Under Fire (Love Over Duty #1)(86)

"What's so funny?" she asked. "It was a genuine question."

"Oh, I know it was, sweetheart. But I just laid it all out for you that I love you, and your response is to ask me about penguins."

The corner of her mouth twitched in the making of a smile. "Anyway, do you know what the catastrophic molt is?"

"My guess is something to do with losing baby fur or something, but go ahead. Tell me, because I can't wait to see you turn this into a relevant analogy." He grinned at her but managed to grip her wrist when she playfully went to hit him.

"It's called a catastrophic molt because it's when the baby loses all of its baby feathers at once. The old feathers won't fall out until the new ones have fully grown in. It lasts about two or three weeks, and during that time, they look weird and awkward and uncomfortable. It's not painful, just strange."

Suddenly he got it. She was the penguin. He wrapped his arms tightly around her. "Lou," he said carefully.

"Two or three weeks ago, I didn't even know you. I honestly never thought I would meet someone like you. The lab and my research have been my everything for so long, and now they're gone. My safety was a privilege I took for granted, and now it isn't," she said, and ran her fingertips across the gauze taped to his side. "So it feels weird, like new things are growing while old things are still lingering. Like my life is changing radically in a very short space of time." Louisa pressed her lips to his just long enough to stir him up before pulling away. "I love you, Six, and it feels strange, and wonderful, and a little bit terrifying amid this huge change happening in my life. I don't know where I am going to end up when this is all over, but I hope it's with you."

She loved him, and the warmth he hadn't known was missing from his life filled him as if someone were heating his blood. It settled in him. Grounded him. Made him forget about everything else except the sheer perfection of having Louisa in his arms, knowing that her feelings for him were as strong as his for her.

* * *

Standing in her clean jeans and a T-shirt, Louisa helped herself to another croissant. It was her third, and she piled more than her fair share of the juicy tropical fruit platter onto her plate. Six looked across the large table at her and winked. Her heart stuttered. She was officially in a relationship. With him. The way he looked at her, like he did now, like he wished he could eat her instead of the pastry in his hand, made her knees weak.

The coffee Mac placed next to her was steaming hot and very strong. She added a little cream and sugar to help keep her awake through the next hour. Thanks to Buddha and Bailey who'd made a drive to Encinitas to grab bags for both her and Six, she was thankful for the return of her belongings, and her dead phone was now charging. Plus, she'd showered with products that didn't smell like they'd double as disinfectant. Transience usually left her agitated, so she doubly appreciated her own things around her.

"Okay," Mac said, dimming the lights. A projector shot images of people and buildings onto the white wall. The full team was sitting around the table with her, men she'd seen around Six's home before. Men who were willing to help her. Each one was as intimidating as Six had been at first, but every time she felt herself flutter around the edge of panic, Six would tap her foot under the table. "So here is the timeline. On Friday the twelfth, Louisa noticed that someone had been messing with her files and switched the samples as a precaution. Let's call the dangerous sample A and the innocuous sample B. On Thursday the eighteenth, she noticed that sample B had been taken, and she assumed that whoever took it thought it was sample A. Unable to find it in the lab, she went to talk to the owner of the lab, Vasilii Popov, and his grandson, also Louisa's lab partner, Ivan Popov."



       
         
       
        

Louisa listened attentively as he ran through the details with the team. She looked at the floor as the details poured out, but felt marginally better when Cabe leaned his shoulder against hers, giving her a nudge of support.

As she listened to Mac recap the relationship between Kovalenko, the man who had tried to abduct her the first time, and a man called Mitkin who had orchestrated it all on behalf of his father-in-law, a man called Lemtov, she couldn't get her mind off her phone. Something was niggling her in the back of the brain. It was important.

"Ivan has gone off grid," Lite said. "We last saw him come out of his house on Monday." Another picture flashed up on the wall, and pain ripped through her at the sight of the man she'd once trusted. It didn't make her feel any better to see that he looked incredibly gaunt, stress or guilt or some other emotion having weighed heavily on him in the six days since she had seen him.