Page 49 of Black Bay Protector
As for Jace, her love for him continued to grow. Every time she’d think she couldn’t possibly love him more, he’d do something to take her breath away. The way he’d surreptitiously add a picture to their growing wall of memories and wait to see if she noticed. The romantic picnic on the beach he’d planned for her day off. And the surprise trip he’d arranged for her folks to come to Virginia Beach to meet him.
While incredibly sweet, that particular gesture had been a bit nerve-wracking at first since Paige had worried her parents would comment on Jace’s genetic alterations and possibly offend him. She needn’t have worried. Jace and her father got on like a house on fire while her mother absolutely adored him. The woman had positively gushed all over him.
The only thorn during that visit had been her inability to tell them about Grady. But she’d made a promise and she wouldn’t break it. She’d wait until her brother was ready.
Determined to help him get his life back, Paige had been spending as much time as she could with him, telling him stories of their childhood, trying to trigger his memories since they couldn’t risk him being anywhere near the doctor who might be able to unlock them. But her sessions with him were never long. As soon as she’d see the tension around his mouth, the frustration when the memories refused to come, she’d back off and leave him be. As Jace had pointed out, it would take time.
While she’d met pretty much everyone at Black Bay, Lark, and Kong had quickly become her favorite people. Their sense of humor appealed to her, and they frequently included her in their sometimes-outlandish escapades they got up to when they weren’t working. As Lark had put it, sometimes doing something silly to blow off steam was the best medicine to keep tempers from running too hot. And those tempers were high lately. The information on the labs they’d been looking into was coming in at a trickle instead of a flood, and everyone was chomping at the bit to get shit done.
The only drawback of hanging out with Lark and Kong was their tendency to squabble like siblings. The sight hurt her heart and only reminded her of the distance that currently sat between her and Grady. They didn’t squabble. They could barely manage a back-and-forth conversation. It was just her talking at him while he sat there stoically and listened until she finally left. It was depressing, and even Jace’s nightly encouragement to keep at it did little to bolster her flagging morale.
Today, as she stood outside her brother’s door with the armed detail the General insisted accompany her any time she visited, she wondered if she should even bother. Her visits were doing little more than causing frustration in both of them and maybe she should just leave him alone and let him figure things out on his own.
She’d ask Grady. See what he thought. If he was enjoying her visits – even if he didn’t show it – then she’d keep coming.
Raising her fist to knock, she hesitated before her knuckles struck the wood, suddenly nervous. God, how awful would it be if he told her not to come anymore?
“Visiting your brother?”
Spinning with surprise, Paige clutched a hand to her chest when she saw Lark’s familiar sinuous stride as the other woman came down the hallway.
“You scared the crap out of me.”
Lark shot her a sheepish look. “Sorry. Not my intention.”
The woman waved her forward and Paige gratefully stepped away from the security detail. “What are you doing here?”
While they hadn’t locked Grady in the brig – too close to Doctor Dietrich for comfort – they hadn’t put him in the residential area either. They’d set him up with a cot and foot locker in one of the vacant offices in the administration building and as far as Paige was aware, Lark didn’t have any duties that would bring her here.
“I came to see you, actually.”
At Paige’s look of inquiry, Lark added, “I’ve spent some time with your brother lately.”
Well, that was a surprise. As Paige tried to process that unexpected little tidbit, the other woman continued. “He’s mentioned a bit of what you’ve told him and I’d like to give you some advice if you don’t mind.”
Trying to ignore the sting that came with the knowledge that her brother had opened up to Lark and not her, Paige nodded. “Uh, sure. Yeah. Lay it on me.”
“You’ve shared some really nice memories with him. Sweet, funny, all good stuff.” Lark paused and braced her shoulder against the wall before sending Paige a speaking glance. “But it’s all fluff.”
“Fluff?” Paige tried to swallow down her outrage and knew she hadn’t fully succeeded. Her childhood was not fluff!
The woman held up her hand in a staying gesture. “You want to tap into his memories? You need to hit that shit where it hurts. We’re talking a nut shot to the hippocampus. You need to dig deeper. Something so painful or so meaningful to him there’s no way he could have forgotten completely. That’s how you get him. That’s where you need to go.”
While Paige stood there in a whirlwind of conflicting emotions, Lark took her leave. Grady’s most painful memory? Paige swallowed hard and before she lost her nerve, she knocked on her brother’s door.
Grady knew his sister was outside. He’d heard her approach thanks to the auditory upgrades in his head but he did his best to tune her out as he contemplated not answering when she finally got around to knocking. The General had just brought him the latest Jack Carr thriller, and he’d much rather read that than listen to a sister he could only vaguely recall tell stories of a childhood he couldn’t remember no matter how hard he tried.
Hearing Lark’s voice outside perked him up. The woman had become the one bright spot in his life. She was his catnip, and just knowing she was close had his heart rate speeding up and his body practically twitching with the need to go to her. But she wasn’t here to see him. A nut shot to the hippocampus? That was her advice? Oh, goody. But, what the hell. He was used to pain. He could take it. And if it worked…
The knock came as expected and Grady stood to open the door for his sister. She looked pale and uncomfortable, but Grady didn’t comment on it. Nor did he greet her. Wasted words were wasted effort. While he retook his seat on his cot, his sister sat in her usual chair and looked anywhere but at him. He didn’t blame her. He didn’t like looking at him either.
“How are you?”
When they’d first started these little visits, his response to that question had been ‘All systems are currently at a hundred percent’. It was the answer expected of him thanks to the programming they’d embedded in his head. But that answer had seemed to bother his sister, so he’d stopped using it. “Fine,” he told her instead.
She nodded. Cleared her throat. Looked around the room again. Fiddled with a threadbare patch on the knee of her jeans and then cleared her throat for a second time. Discomfort. A high level. He was tempted to scan her and acquire more precise reads of her pulse and respiration but he didn’t want the guards getting all twitchy.
Deciding the sooner they got this over with, the better, he said, “I’m ready for the nut shot. Go ahead.”
