Generation 18 (Spook Squad 2)

Haynes could only shrug. The conditioning was stronger for that project than for the more recent one. Gabriel wondered why.

“Did the Generation 18 project succeed?”

A brief, sharp nod, and a hint of pride in the old man’s eyes.

“How many successful crosses did you achieve?”

The other man shrugged. Either he wasn’t sure of exact numbers or he couldn’t say.

“Were there many failures?”

“All experiments have failures.”

“What happened to them? Did they all die, or did some live?”

Another shrug. Haynes either didn’t know or didn’t care. Maybe both.

“Would the military have farmed the failures out for adoption?”

“I don’t know. I was not privy to that sort of information.”

Gabriel rubbed his chin. Emma Pierce had entered the military and had lost her ovaries to Generation 18. Given that she’d entered the military in her twenties, she was unlikely to have had children before then—not if having any family at all would have disqualified her as a test subject. And yet, the first two victims listed Emma Pierce as their birth mother. They had to be rejects from the project. The question was, why did the military have them adopted rather than simply killing them? If they were worried about security, surely death would have made more sense.

“Is it possible that one of the hybrids has gotten loose and is

going after her less successful sisters?” A hybrid certainly fit the puzzle pieces in the doctor’s murder, at least.

Haynes somehow managed to force an answer. “Tagged…Alarmed.”

So if not a rogue hybrid from Hopeworth, then who? Was it Rose, the sister no one had known about?

He glanced at his watch again. Half an hour had passed. Sam should be back by now, and hopefully she had finished the search. He wasn’t going to get much more from Haynes until the conditioning had been neutralized.

“I think you’d better rest for a while.” Gabriel rose and walked to the door. “I’ll send someone back with some food.”

Haynes nodded and picked up the remote near the chair. He was taking his confinement well—maybe a little too well. Gabriel walked down to the security station. “I want a breakdown team assigned to Mr. Haynes. And get him something to eat.”

The blonde nodded.

“Has Agent Ryan checked in yet?”

“No, sir. Not yet.”

He swore softly and glanced at his watch. An hour and a half had passed since he’d left her. More than enough time to deposit Allars at a safe house and get her butt back here. Unless, of course, something had gone wrong. He strode over to the elevator. He’d call the safe house and see what was going on. And if she didn’t have a real good excuse for her tardiness, he’d banish her to the vaults permanently. At least that was one way to ensure she was safe.

—

Sam glanced at her watch. An hour had passed since she’d left Gabriel. Given his desire to get rid of her, he’d no doubt hit her with an official warning about her tardiness. Three warnings and you were out, she’d been told.

She slammed the door shut and ran down the stairs. Allars had been almost impossible to accommodate. He’d insisted on the latest in TV and satellite connections, and, because of his inability to walk very far, had required an apartment with few steps. Unfortunately, most SIU safe houses tended to be in buildings that had no elevators—simply because a would-be assassin might make more noise climbing stairs than taking the elevator. In the end, she’d told the watch team to carry him up to his room.

Why the hell Gabriel simply didn’t house him in the short-term accommodations back at headquarters was beyond her. Sure, Mark might well be pissed off at Cooper and Haynes, but she couldn’t see him providing any real threat to the two men. But keeping them separated did make sense when it came to not keeping all their eggs in one basket. There was no saying to what lengths the military just might be willing to go to protect their secrets; maybe even as far as bombing the building. Which might have seemed over the top, except for the fact that the military might be behind the creation of the kites—and they’d blown their creature to smithereens rather than letting it get caught.

The brown-eyed security officer near the front door looked up from the monitors as she approached. “Is the grump settled in okay?”

“Yeah. Give him whatever he wants—within reason, of course. And don’t fall asleep, Murphy. We don’t want the military getting their hands on him until we’ve had time to question him some more.”

“How likely is it that the military will try to spring him?”