Whispers in the Dark (KGI #4)(90)

“He went crazy outside,” Donovan explained. “Something happened to Shea, and he went nuts and stomped in here to kick the shit out of Resnick. Not that I have a problem with that, but I’d like to know what the f**k is going on.”

“That makes two of us,” Garrett spoke up.

“You did this to her,” Nathan choked out. “You stupid son of a bitch. You took away her only means of self-defense. Those goddamn drugs you gave her make using her telepathy impossible. She’s in unimaginable pain every time she tries to communicate. You can’t imagine the agony she’s enduring.”

Resnick went white and he looked like he was going to be ill. “No, that’s not what should have happened. It’s experimental, yes, but there haven’t been any side effects. It just prevents a person from focusing enough to maintain a telepathic connection.”

“I felt what she’s feeling,” Nathan yelled. “She felt like her head was going to explode, like something was breaking inside her skull, but she bore it to reach out to me because those ass**les have her again. Do you have any idea what they did to her the last time they had her?”

Resnick slowly shook his head, his face going paler by the second.

“They beat her. They tortured her. For days she endured hell because she wouldn’t give them information about Grace. After she escaped, she asked me for help. She’d tried to do so before, but they kept her too drugged to maintain a pathway. And now because you’re a stupid f**k, she’s back in their hands and she can’t give me any goddamn information because you shot her full of drugs that prevent her from using her gift.”

Resnick’s hand shook as he dragged it through his hair. “You have to know I didn’t intend for this to happen.”

“I don’t know anything,” Nathan snapped. “You claim to care about her. You think she might be your sister. Where the f**k do you get your idea of family from? What is wrong with you?”

“Save the insults, okay? I f**ked up. I just wanted to protect her. I had no idea that you and she were involved. I didn’t even know how the hell she ended up with KGI. I thought I could remove her without having to explain anything. I wanted to protect her and Grace without anyone finding out about their abilities. I still don’t know how she got involved with you or how she knew to ask you for help.”

“Because she saved me,” Nathan said in a fierce voice. “She heard me out of all the other voices in the world and she answered. We formed a bond long before we ever met face-

to-face, and I’ll be damned if I let you or anyone else break it.”

Joe slid his hand over Nathan’s shoulder again. “No one’s going to do anything. We’ll get Shea back.”

Just hearing the conviction in his brother’s voice settled Nathan. As he glanced around the room at his other brothers and Steele and his team members, he saw the same conviction in every one of their faces.

Garrett turned to Resnick, his eyes so cold they’d freeze a polar bear. “It’s time for you to start talking. We need every piece of information you have on this lab where you and Shea were conceived or created or whatever the f**k you want to call it. We need names, organizations, and we need to know who’d have an interest in them now. Or who would even know about them.”

“Do you have their abilities?” Sam asked as he took a step closer to Resnick.

Resnick shook his head. His nostrils flared and his lips flattened into a thin line. “I was a…failure. A dropped experiment. Disappointing results. They went back to the drawing board after I was born. It wasn’t until many years later that Grace and then Shea were born.”

“So what, you just hung around the lab? I’m having a hard time wrapping my mind around this,” Ethan said. “It doesn’t add up and it damn sure doesn’t make sense.”

Resnick lit another cigarette and blew out a cloud of smoke. “There wasn’t anything else to do with me. I was the first. They didn’t have a plan for what happened if I didn’t yield the results they were looking for. After me, they adopted out babies that didn’t work out. But they kept me.”

“Who is they?” Nathan asked impatiently. “We’re wasting time here. I’m not interested in your life story.”

“The project was started during the Cold War. At first the U.S. was primarily interested in psychic and telepathic powers. They wanted a way into the heads of people in positions of power. They wanted their secrets. It sounds far-fetched, yes, but then a whole lot of secret research is pretty damn unbelievable.

“There wasn’t any solid success until after the Cold War ended. That’s when Grace and Shea were born. At first there was a lot of excitement that the two girls could communicate telepathically with each other. But then when their ability to heal and take on pain was discovered, it marked a complete one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn in the possibilities.”

“Okay, so who do we like for this?” Nathan demanded. “The government? Some unheard-of, nonexistent shadow group of the CIA who want to keep experimenting on Shea and Grace?”

“Where did they get the donors?” Donovan cut in. “Shea said that according to her mother’s journal they paired egg and sperm from donors who had remarkable abilities. That doesn’t explain how they laid hands on these people. Hardly something you can advertise for.”