Which meant…. “Was anyone hurt?”
“No.”
Reese exhaled his relief.
Harrington’s expression remained pinched.
“I’d think that’s a good thing.”
“No victims mean witnesses. That is a complication we cannot afford.” Harrington walked. “Phillips will meet us there. She’s found some information she needs to go over with you.”
Harrington stopped at the elevator and hit the Call button.
“Yeah, I found out a few things too.”
The lift dinged, and the doors opened. They stepped inside. Harrington hit the button for the garage.
“Is that why you’ve been crying?” Harrington huffed.
Reese nodded. “It’s ugly.” Not just ugly but downright evil.
The doors opened. An SUV waited for them a few parking spots away. Reese got in the back, and Harrington climbed in beside him. The colonel nodded at the driver, and he drove the car between the rows of vehicles to the exit.
Sunlight replaced the drab gray of concrete. The driver pulled into traffic, and they were immediately caught by a red light. A group of school kids darted from one corner to the next. Two businessmen changed sides.
The light turned green.
“Echols knew about Koda before he died.” Fabric whispered beside Reese, but he couldn’t lift his gaze. “I found an email where New World threatened to pull Echols from the project and give it to someone else if he didn’t produce some results. They gave him access to private information on donor files.”
“I thought you said that was one of the places you got samples from?”
“Yes, but there were no names only numbers. The names in the file were all bone marrow donors.”
“Why a bone marrow list?”
Reese took off his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Bone marrow gave us a greater chance to narrow down candidates because of the hematopoietic stem cells. Echols apparently used the database to locate individuals with the highest percentage of the amino acid chains. Koda’s name was at the top of his list for most compatible.
“The date on the list shows it was generated weeks before Koda died. I never knew what happened to him. I never asked. But what are the chances the one person out of thousands of people listed winds up murdered days before he shows up in the lab?” Reese put his glasses back on.
Harrington stared straight ahead. The tall city buildings withdrew as they neared the highway.
“Echols killed him. Or had him killed.” Reese tried to blink back tears. “Fuck.” He used his shirt tail to wipe them off his cheeks but more replaced them. “I’m a monster.” Reese closed his eyes and laid his head against the window. “I’m a fucking monster.”
“You’re a scientist.”
“He was a kid. Nineteen. Someone killed him so I could experiment on him.”
“But you didn’t know that.” The calm matter-of-fact tone in Harrington’s voice stoked Reese’s anger.
“Don’t make excuses. Please. Just hate me.”
“You said you followed the regulations surrounding human remains.”
“Yeah, and it was obviously a lie. All a fucking lie.” Reese punched his thigh.
The SUV merged into the river of cars.
“You told me you joined this project to cure disease.”