Roxanne Fosch Files Collection

Chapter 16

“So what kind of experiments the Society runs on their subjects?” Logan asked a while later.

I frowned and tucked a loose strand of hair behind my ear. I had taken my hand out of the cold water, dried it with a couple of napkins – currently littering the table along with the wet cloth strips. It enforced Logan"s beliefs of me being a pig who never learned table manners, but I couldn"t dredge-up any discomfiture. The pain was still there, pushed back to a tolerable level. I was aware I shouldn"t push my limits, but I needed a few more hours until I healed some.

“It depends,” I evaded.

“On what?”

“Many things.”

“Like?”

“Like what he is, how strong, how many like him they"ve had a chance to experiment on before, his cooperation, the environment, the scientists present, etc.”

Logan was thoughtful for a moment, eyeing me with curiosity. “What did they do to you?” he asked in a gentle tone.

I looked up at his face, back down to the table. I wished I was the one facing the door. I didn"t want to talk about my past, and yet, his simple question made me want to share with someone some of the misery and horrors I"d been through. Michelle had been a good friend, but I couldn"t tell her anything without sounding demented. The journals I wrote back in my early days in the PSS brought me some relief, but, after the third one was confiscated, I stopped bothering with them.

Logan was offering me a chance to talk to someone, someone who could understand what I went through. However, as much as I longed to do that, he was just not that person. At least not yet. Maybe he was offering to be a friend, and it was tempting, but I just didn"t know him enough to start talking about my deepest secrets, my deepest fears.

“It"s in the past now. It doesn"t matter anymore,” I said, but the long silence told him otherwise.

“Suppose my friend is really strong, to the degree they have never seen before and he"s very uncooperative; then what would they do to him?”

“It"s hard to assume things like that at this point. I haven"t actually seen the people they experiment on, but I know for sure they"ve experimented on probably every creature out there. I don"t really think there"s anything out there they haven"t seen before.” I knew this for a fact because I"d read the variations of preternatural entities the PSS have observed and researched from Dr. Maxwell"s journal. The only thing that I knew for sure was rare was myself, and even I had no idea what kind of species I classified as. I was sure I was no were, no vampire, zombie, ghoul, witch, or any other thing that could alternate shapes. Unless being able to shift hands into talons meant I was some kind of a shifter with extreme limitations. But a shifter who couldn"t shift was weak and, according to the PSS, I was far from that. Unfortunately, Dr. Maxwell"s journal didn"t mention anything about me. That was a different journal altogether, one I thought I grabbed when we left that day from the PSS for my last driving lesson. Ruling out all of the above left me with few options, some of which I"d tried searching on the internet among creatures of myths, but nothing I came upon seemed right.

“What is he?” I asked, not because I was curious, which I certainly was, but because I could tell if he was something special or not.

It took Logan a while to answer, and when he did, I thought he was changing the topic.

“The Society described you as a dangerous specimen to be treated with caution and aggression and, if faced with no other choice, to be terminated on the spot to ensure the threat is nullified. I believe they would consider my friend just as dangerous, if not more.”

My eyes narrowed. “You speak from experience. As if they"ve approached you with this information before.”

“I headed there to demand my friend back. They offered me your contract instead. I refused.”

I considered him for a moment. They had tried to hire him to come after me. If he was helping me now, it meant he had refused. Maybe they were holding his friend as leverage against him, something to pressure him into taking the job. Or, maybe he"d accepted it, invented a story about his friend, and was now trying to get me to accompany him on a raid to the place where he was supposed to deliver me to. I gave him a level look as the possibility that I had been fooled rolled over me like ice and fire, burning me from the inside, coldly numbing my emotions to act and kill if need be. The jolt and shock of what I was capable of doing came and went without a hint showing through.

“You refused?” I prompted.

He shrugged. “Yes.”

“You"re a hired assassin.”

Logan"s lips twitched, but this time it wasn"t in humor so much as displeasure. “I"ve been called many names before, and hired assassin isn"t one that I appreciate.”

“That doesn"t change what you are. A horse is a horse, no matter what you call it.”

His eyes chilled a few degrees. “I might be a hired assassin, but I don"t go around agreeing on any job offered me without consideration. You can assume whatever you like about me, but I never lose sight of my moral compass.” He smiled at me then, but the smile did not reach his grey eyes. “If I ever sign a contract, sugar, I go all the way through with it.” He gave me a meaningful glance, as if the statement meant something to me, then he added, “Which is something we can"t say about you, can we now?”

“Oh? And how did you deduce that?”

“Isn"t that why the society is after you? Because you took the money, stole from their archives and skipped out on your contract? Didn"t you `behave" so that when they let their guard down, you could take what you wanted and run away?”

I pursed my lips and considered him. “That"s the story they tell you people?” I snorted. “All of you hired mercs are just fooled by a bunch of scientists to do their dirty work, and you think you"re so tough and smart?”

I could see I had insulted him. Well, he"d just have to deal with it. “Why should I even believe you? What if this whole thing about your friend being in the hands of the PSS is just a ruse to get me to go with you? Say like, you heard about what happened to the last assassins or bounty hunters that came after me and decided to change tactic? Make everything up and just have me follow you on my own?”

Logan"s face grew darker with every word, but his eyes remained cold. “Woman, I don"t care what you think about me, if you call me an assassin, a b****y mercenary, or a freaking monster.” He leaned forward, his eyes practically frosting me over, his voice low. “When I take a job, I go about it straight. I can shoot you looking right into your eyes or wait for you around a bend and jump you from behind. But, if I take a job, I don"t fool around with it.” He leaned back on his chair and studied me slowly with cold eyes. I didn"t flinch. “If I was hired to come after you, believe me, Eliza Daniels, you would have known.”

I believed him. I might be naïve, and I admit it sometimes—to myself only, of course—but I believed him, and God help me, I hoped I wouldn"t add fool to my list of flaws. I didn"t apologize for my misassumption though. Pride and my arrogant paranoia wouldn"t let me.

“You think the PSS are keeping your friend as leverage? So you"d have no choice but to agree to come after me?”

He shrugged again, but his eyes remained as cold as winter. “They denied having taken him, so no, not as leverage. All that matters to me right now is that they have him and I want him back.”

There was a long silence before either of us spoke again.

“If you didn"t break your contract, why are they hiring after you?”

“I was kidn*pped a long time ago. I escaped, they want me back.”

There was a pause as Logan processed my words. “So, let"s say that my friend, under the circumstances, is considered more dangerous than you. Hypothetically, if he"s also something special, what do you think they"ll be doing to him?”

Any answer about what they would be doing to his friend, considering he was as dangerous as Logan thought he was, would stem from my own experience. I eyed Logan for a moment. I didn"t think he was fishing for information about my treatment back in the PSS, but any answer I gave him would be exactly that.

“If he"s as dangerous as you think he is, then he"s in deep trouble.” My answer didn"t satisfy him in the least, but he let the topic drop, at least for now.