“Yes, because I agree, and no amount of your pouting is going to change my mind. You’re more likely to earn yourself a punishment if you don’t let up.” He sent her a hard stare.
Callie looked like she bit back a thousand sarcastic replies. Instead, she managed a long-suffering sigh. “Yes, Sir.”
Not the attitude he wanted, but he understood her strain. The balance of her life might hang on that card and, after nearly a decade of mystery, she wanted the chance to solve her family’s murders. If closure was at hand, she had a right to it. It would help her move forward. It might give her—them—a future.
Sean watched her leave the bedroom and march stiff-backed down the hall.
“I don’t like any of this,” Thorpe said to him in hushed tones.
“I don’t, either. But we’ll have to tell her as soon as we’ve figured out what that says.”
Thorpe nodded reluctantly. “Do you think her father put the card in the egg?”
“And glued it shut, yes. Who else would have done that?”
“Then he wanted this information hidden for some reason.”
“Or kept safe. But I’m trying to decide why he would give it to her.” Sean rubbed an absent thumb over his chin. “To be less conspicuous, maybe, in case someone wanted the information badly enough to break in? But why not put it in his safe or keep it securely at the bank.”
“Daniel Howe wasn’t a stupid man. Maybe he had some inkling that Callie planned to run off.”
“And planned to take the egg with her?” Sean shook his head. “Daniel Howe was regarded as a bit eccentric, but what man stands by idly and lets his sixteen-year-old daughter run off with a player? That doesn’t add up. But I can imagine him wanting to hide the information in plain sight. He could still access it if he wanted. But since he went to the trouble to conceal the card in the egg, I have to believe that whatever it says, he wanted that information buried.”
“There’s no other way to see it.” Thorpe sighed. “I’m almost afraid of telling Callie what we find. It probably got her family killed.”
“I can’t argue, but there’s no way we can keep this from her. If we find something, it will be a bombshell, I have little doubt. It might completely turn her world upside down. We have to be prepared.” She’ll need us both. Sean bit the words back. Thorpe wasn’t ready to hear them.
Cursing softly, Thorpe opened the first file on the SD card. Sean looked over his shoulder. Together, they began to read.
Chapter Seventeen
AFTERNOON had come and gone when Sean and Thorpe finally stepped into the little galley. Callie had long ago stopped pacing, stopped trying to recall the terrible night of the murders . . . stopped hoping that her men hadn’t found anything.
As they stepped into the small space, filing in through the doorway and looking at her with a gravity that scared the hell out of her, she stood and felt her stomach drop to her toes. “You know why someone is after me? Why they killed my family?”
“We think so, yes,” Sean said heavily.
“How bad is it?” No sense in dancing around the truth or letting them BS her. Someone was after her, and she was damn tired of running, of not knowing why her life was in shambles, or not understanding how all her tomorrows had fallen apart at once.
If she was reading their faces right, anything that might resemble a happy future was nothing but a pipe dream.
“Sit down, lovely,” Sean said softly.
So whatever they’d discovered was not just bad, but awful.
“I don’t want to sit down. I’ve been doing that for hours. Damn it, just tell me.”
Sean glanced at Thorpe. Though Callie wouldn’t have thought it possible, he looked even more grim. Her caretaker for the last four years firmed his jaw as if steeling himself.
Panic slipped an icy chill through her bloodstream. “I’m already expecting bad, but you two are scaring the hell out of me. What is going on?”
“Your Master gave you an order, Callie.” Thorpe pointed to the chair.
Did they think she was going to faint? She plopped down into the little aluminum chair with the bright blue vinyl seat and glared.
Before she could demand that they spit it out, Sean dropped to the floor in front of her and took her hands in his. He swallowed. “How much do you know about the research your father paid for when you were a child? What was Dr. Aslanov supposed to do exactly?”
“Find a cure for cancer. That’s all Dad ever said. Is this . . . about the research?”
Sean hesitated, so she looked up at Thorpe. He nodded. “Your father didn’t just want to find a pill or treatment that would make cancer disappear. He told Aslanov to find a way to cure it genetically to ensure that no one ever had to hear again that they or a loved one had a disease that would eat away at them from the inside. Aslanov wasn’t just a researcher; he was a controversial young Russian geneticist. He had theories many of his colleagues eschewed. Turns out he was right. And wrong.”
“Aslanov figured out how to genetically prevent cancer from ever happening?” Callie had to pick up her jaw. Was that even possible?
“Not exactly,” Sean hedged. “If we’re reading your father’s notes right, Aslanov took the principles of genetic engineering used in fields like agriculture and medicine and expanded them with mixed results. Your father later described this sort of genetic research as the ‘lawless frontier’ of science. But he didn’t know that’s what his money was buying until it was too late.”
“What do you mean?” Callie gripped Sean’s hands, her stomach tightening in knots. “Aslanov killed him?”
The guys exchanged another cautious look that made her heart stutter.
“No,” Thorpe finally supplied, looking as if he had more to add. But he clammed up.
“When your mother first got the diagnosis, she apparently wasn’t given more than eighteen months to live. Your father searched for someone who believed they were close to a cure or something at least to put her in remission. But he couldn’t find anyone willing to bypass all the safety precautions and government regulations to test their solution on your mother. Knowing that she was going to die if he did nothing, he veered in another direction and found Aslanov. In the previous five years, the Russian had been to some third-world countries that wouldn’t bind him in a lot of red tape. According to Aslanov, he performed his research on others with great success. He told your father that with a little research and funding, he might be able to save your mother. Of course, that didn’t happen.”
“Her cancer progressed faster than expected.”
“But Aslanov insisted he was close, so your father continued funding him for another four years.” Sean paused, then glanced at Thorpe again, whose mouth took a grim turn.
“If you’re editing this speech in your head, don’t,” she demanded.
“We’re not, pet,” Thorpe promised. “It’s just complicated.”
“All right, then. How did this research lead to the killing of my family?”
Sean stood, paced, obviously agitated. Thorpe took over the storytelling. “In researching to cure cases like your mother’s, he stumbled onto additional genetic changes that your father wouldn’t be interested in . . . but others would.”
Callie frowned. “What others? Spit it out. I’ve waited nine years to find out what the hell happened to the family I loved and to stop looking over my shoulder every five minutes because someone wanted to kill—”
“Aslanov had a wife and three children—and financial problems. While researching for your mother, he claimed to have found ways to mutate the genetic structure of a person to improve their immunity, stamina, strength, and even their intelligence. No idea if that was true, but he sold that bill of goods to someone else, we think in the military because there were notes about an investigation on a camp somewhere in Latin America, experiments being done to soldiers using some of the initial research. But exactly who was behind that isn’t something your father outlined.”