Racing Against the Clock

by Lori Wilde

  What was that?

  Her fingertips skimmed along the underside of the wood. There was something carved into the desk. Numbers. Symbols. A mathematical formula.

  Excitedly, she dropped to her knees and peered upward.

  Could it be? Was it her formula for Virusall? She scarcely dared breath, her trembling fingers running over the notched wood, her mind racing.

  Yes!

  Quickly, she searched for a pencil and clean paper, pulling open drawers, pushing aside rubbish, digging deep.

  Triumph filled her when she found a broken pencil stub and a small yellow notepad. She began to scribble, copying down the equations he had carved into the underbelly of his desk. Then just as quickly, her spirits plummeted. It was only a partial rendition.

  Unfortunately her quirky, paranoid friend often carried his formulas in weird places but left them incomplete in case they were discovered by others.

  Biting down on her bottom lip, she set to work trying to finish the chemical recipe, adding, subtracting and rearranging the elements. She prodded her memory, cast her mind back over seven long years of hard research, and slipped into a mental trance, zoning out in the mathematical equations, losing herself in the chase for her elusive elixir. Adrenaline lifted her spirits and she buzzed along, completely engrossed in her project.

  When she finally raised her head to massage the kinks from her neck, she spied the clock on the wall. Six o’clock in the evening. She had worked all day without respite. The road into Taos might even be open by now. It had been over twelve hours since she had abandoned Tyler.

  Just the mental mention of his name provoked a sharp ache inside her. She should call him. Explain her decision. Tell him about the formula she had found. Hannah rubbed her eyes with her fists and sighed. If she called him, he would insist on coming to her. And even though she did possess part of the formula, it wasn’t enough. Half was almost as useless as none.

  Who was she kidding? Discovering part of the formula wasn’t going to help her solve anything. Not without Marcus himself to help her piece it together. She had no antidote and she still had no idea of her friend’s whereabouts.

  She couldn’t go back to Tyler. Nothing had changed. She was still dying. She had made the right choice to leave.

  If that were true, then why did it hurt so damned much?

  Hannah fought the overwhelming temptation to cry and laid her head on Marcus’s desk. Taking a deep breath, she struggled to calm her riotous emotions. Stay centered, she coached her sluggish mind. Concentrate on the job at hand. You can mend your broken heart later.

  But she could not stop thinking about Tyler. Especially when she could still taste his unique flavor on her tongue, still smell his scent on her skin. She had whisker burn around her mouth and both of her nipples were a little sore. And the tenderness between her thighs was a bittersweet reminder of what they had shared not so long ago.

  I will not cry. At least it has to be this way. I will die alone, here in Marcus’s house. I will have succeeded in keeping the formula from Daycon.

  Yes, she had achieved the goal she’d set for herself, but she had missed so much in the process. She had lost the love of her life and there was no way to redeem it.

  And yet, she wanted nothing more than to call Tyler, to hear his wonderful, soothing voice one last time.

  Except Marcus’s phone was out of order.

  The BMW was still parked at the front gate. She’d seen it when she had ridden in on the snowmobile. She could drive into Taos and call him at the resort.

  “What about the keys?” she muttered.

  Maybe he was one of those people who kept a spare set of keys hidden in a magnet key holder somewhere on the vehicle. It was worth a shot.

  Don’t call him, Hannah. If he begs you to come back, you won’t have the strength to stay away.

  Ignoring the plea from her rational brain and following her heart, Hannah pushed back her chair. She put on her parka she’d peeled off sometime during her marathon work session and made her way back through the house, and outside into the gathering twilight.

  It took several minutes but she made it to the BMW. She searched the car’s belly and smiled at Tyler’s predictable prudence when she found the key holder. She took it as a sign. Wrenching open the driver’s side door she climbed in and started the engine.

  Chapter 15

  Hannah stood in a coffee shop in Taos, her mind a jumble. Part of the road to the ski resort had been cleared but the authorities were only allowing essential vehicles through. Turned away, Hannah had headed straight for the nearest pay phone and dialed Tyler’s cell phone number.

