Last Strike Read Online Free Page B

I’ve highlighted.”
    How long had she been out that he’d had time to break into her computer and study her agenda. “Yoga class, then juice breaks afterward with my friends.”
    “You’re lying.”
    She shook her head, emphasizing the truth she’d given him. “I go to yoga class as often as possible each week.”
    “You are always working. You didn’t leave the lab until halfway through this class last night.” He tapped the side of the screen, glared at her. “You don’t have friends.”
    She swallowed, resisting his harsh assessment of her social life. “No, not friends at the lab.” She didn’t trust any of her colleagues. “Friends at yoga. We gather at the juice bar after class.”
    He bent at the waist, his unnerving pale gaze slicing right through the only lie she’d told him. “Give me names.”
    She rattled off the names of the women who typically lined up at the front of the yoga classroom.
    “Those aren’t your friends.”
    He was pushing her. Testing her. He couldn’t possibly know the truth. “You’re meeting someone else. I followed you from the lab to the juice bar last night.” His thumb found that god-awful nerve in her shoulder. She couldn’t escape the immediate agony. “Why go for juice when you skipped class. Who is your contact?”
    She shook her head, but it only exacerbated the pain. “I talk with my classmates at the juice bar.” Another partial truth she hoped would satisfy him.
    He released her shoulder hard enough to send the chair rocking backward. He caught her before she crashed to the floor. “I will make you tell me.”
    No doubt. “I’ve answered your questions. Let me go. Please,” she begged. “I won’t breathe a word of this to anyone.”
    “More lies.”
    “I’ve been honest with you,” she protested, willing him to accept her sincerity.
    He shook his head, his gaze drifting from her face to the computer. He turned his back on her again, making it clear she wasn’t a threat in any way. “It’s against policy to take classified documents out of the facility.”
    “I’m hardly the only scientist to push that envelope.” If that small defiance warranted a death sentence the program would’ve folded long before the research showed results. If only she’d been brave enough to act sooner, even this man might’ve been saved.
    He twisted back to face her, his lip curled in a nasty sneer. For a cold-blooded assassin, he was taking all of this rather personally. Maybe his programming was faltering. He couldn’t possibly remember her. They dosed him and the patients who’d followed to wipe out those memories.
    “I don’t have any current work on my personal system. Any documents you’ve found are from previous studies.” From him, in fact, though she wouldn’t volunteer that detail. “All of my notes are scrubbed before they go on my personal system. Nothing leaves the lab that can implicate UI.” Nothing yet. Nothing at all if he killed her. “I know my responsibilities to the program.”
    She’d been aware of responsibilities before she’d met this man, and felt trapped by them after watching him suffer and overcome only to suffer again for the sake of progress. “I’m sorry I can’t tell you anything helpful.”
    “You can.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “You will. Start with why.”
    “Pardon?”
    “Why me ?” He closed her laptop with a firm snap. “The notes you most recently accessed were about me, right?”
    “Yes.” Had her contact, her tentative ticket out of the program, double crossed her? It seemed to be the most logical conclusion.
    “Why?”
    She sighed, her shoulders slumped. He deserved to know the truth. More, he deserved to hear it from her as she looked him in the eye. She forced her gaze up to his. “You were my first patient.”
    He swore quietly. “First guinea pig, you mean.”
    She wouldn’t insult him by arguing semantics. He was so different now than he’d been. Everything about him had