“Care to explain why you had me put the school on lock-down then decided to set off the alarm while breaking into my lab?”
“Uh testing it?” I said shrugging my shoulders.
I tried to give Dean an innocent look but he knew us too well to buy it.
“Talk.”
I cringed and looked up at the ceiling.
“Okay. First the reason I wanted the school on lock down is because Shayden noticed the same thing I did. The attack on him was done by people that knew nothing of their job. They were way too easy to take out. So it left me to believe that we are being set up.”
“Set up how?”
“Think about it. I would have used this technique myself. Send in people that know nothing of what’s really going on only to have them cause the ones being attacked to group together.”
I stared at Dean as he thought about this. I saw the moment the light went off and the anger flashed across his face.
“You believe they are trying to gather us together to eliminate us all?”
I nodded then gulped. I had never seen Dean so angry. I didn’t know if it was because I had thought of it before him or because he knew that now put his only family member’s lives at risk.
He got up from the couch and began pacing. “That was smart to think of that, I’m glad you did.” He stopped and stared at the wall a minute. “But I don’t think that’s what they are trying for. I think there is something else at work here. I won’t go into details right now but soon I will have to tell you. Until then please refrain from leaving the room.”
I nodded to him and gave him a sincere look. I walked over to him and hugged him. “I swear I won’t let anyone hurt you or the guys,” I told him as he wrapped his arms around me.
“I think it’s more along the lines they are hoping that we hurt you.”
That sentence took me by surprise. Dean would never do anything to hurt me. I trusted him with my life, I always had and so did Dad. But it still bothered me. What had I done that would cause Dean to want to hurt me? I looked back at Shayden and could see he was just as upset as I was.
“Now care to tell me what you needed my lab for?” he asked as he pushed me back holding me at arm’s length.
“Can it wait until I have it done and can show you?”
“Is it dangerous?”
I shook my head. I knew if I even tried to talk the lie would come out with a squeak. I could never lie to Dad or Dean. I could tell by the look on Dean’s face he wasn’t buying it. But he sighed, shook his head, and released me. That was my go ahead.
They always told me it was hard to argue with a genius.
“Oh before I forget, you may want to have someone put sensors up in the ceiling. You would have known exactly where I was had that been done.”
He raised one eyebrow and thought for a moment. Sometimes I felt like an idiot for telling him how to do his job. I knew he was the best but he hadn’t ever dealt with someone like me before.
“Not a bad idea. But I don’t see how useful it would be since you are the only ones that had pulled that stunt.”
“Just saying, I mean as long as there isn’t a way to the roof from there then everything should be good. Then again Dean there is a reason you asked me to help your security team.” I couldn’t help but smile at him. The reason he had asked me was because I was able to sneak into almost any place. I could do a search of the place by getting in one way or another and then find the breach to allow me to get back in at a later time.
That was another thing I was good at. The other was killing the intended target. That’s what happens when you’re trained from an early age.
It also helps that my size can let me fit most places a man can’t go. Before I had been kidnapped, Dean had me do a few practice drills. He had set up his home, the school, a store, and several cars.
He had placed dummies in each of the areas and would send me texts with the locations. I knew he had cameras placed everywhere so he could try to catch me. He only caught me once; at his house.
I had managed to take out his cameras with my tablet before climbing a tree to the roof. I had slipped down the chimney and killed the intended dummy but had forgotten the security system in place when I tried to go out his office window. The others, he had no way of knowing anything was going on until it was over.
He smiled at me before messing up the top of my hair and walking to the door. “You two behave and I’ll be back shortly to see how things are going.”
That meant I’ll be back to check on you and make sure you haven’t destroyed everything.
Shayden and I went to work making the main program. It had to consist of four different aspects, as well as an alarm and the tracker program. It could be done but it would take both of us to figure out how to do it without causing conflict with everything.
Three hours, a small lunch break, Dean interrupting four times, and a woohoo later, it was finished. Shay and I high fived each other, got up and began gathering everything needed to finish what we started.
“You know you have to do mine right?” I told him as I pulled the special made tattoo machine out of the duffel bag and set it up on the little table. Shayden nodded to me and concentrated on getting one of the microchips out of each tray. He set them aside in their own containers filled with black tattoo ink.
“What kind of design am I doing?”
I grabbed the notebook and flipped the pages back until I showed him a black rose. It was perfect. The petals would allow us to implement the chips without them touching one another.
“Smart, but why a rose?”
“The same reason you done my other rose, for the lives that were taken while we had to stay here and defend ourselves instead of protecting the innocent ones,” I told him thinking of the black rose that I kept covered with makeup on my forearm. Shayden had given that tattoo to me after I had recovered, although he had no idea the real reason.
“Mind if I tell you a story while you do this?” I really didn’t want to talk about it but then again I was a masochist. I could use the pain he was dishing out as I told him everything that happened. Well almost everything.
He nodded to me and I lay back on the coffee table so he would have plenty of room and plenty of light. I waited until he shaved the area and put the design on me, just below my bra line over my heart, to begin.
