Free Retribution (SSU Trilogy Book 3) (The Surgical Strike Unit) by Vanessa Kier Page A

offered to take her shopping after her meeting with Ryker. Although she’d needed both clothes and toiletries, she’d told McDermott the shopping trip would have to wait until she found a way to pay for the items. She had only a few dollars in her wallet, left over from her vacation before Kaufmann had whisked her away. Kaufmann had deposited staff salaries into special bank accounts controlled by his finance department. Before her escape, Gabby had been unable to touch her money without arousing suspicion. And her purse with her credit cards had mysteriously disappeared between the moment Kaufmann approached her about the job and her arrival at his compound.
    Yet McDermott had waved off Gabby’s concerns about money. He’d been instructed by Ryker to set up an account for her at the store and explained that they’d work out the payment details later.
    Though she hated being dependent on others for her basic needs, Gabby had given in and let McDermott lead her around the store. Used to the uniforms and generic toiletry items distributed by Kaufmann’s supply team, she’d found the available choices overwhelming. Eventually, though, she’d settled on a few purchases, knowing that if she wanted to pay the SSU back she would have to either accept Ryker’s job offer or quickly find a job in the outside world.
    While she wanted to help Nate Ngoro and the others, part of her was afraid of ending up in another situation where her work was misused. Although her gut instinct said to trust Ryker, she had no way of knowing if his intentions would change once he had access to Kaufmann’s data.
    She sighed. Unfortunately, Rafe and his men had confiscated all her notes and test tubes. She didn’t like having them out of her control, but even if another doctor got hold of them it would take months to replicate a program as heinous as Kaufmann’s.
    She tossed the damp towel on the bed and pulled on her new pajamas. If she accepted Ryker’s job offer she’d have access to Nate Ngoro and the other escapees. She’d be able to take blood samples and check to see if they, too, had traces of Agent Styx in their blood.
    If they did…
    Her hands stilled on the knot of the drawstring waistband as hope fluttered deep inside her.
    For years she’d listened to Vietnam veterans tell stories and pass along rumors of horrible acts committed under the influence of experimental chemicals, and of the terrible long term side effects. Finding one blood sample with the marker for Agent Styx in the blood of her patient back at Kaufmann’s compound wasn’t enough proof that Kaufmann had been using the supposedly destroyed chemical. But if Nate and the others all showed the Agent Styx markers in their blood, then maybe she could ask Ryker to help her investigate how Kaufmann got hold of the drug.
    With any luck, such an investigation would lead back to the men who’d created the chemical in the first place. The men who’d given it to her father during the Vietnam War.
    The same men her father had been trying to expose before his death. Even though she’d been a child, she’d understood that the mysterious phone calls that spooked her mother and her father’s insistence that Gabby stay inside as much as possible had meant trouble.
    Her suspicions had been confirmed when she turned twenty-one and the key to a special safe deposit box had been forwarded to her by a lawyer. What she’d discovered in the box had changed her life.
    Medical reports from his time in the army that proved her father’s rages had been the result of exposure to Agent Styx. A list of other symptoms. Vials of the chemical, along with a copy of the chemical’s destruction order from the U.S. government. And several coded pages Gabby still wasn’t able to read, no matter how hard she tried to crack the code.
    The contents of that box had further fueled her desire to go into medicine so she could find other veterans like her father and help them before it was too late.