  It rang and rang and rang. Closing her eyes, Hannah could envision the empty rooms at the chalet. Fear, remorse and regret solidified into a cold, gelatinous substance at the base of her spine.

  Where was Tyler?

  Had he gone looking for her? Or had he gone back to the clinic to check on the avalanche victims? She had no idea, but one thing was for certain. She was going back to the ski resort, authorities or not.

  “Hello.” A man’s voice finally answered. But it wasn’t Tyler’s. It was deep and raspy. “Is this Hannah?”

  Hannah gave a small cry and dropped the receiver. It dangled from the black spiral cord, swinging ominously back and forth.

  She stared at the receiver as if it were a poisonous snake, her pulse slowing to a miserable crawl.

  Daycon.

  On Tyler’s cell phone. That could mean only one thing. Daycon had gotten to Tyler.

  No. No!

  Impossible.

  “Dr. Zachary.” The phone wheezed at her. “I’ve been searching a very long time for you.”

  She did not want to pick up the receiver. She would rather shove her hand in boiling oil.

  “Hannah.” A raspy singsong. “Come. To Austin. To my temporary new offices I’m renting from Perfidia Labs. Nasty of you to burn mine down, by the way.”

  Hand shaking so hard she feared it might disconnect from her body, she picked up the receiver and brought it to her ear. “Nasty of you to try to use my drug to create terrorist assassins.”

  “We’re waiting for you,” Daycon said, his voice mesmerizing as a snake charmer’s. “Dr. Fresno and I.”

  “You let him go,” she whispered.

  “Come to me and he’s free to leave.”

  “All right,” she said. “I’ll be there.”

  “That’s a good girl,” Daycon purred. “Catch the next flight out of Santa Fe.” And then he hung up.

  She was stunned. Ill. Sick to her stomach. Disoriented. Overturned. Severed from her roots and crushed into an abject state of mental misery, knowing that she had risked Tyler’s life by involving him in her chaotic problems.

  Legs churning, she fled out into the night, to Tyler’s BMW parked outside the coffee shop. Time was running out.

  She should never have accepted Tyler’s offer of help and gotten him mixed up in this. Why, oh, why had she allowed herself to hope for something that could never be hers?

  That night at Saint Madeleine’s, she should have turned away from him. His kind face and winning ways had made it easy for her to give in to his persuasion when she’d known all along that she was bad news. She had allowed her lonely desperation to dictate her actions and now they both were paying the penalty.

  Guilt and disgust mingled inside her.

  Guiding the vehicle down the steep mountain road, headed for the airport in Santa Fe, she struggled against the rank terror that tasted like stale sweat socks in her mouth.

  Time was running out.

  She was dying. More quickly now, sped up by her emotions. The pain in her temples escalated to an unrelenting pulsation, but she could not give in to her discomfort. She drove like a demon, taking the icy mountain at a perilous pace in the omnipresent darkness. Only one thought dominated her mind.

  Tyler.

  Tyler was vaguely aware that he was lying on some unyielding surface. He smelled formaldehyde a
nd sulfur, and heard the far off ticking of a clock. The kind of cheap, large-faced noisy clocks they put in school classrooms or hospitals. But he couldn’t see anything. He opened his eyes and still his world was black.

  What had happened to his vision?

  His mouth was dry, his throat raw and he needed to go to the bathroom. His head and ribs throbbed relentlessly. He was sore all over, as if he had been thoroughly beaten. Disoriented, Tyler searched his memory for the precipitating event.

  Had a psychotic patient attacked him? It had happened to him once before, years ago when a huge bear of a man—bushy red beard, dressed in leather and studs and high on PCP, had jumped him in the E.R. when he had attempted to suture a forearm gash the man had acquired in a barroom brawl.

  Tyler had felt the same way then as he did now, battered, bruised and none too happy. But he did not remember treating such an out of control patient. In fact, he didn’t even recall working at Saint Madeleine’s.

  Funny.

  Then reality came back in a welcome rush. He hadn’t been treating patients. He had been in a New Mexico ski chalet with Hannah. Two thugs had burst in looking for her and when they had found her missing, had taken their anger out on him. He tried to raise his head and realized then there was a blindfold over his eyes. That explained why he couldn’t see.

