Chapter 96

* Lyon *

“Why don’t you look and see for yourself.” Mancini sauntered into the room and nodded to Tyler and Zak, who came in behind him.

“She let you in?” I probably shouldn’t have been this excited; it was embarrassing.

“She let me in. This is her first Op, so she wants us to see her skills.” Mengele had put blinders in her lab. At any given time, you can pull it up, think you’re live, and then realize that you’d heard the same conversation before, which means it’s a recording.

Tyler tapped some keys, and Disturbs: The Sound of Silence was the first thing we heard when the screen in the kids’ lab came into view. One entire wall was covered with the video of the song in black and white. Shit looked like a horror movie waiting to happen.

“Well, shit, she’s in one of those moods.” We watched as Mengele reentered the room and hopped her little ass up on her stool. The two cohorts were busy at work when she walked in. Nia, the little hacker freak, swiveled around on her stool while Lily kept tapping away at the keyboard.

“The message has been sent…” Nia started to speak, but Mengele pulled some stunt that she thought I wouldn’t catch. “What was that? Did she just shush her with a hand movement? What hand movement was that? Do we have another angle in that room?” My kid thinks she’s going to outsmart me. Hah! I run this shit.

“Sorry, Lyon, she only allowed me the one camera.” Mancini, this schmuck, “We were lucky to get even that. Don’t look at me like that.”

“You fuck, look at the room, what is in full view and what isn’t?” He looked at the screen and wasn’t fast enough to hide his smile of approval before making it disappear.

“Shit, the wall with the video playing. Did she change the room around? What?” He shrugged his shoulders. I give up; they’ll never learn.

“Forget it. Let’s find out what message was sent to who?” Tyler and Zak started tapping away at keys, trying to find out. I knew it was a lost cause, at least for now, when they both started bitching

“Nothing, Russo strikes again. I’m sure he’s the one who gave them whatever it is that has us locked out of their system.

“I’m going to New England, New Hampshire, New wherever the fuck place he lives and fuck that kid up. What the hell is his problem?”

“His wife, your long-lost cousin? She’s on the women’s side.”

No, it’s more than that. I know what his problem is. His daughter is another Mengele in the making, so he’s getting ahead of the game. Not on my watch, you little shit. I know these kids around here; my kids and the ones from Cali are always making snide-ass remarks about Boomers. I’ma boomerang, my foot in one of their asses before long.

“Mancini, get me in that room. I wanna know what she did when she did it and who she did it with.”

“This is a good thing; we want them to outsmart us, don’t we? I thought that was the whole idea.”

Creed, are you fucking stupid? You want Mengele going rogue with all the shit we have around here? She’s already got a grown-ass man hogtied in the bushes back there, surrounded by snakes and poison fucking grass. You fuckers only gonna wake up when she has us all in fucking specimen jars?”

“Ha-ha, specimen jars. Colton said a big word.”

“Shut dafuq up, Tyler.” I saw Mancini give his head a slight shake to settle the rest of them down. That’s his usual ammo when he’s about to handle me.

“Okay, boys, give him a break. You know how he gets when you know who gets one over on him.” This fucker was doing his best not to smile. I’m about to make him swallow his teeth. I looked back at the screen at the back of Mengele’s head. Why is she tormenting me?

“Uh, Colt.”

“What is it now, Hank?”

“She’s asking for fossils.”

“What kinda fossils?”

“Preferably a few hundred thousand years old. She claims the world isn’t millions of years old.”

“On what basis?”

“Okay, hear me out here and remember this is all her deal. Don’t shoot the messenger. She’s working on something called the Methuselah strain.”

“The meth what?” He rolled his eyes like I had time for his or her shit.

“She claims that the oldest tree in the world is less than five thousand years old, so therefore, she doesn’t believe that there is any other lifeform that was actually millions of years old, and she’s a bit skeptical of the hundreds of thousands of years as well.”

I rubbed my forehead where the headache was budding. “What does this have to do with fossils, Mancini?”

“Okay, but it’s a lot, so follow along.” By now, every man in the room was all ears because they’re all military fucks who believe in hoodoo bullshit because of some fuck they saw in the air or under the sea. I don’t wanna shit about anything that’s not right in front of me. If it happened in the past, good fucking riddance. If it hasn’t happened yet, dafuq, does it have to do with me?

“Shoot!”

“Okay, she wants me to get her some older fossils to study both human and maybe prehistoric mammals.”

“What dafuq for?”

