Seth finally shrugged. “He can’t hurt the deal, Brian. And it’s not the first news conference he’s called to try to put pressure on the board to force our decisions his way. It won’t work now any more than it worked in the past.”
Brian nodded his thinning gray head, but his expression was lined with worry. “It makes me wonder if the rumors of his family’s involvement with the Council are true,” he finally sighed. “As God is my witness, I didn’t know the true scope of what we were funding, Seth. Research and development, they called it. The reports I received didn’t mention anything about children, or adults, being created.”
It was, Dawn suspected, no more than that truth. The Council reports to many of the companies funding them had been in terms of “weapons” developed; the testing of those weapons, the units built or destroyed for lack of efficiency.
A lack of efficiency. More clearly defined, the inability to endure the horrors of their “training.” And the scientists’ excuses?
Callan had nearly lost his sanity during the Senate hearings just after they revealed themselves. The Council scientists’ reasons for their cruelties, expressing their utter lack of humanity, had been brief. The Breeds were weapons that could be tortured for information. Better they understood the torture before embarking on their missions.
Their unique physiology and DNA required the various tests that were performed against them. Tests such as autopsies performed while the Breed screamed in agony. Beatings inflicted while electrodes
measured pain, strength and neural synapses. It went on and on, the horror of it often too much to grasp, even for a Breed reliving it through those hearings.
“Lawrence Industries went over the records of its board members carefully, Brian,” Seth reminded him.
“We’re aware of the reports that were sent out, just as we’re aware of the evidence that proved the knowledge of those we forced off the board ten years before.”
Brian nodded, then his lips quirked. “Have you regretted allowing Vanderale to take the place of one of those board members?” he asked. “He’s definitely a unique personality, Seth. Not always a comfortable one, but unique all the same.”
“That’s the most tactful description I think I’ve heard of him.” Seth chuckled as Dawn’s gaze began to move around them once again. “Normally, the language gets much more colorful.”
“Not to mention threatening,” Brian admitted. “I think I threatened to rip his throat out for him during a meeting last month.”
Dawn jerked her gaze back to the portly, charming board member in surprise. This little man had threatened Dane Vanderale? Dane wasn’t a man that even Dawn wanted to meet in a fight.
“I was a little irked,” he informed her with a deep chuckle. “Dane has that effect.”
She smiled at that, her lips parting to speak, when she felt him. Shesmelled him. That touch of evil was so deep, so invasive she felt pummeled by it.
She stiffened, aware of the growl the rumbled in her throat, of Seth stiffening and Brian watching her with narrowed eyes.
He was here. The one from her dreams. She could feel him watching her now and she realized she had felt him the entire time she had been on the island.
She had known him, but the block within her memories had hid the knowledge from her. The smell of liquor and smug satisfaction. Of malicious pleasure and depraved lusts.
“Dawn,” Seth murmured at her side, forcing her into a position where he could protect her, rather than the other way around.
She searched the room. He was in the room. That brief whiff of his evil had been enough to assure her of that. She turned, scanning the crowd, knowing, fearing the worse. He wasn’t outside. He was here, in the room. He wouldn’t be unarmed; he would know better than to ever go unarmed. As the scent reached her again, she tensed further, the various layers of smell sorting through her mind as she tried to identify him.
She had smelled him before, though there had been other scents around him at the time. Scents guaranteed to throw off the Breed senses. Liquor and drugs, they temporarily affected the body’s chemistry, and their basic scent hid him. Her memories had returned though, and with them the memory of his scent beneath the liquor and drugs.
Her eyes were restless, her mind working, ignoring Seth’s demand for an explanation as it began coming to her, slowly. So slowly.
The soldier who raped her had used drugs to maintain an erection. Even then. He had been young, in his early twenties, she had sensed that much about him. He drugged himself for the added pleasure as well as the added length of time it afforded him to torture the children he enjoyed. He still raped. She could smell the scent of that depravity, the subtle smell of the pain he had inflicted that still clung to his body now that he wasn’t attempting to disguise his scent.
“He’s here,” she murmured.
“Who’s here?” Seth’s hand was in the pocket of his jacket, his fingers curled over a weapon she had watched him place there earlier.
“Heis,” she whispered again.
There was a long, strained silence as Dawn searched the faces her gaze touched upon.
“That’s not possible.” Rage burned in his voice now.
“It’s possible,” she told him quietly, ignoring Brian Phelps, knowing she couldn’t worry about him now. Wherever his wife was within this crowd, she would have to worry about him.
“Where?” Seth snapped out, motioning several Breeds closer. Dawn was aware of his every move, just as she was suddenly aware of every guest within the room. She could feel their heartbeats, smell their emotions. Many were so oblivious, but there was one. One that was waiting, watching.