Lethal Affair

by Jean Thomas

  The nerve at the corner of Dr. Milosz’s mouth twitched all the while as he introduced her to the formula he had manufactured in this room. He seemed nothing but proud of his clever ability to halt the reproduction process in women without their being aware it had been artificially accomplished.

  Brenna must have registered her disgust on her face. Milosz didn’t observe it, but Marcus did.

  “I don’t think she’s paying sufficient attention to your lesson, doctor. Perhaps this over here will be of more interest to her.”

  He went back to the other side of the room, expecting her to follow. She remained where she was.

  “Perhaps we need Karl to encourage you. He’s very capable when it comes to persuasion.”

  From the slow smile on the thug’s mouth, Brenna knew he would love the opportunity to use force. She had a choice. She could either willingly submit to Marcus’s will or be manhandled by Karl. That kind of brutal treatment could end up injuring her, making her incapable of an escape. And naive though that intention might be, she still hoped for it.

  It was wiser to join Marcus where he stood by a covered something she hadn’t noticed until now.

  “That’s much better, Brenna. You can’t fail to be fascinated by this latest addition to my collections.”

  She couldn’t prevent the gasp that resulted when he whipped off the cover, revealing what was underneath. It was a chair, but not an ordinary chair.

  “I purchased it from an American prison that was no longer in use and had it shipped down to me. Original, isn’t it? But you’re looking alarmed. You don’t think— Oh, no, no, this isn’t an electric chair. Nothing that uncivilized. But you can see by the leather straps on the arms and at the legs, this was a chair used for executions. In this case, the gas chamber. Try it, why don’t you?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  His voice altered, going from pseudo pleasant to genuine harshness. “I insist. And if you refuse, there’s always Karl.” He thrust his face down into hers, his blue eyes cold with contempt. “Have you forgotten my promise to you that you’ll regret turning on me? This chair is my means of making that happen. Karl, get over here.”

  The blond left the door and joined them.

  “Strap her down in the chair. If she gives you any trouble, you have my permission to do what’s necessary. Meanwhile...” Marcus turned away, calling across the laboratory to Dr. Milosz where he waited on the other side.

  “Doctor, do me the favor of preparing a syringe containing a strong dose of your formula.”

  “Do I understand that you want me to inject Miss Coleman?”

  “That’s the intention.”

  “You realize, don’t you, Marcus, that once it’s in her system she’ll never be able to conceive?”

  “Of course. It’s exactly what she deserves.” He turned back to Brenna with a soft, taunting “For the rest of your life, Brenna. It will stay with you for the rest of your life.”

  Dear God, he’s a lunatic. They’re all lunatics. To rob a woman of her right to bear a child. It’s unthinkable...

  But if Marcus Bradley had his way, it was about to happen to her.

  She’d wanted a baby. One day, that is, when she was established as an artist and had the time and means to get pregnant. She and Casey had discussed it during their engagement, planned for it. It wouldn’t happen now. Casey would never father their baby.

  Wait a minute. She wasn’t thinking straight. Marcus was just tormenting her. Knowing what she did, he couldn’t afford to let her live. Oh, he would let her suffer for a time with being infertile while he kept her captive. That was his way of punishing her, but sooner or later she would be killed.

  That didn’t mean she was going to willingly submit now to any form of injection.

  She fought Karl with the fierceness of a mother bear protecting her cub, but he was too strong for her. In the end, spewing curses all the while, he secured the leather straps around her wrists and ankles.

  Bound to that chair as she was now, Brenna felt like a helpless victim about to be sacrificed on a satanic altar.

  Chapter 18

  Casey could feel the truck swinging into the end of the driveway and stopping at what he presumed were the locked gates of the plantation. There was a pause and then an exchange of voices.

  From what he could tell where he and Will were hidden on the bed of the truck, the driver had to be leaning from his open window, calling to another man behind the gates. “Ion, is that you?”

  “Who else? Don’t I always get the crappy jobs? Boss kept Karl up at the house and sent me down to wait for you. You took your sweet time getting here.”

  The voice, bearing traces of an Eastern European accent, was familiar to Casey. He had heard it before. When and where? It took a few seconds before his memory kicked in.

  Yeah, that was it. The day along the waterfront when the gun had been shoved into his back and this bastard had snarled a warning into his ear to stay away from Brenna. A threat that had to have originated from Marcus Bradley.

  Ion, huh? His presence at the waterfront back then made sense now. Casey knew the driver tonight had been collecting another chemical delivery that day, and this Ion must have been there helping him.

  “Come on, open up. Boss is eager to get these chems.”

  “You know why, don’t you, Lew?”

  Casey could hear a jangle of keys, one of which he supposed was unlocking the gates.

  “I guess you’re going to tell me, aren’t you?”

  “He and Milosz are trying to stockpile the stuff so they get enough batches to send overseas to all the cabal members at the same time. Problem is, the chem brew in the vats needs to be mixed and refined until the solution—”

  The driver cut him off there with an impatient “Since when did you get so freakin’ interested in science? No, don’t tell me. Just get the damn gates open.”

