The Becoming: Redemption (The Becoming Series Book 5) by Jessica Meigs Page A

her for her sister, had been a shot of hope to her heart.
She couldn’t let that chance slide through her fingers, not if she
expected to be reunited with her lost family.
    The decon room’s door banged open, and Jacob
Howser walked into the office, his hair still damp from the
decontamination shower. He finished buttoning his dress shirt
one-handed, pressing the buttons on the keypad beside the door to
shut the decon room’s shower door behind him.
    “What are you doing in here?” he asked. “I
thought your shift was over.”
    “I hung around because I wanted to talk to
Major Bradford,” Lindsey said.
    “Yeah? How did talking to that monumental
jackass go?” Jacob asked. He went to the mini-fridge under one of
the desks and opened it, taking out two Diet Cokes. He handed one
to Lindsey and returned to her desk, resting his hip against the
edge of it. She cracked the can open and took a swallow of the
liquid before she spoke. It was cold and soothing on her parched
throat.
    “It went about as well as you would expect a
meeting with Major Jackass would go,” Lindsey replied. “He’s
already gotten what he wants into his head, and he won’t entertain
any ideas or objections, no matter how logical they happen to be.
He still thinks that showing Lieutenant Evans the Wall will shock
him into spilling everything he knows.”
    “And you think it won’t,” Jacob
commented.
    Lindsey shook her head. “I think it will
break him, but I don’t think it will be in the way Major Bradford
hopes.”
    “What do you think is going to happen when we
tell him?” Jacob asked, clearly curious.
    “Whatever it is, it won’t be anything good,”
Lindsey said. She took another swallow of Diet Coke and set the
cold can down on her desk, well away from any important paperwork.
“Which is why I would really like to hold off on the big
reveal until Evans is evaluated psychologically.”
    “And let me guess, you want to be the one to
evaluate him,” Jacob said with a knowing look in his eyes.
    “Well, I am the only person in the
facility with any training in psychological evaluation,” Lindsey
said, feeling an odd mixture of pride and defensiveness over her
university minor in psychology. “Even if we only get a basic
evaluation of where he is mentally, it still should be enough to
determine if it’s safe to show him the Wall.” She gave him her best
doe-eyed look, hoping to play on his sensibilities and his
attraction to her, a poorly kept secret around the labs. He saw the
look and groaned.
    “You want me to pull rank and see if I can
get you in to talk to him, don’t you?”
    “Would you? Please?” Lindsey begged. Jacob
had been in the facility longer than she had, nearly since day one,
and had far more pull with the higher ups than she did. If anyone
could get her permission to have a chat with Evans, maybe even a
private chat, away from cameras and guards watching and listening
and recording his every word, it would be Jacob Howser.
    Jacob sighed and scrubbed a hand through his
damp brown hair. “You owe me dinner if I succeed,” he said. It was
a standard request from him whenever he did her a favor, and she
had no problem granting it. It was a routine they’d been through
many times before. She gave him a dazzling smile and sat up
straighter, the promise of possibly meeting with Evans enough to
bring her to a higher level of attention.
    “If you actually get me permission, I’ll even
let you pick the restaurant,” Lindsey said. “Seriously, you have no idea how much this means to me.”
    The smile on Jacob’s face that had appeared
when she’d agreed to go to dinner with him faded, and he leaned
closer to her, looking her over with an expression as critical as
the one he’d used when examining the slide under his microscope.
“There something you want to tell me about?” he asked.
    Lindsey glanced toward the ceiling without
moving her head, a quick flicker of the eyes, indicating the camera
that was