Genesis Read Free Page A

truth would only give Umbrella the excuse they needed to ruin what was left of Fadwa’s life.
    So when Matt came to her with an opportunity topay the bastards back, she took it. It didn’t matter if it meant a commitment of time that might number in years. It didn’t matter if she risked her life. It didn’t matter that she risked provoking the ire of a corporation for whom forcing an IRS audit was the mildest of weapons in the arsenal they could call to bear on the average citizen.
    With the divorce final, and Nick off contemplating his navel or whatever it was he decided to do with his life now that his mother was dead, Lisa had no family to concern herself with. They had never had kids—for which she was now eternally grateful, as the divorce had been ugly enough without that factored in.
    She was free and clear to exact her revenge on the sons of bitches who murdered her friend.
    Any time she had any doubts, she thought about Fadwa.
    After that, it was easy.
    Let them move her into an underground complex a thousand feet beneath Raccoon City. Let them only allow her occasional trips to the surface. Let them force her to spend ninety percent of her life in a hole providing maintenance and upgrades on their computers’ security systems, allowing them to keep their precious secrets from an inquisitive world.
    Let them give her access. Because with that access would come her revenge.
    â€œAll right, then,” Acker said, clapping his pudgy hands together. It sounded like someone playing a percussion riff on a ham. “I guess that just leaves us to fillout all the paperwork. I gotta tell you, though, there’s a lot of it. NDAs, employee contracts, the whole nine yards, y’know?”
    Once again plastering a smile onto her face, Lisa said, “Bring it on, Mr. Acker. I’m ready to join the Umbrella family.”
    Acker returned the smile. “Glad to hear you say that, Ms. Broward. Trust me, you won’t regret this decision.”
    She didn’t, but not for the reasons Casey Acker thought . . .

THREE
    WHEN ALICE ABERNATHY WAS A LITTLE GIRL growing up in Columbus, she had imagined that getting her wedding picture taken would be a glorious moment of joy. She’d be surrounded by friends and family, a band playing her favorite music, and tons of food and drink. Dressed in a beautiful white dress, her prospective husband in a tuxedo (it had to be a tuxedo—she’d never marry a man who wouldn’t get married in a tuxedo), they’d stand as close to each other as they could, reveling in the feel of their embrace, while the photographer said something ridiculous like, “Say cheese!”
    The moment of pure happiness would be frozen forever in that photograph.
    The mansion on the outskirts of Raccoon City was along way from Ohio, both physically and metaphorically. Two-and-a-half decades removed from that childhood fantasy, Alice found herself in the white dress embracing a man she barely knew as a photographer employed by the Umbrella Corporation muttered something noncommittal and snapped another photograph.
    At least her “husband” was wearing a tuxedo.
    It was all part of their cover. Alice had taken over as the head of security for the Hive, the semi-secret underground facility owned and operated by the Umbrella Corporation. However, the promotion came with a new assignment. The person who ran security for the Hive had to spend the first three months of the job with what was considered either the best or worst assignment in Umbrella’s Security Division: mansion duty.
    The mansion—a massive estate that felt to Alice like it belonged in a museum or a Jane Austen movie rather than a suburb of a small American city—was located in the neighborhood of Foxwood Heights, two miles outside the Raccoon City limits.
    Raccoon itself only had an official population of approximately 853,000, including the five hundred employed by Umbrella