  Where was he? And why was he here?

  More important, where was Hannah?

  Greasy nausea slithered in his guts and he feared he might regurgitate. If those thugs had done anything to harm her, he would hunt them down and kill them with his bare hands.

  Except he could not move his arms. Tyler acknowledged that there was a rope tied tight around his chest, above his elbows, fastening his upper arms against his body.

  Damn. Damn. Damn.

  His feet were tethered by some heavy object. Even around the edges of the blindfold, he could not make out any light. He tried to sit up but dizziness assailed him and intensified his nausea.

  Hannah. Somehow, he had to get free. Had to find her before it was too late. Before she sacrificed something important in order to save him.

  Tyler’s heart wrenched. Daycon was using him to draw her back to Austin. He knew she would come.

  Escape. Get to Hannah before she surrenders to Daycon.

  Tyler made his move. Ignoring the pain in his wrists, he worked himself free from the ropes and ripped the blindfold off to discover in was in a lab and laid out on one of the tables. At that same moment Cauliflower Ear walked into the room eating a meatball hoagie, marinara sauce dripping over his hammy fists.

  Startled, he stared at Tyler for a moment before realizing his hands were no longer tied and the blindfold was off.

  Tyler took full advantage of the big man’s hesitation and flung the rope bindings in his face.

  Cauliflower Ear stumbled backward, stubbornly clutching his sandwich.

  Hobbled by the sandbag anchoring his legs, Tyler lunged his torso off the table, going for the gun in Cauliflower Ear’s waistband.

  “Hey,” Cauliflower Ear shouted. “Hey.”

  Triumphantly, Tyler snagged the gun, waved it in the thug’s face and regained his precarious balance. “Don’t move.”

  “Listen, man, you’re in over your head. Daycon’s gonna win. You might as well make it easy on yourself,” Cauliflower Ear wheedled. He was on the ropes and he knew it.

  “And,” Tyler said, reaching down to untie his shackled ankles while still trying to keep the gun trained on Cauliflower Ear, “you can cooperate while I tie you up. See how you like it.”

  Daycon’s goon sighed, wiping his hands along his pants legs. “Well, damn.”

  Tyler kicked off the ropes, hopped to his feet and then advanced on the man. “Lie down on the floor. Hands behind your back.”

  “Oh man, Daycon’s gonna kill me,” Cauliflower Ear whined, but complied by sinking to the floor on his stomach and extending his wrists behind him.

  “Better you than me.”

  After Tyler had him firmly secured, he nudged him with the nose of the gun. “Roll over.”

  Cauliflower Ear squirmed onto his back and squinted up at Tyler. “Watcha gonna do?”

  “For one thing, I’m going to take that blindfold you slapped over me and use it on you as a gag.”

  “Hell.”

  “I know, ain’t life a bitch? But first, I want information.”

  “I don’t know anything,” Cauliflower Ear replied in a sullen tone. “They don’t tell me anything.”

  Tyler traced a line down the side of the man’s cheek with the gun. “Where’s Hannah Zachary?”

  “I told you, I don’t know nothin’.”

  “That’s a shame,” Tyler drilled the gun against his temple.

  “I’m not scared of you.” Cauliflower Ear grimaced. “You’re a doctor, you won’t kill me.”

  “You willing to put me to the test?” Tyler narrowed his eyes. “Then you underestimate my love for that woman. I would do anything to keep her safe. I’m going to ask you one more time,” Tyler said, “and if the answer isn’t satisfactory, then too bad for you. Where is Hannah?”

  “I don’t know anything about her,” Cauliflower Ear said, stubbornly clinging to his statement.

  Was he telling the truth? Tyler cocked the hammer, calling his bluff. “Sorry about your luck, but maybe ignorance isn’t bliss after all.”

  Instant sweat popped out on his face. “Wait!”

  “Oh? You got something to tell me?”

  “She’s on her way to trade the formula for you. In fact, she might even be in Austin already.”

