by S. E. Babin
I blinked. “Not quite.”
Aaron grinned. “I quite like Cass’ approach. Straightforward, no shenanigans.”
“How about we label that as a last resort?”
“Fine,” Cass said, “but I think it’s a quick way to get what we want.”
“Everyone dying is a more straightforward path, but I think negotiation or stealth is going to win the day.” I had to laugh. Cass looked completely serious. See an enemy, take them out using whatever force necessary, then go home and have a nice dinner. Win. Win.
I’d like to get my father and friends out first, though.
I told them we’d give my mother half an hour to contact us. After that, we would go in.
Twenty minutes later, our comms went off. “Come in through the front. Weapons holstered.” Her voice paused. “They’ve been commanded to shoot on site at even a hint of threat. Keep your hands down at your sides.”
“You seem surprised by this.”
Her sigh came over the comm. My mother sounded exhausted. “I guess a lot changes in twenty-five plus years, doesn’t it?”
“We’re coming in, Mom.”
“Remember what I said.”
We walked in side by side, hands down, and innocent expressions on all our faces. Several of the suits, males and females, greeted us and we were quietly and efficiently frisked and relieved of all our weapons.
“We’re getting those back, right?” I asked.
Dead silence. One of the males, a tall gentleman with a strong, jutting jaw line, took me not so gently by the elbow and led me to the elevators. “My, sir, what a strong grip you have,” I said to absolutely no response. I sighed. That was hilarious. Were these guys deaf?
Aaron was escorted by a tall redheaded woman who resembled Lila so much, it chilled my blood. From the look of distaste curling his lip, Aaron agreed with me. Cass was hauled along by a shorter man who, from the looks of it, handled her a little more gently than our friendly thugs did.
We were shoved unceremoniously into the elevator. One of them pulled out a key, opened the numbered floor box, and pressed a small blue button at the bottom. The elevator groaned and we plummeted to the earth.
I let out an unladylike screech as the elevator flew downwards. Just when I thought we were going to crash and our body parts flung around like the wash cycle, we stopped abruptly. I swallowed down my gorge. “Maybe a little warning next time?” I gasped.
Nothing.
The doors slid open and we were escorted to the end of the hallway. Two glass doors greeted us. One of the men placed his eye into a scanner located to the left of the door. With a whir, the scan started and the door clicked open.
Masters had been right about the biometrics.
There was a large round table in the middle of the room. My mother was seated opposite Irene and there was a chill in the air that had nothing to do with the temperature. There was no sign of my father, Watson, or Masters.
At our entrance, Irene glanced up and a wide smile split her face. “Ah! Welcome to Waterstone.” Her gaze flicked over me and shock lit her expression as she realized I was quite alive, thank you very much.
I grinned. “I’m so glad to be back, Ms. Adler.”
Her composed mask slipped for only a moment, but allowed me a second to view the fear lurking in the back of her crystal blue eyes. That was nice to know. Perhaps she recognized me as a fellow immortal now.
“Your mother has an interesting proposition for me. I’m so happy we get to go back into business together once again.” Her lips curved into an amused smile. “It appears our first bargain worked out well for the both of you.”
Not so much, but I was going to allow my mother to handle this.
“Please, forgive my rudeness. Have a seat.”
I pulled the chair out right next to my mother. Aaron sat beside me and Cass right next to him. Whatever we were, we were united.
“Touching,” she said dryly.
“Now, let us get back to business, shall we?” Irene smiled politely and allowed her cool business mask to fall back over her face. “Your mother has offered me a unique opportunity and one I cannot pass over without much regret. This tells me two things. One of the people I’m holding is very, very important to her.” She smiled at my mother and not a single crow’s foot could be found on her ivory face. “Or,” she tapped one blood red nail on the table, “one of those people must be the creator of the product I want.” She leaned forward, her white button-down straining against her ample breasts. “So, which is it, I wonder? Is your mother so terribly loyal to the people here or is she merely trying to keep me from the better prize?”
She studied us one by one. Her gaze lingered on Aaron and a wide smile split her face. “Ah. Don’t you look familiar. I believe I had the pleasure of dealing with your sister.” She made a clucking noise. “Really, you need a better ambassador if you want a better deal in the future.”
I felt Aaron tense beside me. Underneath the table, I put my hand on his knee. It wouldn’t do any good to start a fight we could lose. There were three thugs plus Irene in here. Four against four. But…we were weaponless. We had no choice but to play along.
“But, in the end, she did walk away with the better part of the deal. I’m sure you know that, though, don’t you?” She stood and sidled with reptilian grace over to his chair. She stood behind him and rested her hands on his shoulders. “She sold me a defective product.” Irene leaned down and whispered in his ear loud enough where I could hear her. “And when I find her, I will force feed her that serum and watch as her body tears itself apart.” She stood and patted him on the back. “I’m sure there’s a time period she’s always wanted to visit. Perhaps it may be only her spleen that gets to go.” She chuckled. “Wouldn’t that be fun?” She walked to a window and stared out. “Of course, you can live without a spleen, but we have all kinds of new forms of pneumonia and viruses in the lab that look really promising.” She turned and winked at Aaron. “Wouldn’t that be fun to watch her try to beat one of those while missing the part vital to the immune system?” She sighed. “I’d like to watch it.”
