Poison and Prejudice

by Field, Chelsea

  “Sorry,” I squeaked ineffectually.

  “What the actual [bleep]? Get the [bleep] off my set!”

  I decided now would be a good time to search Zac’s trailer for a DNA sample and fled the scene of the sneeze.

  * * *

  Zac had one of the largest trailers of course, and I’d spent a fair amount of time in it to escape either the weather or the scrutiny of the film crew. But as I drew near, I heard someone inside. My hand went to the pepper spray in my pocket before recalling the man I was scared of was in front of the cameras. But if he hired someone to get rid of me, doing it now would give him an irrefutable alibi. It would’ve been easy for him to anticipate that I’d wind up in his trailer.

  I shuffled on the doorstep trying to decide what to do, then palmed the pepper spray canister and slid back the safety. It was small enough that I could hide it in my hand, so if whoever was inside had a valid reason for being there, they’d never know about my protective measures. My other hand went to the doorknob before I hesitated again. What if they did have a valid reason for being there and were waiting for Zac? Like an admirer, for example? Or worse, a naked admirer?

  I knocked, loosening my grip on the canister when a fully clothed, middle-aged woman opened the door. Connor would chide me for being so quick to relax my guard, but she didn’t look like a killer.

  Come to think of it, ordinary people would have the same instinct I did. Which meant an out-of-work, middle-aged woman might make an ideal candidate for a career as a hitwoman. Oops.

  “Good timing,” the hopefully-not-a-hitwoman said. “I’ve just finished cleaning.” She brushed past me carrying a backpack rather than the typical cart of cleaning supplies. It made sense when you had to go up and down trailer steps all day.

  Figuring hair would be the easiest, if also the grossest, I headed straight for the bathroom and hoped the cleaner hadn’t done too good of a job.

  She definitely hadn’t done too good of a job. There was a clump of hair in the shower drain. I grimaced. Would it work if it had been washed a bunch of times? I googled it, but while I found a list of the types of items that could contain DNA, none of it was conclusive unless I could get Zac to spit in a sterile cup for me. Or pee in one. Hmm. I imagined trying to convince him there was a nasty urinary tract infection or STD spreading around the film crew and volunteering to take his sample to the doctor for testing. With my luck, he’d either see straight through the lie, or I’d end up collecting urine samples for every person on the crew. I shuddered and decided the hair wasn’t that bad after all.

  Unfortunately, I’d failed to bring anything with me to collect the sample. No way was I chucking a wad of short and curlies in my purse.

  I went to the kitchenette section of the trailer and searched through the drawers. No handy-dandy ziplock bags. That would’ve been too convenient. The best I could come up with was plastic wrap. Thinking of the hair, I grimaced again. But I was going to have to make it work.

  Placing a layer of plastic wrap over my palm, I pinched up some of the hair and artfully mashed the whole thing including the wrap into a ball. Then I put an extra two layers of plastic around it for good measure. Ugh. It was going to have to go in my bag.

  And what if, after all this, it wasn’t enough? Google suggested the hair needed to have the root and tissue still attached. I didn’t want to look that closely. It also said the quality of the DNA affected the processing time, and I was sure Connor would like it processed as fast as possible so I’d stop rubbing shoulders with an almost-definite murderer and alleged human trafficker. I wouldn’t mind that myself.

  After a moment’s consideration, I grabbed Zachariah Hill’s toothbrush, covered that in plastic wrap too, and shoved it in my bag. An image of security checking my bag on the way out and finding the hair and toothbrush almost made me put them back. But the stakes were higher than my potential embarrassment.

  Because both the toothbrush and hair would’ve been wet multiple times, I resolved to try to add a fresh saliva sample to my stash before the day was out. Then I wondered why the hell Homeland was relying on me to do this, or at least why they hadn’t given me more in-depth instructions. Detective and crime shows didn’t go into the specifics of DNA collection, and I was feeling grossly unqualified. The way Connor kept telling me I was. Humph.

