Harper Allen - Payback

The man was gorgeous. And she’d been living like a nun for the past nine months, Dawn thought in frustration, turning away.

“Not that my sex life’s ever been red-hot,” she muttered ten minutes later as she hoisted herself out of the air shaft and ran lightly to the edge of the barracks’ roof, the Dawn Swanson sweats tied in a bulky bundle around her waist. She removed the gun from her waistband before securing it and the ammo clips in the padding of clothing tied around her, and jumped. “There was that Roman god of a gardener last year in Milan when I was on the Italian job, and before him there was Alexei what’s-his-name in Moscow, who could toss back vodka all night and still show a girl why he was nicknamed the Russian bear,” she remembered, coming out of her landing roll. “Aside from them, the list is pretty skimpy.”

But numbers weren’t the point anyway. She made her way through the air shaft, her expression thoughtful. As fun as Alexei and the gardener had been, she had no illusions that they’d wasted any time dreaming about her after she’d disappeared from their lives. What would it be like to experience more than a one- or two-night stand with someone? What would it be like to know you were in his dreams, as the man she’d just left had drowsily asserted she’d been in his?

Pausing a few feet from the vent leading to her washroom, she shook her head decisively. “Way too much commitment. Still…it was kind of sweet to hear him say it.”

She was almost sorry she’d chosen Lover Boy’s footlocker to break into, she mused as she lifted the metal grate that overlooked the toilet and shimmied through the opening. She’d noticed a second sidearm in the locker, so hopefully he wouldn’t feel duty-bound to immediately report a weapon missing and would assume its absence was part of a practical joke by a buddy. Balancing on the porcelain tank, she hauled down the bundle of clothing, first removing the Beretta and its ammunition and shoving them out of sight in the vent for retrieval later. She replaced the grate, stepped down from the tank and glanced at her watch.

The whole excursion had taken twenty minutes. There was time for a brief catnap before she needed to start getting ready to report for her first day of work in Sir William’s lab. Stifling a sudden yawn at the thought, she lifted the unattractive brown robe that was part of her Dawn Swanson wardrobe from the hook where she’d hung it when she’d unpacked, wrapped it around her and unlocked the door to the bedroom. She took a step toward her bed and then stopped in shock.

The man sitting on the edge of it wore a shapeless sweater and a threadbare pair of gray flannel trousers. His bony feet, bare of socks, were jammed into odd-looking sandals with an assortment of straps and buckles. Half-moon reading glasses were perched on the end of a beaky nose, and his pure white hair looked almost as wild as Carter Johnson’s funky bed-head style. He looked up from the notebook he had been scribbling in, his expression thunderous.

“What the bloody hell have you been doing all this time in the loo?” he barked. “And where’s the damned poster of me I hear you keep over your bed?”

“You miss the point entirely,” Sir William London snapped impatiently thirty minutes later. “Von Trier’s ridiculous hypothesis aside, what’s to stop the gene from mutating further under controlled conditions? Nothing!” He slumped back onto the pillows piled up against the headboard of Dawn’s bed, the ergonomically molded soles of his sandals further disarranging the bedcover. “And yet it’s as inert as a bloody pudding,” he muttered disconsolately, “and I’ve already wasted two days trying to find out why.”

The first stage of her agenda, after arriving here, had been to get close to the famed Sir William, Dawn thought, still finding it hard to believe the turn of events of the past half hour. It seemed she’d already accomplished that, and with barely any effort on her part.

“I’ve been unpacking and arranging my toiletries, Sir William,” she’d replied to his querulous demand when she’d exited the bathroom and found him in her room. She’d walked unconcernedly to the bureau and picked up her horn-rims. “And although I used to have your poster over my bed when I was in college, I didn’t think it would be appropriate to do so here. What can I help you with?”

“I need to pick someone’s brains,” he’d growled. “Since yours was the only room with a light showing under the door, I thought I’d pick yours. Why in God’s name the rest of my staff need to sleep like logs all through the night when they know that’s when I like to brainstorm, I don’t know,” he’d added in irritation.

Aldrich will be over the freakin’ moon when I phone in my initial progress report later this week, Dawn told herself now. If anything could reassure him that I’m still the best at undercover assignments, this will.

She shut all thought of Aldrich Peters and Lab 33 from her mind and gave her attention to her unlikely companion. “More tea?” At his nod she walked over to the bed from the small desk where she’d been sitting, the battered thermos that Sir William had brought in her hand. Absently he held out a glass lab beaker, and she filled it before pouring some of the vile-tasting brew into a chipped mug for herself. “Of course there’s nothing to stop the gene from mutating under controlled conditions,” she said as she sat down again. “Since it hasn’t, someone’s obviously screwed up the conditions.”

“A typically glib Yank answer.” Under scraggly eyebrows, London’s regard was sharp with annoyance. “Who the hell would dare to—” He stopped abruptly, his scowl deepening.

Who indeed? Dawn thought wryly. For starters, just about anyone, if this lab was anything like the one she’d grown up in. All scientists, in her experience, were prima donnas. All lab technicians were underpaid. All maintenance staff were overworked and cut corners where they could. At least at Lab 33 everyone ultimately answered to Peters, which kept them toeing the line, but that wasn’t the case here.

A plan began to formulate in her mind. She pursed her lips Dawn Swanson-style, but before she could speak, London exploded. “That ass Hewlitt! He came to me straight from Von Trier’s facility. The bugger’s trying to sabotage my work!”

“Maybe.” She kept her voice calm. “Then again, maybe not. Tell me something, Sir William—the supervisor who showed me to my room this evening, Roger somebody?”

“Roger Poole? What about him?” The scowl was back on his face. “Roger’s been with me for years. He’s as loyal as a beagle, so if you’re trying to suggest he—”

“Loyalty’s not the issue,” she cut in. “Being a decent guy’s probably his biggest problem. You need someone taking care of the day-to-day running of your lab who’s not afraid to be disliked.” She shoved her glasses higher up onto the bridge of her nose and leaned forward, her expression tentatively eager. “I hope I’m not out of line, Sir William, but any slip-ups that are occurring in your lab certainly can’t be your fault. And you shouldn’t have to take time from your groundbreaking research to correct these problems. I know I was hired as a lab tech, but it’s obvious you need a pit bull a whole lot more than you do a beagle. Let me be your pit bull. Give me two days, and I promise your lab will be running like a well-oiled machine.”

“She’s not cleared for that kind of responsibility, Sir William.” The door to Dawn’s room crashed open and Des Asher, still in uniform, took a step across the threshold. His expression seemed carved from stone as he went on, directing his words at his uncle and ignoring her. “As head of military security here, I can’t allow her to be given free access to this facility.”