“Irene,” my mother barked, “we are not here about him.”
“Aren’t we?” Irene asked. “I would never have put it together if you hadn’t brought him here. But he looks too much like the girl for me to overlook it. I bought the serum from Gwynne because of its similarities.” She clapped her hands together like a little girl. “But it isn’t just similar, is it? It’s the same. Or modified somehow. And that’s why you came here. I hold the person who could fix it.”
My mother’s face went carefully blank as I watched her mind working furiously to formulate a response. “I am not here about his serum. I’m here to offer you the formulation to the one you want. His is not the same. You’ve seen it yourself.”
“Yes. Quite unfortunate. Those first test subjects so eager to see themselves healed only to find themselves ripped apart. Sad stuff.”
But she didn’t sound sad. “You see, Maggie. There are too many coincidences here and I am not a woman who believes in coincidences.”
My father had said the same exact thing to me only a short time ago. I braced myself for what was to come, because so far, this wasn’t working in our favor.
“You are intelligent enough to realize the flaws in the serum you purchased cannot be corrected.”
“Oh, Maggie,” Irene said, “you still don’t realize my capabilities, do you? I have my best working on it right now. We will continue to test it until it works. And when it does work…well, we’ll just have to see, won’t we?”
I was beginning to think maybe Cass’ way had been the right way. We needed to burn this fucker to the ground and salvage what we could. Irene hadn’t made any move to harm us, but she’d shown us no proof that our people were still alive.
“Anyhow, I’ve been talking entirely too much. I’ve decided you have not provided a satisfactory deal today. I’ll keep your people until I figure out whi
ch one has what I need.” She gave us a cruel smile and raised a hand up. “Escort them out.”
I was hauled up from the table with little fanfare.
“Maggie stays,” Irene said.
“Noooooo,” I roared and reared up against the man holding my arm.
My mother shut her eyes.
I flung my head back and heard the satisfying crunch of a broken nose. He dropped to his knees.
“You’re on, Cass!”
I was rewarded with a wicked grin and the sound of a high-pitched male screaming. Cass plucked out the wicked stiletto she’d cleverly concealed in her hair from the man’s thigh and turned it on the woman, but Aaron already held her by the hair.
My mother rose and stood beside me. “We can do this the easy way or we can do this the hard way.”
Irene, strangely enough, didn’t look frightened. Instead, she looked amused. “Bravo! I should have seen that coming.”
She disappeared from our sight.
I screamed out a curse. “Where did she go?”
My mother grabbed my arm. “To your father. Let’s go.”
Dozens of suits filled the hallways as we left the room, and seconds later, it became a blood bath. I took a hard punch to the kidney and my mother lost a hunk of hair, but we made it through them. I had no idea where to go.
“Where were you when you escaped?”
I shrugged. “A regular office. I think maybe on the third floor?”
My mother shook her head. “No. She wouldn’t keep someone like him in a place where he could easily be discovered.” She stepped over and pulled a female up by the hair. With a flick of her wrist, a knife appeared. I needed to ask what kind of material those were made of because we’d passed through metal detectors on our way in and they must not have reacted at all when my mother had gone through.
With her knife rested at the jugular of Irene’s thug, she asked politely where my father was and was promptly rewarded with a word that would have ended up with my mouth washed out with soap. “I’ll ask you one more time. Nicely. If you don’t answer me, I will slit your throat from ear to ear and let you bleed out over my shoes. Do you understand me?”
Whoa.
A pause and a quick nod showed the man knew she was serious. He licked his lips. “There’s another floor below this one.”
“How do we get to it?” I asked.
He motioned to his belt. “There’s a keycard. Press it to the elevator. A blue light will come on and take you there.”
“Kind of you to be so cooperative,” my mother said. She let him drop to the floor, and with speed I didn’t know she possessed, lifted and twisted his leg. A sickening crack blared through the room and the only sound left was screaming.
I swallowed hard and bent down to take the poor bastard’s key card. “At least she didn’t kill you,” I whispered.
Yet. Instead she’d left him to suffer. The poor bastard would take awhile to die.
The shocked faces of my companions would probably haunt me the rest of my days. My mother was a genuine ninja. And I now believed my father when he told me she’d been an assassin. I always thought he’d been kidding.
Not anymore.
We stripped everyone of their weapons, hurried over to the elevator, pressed the key card in, and waited for it to take us down another floor. This ride was more subdued than the other had been, but I still had to take a couple deep breaths before I stepped out. The doors slid open to an empty hall.
I lifted the gun up to eye level as I ventured out.
I moved forward slightly and heard a male shout. I tucked the weapon into my waistband, hoping my friends would have my back, and took off running.
The shout was my father’s.
I took a corner too fast and slid against the wall with an oof.
