Chapter 3

"If you hurt Blair again, Margot, I swear I'll kill you." The rage in Garrett's eyes was so raw that everyone around us took a step back.

"She grabbed me first. If she fell, she had it coming."

He raised his hand again. This time I caught his wrist before it came down. "Hit me again, and you can explain it to the board."

Garrett tried to yank free. I held his stare for a second, then shoved his hand away.

Nobody stepped in. The symposium would decide appointments for several important positions, and no one wanted to cross Garrett over a stranger.

"I had no idea the Aldridge Institute let its researchers assault guests whenever they felt like it."

Garrett's face darkened. "I'm warning you, Margot. Leave now. If you get in the way of my appointment, I'm done being polite."

"Then I'd love to see what you call impolite."

Something calculating flickered across his face. A moment later, Blair stumbled sideways into an administrator standing nearby.

"Oh, I'm so sorry! This is my cousin. She got in without a badge." Blair stepped in front of me and put on a worried look. "She's always been in love with my husband. I think she just lost it when she heard Garrett was getting his appointment today. Please don't have her arrested."

The administrator's expression hardened at once. "Where's security? Get this unidentified woman out of here, now!"

Everyone in that hall believed Garrett was Dr. Penrose's favorite student and the man most likely to take over the Regenesis Project that evening. When the administrator turned toward him, even his tone grew warmer.

"Dr. Penrose invited me," I said. "Before you put a hand on me, I'd think hard about the consequences."

The administrator hesitated and glanced at Garrett.

"My mentor met her once, back when he thought I was marrying her," Garrett said with a sigh. "Then things changed. She ran off with another man the night before our wedding."

Whatever doubt the administrator had left was gone. "Throw her out."

"I'm Dr. Penrose's student, and I'm the one presenting the new project tonight."

The security officers stopped. Walter Penrose carried enormous weight in regenerative medicine, and nobody wanted to risk offending someone who might really be his student.

A flash of malice crossed Blair's face. Then she raised her voice. "Margot, hand over the research files you stole! This is the Aldridge Institute. Leaking confidential research is a crime!"

Every core project at the Institute carried serious commercial and national-security weight, and toxin research was the most sensitive of all. If it reached a rival lab overseas, it could hand competitors a ten-year lead.

The way people looked at me changed instantly.

Blair leaned in and whispered, "Get on your knees and apologize, and I'll tell them I made a mistake."

I laughed, cold and short. "Have you forgotten how you became Garrett's wife?"

She went white, but the smile came right back. "Who do you think they're going to believe?"

Then she raised her voice again. "She used to make secret phone calls and send encrypted files behind our family's back. She talked about experimental data and project reviews. I never understood any of it, but now I think she's been feeding information to our competitors for years."

Those calls and files had been my research reports to Walter.

Garrett jumped on her accusation. "So that's why you were so set on marrying me. You wanted to use my position to get into the Institute and steal classified information. Thank God I didn't choose you. You'd have dragged our whole town down with you."

I clenched my fists. In this life, I had already stepped aside and given them everything they wanted. And they still meant to brand me a spy. "Have you two forgotten what really happened at that wedding?"

"You left town with Callum Rivers and stayed out all night, so Blair said the vows in your place," Garrett said with a sneer. "What is there to hide?"

So that was the story Blair had told him.

"We're investigating your theft of confidential material now. We gave you a chance to leave, and you turned it down. It's too late to change your mind."

"I already told you. I'm a researcher, and I was invited to tonight's symposium."

The security officers grabbed my arms anyway and snapped a pair of handcuffs around my wrists.