things should be private, and she’d always wanted him to share of himself what he chose to, a gift given instead of a secret pilfered.
Now, she read him as she had read everyone else in the room.
Heartache. Utter and complete heartache. He didn’t seem to be concerned about his health in the slightest, but then that was a bonded male for you right there. Always thinking of his mate, and not just because it was the right thing to do. The single-minded focus was in their breeding, literally a part of their DNA.
As worried as she was about that shoulder wound, at least she could do something with his broken heart.
“I can prove to you there’s nothing going on between Murhder and me.”
John looked back over and she hated the wariness in his eyes.
“No, really.” She nodded. “I know just what to do.”
The following evening, Sarah tied the laces on her running shoes, first on her right foot, then on her left. As she stood up, things felt nice and cushiony under her soles.
There were also good treads down there. Just what you’d want if you had to make a sprint for an exit.
Pulling on her parka, she picked up her backpack, one-strapped it and grabbed her keys. At the door out into the garage, she looked over her shoulder and wondered if she was ever going to see her house again.
She had spent the daylight hours scrubbing all the bathrooms, vacuuming the rugs, taking out the trash, mopping the kitchen floor. It was, she supposed, a reflex, like making sure before you left for a long trip you had clean undies on.
Just in case you were in a car accident.
Before she lost her nerve, she turned the alarm on, exited and locked up. Backing her Honda out, she tried to make like this was no big deal … just another Sunday night heading into work to check ongoing research results. Fortunately, she had done this before. Not all the time, but depending on where she was in her work, she had often headed into the lab on off-hours. Off-days. Even holidays like Christmas Eve, New Year’s Eve, Fourth of July.
Although in the last two years, those trips had mostly been to distract herself from the loneliness of her house. Her life. Her future.
Heading down her street, she stared straight ahead. There didn’t appear to be any deceptively nondescript sedans around, but who knew where the Feds were.
As she passed by familiar houses in the neighborhood, made familiar turns as she came to intersections, and stopped at familiar lights, she decided this was a bizarre experience. Most people didn’t know that they were saying goodbye when they did something for the last time. It was only in retrospect, after things changed forever, that they realized a period in their life, an era, had come to an end.
Considering what she was going to do? There was a good chance she was not coming home.
She had called no one.
No one to call. Nothing really to say.
As she’d developed her plan, she had made sure to keep her schedule exactly as it always was on Saturdays and Sundays with bedtime and wake up, the cycle of lights inside what she usually clicked off and on.
Nothing out of place. Out of sync. Out of order.
Her heart was pounding as she continued along the route to BioMed, and when she pulled up to the gatehouse at the facility, she wanted to throw up.
Instead of giving into the heaves, she put her window down and smiled in anticipation of the security guard opening his sliding door. As the partition pulled free of its jamb, she braced herself for a gun to be pointed at her head.
Instead, the guard smiled. “Hey, Dr. Watkins. How you doin’?”
“Good, Marco, good.” She handed him her ID and prayed he didn’t notice that her hand was shaking. “It’s cold tonight. You warm enough in there?”
“Oh, you know it.” He put a scanner on the barcode underneath her picture and the device let out a beep. “Just watching the Heat play the Bulls.”
“That’ll keep you toasty.”
“Sure will.” He gave her the credentials back. “I’ll see you on the flip side.”
“I’ll just be an hour or so. Checking on things.”
“Good deal.”
He closed his door. She put up her window. And then the twenty-foot-high chain-link gate trundled off to the side and the arm bar rose.
The lab compound was located a distance back from the guardhouse, and as she proceeded forward on the plowed