Page 47 of The Alpha Experiment
I nearly choked again.
“Um, ugh, excuse me,” I sputtered. “Meredith, seriously. I’m fine. I’ve been—” Shit, shit, I couldnotexplain what we’d been doing. Meredith could get a little wild-eyed about research progress herself, but she was already worried about me. This might push her over the edge. “I’ve been going out hiking and hunting with Colin,” I finished. Ah, half-truths that totally obscured the truth. How I loved them, even though I felt like crap about it. “I thought I might be able to jump-start some measurable genetic expression if I got in touch with my werewolf side. And both of us are exhausted. We were out in the woods for the past few days.”
Her expression of total confusion reminded me that…oh,hell. I’d never caught her up on the developments with Greenwald, in all of my own confusion.
“Let me start from the beginning…”
Meredith pulled up a stool, I reluctantly parked my very sore ass back on mine, and I told her the whole story—minus the part of my experimentation that involved the soreness.
She sat back when I’d finished, her eyes narrowed. “So you still have about three weeks to give him something before he, what, torpedoes your career? Newton, are you sure he’d be able to do that? It could be empty threats. Maybe he’d be able to keep you from getting certain jobs in the private sector, but you don’t want those anyway. I’m just glad to know you’re not in any real danger.”
Fresh guilt hit me at having left her in the dark so long—and it joined the growing pile of other, festering guilt at still not having updated my family. I hadn’t known what to tell them, since I knew my dad wouldn’t be so reassured by my telling him it was a job offer gone wrong. And I hadn’t been able to think of another cover story, including my half-baked prank idea, that would set them at ease.
“I’m sorry I didn’t call you right away. I’ve been busy trying to figure it out. Thanks for the phlebotomy kits. And—for everything.” She nodded. “The thing is, I’m more worried about what he said about Colin. They had a pack war recently, and it was pretty nasty. I know there were casualties. Some of those casualties belonged to another pack and ended up buried in the woods without a marker, you know? If Greenwald follows through and manages to get some human authorities interested, that could cause Colin a lot of trouble, even though werewolves mostly handle their own affairs. And, honestly, I really could see the university asking me to resign, if they got a tip that I was involved in any way, even just knowing about it and not reporting it. I’d never get another job after that.”
Meredith chewed meditatively on her lip, looking lost in thought.
“I’ll put my thinking cap on,” she said at last. “I’ll help you figure it out. Because you don’t actually want to turn over any of your research to this bag of dicks, right? Even if you succeed in having a breakthrough in the next few weeks.”
“No, I sure as hell don’t.” The thought gave me hives, actually. The chances I’d get credit for anything I did and gave to him, even if he paid me for it? Somewhere between zip and zilch.
Meredith nodded briskly, the purple bobble bobbing wildly. If that wasn’t her thinking cap, I was a little afraid to see what was. “Then we’ll figure something else out. For one thing, do you mind if I call a friend of mine and ask his advice? Tony Whittaker,” she said, at my look of doubt. “Dr. Anthony Whittaker. He’s head of R and D at PharmaTestics, and he knows everyone. If there’s any gossip about Greenwald or Initech, he’ll have heard it.”
I thought that over for a second. “You trust him?”
Meredith grinned. “Enough to have sex with him in every possible position for a year while we were in grad school, yeah.” I nearly choked, and she winked at me. Her tone turned serious as she added, “Yes, I really do trust him. He’s a great guy, and he knows how to keep a secret.”
“Then call him.” I hated the idea of bringing another person into this, but I didn’t have any industry contacts of my own. “And thanks. I could use all the help I can get.”
Meredith nodded. “I’ll call him tomorrow morning. In the meantime, come and eat your pizza and tell Colin I haven’t murdered you or anything.”
I laughed at that, and she chuckled with me. “Yeah, I’m hungry,” I said. “But actually, hang on one minute. Can you look at this? I’d like a second opinion on this enzyme…”
Meredith pulled up her stool and bent over the laptop with me, got that look on her face that meant something had caught her interest—and in the end, I completely forgot about the pizza, Colin, and everything else in the world but the data in front of us.
Chapter 15
Breakthroughs
Meredith and I staggered out of the lab right as the wall clock ticked past six-thirty A.M., having finally finished analyzing the last of the test results. We were both nearly asleep on our feet, but I couldn’t suppress the grin that kept breaking out.
I’d done it. I’d seriously freaking done it, and it’d need more experimental data, more analysis, more of everything, but…I’d freaking shown my theory had merit. Sure, it didn’t count for much until I saw some physical changes in response to the chemical ones.
But gods, I didn’t care at that moment.Real results. After years. And I didn’t give a crap about Greenwald or the university or anyone else.
I’d done it forme.
Meredith looked the same as I did, frowsy and pale like anyone got after spending a whole night in a windowless, fluorescent-lit lab staring alternately at a laptop and an array of equipment, but she also had a goofy smile stretching her lips and a bright, manic glint in her eyes.
We were both laughing as we tumbled into the hallway, but we stopped, blinking and adjusting to the real world, as we caught sight of the faint, apricot-pearl glow on the horizon through the hallway windows. True dawn wouldn’t be for another hour, but it wasn’t night anymore, either.
A rustle startled me out of my fugue of exhaustion and giddiness. I turned to see Colin rising to his feet from the speckled linoleum, dusting something off of his knees and looking oddly grim, his mouth set in a hard line.
I glanced down at the floor and saw a couple of discarded chip bags. The vending machine didn’t have Cheetos, but apparently it did have nacho-flavored chips. Nacho dust. That was what was on his pants. That crap got everywhere, and I stifled a giggle.
Goddamn, but it’d been a long night.
“Have fun in there?” Colin asked, his tone flat and his eyes flicking from me to Meredith and back again.
