Bodyguard Lockdown(22)

“She was a bargaining chip?”

“No.” Booker shook his head. “My grandfather loved my mother and wanted only the best for her. But when my grandfather forbade the marriage, she ran away with my dad.”

Booker’s jaw tightened, holding back the resentment that his words, didn’t...couldn’t disguise.

“My grandfather was furious. He disowned my mother the moment he found out. Then he proceeded to buy up as many oil companies he could and blackballed my father from the fields. Only those who knew nothing of my mother’s family or the story or disliked my grandfather gave my father a job.

“We didn’t have health care. When I was ten, my mom caught pneumonia. My dad wanted to go to my grandfather and ask for help to pay for medical care but my mom made him promise not to. She died the next day, in my father’s arms.”

“Promise or not, he should have tried—”

“My father loved her until the day he died. I was eighteen at the time.” Booker tossed his sandwich away, wiped his hands on his thighs. “He got caught in the backlash of loose steel cable. It ripped him in two.”

“Booker, I’m so sorry.” Her hand automatically went to his shoulder.

“It happened a long time ago, Doc.” Booker shrugged off her hand, shifted back onto his elbows and stretched out his legs.

She let her hand drop to her lap.

“The funny thing is, he only lived a few minutes and was in a tremendous amount of pain,” Booker continued. “Yet he died with my mother’s name on his lips and a smile on his face. It was as if he’d welcomed death because he’d be with her again. He loved her that much.”

“Their love must have been incredible. And so tragic,” Sandra murmured. “It reminds me of my uncle Bari and my aunt Theresa.”

“The irony is, a few years ago, my grandfather took ill. His lawyers showed up on my doorstep. My grandfather wanted me back in the family. I closed the door in their face. And haven’t seen him since.”

“Is he still living?”

“Oh, yes,” Booker stated, his frown deepening. “He’s ninety-three and a stubborn old bastard.”

Like his grandson, Sandra mused, sure that Booker wouldn’t appreciate the comparison.

“He sends me letters. I return them unopened.”

So many secrets. So much distance.

“All of them?” Instinctively, she knew he wasn’t telling her the whole story. Why wouldn’t he just throw the letters away? Why take the time to send the letters back?

Because the old man was his only family. At least sending the letters back maintained some kind of connection.

For the first time she understood—the distance wasn’t only with her. He maintained the same detachment with everyone.

Booker’s whole family had died on him. His mother, his father. Emily and their baby. His men.

“Yes. I sent every one of the letters back.” Booker nodded toward her sandwich. “Eat your lunch. You’re going to need the energy.”

“Doctor.” She pointed at her bag by her side. “Remember?” Still, she took a bite of her food. But this time the peanut butter tasted more like the sand around her feet.

“In my experience, doctors are the worst offenders,” Booker retorted.

“How many doctors do you know?”

“Just one. Isn’t that enough?” he teased.

“Funny.” With a smirk, she tossed her sandwich away, daring him to make a comment.

Instead, he closed his eyes, taking a moment to enjoy the easy camaraderie they’d stumbled upon.

She looked out over the desert, enjoying the simple blend of the cloudless sky and endless sand. “One thing Trygg did for me. He gave me a reason to come home after the trial.”

Booker opened one eye, saw the relaxed features, the quiet, ironic smile across her lips.

“You want to tell me what happened?”

“You’ve seen the file.” She stretched out her legs and dusted the crumbs off her pants.

“I’d like your version.”

“All right.” He’d opened up about his family, she thought. She needed to do the same. “After I graduated from college, I got a job in Washington, D.C., working on a military research project under the direct report of General Trygg.”

“CIRCADIAN?”

“Yes,” Sandra said, frowning. “It worked at a rate of a thousand times faster then the average healthy body can heal.”

“Super Soldiers,” Booker grunted. “Trygg’s specialty.”

“Exactly,” Sandra agreed. “Although I didn’t know it at the time. My father had been informed of the research opportunity shortly after I left college.”

“Who told him?”

“He never said.” Sandra paused, thinking. “I interviewed with several individuals. Several or all might have talked with my father.”

“Including Trygg?”

“Trygg, Senator Harper, Kate MacAlister,” she admitted. “President Mercer.”

Booker stiffened in surprise. “You interviewed with Jonathon Mercer?”

“For over an hour. In his private quarters,” Sandra explained. “I remember being surprised at the extent of his knowledge of CIRCADIAN.”

Booker wasn’t, but said nothing. Instead, he snagged a bottle of water from the brown bag. Took a long swallow. More to cover his anger than for thirst. “Your father’s social circle includes some high-powered company.”

He offered Sandra the bottle.

She swallowed a small amount and handed it back to him. “As a young man, my father studied in the States and graduated at the top of his class. He was recruited into government work almost immediately. I don’t know the projects, of course—they were all top secret. But he maintained his contacts even after he’d left the government and returned to Taer.”

When Booker remained silent, she said, “I know what you’re thinking.”

“No, you don’t,” he responded evenly, keeping his features deliberately blank. Omar Haddad had been a government operative long after he’d returned to Taer.

“You’re thinking somehow if my father is involved, the reason might lie in one of those top secret projects he was involved in years ago.”

“All right,” Booker lied. “I have to admit it’s logical.”

“I would have pursued the job without my father’s help. I had my own reasons for wanting this serum to work, but I needed the funds.”

“What reason?”

“It’s personal.”

“Too personal to share.”

“I’ve lost family members, Booker,” she answered slowly, still not willing to trust him with the information on her brother Andon.

She placed her hand on his arm for a brief second. “I can’t help believing I would save those I have left.”



Booker nodded, understanding. “How did the project get away from you?”

“Eventually I made a breakthrough and Trygg fired my boss, and placed me as the lead researcher. What I didn’t know at the time was that he altered my reports to suit his needs. Omitting information, falsifying test results.”

“Who did he fire?”

“Kate MacAlister-D’Amato,” she said quietly.

“Why?”

“Kate questioned every decision Trygg made,” Sandra stated. “And she had connections to back her up.”

“Obviously, that made Trygg nervous.”

Sandra snorted. “Trygg doesn’t get nervous. He got angry. And then he got rid of her.”

“He would’ve killed her. You know that, right?” Booker asked.

“Now I do,” Sandra replied. “He couldn’t easily, though, because she was so well connected.”



“Trygg brought in Lewis Pitman?”

“Yes,” Sandra said. “Kate tried to convince me to leave also, but I was Trygg’s shining star.”

“You were young,” Booker observed. “Too young to lead a top secret, high-priority research project.”

“I was naive and full of myself,” she corrected, her self-disgust palpable. “Kate went to work on another project, and I continued working on the cell reconstruction serum. You know the rest.”

“And Trygg?”

“I didn’t know at the time, but Trygg couldn’t have been happier.”

“Fifty men died,” Booker said grimly.

Sandra nodded. “Yes. Because of something I created.”

“That’s where you’re wrong, Doc. Trygg is an unbalanced killer with a god complex,” Booker corrected her, the edge of his words cutting the air between them. “Those men died because Trygg murdered them.”