Another shrug. Haynes either didn't know or didn't care. Maybe both.
"Would the Military have adopted the failures out?"
"I don't know. I was not privy to that sort of information."
Gabriel rubbed his chin. Emma Pierce had entered the military at an early age and lost her ovaries in Generation Eighteen. She couldn't have had children before entering Hopeworth. If what Allars said was true, that one fact would have disqualified her from the tests. And yet, the first two victims listed Emma Pierce as their birth mother. They had to be rejects from the project.
Question was, why did the military adopt them out rather than simply killing them? If they were worried about security, surely death would have made more sense.
"Is it possible that one of the hybrids has gotten loose and is going after her less successful sisters?" A hybrid certainly fit the puzzle pieces in the doctor's murder, at least.
Haynes somehow managed to force an answer. "Tagged... Alarmed."
If not a rogue hybrid from Hopeworth, then who? The SIU had no hybrids currently on register for Victoria, and within Australia, there were only three listed. There was a forth, one the SIU didn't know about. He and Stephan intended to keep it that way. Their old man wouldn't have been involved in these murders anyway — not without consulting both him and Stephan first.
He glanced at his watch again. Half an hour had passed. Sam should be back by now, and hopefully she had finished the search. He wasn't going to get much more from Haynes until the conditioning had been neutralized.
"I think you'd better rest for a while." He rose and walked to the door. "I'll send someone back with some food."
Haynes nodded and picked up the remote near the chair. He was taking his confinement well — maybe a little too well. Gabriel walked down to the security station. "I want a breakdown team assigned to Mr. Haynes. And get him something to eat."
The blonde nodded.
"Has agent Ryan checked in yet?"
"No, sir. Not yet."
He swore softly and glanced at his watch. An hour and a half had passed since he'd left her. More than enough time to deposit Allars at a safe house and get her butt back here. Unless, of course, something had gone wrong. He strode over to the elevator. He'd call the safe house and see what was going on. And if she didn't have a real good excuse for her tardiness, she'd be banished to the vaults permanently. At least that was one way to ensure she was damn safe.
* * * *
Sam glanced at her watch. An hour had passed since she'd left Gabriel. Given his desire to get rid of her, he'd no doubt hit her with an official warning about her tardiness. Three warnings and you were out, she'd been told.She slammed the door shut and ran down the stairs. Allars had been almost impossible to accommodate. The old fart had insisted on the latest in TV and satellite connections, and, because of his inability to walk very far, had required an apartment with few steps. Unfortunately, most SIU safe houses tended to be in buildings that had no elevators — simply because a would-be assassin might make more noise climbing stairs than taking the elevator. In the end, she'd told the watch team to carry him up to his room.
Why the hell Gabriel simply didn't house him in the short-term accommodations back at Headquarters was beyond her.
The green-eyed security officer near the front door looked up from the monitors as she approached. "The grump settled in okay?"
"Yeah. Give him what he wants — within reason, of course. And don't fall asleep, Wright. We don't want the military getting their hands on him until we have time to question him some more."
"How likely is it that the military will try to spring him?"
That depended on several factors — what the military thought Allars might tell them, how much they knew about the SIU, and how quickly they could hack into SIU programming and get a list of current safe houses. "We don't really know. Priority is given to getting him out of here if it happens, though."
Wright nodded. Sam swiped her ID through the slot. The front door opened and the wind gusted in, thick with the promise of rain. She lifted the collar on her jacket and headed out to her car.
Rain spotted across the pavement. She raised her face, enjoying the feel of the cold droplets against her skin. There was something almost soothing about it.
"Samantha."
She froze. The voice was deep and warm, yet held a hint of caution. It was the voice of the man who'd once saved her life. The voice of the man who wanted Gabriel dead.
The voice of a man who was neither friend nor foe, but something in between.
Chapter Eight
Sam turned around slowly. The hirsute stranger leaned against the apartment building's brick wall, half-hidden by the shrubs and bottlebrushes that overhung the pavement.
"Just who the hell are you? And why do you keep popping up in my life?"