Legend of Michael Read Free Page B

mother’s car accident, the reference to her passing made Cassandra’s chest tighten uncomfortably. “As my psychology mentor, she’d be as nuts as I am over the incomplete evaluations done on the GTECHs.”
    “I have no doubt,” he said. “But before you dive in and try to conquer a year of what you see as our deficiencies, I want you to focus on a specific list of ten soldiers of special interest to me.”
    “What kind of special interest?”
    He shut the door. “They’ve all tested positive to a certain gene we’re calling X2. We have animals in the lab also testing positive that are showing aggressive tendencies we need to be certain don’t translate into our GTECH population. We need to rerun all baseline evaluations and whatever extra testing you deem necessary, then ongoing evaluation.” He fixed her in a silvery stare. “The animals and the soldiers seem to be showing the gene growth somewhere in the twelve to fifteen months post-injection range.”
    Cassandra ground her teeth. The fact that he, and the government, had withheld the experimental compound of the immunizations from the soldiers was completely despicable. But she’d stated all her objections to how the GTECHs had been created before taking this job. Heard all the vows that the GTECHs were created by accident, when they—meaning the army, though she translated that to her father—were simply protecting them from a biological threat. Considering her father was all about protecting his country at all cost, and though he meant well, often went too far by her standard, she wasn’t completely sure she believed that claim. She suspected she’d hear the soldiers voice the same concerns once she earned their trust, which she fully intended to do. In fact, it was her objections to how the GTECHs were created, and then how little emotional support they’d received regarding that creation—rather than her father’s urging—that had finalized her acceptance. Her father wanted her for the job for her skill and the family loyalty her mother had often given him. But like her mother, who had often worked by her father’s side, Cassandra wanted to help the soldiers he employed. So, like her mother, and out of character to her true self, she did what most people did around her father and bit her tongue.
    “Let’s have a father-daughter breakfast in the morning,” he ordered rather than asked. Her father didn’t know how to operate outside of giving orders, even when he simply wanted father-daughter time.
    Knowing this, and seeing it as his form of affection, Cassandra smiled. She didn’t always approve of her father’s ways, but she loved him deeply. “I’d like that.”
    “I’ll pick you up at seven,” he said, giving her a nod before disappearing out the door, and leaving her with a sense of unidentifiable dread that lingered for the next hour.
    Finally, tired and ready for food, she exited the building and headed to her car, only to be greeted by a perfectly flat, perfectly defeating, tire. “Great,” she mumbled, setting her files inside on the backseat and then pulling the tight knot at the back of her hair free to release the ever-growing tension there. She glanced around, looking for the resource never in short supply on a military base—a soldier or two or three, who could be easily convinced to lend a helping hand.
    Suddenly, her hair lifted around her neck, a soft breeze picking up momentary speed with a raw masculine scent touching its depths. A second later, Michael appeared before her, as big and broad and devastatingly “sexy” as he had been this morning.
    “You really should come with a warning alarm of some sort,” she said, fist balled at her chest to calm her pounding heart.
    “So I hear,” he said, his too-blue eyes flickering with a hint of unreadable emotion before he glanced at her tire. “Looks like you need help.”
    There was something overwhelming—perhaps decadent even—about this man that had her