Red Awakening (Red Zone 2)

“This has been verified?” she asked her assistant, who was waiting silently beside her desk.

“Yes,” the man said. “By several sources.”

She stretched out an arm, placing her hand over the report, and drummed her red nails. “I want the original report.”

“I’m not sure…”

His words faded when he saw the look on her face. There would be no excuses where this task was concerned.

He swallowed hard. “I’ll get right on it. But it may take some time. The information is with the Houston Forensic Department and has been deemed highly sensitive. It’s locked up tight.”

She cocked an eyebrow at him.

“But I’ll make sure you get all of the samples and any report that’s already been written on them.”

She inclined her head, and he scurried toward the door.

“One more thing, Andrew,” she said, stopping him in his tracks.

“Yes?” He turned back to her.

“Make sure that this information doesn’t make it into Miriam Shepherd’s hands. Am I making myself clear?”

“Yes.” He paled and then ran from the room.

Sandrine flipped open the report and started reading from the beginning again. She couldn’t believe her luck when Andrew had informed her that the information hadn’t made its way to Miriam yet. It was an oversight on the part of the Northern Territory’s Enforcement department. Such a thing wouldn’t have happened in her territory. Her people knew what was important to her. And this was very important.

Scanning the copied notes on the samples taken from CommTECH’s research facility after the siege, she couldn’t help but smile. Mace Armstrong wasn’t a reporter, that much was certain. In fact, according to the blood he’d left behind on two of the building’s windows, Mace Armstrong was something else entirely.

Something the world hadn’t seen before.

And the person who owned the blood he left behind would own the research that went with it. Research into the first proof that a fusion between animal and human DNA was possible. Research that could change the world forever. Research that would get Sandrine out of the Southern Territory and straight into the Northern one.

Where she belonged.