Rules In Defiance. Nichole Severn

       Chapter One

      An ear-piercing scream had Elliot Dunham reaching for the Glock stashed under his pillow. He threw back the sheets and pumped his legs hard, not bothering to check the time as the apartment blurred in his vision. That scream hadn’t come from his apartment, but close by. Air rushed from his lungs as adrenaline burned through his veins. There was only one name that came to mind. “Waylynn.”

      Ripping open his front door, he made the sharp turn to his left in the darkness and faced his next-door neighbor’s front door. No hesitation. He aimed the heel of his foot toward the lock and kicked with everything he had. Pain shot up his leg, but the door frame splintered, thick wood slamming back against the wall. Dust flew into his beard and face as he raised the gun and moved in. One breath. Two. Nothing but the pounding of his heartbeat behind his ears registered from the shadows. He scanned the scene, his senses adjusting slowly.

      He’d gone into plenty of situations like this before, but this wasn’t just another one of his clients. This was Waylynn. She mattered. He’d trained out of Blackhawk Security, offered his clients personal protection, home security and investigative services, as well as tactical training, wilderness survival and self-defense. But none of that would do Elliot a damn bit of good now. He was running off instinct. Because when it came to that woman, he couldn’t think. Couldn’t breathe.

      Debris cut into his bare feet as he moved deeper into the dark apartment. A broken picture frame—Waylynn’s doctorate degree from Texas A&M University—crunched beneath his weight. Torn couch cushions, a broken vase, a purse that’d been dumped over the floor. Signs of an obvious struggle littered the living room, but it was the trail of dark liquid leading to the back bedroom that homed his attention to the soft sobs echoing down the hallway. Blood. “Waylynn? It’s Elliot. Are you dead?”

      “Don’t come in here!” That voice. Her voice.

      “I take it that’s a no.” While his gut twisted at her hint of fear, relief spread through him. She was alive. And the scream… Something horrible had happened to make her scream like that. The front door had been locked. No breeze came through the apartment from a broken window. Elliot moved down the hallway, putting the survival skills ingrained into him since he was fourteen to good use. No sign of a break-in. No movement from an intruder. He hit the bedroom and pushed the partially open door open with his free hand. The bed had been perfectly made, brightly colored throw pillows straight. Not much damage in this room. Light from beneath the closed bathroom door stretched across the beige carpeting.

      And Elliot froze.

      The gun faltered in his grip as water seeped from beneath the bathroom door. Not just water. Water mixed with blood. He shot forward. “I don’t care if you’re naked, Doc. I’m coming in.”

      Elliot shouldered his way into the brightly lit bathroom and caught sight of his next-door neighbor huddled against the wall. Ice worked through him as he took in her soaked long blond hair, her stained oversize sweater and ripped black leggings, the terrified panic in her light blue eyes as she stared up at him, openmouthed.

      And at the dead woman in the bathtub.

      “Oh, I didn’t realize this was a party.” A hollow sensation carved itself into the pit of his stomach as he dropped the gun to his side. Terror etched deep lines around her mouth. Pressure built behind his sternum. Elliot set the gun on the counter and crouched in front of her, hands raised. Mildly aware he wore nothing but a pair of sweatpants, he ignored the urge to reach out for her. He’d take it slow. The woman in front of him wasn’t the one he’d moved in next door to a year ago. This wasn’t the woman who’d caught his attention with a single smile and a six-pack of beer in her hand when she’d made the effort to introduce herself to her new neighbor. This woman was scared, vulnerable. Dangerous.

      “Who’s your friend?” he asked.

      Her gaze wandered to the body, far too distant, far too empty. Color drained from her face. “Alexis.”

      “Okay, then. First piece of the mystery solved.” Elliot framed her chin between his thumb and index finger and softened his voice. He didn’t have a whole lot of training when it came to trauma victims, but he couldn’t keep himself from touching her. “Second question. Are you the one bleeding?”

      “I’m…” She turned that ice-blue gaze back to him, her voice dropping into hollow territory. “I’m not the one bleeding.”

      “Now we’re getting somewhere.” He lowered his hand, careful of where he stepped, careful not to leave prints. He’d barged into the middle of an active crime scene. A crime scene where the most trusting woman he’d known stood in the center. There’d been a struggle, that much was clear. Things had obviously gotten out of hand, but he needed to hear the rest from her. He’d learned to trust his instincts a long time ago and something about the scene, about Waylynn’s scream a few minutes ago, didn’t sit right. He pointed to the bathtub. “Last question. Why is there a dead woman in your tub?”

      “I don’t remember. It’s all a blur. I woke up facedown on the bathroom floor. Water and—” she shuddered, wrapping her arms tighter around her middle “—blood were spilling over the edge of the bathtub. I got up and then I saw her. I screamed.” Tears streamed down her cheeks and she wiped at them with the back of her long, thin fingers. She worked to swallow, her knees pressed against her chest, hands shaking. She blinked against the brightness of the lighting. “It’s Alexis. Alexis Jacobs. She’s my assistant at the lab.”

      Genism Corporation’s lab. The largest, most profitable biotech company in Alaska. Also one of the military’s biggest prospects for genetic testing, from what he’d learned, because Dr. Waylynn Hargraves herself had put them on the map. Advancing their research by decades according to recent publicity, she’d proved the existence of some kind of highly contested gene.

      Elliot scanned the scene again.

      He dragged his thumb along her cheekbone, focused entirely on the size of her pupils and not the fact every hair on the back of his neck had risen at the feel of her. Only a thin line of blue remained in her irises, which meant one of two things in a room this well lit. Either Waylynn had suffered a head injury during an altercation or she’d been drugged. Or both. He scanned down the long column of her throat. And found exactly what he was looking for. A tiny pinprick on the left side of her neck. The right size for a hypodermic needle. He exhaled hard. Damn it. She’d been drugged, made to look like she’d murdered her assistant. Framed. “What’s the last thing you remember?”

      Anything to give them an idea of who’d done this. Because it sure as hell hadn’t been Waylynn.

      She blinked against the bathroom lights as though the brightness hurt. “I… I was supposed to meet Alexis here, at my apartment. She said she’d found something alarming in the recent study I oversee at work, but she didn’t want to discuss it over the phone or at the lab. She insisted on somewhere private where we couldn’t be overheard.”

      If