Total pages in book: 29
Estimated words: 26962 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 135(@200wpm)___ 108(@250wpm)___ 90(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 26962 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 135(@200wpm)___ 108(@250wpm)___ 90(@300wpm)
“So those men from the club I overheard took my mom?”
“Them or someone who works with them.”
“Don’t you work with them?” I challenge, and Gray’s jaw clenches. “Answer me.” I smack my hand down hard on the table, making everything shake.
“I work for myself.”
“Damn it, Gray!” I start to get up from my chair, but of course he beats me to it. In the blink of an eye, he’s hovering over me and keeping me planted in my seat.
“There are some things that are better if you don’t know, Jade. This is for your own safety, and I need you to trust me.” I grip the arms of the chair. “These are things you don’t need to bear.”
“I’m scared,” I whisper.
“You’re fearless. If what you heard was true, you risked yourself to find out what was going on, but there is no story. Not one that anyone will ever know about. Even when it’s all over.” He drops his forehead to mine. “I need you to trust me. Please.”
“You don’t say please often, do you?”
“There are a lot of things I didn’t do until you turned up in my life.” Damn, I can’t help but smile up at him. To think I’ve drawn something out of Gray no one else ever has.
“Okay, I’ll trust you.” The words barely cross my lips and he’s kissing me breathless.
“Now eat,” he grunts when he pulls back from the kiss and goes back over to his own chair.
As I dig into my pancakes, I realize that since my mom is being debriefed, she must be with some kind of law enforcement. That means Gray is working undercover on something. The thought hits me like a ton of bricks, and I wonder why I had never considered that before now. It all makes sense, except why not just tell me that?
“Little mouse, stop thinking and eat. Then maybe I’ll let you into the room you tried to break into.”
That gets me moving, and he fights a laugh when my next bite is a giant one.
“Can I ask you about something else?” I ask after a few more bites.
“Of course.”
“How are you like Keaton? Both of you? I find it hard to believe that either of your parents would experiment on their own children.”
“But you think I’d sell my technology to foreign agencies?”
“I never would have thought that unless I’d heard what I heard. Before that night, I always thought both Lone and JM Technology did incredible things.” They’ve created machines that can operate on people with perfect precision. There are so many things they’ve done that I’m sure there’s a lot I don’t know about.
“Have we?” He leans back in his chair.
“You don’t think you’ve saved lives?” The room grows quiet for a long moment.
“Have we saved lives? Yes. Have we taken them? In a way. The military uses a lot of the technology we’ve created. Sometimes I wonder if we are doing the same amount of harm as we are good. There are some things that shouldn’t be played with, but then I worry someone might. If that happens, do we have something to combat that and protect the people we love? Are we playing offense or defense?”
“Like Einstein.” It dawns on me what he means, and he nods.
“Einstein only researched atomic weapons because he wanted to harness that deadly technology before the Germans did. He regretted it when he realized the Germans never succeeded in developing an atomic bomb.”
“You’re trying to pay for the sins of your father?” I want to understand him, but he’s still such a mystery to me.
“My father didn’t inject me with the formula, and Keaton’s was an accident. You’re right that our parents wouldn’t have experimented on us. But after Keaton’s accident, he all but disappeared.” He shrugs as he goes on. “Me? I injected myself.”
“So that you could have those abilities?”
“No, to try and understand why it killed my father,” he says, dropping one of his own little bombs. That’s not what was on the report when Gray’s father died. “We still don’t know why it can affect some one way and others another. I’m still trying to understand what it does to me. I thought I had myself under control, but now I’m understanding why Keaton locked himself away.”
“What does that mean?” I scrunch my nose. “Something’s changed?”
“You could say that. You bring out something that’s deep inside of me. At times, it makes me feel out of control.”
Whoa. That explains a lot about the way he acted when he pulled me from the trunk of his car. He was all over me, and while I thought he was sniffing me, I told myself I was being a nut.
“So you’re still trying to figure it all out?”
“Honestly? I’m at a standstill. Do I keep digging or let it go for someone else to create? Then what?”