Resnick gave a resigned sigh. “Yes. I didn’t locate the Petersons or the girls until they were nearly adults. The Petersons took the girls and ran when they were very young. Just toddlers. I was glad. I hated seeing what was done to them. I was just a teenager who was helpless to do anything but watch while they were treated like objects.
“They were why I pursued a job in the CIA and why I worked my way into the upper echelons of the intelligence community. I not only wanted to find and protect them but I wanted to keep my ear to the ground so I’d know if there was an effort to regroup or if anyone began digging around for information on the girls.
“The project folded after the Petersons escaped with Shea and Grace. There was a fear of discovery. No one knew when or if the Petersons would go public. One day the project was alive and well. The next day it was a ghost town.”
“And you?” Sam asked. “Where do you fit into all this, Resnick? What did you do after the project folded? Or did you keep your hand in it all this time?”
Resnick’s lip curled at the distrust in Sam’s voice. “Since I was conceived in a lab, I didn’t officially exist. I didn’t even have a name, though the Petersons called me Adam. For the first created man. But I had no official identification. No birth certificate. To the world I didn’t exist. It was pretty easy to disappear, start over, create my own past. It didn’t take long to get a birth certificate and a social security number. Things were much easier back then. Not as much red tape. And once you’re in the system, you’re there. And so I became Adam Resnick. More importantly, my connection to the research project has never been known.”
Resnick stopped for a moment and then he tiredly ran a hand over his jaw. His injured arm hung loosely at his side and he had a gray cast to his skin. He looked beaten. Regret radiated from him in waves.
“For what it’s worth, I’m sorry, Nathan. I didn’t know. I couldn’t have known. I only wanted to protect Shea. I still want to protect her.”
“Then let’s find out who the fuck has her,” Nathan ground out. “Last time they caught up to her in California and they held her in the vicinity for a week. She escaped and I found her in Crescent City, hiding in a culvert. They kept her drugged the entire time. She remembers little except the torture, so she couldn’t tell me anything about who they were.”
Resnick sighed. “I’ve looked for her and Grace ever since the Petersons turned up dead and the girls disappeared. I knew they were in serious trouble. I made sure the Petersons’ bodies were removed and nothing got out about their deaths. The house belonged to me under an assumed name, and on paper the Petersons were renters. They kept to themselves and never involved themselves in the community, so it’s doubtful anyone ever knew they were gone. I made sure the house was kept up in case…in case one of the girls ever came back.”
“You mean you intended to nab them as soon as they showed up,” Nathan said darkly.
“I would have taken them in, yes,” Resnick said calmly. “I would have done anything to protect them. Unfortunately, I wasn’t the only one watching the house, and Phillips and his team got there too late to help Grace. I was determined to at least bring Shea in. When we failed to intercept her at the house, I knew that eventually you’d take her home, so we waited for our opportunity and took it.”
“Who else is watching?” Sam demanded. “Who else wants them?”
“I don’t know. But I plan to find out.”
“So what now?” Garrett demanded with his trademark impatience. He was positively fidgeting with all the talking going on, an impatience that Nathan shared.
Resnick pushed off the edge of the counter. “Now we find the fucks who have Shea and we go blow some shit up.”
Ethan grinned. “Now we’re talking!”
CHAPTER 38
TORTURE was preferable to this hell. Her sanity was slowly being eaten away.
She was in a clear plastic tube, the sides pressed to her arms so she couldn’t move. Bands circled her ankles, her wrists and even her neck. That one was the worst of all because she fought the sensation of choking every second she was conscious.
They’d already taken blood samples. It had all been sterile and very methodical. No one spoke to her. They treated her like she was a nameless, faceless object. Soulless. No one. Just another research project. Was this what it had been like for her and Grace in the beginning?
What did they want from her? Tears pricked her eyelids and her vision blurred. She was a human being regardless of the circumstances of her birth.
This wasn’t right. None of it was right. She and Grace deserved to be left alone. Running from a faceless enemy was no way to live.
She glanced fearfully over at the monitor positioned to her left. She had to calm her thoughts. Make everything blank.
The electrodes attached to her head monitored brain waves and activity. She’d already learned the hard way that the consequence of her trying to communicate telepathically was horrific pain, not only from the lingering effects of the drugs but from the electrical shock that speared through her body every time her brain activity increased.
But telepathy wasn’t the only thing that would raise the level of her brain activity. She had to be careful to temper her emotions.
She felt like the negative reinforcement rat. Eat, zap. Do the wrong thing, zap. Zap, zap, zap.
Yeah, she was starting to lose her mind. It wouldn’t take much at all to sever her fragile grasp of reality. She was clinging by a thread, and right now it seemed a lot easier to just let go and check out.
She hadn’t tried to contact Nathan for hours now. She could still feel the lingering pain from her last effort. The empty void in her mind was hell. The claustrophobic capsule they’d crammed her in was hell. She knew in that moment that she didn’t want to connect with Nathan. She never wanted him to know how this felt. He’d already endured so much torture, and knowing what was happening to her would send him right over the edge.
RESNICK paced back and forth in the basement of his home that served as his office away from his headquarters in D.C. “She should have been able to communicate with you by now. Have you tried reaching out to her recently?”
“I won’t do it again,” Nathan said fiercely. “Every time I do, I can feel her pain. It’s horrific. I won’t put her through that. I can feel her confusion, her emptiness. She’s so goddamn alone and she’s hanging on by the thinnest of threads and the pain is unimaginable. We have to give her more time.”
“I could try,” Joe said in a low voice. “You’re too worked up, man. We need to keep her calm. If she feels what you feel, I can’t imagine what that does to her. I’m more objective. At least let me try. Maybe I’ll cause her less pain.”
Nathan sighed, knowing his brother was probably right at least about him being too worked up. “I appreciate you trying to help, man, but this thing with Shea, it’s random. She told me she has no control over whom she can connect to.”
Joe slowly shook his head in disagreement. “She can speak to me. I’ve heard her in my mind. Back when we first met. I felt her and then I heard her. I thought at first that I was imagining it, but yeah, it was her.”
Nathan stared at his brother in confusion. “What?”
“She didn’t tell you?”
“No, she didn’t tell me. I had no idea. Why didn’t you tell me?”
Joe held his hands up. “Whoa. It’s not like she was cheating on you with me or anything. She was afraid I’d be pissed because she could hear me and vice versa. It was the reason I asked to talk to her alone back at the house. So we could iron out a few things.”