  Ion must have done that, because the truck pulled forward and stopped. Casey supposed the driver, Lew, was waiting now for Ion to close the gates, relock them and climb aboard the vehicle for a lift back to the house. When the passenger door opened and slammed shut, he knew he was right.

  Casey waited for them to be rolling again before signaling Will to be ready to jump down. Lifting his head, he saw the lighted great house looming ahead of them. The truck slowed when it reached the turn in the drive that would take it around to the back of the mansion.

  It was then Casey swung down from the open rear of the truck. Will followed. They took cover in the shrubbery at the side of the house. It was only when they were out of sight and hearing that Casey spoke softly to his friend.

  “We need to find a way inside this mausoleum. Let’s try the back. They’ll probably be taking the drums in that way. With any luck, we might be able to slip through.”

  “I’m with you. Lead on.”

  The two men worked their way through the shrubbery. They stopped when they rounded the corner of the house. Ahead of them, beneath the glow of a yard light, sat the truck. Ion and Lew were there, securing three of the heavy chemical drums on a forklift.

  Casey placed his mouth near Will’s ear. “Can’t see any entrance inside the house from this angle,” he whispered.

  “Looks like what used to be a horse stable across the yard from where they’re working,” Will whispered back. “How about we backtrack where it’s dark enough to slip around to that stable without being spotted and take up position there?”

  A few minutes later they were hugging the shadowed side of the derelict stable. Their situation gave them a clear view of the yard and the back wall of the mansion. There was still no sign of an entrance.

  There had to be one, Casey thought. The burly Lew was already seated on the forklift, ready to trundle the drums to where they would be needed.

  “I’m gonna take a quick smoke break while you’re gone,” Ion said.

  “You’d better be here waiting when I’m back to help with the next load. And you’d better g
et out of sight before you light up. You know what a fit the boss will throw if he catches you anywhere near those chems with a lighted cigarette.”

  Lew had already swung the forklift around and was on the move when Casey realized Ion, cigarette in one hand, lighter in the other, was headed directly toward where he and Will were hiding. Presumably, the bearded bastard meant to share their shadowed wall.

  Casey made a quick decision. If he and Will were going to find Brenna and get her out of that decaying mansion, they would have to start taking down these goons. This was as good an opportunity as any to begin.

  Casey was ready for the guy when he rounded the corner of the stable and came to a halt, his eyes bugging in disbelief. Not a surprising reaction since the man lurking at the side of the stable was supposed to be dead.

  Casey gave him no time to think about it.

  “Hi,” he greeted him cheerfully. “Remember me? I remember you.”

  Casey’s fist was ready and eager. It shot out with the force of a piston, connecting with Ion’s jaw. Casey didn’t care what his wounded arm might suffer from that blow. It felt too good to mind. Almost as good as seeing his target drop to the ground and stay there.

  “Guy must have a glass jaw,” Will observed.

  “Yeah, looks like he’s going to be out for a while. Hey, you see where the other one disappeared to with that forklift?”

  * * *

  How much longer did she have, Brenna wondered, before her body was injected with that foul fluid that would make her forever barren?

  Dr. Milosz was still preparing the syringe on the far side of the laboratory, and Marcus remained with him watching the procedure. Karl hovered close to the chair that held her, guarding her. Which was pointless since she was incapable of going anywhere.

  She was startled when a bell rang toward the rear of the hall. Was it an alarm of some kind? None of the three men were surprised by it.

  “That would be Lew with the first of the drums,” Marcus remarked to no one in particular.

  Brenna saw him pick up what looked like a remote control. His thumb must have punched a button. To her amazement, a wide section of the back wall of the hall slid open to admit a forklift. The man with all the tattoos—Lew, wasn’t it?—was seated at the controls operating the machine, its extended carriage supporting three of the drums.

  “Where’s Ion?” Marcus wanted to know as the forklift rolled into the laboratory.

  “Waiting out at the truck to help with the next load.”

  Satisfied that Ion had been accounted for, Marcus went back to watching the doctor. Brenna’s own gaze was on the forklift and its current load proceeding slowly toward the front of the hall.

  She could guess what those drums contained. Chemicals needed to manufacture more of the junk that would be pumped down wells all over the world. The very thought outraged her.

  The forklift had come to a sudden halt. Something strange was happening. Its frozen driver was staring directly into one of the long mirrors mounted on the front wall.

  From her position in the chair, Brenna was unable to see what had captured his attention in the pier glass. What she could detect from his profile, however, was the horror on his face. As if he were looking at a ghost from the past.

  But the mirror wasn’t reflecting the past. What it was reflecting, she realized, was the back wall of the laboratory.

  Something or someone was there outside the opening, and it couldn’t be Ion. Not to elicit such incredulity from the man on the forklift.

  It was both a night and a setting for seeing ghosts. Brenna understood that when the tall figure of Casey McBride, hands down at his sides curled into fists, strode through the opening.

  She choked on a sob of astonishment that rose from deep inside her. It couldn’t be him. How could it be?

  It took her a few seconds to know that it was him. He hadn’t died. He was real. As real as her brother, Will, who entered behind him.

  Brenna had no time to process any of it, to experience the joy it deserved. What happened next happened so swiftly, so violently there was a surreal quality to it.