  With my assorted stolen items tucked under my arm in my bag, I forced myself to return to my chair by the film set. I wanted to be there when Alyssa’s death was announced, and I was supposed to be tracking any private conversations Zac was having.

  Everybody would’ve forgotten about the sneeze incident by now, right?

  Yeah. Sure they would have.

  10

  A hand clamped over my mouth, and something cold and sharp touched my throat. A knife, I realized.

  Someone must be super mad about that sneezing thing.

  “Don’t move,” a woman’s voice hissed.

  While most of me was appropriately terrified, a small corner of my brain noted the blade was a refreshing change from all the guns that had been pointed my way of late.

  “You will come with me, quietly, or you’re dead. Got it?”

  Okay, probably not about the sneeze.

  Since she had her hand over my mouth and a blade to my throat, I couldn’t very well respond.

  “Got it?” she hissed, more urgently this time.

  I was careful not to swallow before grunting out the nearest to “got it” I could muster under the circumstances.

  My mystery assailant pulled me backward, and I followed the pressure, having no idea where I was going and hoping like hell that I didn’t trip and take care of the dirty deed of slitting my throat for her.

  We passed Zac’s trailer that I’d just exited and weaved our way around a few of the other vehicles in the lot. I hoped someone would spot us, but the parking lot tended to be abandoned while filming was going on. I wished I’d taken some of those self-defense classes Connor had recommended.

  Damn. Why did he have to be right all the time?

  The steel against my skin reminded me I had bigger problems.

  The woman’s hand left my mouth, and I heard a door slide open. She spun me around, turning with me so she was still behind with her knife to my throat, and I got a glimpse of a white panel van before she ordered me inside. Fear stopped me from trying to flee. Even if I could overpower her and push the blade away from my neck, she might switch targets and stab me elsewhere.

  I got inside. The roof was too low for me to stand up, so I squatted and searched for something I could use to escape. I had a lot of somethings to choose from. The van was littered with celebrity magazines, clothes, boxes, McDonald’s bags, an assortment of hats and uniforms—disguises?—and cleaning equipment. Based on the mess in the van, I was guessing the latter had never been used.

  A set of handcuffs were pushed into my hands. “Put these on.”

  I hesitated. My instincts yelled at me to get away, but if my attempt failed… I put the cuffs on. At least doing it myself meant I could keep my arms in front of me and the bracelets nice and loose. I’d wait until the blade was farther away and then come up with an escape plan.

  “Hands above your head.”

  Bracing myself for some unknown horror, I lifted my arms. She tightened the cuffs—not good—and then I heard another set of handcuffs clicking into place. My chances of escape had narrowed further. She’d shackled me to the van’s grip bar.

  The knife left my throat, the door slammed shut, and I got my first view of my captor in the gloom of the van’s interior. She was in her forties, with a round, pleasant face, unfashionable bangs, and some extra baggage around the waist. Dressed in slacks, a blouse, and sensible shoes, she could have been any middle-class housewife. Unmemorable, yet I recognized her. The alleged cleaner in Zac’s trailer.

  No wonder the shower drain had been full of hair.

  She turned over a mop bucket to use as a makeshift stool and sat down. I had no such lux
ury, and with my hands cuffed over my head, able to neither sit nor stand up straight, my position was going to get painful fast.

  “Zachariah Hill is mine,” she told me, confirming my suspicions that she was a bona fide stalker. And therefore at least a little unhinged. “I’ve been waiting forever for him to break it off with his slutty wife so he can be with me, and now it’s finally happened. Now Zac and I can finally be together…” Her expression slackened into joyous wonder, and she seemed to forget I was there.

  Okay then. Maybe she was a lot unhinged.

  Her gaze refocused, and her eyes grew slitty. “And I will not allow you or anyone else to interfere!”

  “No arguments here,” I said. “He’s just my boss.”

  The unhinged stalker was fiddling with her knife. It was a kitchen knife with a plastic handle; the bargain kind that comes in a block set where you get ten knives for the price of one and then after a month wish you had a single knife that was actually sharp. But as blunt as it might be, it was no doubt still sharp enough to cut an artery.

