Heart of Danger by Lisa Marie Rice Read Free Book Online Page A

Millon was six months. An exception had been made for Catherine Young because Lee felt her work shouldn’t be interrupted and it would take another scientist six months just to get caught up to speed.
    Young was tasked with making an fMRI map of the altered minds, creating a baseline for further research. Her work had to remain confidential, which is why Lee had planned on having Baring terminate her once the map was complete, instead of transferring her.
    Young knew a lot. More than enough to create trouble.
    He kept her under surveillance. Baring’s surveillance had been very tight in the beginning, but nothing had shown up and they’d decided they could take it down a notch or two.
    And now she’d slipped through their net.
    “What about her car?”
    “Not transmitting. Transponder dead.” Baring’s lips clamped closed in disapproval.
    Baring had petitioned to put trackers in staff cars, too. But most of the staff had electric cars, which would soon become mandatory in California anyway. All cars were run by microchips which were hackable with just a little effort. There Lee definitely ruled against Baring. An external tracker on a car would be a dead giveaway that something was wrong, particularly when any car could be hacked as long as it was running.
    All eCars had transponders which allowed them to send out an emergency signal.
    So Catherine Young’s car was somewhere out there, but not running and the transponder was dead.
    Lee drummed his fingers on the console, once. It was all he allowed himself. No one knew better than he the importance of keeping body language serene.
    “Did you check the cameras in the lab?”
    “Yessir.” Even in the hologram, Lee could see Baring’s color change, face becoming ruddy. “Of course.”
    “Anything untoward happen yesterday?”
    “It didn’t seem so. Sir.” Baring’s jaw muscles tightened, as if he’d been questioned.
    Then again, what would Baring know? He wasn’t a scientist. He couldn’t follow any of the researchers’ work.
    “Did she seem . . . agitated in any way? Did she do anything different?”
    Lee watched Baring’s disembodied head. Even just a few years ago there was half a second’s delay in holographic telephony, sometimes making conversations surreal. But Arka had state-of-the-art technology and Baring reacted in real time. “No, sir.”
    “Who was she working on yesterday?”
    “Number Nine, sir,” Baring replied.
    Lee felt that prickle of coldness once more.
    Baring had no idea who Nine was. It was a good thing that Captain Ward had always worked in the shadows. Only a handful of people were familiar with his spectacular military career. Baring was ex-military but he came from infantry. What Ward did had always been above Baring’s pay grade.
    This was nothing. And yet . . . Catherine Young disappearing after working on Ward was not good.
    Ward was the key, Lee was sure of it. They were so close, so very close. SL-57 hadn’t worked, but each successive iteration brought them closer to their goal. A virus-borne cocktail of hormones and chemical stimulants to neurotransmitters and muscle enhancers was being fine-tuned. Currently, the protocol to enhance intelligence and speed of reflexes caused fulminating dementia in most patients, but they were closer to understanding the cause and reversing the effect. SL-58 was being tested. Right now, in fact.
    It had been a top secret government project known by the harmless name of Strategic Leadership that Lee had run under the orders of General Clancy Flynn, the money coming from a black fund Flynn controlled. Flynn was retired now, CEO of a private security company. Lee knew that Flynn wanted to create an unstoppable private army via SL.
    Flynn was funneling private money into Arka’s research at the Millon Labs. He was pumping close to ten million dollars a year into Lee’s project. Flynn’s projections were of one billion dollars profit the first year, and double that within three