He shook his head. "They were creating sleepers. Killers they could activate and use whenever they wanted."
She blew out her breath. This was too much. If Keenan weren't so damn serious, she'd think he was trying to pull a fast one on her.
He lived in a mountain town. There weren't any hospitals around.
But, she'd seen the oddities. The way he could physically do things without any effort. Even while having sex, he was never out of breath and could go all night long.
He'd heard her whisper. That was a superhuman ability only seen in movies.
She swung around and faced him. "That man that attacked me?"
"He was enhanced, but the training failed to make him obedient. He never lost his memories or emotions, and that made him dangerous. He wouldn't have succeeded in the program. He wasn't even supposed to be out of his cell."
"Cell? Like a prison?" She refused to listen to him anymore. Already the story verged on unbelievable. "I need time to—"
"We'll go in the house."
The danger of being outside never entered her mind until Keenan locked the door, and she was safely in the house. His wild story distracted her from what was really going on. She failed to connect the dots with all the information he'd handed her tonight. His claim to be part of a project that altered regular men into unemotional killers seemed farfetched compared to her arriving in Avery Falls under a pretense of photographing a rare sighting of a fisher.
He rubbed her back. "Let's go to bed."
She scraped her teeth over her bottom lip. "I think I'm going to sleep by myself and try to wrap my head around everything."
"You can do that with me holding you."
"I don't think I can." She gazed up at him, conflicted but determined. "We can talk in the morning."
His gaze intensified, but he let her step away from him. She walked down the hallway to the bedroom and shut the door. It was too easy to ignore the signs that something was terribly wrong with his story when he touched her.
Chapter Twenty Seven
The bedroom door opened. Keenan, sitting in the hallway, pressed against the wall and stood, studying Grace, trying to gauge her mood. He couldn't stand being away from her last night after dropping a heavy load of truth on her.
She frowned. "Have you been sitting out here all night?"
"I'm worried about you." He tilted his head. "Are you okay?"
He took in the shadows underneath her eyes. Her tiredness and stress looked back at him, making him hurt.
He knew without asking that she'd tossed and turned all night, periodically getting up and pacing the room. He'd heard every movement. Every sniffle. Every deep sigh.
She rubbed her arms. "I'm so far away from being okay, I'm sick to my stomach. I have a million questions for you, and it's hard for me to figure out if you're telling me the truth or this is some big game that I've been pushed into playing."
"It's not a game. It's dangerous." His gut tightened in his need to protect her. "I've kept you here, not only because I want you—and fuck, Grace, I want you. But I know what they're capable of. I'd put my life down in front of you to make sure they do not hurt you."
"Who are they?" she whispered.
"I don't know," he whispered back. "I've been a part of the project for more than eighteen years. During that time, they..."
"What?"
He closed his eyes an extra beat and then faced her, tapping his temple. "There are things I will never know. The drugs and training I went under make it impossible for me to remember certain things. I know one man, the leader, controls two handlers who oversee our care. I suspect there's an organization or group that funds the project. With the level of knowledge, money, and power they have, they're dangerous. You can see what they've done to me. If you're alone, you won't be able to stop them from hurting you."
The project had gifted each member of Avery Falls Motorcycle Club with a house that was outfitted with a training facility to maintain their enhancements. The small mountain town was given to the club, and the members were instructed to make the former ghost town a thriving recreational hub in the Bitterroot Mountains.
To do all that, there had to be money backing the Alpha Bio Project.
But he knew nothing else.
Over the last year, he'd had plenty of time to process his memories and what had taken place before and during his participation in the project. But the answer of who was behind the AB Project escaped him.
It would take time and evidence to figure that out. Time with his MC brothers, once they were able to settle after the switch.
His time with Grace was limited. He needed to show her how much she meant to him—outside of what was happening to them.
"What in the world was going through your head when you signed up to participate in such an inhumane project?" she asked.
"Let's go in the kitchen. You need to eat."
"I'm not hungry."
"Coffee?" He needed to get her to change the subject. If she wanted to ask him questions about what he went through in the project, he'd answer her. But his past before coming to Avery Falls was off-limits.
She followed him into the other room. He took down a mug and handed her the small can of instant coffee he'd bought for her last week. As she made a cup and warmed it in the microwave, the palms of his hands itched from wanting to touch her and make her forget everything that'd happened.
It would be so easy if he could make her forget, and they could start over.
He swore on his life if he had the drugs available to him that would make her forget everything up to today, he'd give it to her with the coffee to save her from the pain that she'd go through adjusting to his life.
His fear that she wouldn't be able to understand and accept him tainted his tongue. Everything he spoke to her about hid the real truth.
She took a drink, shaking her head when the hotness hit her mouth. Before he could allow her to ask her last question again, he sat on the counter and volunteered more information. "We're not alone in what is happening. Every member of the Avery Falls Motorcycle Club has participated in the project. They're all enhanced."
"They're dangerous like the man that attacked me?"
He shook his head. "No. They'll protect you because you belong to me. But right now, they're dealing with the switch and that makes them unpredictable."
"What is the switch? You mentioned that word before. So it's what happened to you when you woke up at the cabin?"
"Yeah," he mumbled. "It's hell."
"That's where you've been going during the day? To your friends?"
"I've been dealing with keeping my MC brothers safe and trying to keep Avery Falls running. We've got a town full of tourists, and I'm the only member who can keep the businesses open and deal with the locals. As it is, I've had to close the diner and The Shack. I've put the RV Park on the honor system, having the campers who hadn't paid in advance slip an envelope with their payments through an open window on Hank's motorhome." He inhaled deeply. "I'm hoping by the weekend, some of the members will have recovered enough to take on a little more responsibility. But, hell, Grace. I don't know what's going to happen. When this is all over, I'm not sure how many of us will be left."