Confusion and relief and sheer, utter joy warred with Nina’s shock, but they couldn’t overcome it. She stared at Ava, shaking her head. “What happened to you? How?”
“Does it matter?” Ava took a step forward, her heeled boots clicking sharply on the tile. “I finally got away from the Franklin Center.”
“They—they told me you were dead.”
“I’m not.” Another step. Ava opened her arms and folded them around Nina, and the familiar scent of lavender and vanilla curled around her. The memory hit her like a tangible thing—lounging around their shared room, idly picking through various bottles of oils as Ava mixed her own fragrances.
The joy finally broke through Nina’s numb shock, and she exhaled with a sob. “You’re here.” She held Ava tighter. “You’re alive.”
“I am.” Ava’s lips were so close that the whispered words fell against Nina’s ear as a sigh. “And I hope you’re telling the truth, Nina. I truly do.”
A sharp stab of pain at the side of her neck made Nina jerk away. She tried to lift her hand, but a heavy warmth was already spreading through her, turning her limbs to lead. The necklace she’d found fell from her nerveless fingers, and she slumped to the floor.
The last thing she saw as dark oblivion spun up to claim her was Ava, bending down to retrieve the pendant.
* * *
Nina wasn’t back from her perimeter check yet.
Knox rubbed at the back of his neck, as if that would settle the prickles. No one else seemed alarmed by Nina’s tardiness. Maya had set up their clever little camp stove on a table Dani had righted, and the two of them were turning a series of those ever-present silver packets into dinner.
The scent filled the lobby—scalloped potatoes, thick slices of honey-glazed ham, and some sort of vegetables with a tangy citrus dressing that made Knox’s mouth water. Lunch—and its bland nutritional bars—had been a long time ago.
The women were chatting easily as they prepared their feast. Conall straddled a chair on the other side of the table, his out-of-character silence the only evidence of the tension all the men shared. Gray was mostly hiding it, but Rafe had been digging through his pack for the last five minutes, shifting and rearranging things without purpose.
No one could relax until the truth was out in the open and they knew how the women were going to respond. And Knox couldn’t broach the subject until Nina returned.
He was getting ready to go looking for her when footsteps sounded in the hallway. Nina paused on the threshold of the lobby, her gaze sweeping everyone’s positions. He tried to catch her eye, but she avoided it and stepped into the lobby. “Dinner smells good.”
“Sorry about the ham,” Dani threw over her shoulder. “We made you extra vegetables, though.”
Nina laughed, and the back of Knox’s neck prickled again. Something was wrong. Something was off. The woman approaching the table looked like Nina and smiled like Nina. Laughed like Nina.
Trios of genetically engineered clones as far as the eye could see. That’s where I grew up.
His gun was in his hand before Nina’s words stopped echoing in his head. He pointed it at the newcomer as protective rage roiled up inside him. “Stop right there.”
“Whoa, hey.” Dani drew on Knox, her expression one of sheer outrage. “What the hell?”
Conall didn’t say a word as he sprang from his chair and leveled his sidearm at Dani’s head.
The woman who wasn’t Nina raised both hands, her face the perfect picture of shocked concern. But the chilly hardness in her eyes betrayed her, even as she lowered the voice that could have been Nina’s to a gentle murmur. “Knox, are you okay? What is it?”
“That isn’t Nina,” Knox ground out.
“Are you fucking high?” Maya’s chair clattered to the floor as she rose and twisted, that dangerous little laser gun of hers pointing right at him. She drew a second pistol from her thigh holster and leveled it at Rafe before he could move. “You fuckers need to back the hell up, right now.”
Gray popped a bit of freeze-dried apple into his mouth and studied the standoff with a critical eye, as if he hadn’t moved yet because he hadn’t decided who he would shoot. “If it’s not Nina, who is it?”
Knox ignored the weapons pointed at him and stared into that beautiful face, so close to perfect and somehow utterly wrong. “What