  Lew in his shock must have lost control of the forklift. As he yelled wildly, the machine spun rapidly in the direction of the lab counters. Brenna could only guess that, in his effort to correct his mistake, he somehow activated a wrong lever.

  The carriage dropped, kicking off the three drums it had supported. The impact of them striking the hard floor was so strong that while the first drum remained sealed, the other two popped their lids. No longer contained, their chemical contents gushed out onto the floor.

  One of those rolling drums smacked into the bottom corner of a lab counter. The same counter on which the forgotten Bunsen burner still sprouted its intensely hot, blue flame. The collision forced a geyser out of the open drum, the fluids raining down on the counter, leaking over the sides to join the widening lake on the floor.

  It needed only the merest trickle of the inflammable chemical coming in contact with the Bunsen burner to ignite the fluid. The resulting fire licked a trail across the counter and down the side. When it reached the spreading liquid on the floor, and it did so with an unbelievable swiftness, it resulted in a situation so volatile it was like an explosion.

  That’s what it seemed like to Brenna who, helpless in the chair, could only watch with terror what followed. The six men in the laboratory were galvanized into immediate action.

  Lew left the forklift behind in his race to the far side of the laboratory to assist Marcus and Dr. Milosz, who were already taking down fire extinguishers from the wall there.

  Casey and Will rushed toward Brenna, Casey shouting to her brother, “Will, get Brenna unstrapped from that chair and the hell out of here! Looks like I’ve got another job that’s gonna occupy me!”

  She knew he meant Karl, who, like a dumb, stubborn ox, refused to disobey his order to guard her. Even in this crisis, he was determined to oppose any effort to free her.

  A frantic Brenna didn’t know where to look. At Casey and Karl locked in combat, at Will striving to unfasten her bindings or at the inferno raging out of control. An inferno aided by the first barrel which, unable to resist the heat, erupted its contents. The chemical that had been Marcus Bradley’s ally was now his enemy.

  The extinguishers were of little use against a chemical blaze that trapped Marcus, Milosz and Lew behind a wall of encircling fire.

  Will had her out of the chair and standing, his hand gripping hers. “Come on, Brenna, we need to go.”

  “Not without Casey.”

  “Trust him. He won’t lose this fight. Not unless he has to worry about you.”

  She was torn in two directions, but in the end rightness prevailed. Dragging her hand out of Will’s grasp, she headed in the direction of the double door through which she had entered the hall.

  “Not that way!” her brother pleaded behind her. “The opening in the back wall!”

  “There’s a boy locked in a bedroom upstairs. I won’t leave him there to burn.”

  It was with a desperate prayer for Casey, and a last glimpse of him still struggling with Karl, that Brenna left the laboratory. Will stayed protectively behind as she ran through the corridors that brought her to the back staircase. She took both the flight and the broad hall with as much speed as possible.

  She was out of breath when she arrived at the locked door. Her hand shook as she endeavored to turn the key.

  “Here, let me,” Will insisted, unlocking the door for her and flinging it back.

  The sight of a very frightened young man inside was all Brenna needed to realize her choice of whether to stay with Casey or come up here was the correct one.

  “You have to go, Joseph. The house is on fire.”

  She didn’t know whether he understood her words or not. There was no questioning his action, however. He fled past her and Will, headed for the main staircase.

  “Don’t even think about trying to go back to the laboratory,” Will s
aid. “I can already smell the smoke up here.”

  Recognizing the wisdom in that observation, Brenna led the way to the front staircase, descended them with her heart heavy and her mind on Casey and reluctantly walked through the main doorway that Joseph had left open in his flight.

  The last glimpse she had of the young man was of his slight figure running down the drive in the direction of the gates. She had the feeling Joseph would no longer want anything to do with White Rose Plantation.

  Brenna was hardly aware of Will propelling her away from the house. “I deserted him,” she said when, putting a safe distance between themselves and the mansion, they sank down on what was left of a once-proud lawn.

  “Stop punishing yourself. We both did what Casey wanted us to do.”

  She clutched her brother’s arm. “What if he doesn’t make it out of there? Will, I couldn’t bear to be cheated of him a second time. First on Maroa, and now this. Life just can’t be that cruel!”

  “You weren’t cheated of him on Maroa. He didn’t die. And you won’t be cheated of him here.”

  “Then where is he?”

  “Give him time. He’ll come.”

  Brenna wished she could be as calmly convinced of that as her brother. Silent now, they sat there in the grass and gazed up at the great house where tongues of leaping flames, using the ancient, dry timbers as their fuel, had already eaten through the roof.

  Brenna covered her mouth with her hand to prevent herself from sobbing aloud as she watched smoke curling from the walls of the building. The windows that weren’t shuttered glowed orange with the blaze that raged through the rooms inside. No one could survive that.

  “Look,” Will said, pointing to the side of the mansion. A tall figure had come around from the back and, like a phantom, was approaching them through the veils of drifting smoke.

  But Brenna knew that gray form emerging from the mist was no phantom. Even before Casey, having sighted them, arrived where they were waiting, she was on her feet and flinging her arms around him so fiercely she almost knocked him off his feet.