The Mafia Heiress They Could Never Find novel · Chapter 5 of 24

Chapter 5: Researcher Nine

At the inner gate a guard held out a gray plastic bin, and I dropped my phone into it.

It lay on top of forty other phones, face up, with Finn's cake emoji still on the screen.

The guard scanned my suitcase and found the pocket watch and the drawing roll.

"The watch stays with you," he said. "The roll goes to review."

They gave me a bunk in a long dormitory building and a badge that said RESEARCHER NINE.

Nothing on it said Maeve, and nothing said Doran.

I slept for six hours and woke up not knowing which direction the door was.

At seven the next morning, forty of us sat in folding chairs in a concrete hangar that smelled of cutting oil.

The coordinator stood at the front with her tablet.

"This is a closed program," she said. "You don't know each other's real names. You don't ask."

She tapped the screen, and a handbook page lit up on the wall.

"Rule nine. No romantic or sexual relationship between members of the same team. Two violations in the history of this lab, and both teams were dissolved the same week."

Somebody in the back row coughed.

"Team assignments are posted on your badges," she said. "Weapons Team Two reports to Eamon Kerr."

A man stood up from the front row.

He was tall, maybe thirty, with short dark hair and a scar that split his left eyebrow in two.

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