Total pages in book: 29
Estimated words: 26962 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 135(@200wpm)___ 108(@250wpm)___ 90(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 26962 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 135(@200wpm)___ 108(@250wpm)___ 90(@300wpm)
My ears perked all the way up when I heard Gray Malice’s name. Everyone knows who he is, but he’s never on the social scene. I think all my roommates would die with excitement if he showed up to one of these parties, but I could never get any information on him.
That was until this particular night when we’d been at some underground club. I don’t think the men had a clue that one of us knew Russian. It happens to be one of the four languages I can speak. In fact, it's my first language. It’s all my grandmother and mom would speak in the house even though we lived in the States, and I was born here.
From what I could catch over the music they’d been talking about Gray selling some tech along with a new drone that was not only undetectable on current radars, it was also invisible because it could mirror the things around it like a chameleon.
It all sounded a bit crazy to me, but then I started to dig. Down the rabbit hole I went. My curiosity is always getting the best of me, and people-watching is one of my favorite things to do. A person can learn so much about people just by watching them and never having to say a word. The more I watched, the more I knew Gray was up to something, and I knew this wasn’t something I could do alone. I was in way over my head.
I needed inside help, and it just so happened that one of Gray’s new hires at JM Tech was a girl I’d gone to school with. Elsy Harbor was a few grades above me, but I knew she was close to the Lone family who in the past had worked alongside the Malice family. That was until John Malice’s untimely death.
Elsy and Keaton Lone were always glued to each other's sides, but a rift grew between the families. For some reason, Gray hired Elsy even with her close connections to the Lone family. That really piqued my interest, and I knew she’d be my way in. There was no way Keaton would be happy about Elsy working for JM, and I was right.
That fallout between the families has been a mystery to everyone for years. I still don’t know the whole story, but things have gone nuclear. I’d barely gotten Elsy on board to work with me before the Lone Enterprise building went up in flames.
That’s when I got a taste of what other things the Lone and Malice family dabbled in. It wasn’t only technology. It’s also bioengineering, because Keaton Lone might be human, but that’s not all he is. In fact, what he could do scares me more than the drones I’ve heard about, and Gray has his hands on the same bioengineering. What if he sold that too?
At least with Keaton Lone, I know where he stands, and he wants a piece of Gray too. I’ve kept Keaton’s secret because secrets always owe favors, and I have a feeling I’m going to need a few of those if I’m going to get to the bottom of all this and come out the other side alive.
Chapter Two
GRAY
It’s late when I leave the lab, and the weight of it is heavy on my shoulders. There’s a reason for everything I’m doing, but I can’t tell anyone. It’s my burden to carry and my problem to fix. My dad left me a mess to clean up, but I’ll do it because I owe him that much.
As I walk out to my car, the lights underneath it light up, and so do the interior ones. Just as I go to touch the handle, my fingers stop a few inches away. A scent lingers, and my head snaps up as I try to locate it. I inhale deeply, desperate to find the direction, and I take a step away from my car. I’ve smelled this once before, and it was on Elsy Harbor. She said it was a friend’s, and it’s been driving me crazy since.
When the sweet fragrance disappears, I turn back to my car and narrow my eyes. The scent is unlike anything I know, and I can’t describe it. All I know is that I have to get to the source. I walk toward the front of the car and it lessens, so I walk around to the rear of the car. It’s the strongest here, so I bend down and inhale what has to be the scent of a siren.
My eyes widen and then I hear something in the trunk and realize that this friend of Elsy’s has somehow broken into my car. I reach into my wallet and take out the security card. This is supposed to be impenetrable, yet I can feel her in there.