A Chosen Destiny (The Samantha Project Series #3) by Stephanie Karpinske Page A

enhanced genes in just any woman. It won’t survive. It has to be in Sam.”
    I shuddered. “Well, that’s never going to happen.”
    “Jack, you know that GlobalLife will still test the combined DNA,” Dave said. “They won’t wait. They can’t. Their investors are demanding results. GlobalLife has to make those enhanced genes work.”  
    “The enhanced genes are just part of the plan,” Erik said. “GlobalLife has other plans we haven’t told you about.”
    Erik and I described what Drew said about limiting the population, leaving only a select group of people on the planet.
    “When Drew talked about it, Owens didn’t seem that surprised,” I said. “He acted like he was on board with the whole thing.”
    “He was playing along, Sam,” Dave said. “If he was in on that plan, he wouldn’t have allowed you and Erik to listen in.”
    “But Owens didn’t even react when Drew explained it. Doesn’t that seem a little strange? You would think he’d have some kind of reaction.”
    Jack motioned for us to get closer so he could lower his voice. “Dave and I were talking earlier and we’re starting to think that we can’t trust Owens. We don’t believe that story he told us about his intent for the genes. And we don’t like the way he’s already made plans for you two to live in his house in Switzerland. And I’m still troubled by the fact that he went to so much work to find Erik. Making that online code game. Getting Luke and Dan involved. Even if Owens didn’t intend to, he got Paul killed. And Dan. And possibly Luke. All in his attempt to get Erik.”
    “And Owens lied to me in Minnesota,” Dave added. “He assured me he would have the alien genes by the time you two arrived here in Iceland. He never mentioned your involvement in getting the genes. That makes me wonder what else he’s not telling us.”
    “We don’t want to wait around to find out what that is,” Jack said. “We have to get out of Iceland and back to the U.S. But the only way we can do that is with Owens’ help. We need his private plane. GlobalLife is monitoring all commercial flights in and out of here.”
    “To make sure we get out of here, Jack and I told Owens that we would help him open those files when we get to New York,” Dave said.
    I glanced around to make sure none of Owens’ employees were around. “But we don’t want Owens to get the remaining gene samples. You just said you didn’t trust his plans for them.”
    “He won’t get the genes, Sam. Once we locate them, we’ll tell Rachel where they are and she’ll have members of that rebel group she works with retrieve them from GlobalLife. They have people working on the inside. Owens will never get his hands on the genes.”
    “But if you agree to this, we’ll have to live in his house with his security people watching everything we do.”
    “Rachel is working on getting us a different place to stay. We’ll stay at Owens’ house until she lines that up. If Owens gets upset about us moving, then we’ll refuse to help him with the files.”
    “How do we know if we can trust Rachel?” Erik asked. “I mean, she does work for GlobalLife.”
    “I trust her more than I trust Owens right now,” Jack said. “Sam. Erik. I want you both to start listening to Owens’ thoughts. Same for Rachel.”
    “We already tried that,” I said. “Erik and I tried listening to the thoughts of people here in the building right before Owens’ dinner with Drew. We were just practicing, but we couldn’t hear anything. Owens must have installed one of those brain wave scrambling devices in here.”
    “Well, that just proves there’s something going on with him. We need to—” Dave stopped when we heard someone coming in from the parking garage. We went out to the common area and saw Owens talking on his phone.
    “I don’t care what you do to him!” he yelled. “Try it on him for all I care!” He put his phone down on the table next to him.
    The room got