  “Bull poop!” she spat. Despite the inoffensive substitution of the expression, her ferocity made it scary. “I saw you together on the red carpet. He wouldn’t have taken you on it if there wasn’t something going on between you.”

  That unwanted walk on the bleeping red carpet had a lot to answer for. Oh great, now I was using bleep as a swear word.

  My brain raced, trying to think of something that would convince her and her delusions that I wasn’t a threat. Something she wanted to hear. “No, Mr. Hill was just being nice. I’m sure you’re aware, seeing as you know him so well and all, that he’s a very kind person. It was like his charity work. He did it out of the goodness of his heart, nothing else.”

  She pondered this, chewing a nail while holding the knife and coming perilously close to poking out her own eye. While such an injury would be a useful distraction, I couldn’t watch without every fiber of my being squirming in protest at the idea.

  “And,” I added, “since he’s single and everything right now, maybe I could set up a meeting between you two.”

  The knife clattered to the floor, and she swooped to pick it up before answering. “You could do that?”

  “Sure,” I lied. “Let me go, and I’ll set up a date for you.”

  She cackled. A mixture of hysteria and menace. “I’m not stupid.”

  My hopes plummeted.

  “I’m not going to let you go. But if you set up that date from here, I might not need to use this.” She thrust the blade in my direction.

  Well, that was better than nothing, right? It gave me more time to come up with an escape plan.

  “I’ll just go home and get changed first,” she added.

  Even in her excitement, she was smart enough to gag me—with a scarf that smelled unfortunately of wet dog—before she started driving. We’d have to exit the studio premises through the security gate, but it opened automatically on the way out so there was no chance of a guard hearing my muffled shouts.

  She also took my bag with her, stealing with it any hope of phoning someone for help.

  Left alone in the back of the van, I considered my options. There was a steel partition between my captor and me, with small holes in the top third offering some light but little visibility. I didn’t think she’d be able to see what I got up to, so I’d use the commute to free myself.

  First things first. My legs were already trembling with exhaustion, and my shoulders ached. At least her slobby ways left me plenty of options for things to sit on. I painfully switched all my weight to one leg and dragged the overturned mop bucket toward me with the other.

  Once seated, I searched the floor again, looking for something I could use to pick the handcuffs. My eyes landed on a used Q-tip. Eww. I imagined having to bite the end off with my teeth, even pretending I wasn’t gagged and could somehow get the disgusting thing up to my mouth, and kept looking. Eventually I uncovered a bobby pin. Kicking one shoe off, I managed to pick it up with my toes but not before discovering there was something wet inside the McDonald’s bag it was resting on.

  Maybe I’d avoid McDonald’s for a while.

  When I tried to get the bobby pin all the way past my head to my hands, I fell about two feet short. I wasn’t one of those flexible dancer types. I was more of a comfy couch potato type. Something that had never bothered me too much until now.

  Perhaps if I could use my body to do some of the bending instead of relying solely on my leg, I could get it closer. To this end, I wiggled down the bucket until more of my back than my butt rested on it, curled my body into a banana shape, and tried again. Success!

  My elation didn’t last long. I had no clue how to pick handcuffs. Or locks of any kind. My septuagenarian neighbor Etta would have been out of here in a flash. She’d once explained her adroitness at picking locks by saying it was a useful skill to have for this type of scenario, and I’d been sure she was lying. Now I was going to have to eat my words and beg her to teach me.

  Or never admit to any of this.

  I separated the bobby pin regardless and jammed it into the lock, twisting and turning it for all I was worth.

  Twenty minutes went by with no further developments except for the ongoing cycle of heavy numbness, prickling pins and needles, and burning pain in my arms and shoulders. I heard the sound of a garage door opening, and then the van stopped. “Be right back,” my captor said through the steel divider. She shut the garage as she left, plunging me into darkness.

  My mood was turning equally dark, but I forced myself to look on the bright side. The more time this whole trip took, the more time I had to come up with a better plan.