“She thinks that the human body isn’t supposed to disintegrate, and since bones live longer than our organs, etc., she wants to do some research on the bones and see. Fuck it, she wants to figure out how to have her grandparents live longer.”

“Who? The pothead nosy ass Elena Lyons and my in-laws?”

“Yep!”

“Isn’t that shit that shit she’s growing medicinal? That should have the pothead among us for about a hundred and fifty years, give or take. And what the fuck does she plan on doing with that doctor?”

“Oh, that, well, she’s done with him. She got all the information she wanted. She didn’t say what her end game was with him.”

Knowing my crazy ass daughter, now that she’s on this bone shit, she’d either skin him down to the bone to study his shit or, since he’s a brilliant psychiatrist in his own demented right, she’d probably pick his brain until she’s done with him. By then, he should be half a damn vegetable from fear. Speaking of which.

“How sure are we that she removed the venom gland from those reptiles after she extracted the venom from them?” I’m not going to think about how often she had to handle them to get the venom out. If her mother ever knew she had those things back there, she’d freak. Then I’d have no choice but to go back there and burn the shit to the ground.

“By the way, you do know there’s a possibility the glands could grow back with time, right?” Fuck me!

***

* Elena *

This is a lot to take in at once. I don’t know how to feel except disgusted. Not that at the situation, but at the people involved. I know Janie had made a comment on screen alluding to something like this, but since there was no follow-up and it was obvious that she was high off her ass, it never really went anywhere, and I’m ashamed to say I’ve been distracted by other things these last few days.

After hearing everything Ryder had to say about the situation, I excused myself to the bathroom to take a long, hot shower and clear my head. I wasn’t sure about the impromptu concert before, but now I can’t wait.

Now it was not about us and our rekindled relationship and more about what could happen to save kids. It’s a bit nerve-shattering as well to know that something like that could actually be taking place while we were on stage, so there was a lot to unpack.

I was proud of Ryder, though, and how far he had come as a person and how much he had grown. I’m also enraged at Mary and the others who used him in such a despicable way. But the worst is his ex. If I ever doubted that she was just using him for money and clout those doubts were long gone now.

There were times when I felt bad for her, especially after seeing her in that warehouse. As much as I resent her, the reality is that she was just a kid when she became infatuated. I’d like to say with him, but the way she acts, it seems like she was more infatuated with our relationship than anything else.

But there’s no way that she could’ve ever been truly in love with him. I would’ve known because I know how it feels to love him, and I could never, even when he hurt me the most, bring any kind of harm to him.

Now the fact that she was willing to use something like this to get back at him, to come between us, I no longer have any remorse about anything that happens to her going forward.

I have no idea where she is right now, and I don’t think I care. That reminds me of Rachel. I won’t say that I’ve written her off completely; I still plan to pay for her mother’s stay at the home where she’s been staying for the past few years. I don’t have it in me to make her suffer for something her daughter did.

Plus, Rachel wasn’t always like this. Sure, she may have been envious, maybe a little bit jealous of my success, but there were good times as well. I wouldn’t let her back into my life, though, obviously. Sydney would probably have me committed if I tried. But I’m not the kind of person who can just wash my hands of someone just because they turn out to be a horrible human being. If I could do that, then Ryder and I would never have our second chance.

* Ryder *

She’s been in there way too long. If I know my girl, she’d be stressing about this whole thing, which is something I wish I could spare her and went out of my way to do. I have Janie to thank for this shit now too.

I guess she’s trying to make herself relevant, though that message was about as unhinged a ramble as I’ve seen from her. That means she’s either high or going through withdrawals. I should know; I know the signs; I’ve been there enough in my time.

I won’t say I wish I could empathize because I don’t. That may make me sound like a piece of shit, but I can’t bring myself to care. I’m still so filled with rage it’s amazing that I can get through one day to the next.

The more time I spend with Elena, the more I realize what we’ve missed. We would probably have a kid, or two by now had our lives not been derailed by that lunatic. Just that alone is enough to make me hate her until death.

At least her latest stunt had achieved one thing in my favor. I was afraid that because of her soft heart, Elena might feel some level of pity for her, but from the way she looked when she stomped off to the bathroom just now, that was pretty much dead. Huh! Maybe I can help her with some of that pent-up anger.

I rolled off the bed and lost my pajama bottoms on my way to shower. She yelped when I stepped in behind her and wrapped my arms around her middle. “Ryder, what are you doing?”

She sputtered and laughed as she wiped water from her eyes. I rubbed my growing hard-on against her ass, “Can’t you tell?”