  Hannah was here? Joy was instantly replaced by fear and a cold sweat broke out across Tyler’s body. If Daycon already had Hannah in his grasp, he had no more time to waste on Cauliflower Ear. Daycon was his quarry. Quickly, ignoring the heavy thud of his heart, Tyler gagged the hoodlum, turned out the lights and stepped cautiously into the vacant corridor filled with closed doors.

  He had no idea where he was or even where to start his search. The corridor was dimly lit with faint florescent lights overhead. Clutching the gun firmly in his right hand, he tried first one door and then another. Specially coded security locks barred each. He was on the ground floor, Tyler decided, or maybe the basement. There were no windows, nor were there any signs directing the way, save for a red Exit sign at the very end of the corridor.

  The way out.

  Except he was not leaving.

  Not without confronting Daycon.

  His own breath roared loudly in his ears. Only the noise of his sneakers squeaking against the linoleum disrupted the silence. Daycon was probably hidden away upstairs somewhere, in his cushy office. What Tyler needed was an elevator.

  Turning right down another long corridor, he kept his body pressed against the wall as he moved, the gun outstretched.

  Hang on, Hannah, I’m coming. He mentally spoke to her, sending his thoughts into the ether and hoping she could pick up on his vibrations wherever she might be.

  He trod a hundred feet. No elevator or stairwell here, either. What was this place? A dungeon? At the end of this second hallway, Tyler spotted a door where light bled between the cracks. Aha. Activity.

  Quietly as possible, he crept forward. When he reached the heavy metal door that was already open a crack, he paused to press his ear against it, listening.

  He waited. Two minutes. Three. Four. Hearing nothing that indicated there were people beyond, he braced himself for whatever might lie ahead and nudged the door open with his foot.

  It swung inward.

  Daycon’s other thug stood with his back to Tyler at a second door, fumbling with a security pass card and muttering curses under his breath.

  Tyler hoisted the gun by the nose, took a deep breath and whacked him on the back of the head with all his strength.

  The man crumpled without a whimper.

  Two down. One to go.

  Stepping over the man’s prostate body, Tyler plucked the security card from his
hand and hesitated only long enough to make sure the man was still breathing. He’d live.

  Tyler swiped the security card through the lock and stepped inside a glassed-in area that lead to an isolation room.

  A metal table and shelf housed barrier gowns, gas masks, sterile supplies and various other medical equipment.

  Should he gown up and go beyond the safety of the glassed entrance?

  Trepidation passed through him and he suppressed a strong urge to turn and run. It was instinct. He had seen many isolation rooms similar to this one in the army and what lay on the other side was never a pretty sight. He thought of some of the cases he had seen during the Gulf War, most of them victims of chemical warfare. Seizures, vomiting, diarrhea, body parts turning black and sloughing off. Men writhing in pain from headaches so severe it made them insane. He shuddered.

  What if Hannah was on the other side, hurt or contaminated in some way? The thought caused him such much mental anguish he squelched it immediately.

  He shut the door between him and the prostrate goon and moved through the anteroom. He set the gun on the counter, donned protective gear, covering himself from head to toe. He had no idea what waited for him but he was taking every precaution.

  For Hannah’s sake.

  If he saw her again he did not want to be responsible for exposing her to yet another disease.

  Not if you see her again, but when. No pessimism allowed. He would see her again. He was meant to be with her. He’d waited too long to lose her at this stage of the game.

  Once he was completely gowned up, Tyler retrieved the gun, wrapped it in a red plastic biohazard garbage bag and stuck it under his arm. He wasn’t leaving the weapon behind for Daycon or his men to find and use against him.

  Marshaling his courage, Tyler tried the thick glass door with a heavy dark blind on the inside that kept him from seeing into the isolation room.

  It was locked.

  He felt a little disappointed. He stood there a moment, peering at the door and wondering what to do next, when he heard movement from beyond.

  “Hello,” Tyler said. “Is someone in there?”

  More movement.

  “Are you hurt? Can you open the door from inside? My name’s Tyler Fresno. I’m a doctor. A surgeon. Can I help you?” His voice took on an urgency that matched the blood racing through his system.