  Almost half an hour later, I’d had plenty of opportunity to come up with a better plan, but it hadn’t done me any good. With my hands in cuffs, my mouth gagged, and my self-defense weapons taken from me, I was useless.

  For a moment I’d had a surge of hope when I’d remembered the microphone on my Taste Society ring. It was designed to send a short, recorded message to the base, alerting them of the type of poison someone had ingested. The base could then prepare the antidote and mobilize one of their emergency toxicology physicians to go to the scene, and if the Shade was unconscious when they arrived, they didn’t have to rely on the client to remember what the poison was called. The problem was, there was no GPS built into the ring—it would’ve required too much battery and bulk—and since I was gagged, I couldn’t communicate my whereabouts through the message. Besides, I didn’t even know my whereabouts.

  I twisted the ring and sent a message anyway. It sounded like this: “Mmmphhmmmm.” Yep, that’d work. The base would call my phone and then Zac’s, and when neither of us answered, they’d write it off as an accidental microphone activation.

  The rings hadn’t been designed with abductions in mind. I seemed to be the only Shade who had trouble with that.

  My abductor returned at last, switched on the garage light, and opened the van door. I buried my bare foot in a pile of clothes so she wouldn’t notice my missing shoe and prepared myself to grab any opportunity that might lead to escape.

  She was wearing, from what I could tell, the exact same outfit as earlier, except with a chunky bead necklace and pink lipstick.

  A half hour well spent.

  Sadly, she had the same knife accessory too.

  She removed the gag, that knife getting perilously close to my eye this time, and I forced myself to smile at the crazy witch.

  “You look great.” I’d have to string her along about this date thing until I got a better opportunity to flee. “What’s your name?”

  Her brow furrowed in suspicion.

  “So I can introduce you to Zac, I mean.”

  “Jennifer. But Zac will know who I am. I’ve sent him a lot of pictures.”

  Lucky Zac. “Ah, of course. I thought I recognized you. I think I must have seen you in one of the photos he has hung up on his wall.”

  She looked pleased. “Th
e nude ones or the others?”

  Oh, blessed buttons. “The others. I guess he keeps the nude ones for his private collection.”

  Even if Zac was a murderer, I felt bad for besmirching his reputation like this. But what’s a girl to do?

  “Which one is it?” she asked. “Describe it.”

  Crap. “Er, well, you’re wearing”—I searched her for inspiration—“a nice blouse.”

  “What color? What’s on it?”

  “Oh, it’s not the one with the flowers, it’s the one with the, um, what are they called again?”

  “The stripes? Checkers? Dragonflies?”

  “That’s it! Dragonflies.” Surely she couldn’t have multiple colors of those to quiz me about.

  “Interesting choice. I thought he might appreciate a bit of pizazz like those dragonflies give a woman.”

  “Absolutely!”

  Her eyes narrowed, like she was weighing whether I might be agreeing out of personal experience, rather than sheer desperation.

  “I mean, you absolutely must have figured correctly since he chose that photo to hang on his wall.”

  She nodded. “I want to see it. Study it. Work out why he loved that one the most. Can you get me in?”

  Oh boy. “Sure.” Taking her to a secluded house with no one else around wouldn’t have been my first choice, but maybe it would mean she’d relax her guard more. Hell, if I got her into Zac’s loft, a place she must have fantasized about visiting, maybe she’d forget all about me.

  Yeah, I was an optimist by nature.

  The pain urged me to keep talking. “Any chance you could attach my cuffs to something lower down? My arms really hurt.”

  “No.” She shoved the gag back in my mouth, slammed the door, and returned to the driver’s seat.

  * * *

  What felt like an eternity later, the van stopped again, and the door slid open. “If you promise to cooperate, you can come with me.”

  My guess was she didn’t want me banging on the panels of the van in a public space where I might attract attention. But since it meant she’d have to uncuff me from the van’s grab bar, I agreed eagerly. The most cooperative captive ever. It was just as well I’d thought to slip my shoe back on to avoid raising questions.