A Time & Place for Every Laird by Angeline Fortin (ebook reader TXT) 📕

Claire backed off another step, intending toflee the room and forget what she had just seen, but then anotherfigure appeared at the bars of a cage farther down the row andopposite the Indian. Another man! This man was larger than theIndian but just as grimy and mangy. His dark hair and beard werelong and matted. His face was so dirty it was difficult to see thatthere was human flesh beneath. He was dressed in a bloody, torn tanshirt and … was that a kilt? Was he Scottish? If he was, he was sodirtied and bloodied that it was difficult to tell.

His nostrils flared and his lip curled … hisheavy eyebrows were parted only by the vertical furrow between themwhen his gaze pierced hers. There was anger this man, just as therewas in the Indian, though he was perhaps even more terrifyingwithout the restraint and nobility of the Native American. He waswild, untamed. Claire’s heart raced unexpectedly, pounding againsther rib cage.

Fear. Panic? Claire could define what shefelt, but even as her pulse quickened, the anger faded just asrapidly from his vivid blue eyes. What remained was frustration andmaybe a touch sadness and defeat. When he spoke again, his voicewas grating but soft.

Surprisingly, her first thought was thatshe’d thought they spoke English in Scotland. Claire couldn’tcomprehend his words, but neither did she ask him to repeat them.As with the Indian, she knew what he was asking.

Inexplicably, her first impulse was tocomply. She even took a hesitant step forward before she realizedwhat she was about. “I can’t,” she whispered with a shake of herhead, not even certain that he would understand her any better thanshe understood him.

Even if Claire were to unlock the cellssomehow, there was no way for him to escape the facility. Therewere coded locks, guards, and cameras everywhere. Thinking of thesecurity cameras, she glanced overhead at the camera mounted abovethe door, aware that both men’s eyes followed hers. Were theyintelligent enough to realize that they didn’t stand a chance?

“Please.”

Claire’s eyes widened atthe sound of the word. Had she heard that right? Was he speakingEnglish now? Glancing back at the Indian, she tried to determinewhether he had understood as well, but that warrior’s gaze wasstill as dark and fiery as the depths of hell. The bigger man waswaiting more patiently but there was desperation in his eyes.Pleading. Claire’s heart ached. Whoever he was—whatever he was—he didn’t deservethis.

“I don’t know … I—I’ll try,” she said,sweeping her glance around the room once more and taking in thevariety of animals and the two men caged as if they were beasts aswell. Claire didn’t know if there was anything she could do, butsome latent humanitarianism in her couldn’t leave them there likethat without doing something.

The murmur of voices floated in from thehallway, jolting Claire back to the precariousness of hersituation. It wouldn’t do at all to be caught where she knew sheshould not have tread. Hurriedly, she stepped back into the lab,pulling the steel door shut behind her before hastening as far awayfrom it as she could. With luck on her side, she made it to themain office door just as it opened. “Oh, Dr. Fielding, Marti askedme to drop off those files you needed. They’re on your desk.”

“Thank you …?”

“Claire,” she supplied.

The astrophysicist nodded absently, hisentire focus on the folder in his hands, leaving Claire ampleopportunity to sneak by without any further questions but for thosefairly bursting in her mind.

Chapter 2

“Claire? Hello?”

Claire looked up to find her friend DarcyWashington looking down at her with a frown. “You’ve got a mark onyour forehead, you know?” Darcy continued when Claire didn’tspeak.

Reaching up, Claire rubbed her forehead. Ofcourse she had a spot there. She’d been face down on her desk,numbed with shock over her recent encounter.

“Come on, girl! It’s time for lunch.”

Claire blinked up at her friend and then atthe clock in surprise. For more than an hour, she’d been trying tofigure out what Dr. Fielding might possibly be working on that hadhim keeping specimens of any sort in his lab, let alone human ones,but so far had been unable to even hypothesize a single logicalexplanation. Mark-Davis Laboratories was awash with top-secretactivities, but in reality most of them weren’t that big a mysteryto those working on campus.

Grabbing her purse, Claire rose and trailedher friend out of the building before coming alongside Darcy. Likefictional Eureka, Mark-Davis was a sprawling campus rather thanjust one building. Since the higher-ups preferred to keep theiremployees from having reason to leave work, there were places toeat, a gym with a swimming pool, day care facilities, a smallmedical office, and even a post office housed within the corporateconfines. Inside the dozen buildings there was a honeycomb ofsectors working on everything from ballistics to bombs.

Claire’s sector worked in the development ofultrasonic weaponry, or USW. USWs employed focused beams of soundas a weapon in the form of bullets, grenades, or mines. This wasone of the many projects helping to make science fiction intoscience fact.

As they walked down the sidewalk and arounda tiny park surrounded by buildings on their way to the cafeteria,she continued to rub her forehead, trying to rationalize what shehad seen, but still couldn’t think of a single project in the worksthat used animal testing … or human. Of course there were manylevels of security clearance at play in the company, but regardlessof the secrecy of any project in the works, there was always somegossip in the company cafeteria. Whatever secrets Fielding waskeeping, he was keeping them well.

Still, Claire couldn’t help but ask Darcy ifshe’d heard anything. “I suppose you think Todd probably saidsomething,” Darcy grimaced, referring to her former boyfriend, whoworked in Fielding’s sector.

“Did he?”

“Just pillow talk,” Darcy confessed in awhisper. “Todd never told me exactly what they’re working on but Ido know that whatever it is, they are failing miserably. Billionsof dollars given to them by INSCOM and nothing to show for it.”

“INSCOM?”

“Army Intelligence and Security Command,”her friend explained the acronym. “I know, I had never heard ofthem either but apparently they’re like the black ops of Armyintelligence.