He listened carefully, never faltering in what he was doing and I continued giving more details to him than I did to the others. Knowing Braxton though, he had Dean on speaker phone or even went as far as to put it on video in Dean’s office so Dean could hear it.
When I got to the part about my back being cut several times, he paused. Shayden laid the machine down and rolled me to the side so he could see the scars.
“Oh my God,” he said as he touched them. He rolled me back over and I could see the look of confusion and fear. “How? Oh my God Rissa, how did you survive that?”
I went on to tell him how Braydon had saved me. Shayden hadn’t exactly been nice to Braydon but he wasn’t cruel to him either. He just didn’t understand why I wanted him around. He was known for things he had done. But the side of Braydon I saw was completely opposite. He was sweet, funny, and caring.
Shayden finally finished the tattoo and cleaned up the kit. He wiped off any remaining ink that had splattered me, put ointment on the tattoo, and wrapped cellophane around my ribs to keep it clean. I kept my shirt tucked under my bra so it wouldn’t mess with anything and walked over to the computers.
“Here goes.” I looked into the camera on the wall. “You watching Dean? We’re about to make history,” I laughed as I pressed a button. It took a second and then I watched as a flat line began growing peaks.
“Woohoo!!” I screamed jumping up and down. Shayden grabbed me and we jumped together. It had worked.
One area showed my heart rate. I would have to adjust it as I went so that it would trigger an alarm if my heart rate got up to h
igh, like when I am attacked. Another area, monitored my blood pressure, another monitored my oxygen levels, and the last monitored glucose levels. These things would come in handy if injured. If my heart rate didn’t go up to send the alert out and allow me to be tracked then when my levels dropped to a certain point, that would.
It took a matter of five minutes before the room began to fill up. I sent a copy of the program over to Braxton so he could download it and see what we had done while I explained it to everyone else.
I got the same reaction from most of everyone. The only two that didn’t seem excited and begging to get one of their own was Gabe and Dean. But Dean just seemed shocked that I had come up with it. Gabe on the other hand was pissed.
“You mean to tell me you implanted that in your system without knowing whether or not it worked? Do you know how careless, dangerous, and idiotic that was?”
“How do you propose I check it out? I didn’t have enough to do for a trial run nor did I have a test subject besides myself willing to do it. If it makes you feel any better I compensated myself greatly,” I told him as I looked up at him.
He closed his eyes and shook his head. “How?”
“I ordered myself new parts for my bike.”
He continued to shake his head but walked over to the couch to look at the screen. “We need to compare it with other tests to make sure it’s accurate.” I agreed and brought over the supplies.
He took my blood pressure and compared it. It was only a few numbers off but my guess would be the computer was more accurate. My sugar levels were dead on and my O2 stats were as well. He sat back a minute and then reached across to took my pulse. He was checking my heart rate.
“We have to find the trigger point though, on the heart rate,” I told him. This meant running more tests.
It took two days to run the tests on everyone. Dean agreed to allow them to get the tattoo only if we had done the tests first and could determine that mine wasn’t going to fail.
I had to leave it on and monitor my resting heart rate, when I ran on the treadmill, when I trained with Shayden, and goofed off with the guys. The only thing left was to see what scared me enough to raise my heart rate above those results and triggered the tracker.
It was on the second day that Dean sent me a text asking me to come to his office. I had expected the guys to do something between now and then but they were each busy running the tests on themselves to try to attack me and raise the rate.
I had just walked out of the room and shut the door behind me when I could see a blur in my peripheral. I turned quickly but no one was there. I could feel my heart starting to pick up speed as I turned back and walked on down the hall. Before I could get to the middle stairwell near Dean’s office someone dressed in all black stepped out.
He raised his arm up and pointed a gun straight at me. My eyes widened and I dove to the floor just as the shot rang through the building. I jumped up and ran at him full force. I thought it was one of the guys but when I got closer I could see the eyes were older. Dean.
For a split second I wondered if he had finally decided to do what he said they wanted, kill me. I could only pray that he wouldn’t.
Several more shots rang out as I made it to him. I could feel the sting of the impact and was glad I had my suit on. Right before I ran smack dab into him I slid to the floor like sliding into base and through his legs.
He spun around in time for me to knock the gun from his hand. I jumped to my feet and ducked as he swung at me. He wasn’t holding back. He never did. I had to jump back several times to avoid being hit or kicked. My heart sped up even more as I saw the light glint off the dagger he pulled from behind his back.
He swiped it at my face and I yelped but got out of the way in time. My face was the only thing unprotected and it shocked me that he would go for it. I hit the dial to levitate myself so hard that I almost flew through the tile. I crawled as quickly as I could toward the door of his office but felt the sting in my leg. He had taken my advice.
I was almost cursing as I turned and headed back down the hall. I was almost tempted to go into Braxton’s room and disable the sensors but I knew it wouldn’t do any good. I dropped down midway between him and my room only to find myself surrounded.