Another shout led me to a large open room. I sagged in relief when I saw Watson, Masters and my father all alive. And angry as hell.
Irene stood over my father with a wicked looking needle. And I knew what she had in it. We’d used it with wild abandon earlier.
“Truth serum,” my mother muttered.
Irene’s other hand held a massive gun. I didn’t recognize the type, but from the swirling in one of the chambers, I had a sick feeling I knew what it contained. “Aaron.”
He cursed. “Do not get hit with what’s in that gun.”
Cass groaned. “I need to ask more questions before I go running off with you people again.”
I grinned at her. “But this is so much fun.”
Her gray eyes sparkled. “I still think we should have just killed everyone.”
“Me, too.” I stepped forward with my hands out. “We just want our people. Hand them over and we all walk away.”
Irene rolled her eyes at me and scoffed. “Let you leave with Sherlock Holmes? I think not.”
My father’s head lolled as he realized I was there. “Ah, Penelope, love. So nice to see you.” A frown wrinkled his forehead. “She has a gun. Why does she have a gun?”
“It’s not really a gun, Dad. It’s the serum.”
One eyebrow rose. “Which one?”
“The bad one.”
“Ah. Miss Adler, pray do not use that. Deadly consequences if you do. Positively dreadful.”
Irene grinned. “So I’ve seen.” She ruffled her hands through my father’s hair and I could feel my mother quivering with rage. “How would you like to take a trip with me, Mr. Holmes?”
My father sighed. “I’d rather not. You haven’t been the most hospitable hostess, Ms. Adler.”
True amusement colored her face. “And neither have you been good guests.”
“I suppose that’s true. What do you want from me?”
“I think we both know what I want.”
A heartfelt groan issued from his throat, but he surprised me with his next words. “I do believe you already have it, do you not?”
I froze. How could he have known that? My mother went pale.
Irene’s face flashed with surprise. “Not quite.”
“Semantics, Ms. Adler. You are as immortal as I am. Pray tell me how that happened and perhaps I will consider cooperating with you.”
Irene chuckled. “I’m sure you don’t have much choice.”
He clucked his tongue. “I always have a choice. And even though you’ve managed to drug me, doesn’t mean I am entirely without my faculties.” He reached up, quick as a snake, and grasped the wrist holding the serum gun. “When you’re in the business I am, you make sure you’ve developed a healthy tolerance to drugs like sodium pentothal. It’s just good business.”
With a quick snap, he broke her wrist and roared for us to run. I hurried over to help Watson and Masters up, avoiding the fact that Masters was bleeding profusely from a head wound. Aaron slid Masters’ arm over his shoulders and rushed out of the room. I passed Watson off to my mother and screamed for her to leave me behind.
Even with a broken wrist, I was impressed at Irene’s speed and agility. With a quick punch to his solar plexus, my father let go of her arm. I watched as she got in two quick punches and a kick the likes I’d never seen performed before. I drew my weapon and whispered a prayer that I would get a clean shot.
“Penelope!” my father screamed.
And in that moment of distraction where he was more concerned about my safety than his own, Irene struck. A blow to his nose landed with a sickening crunch, obscuring his vision with copious amounts of blood. Before I could fire a round, Irene grasped my father by the back of his neck and disappeared.
I lowered my weapon. How in the hell had she done that? I didn’t see a DAR anywhere on her person, or on any of her cronies.
I looked around the room thoroughly, searching for trap doors or any other mechanism that could hide them in plain sight. I stood stock still and listened for the sound of breathing.
Nothing.
Irene had managed to take my father right out from underneath my nose.
I tucked my gun into the b
ack of my waistband, snatched up the serum, and ran to catch up with my mother.
She waved me frantically toward the elevator and I caught it just as the doors were sliding shut. She leaned over. “We need to get back to the compound as soon as possible. Masters is not…well.”
His face was grey and his breathing was labored. I nodded. We took the elevator up several floors until we were sure we could use our DARs. My mother strapped the extra bracelets to Watson and Masters’ arms.
Moments later, we were back in the compound. Aaron slung Masters over his back and began running to the infirmary. I cringed, but didn’t tell him to be careful. I think we were past the point of damaging him anymore than he already was.
Screaming at people to get out of the way, I ran ahead and flung open the doors. Aaron bolted in, found the first bed, and gently laid the man down. Nurses rushed over and not so gently pushed us out of the way. They were quick, methodical, and efficient. Apparently seeing several bloody people running in a panic wasn’t something that surprised them.
One of the nurses, a large boned pretty brunette, pulled me aside. “Tell me what happened.”
I blinked. I didn’t know what happened and even if I did, how in the hell could I explain that in only a few sentences? At my blank stare, she made a noise of disgust. “Who knows what happened?” she asked in a loud voice.
Watson stepped up, holding his side. Pain etched the fine lines in his face. He spoke quick and softly. “Me. I happened.”
I started. “Wha—?”
He glanced over at the prone, pale man. “He did something to Penelope.”
I swallowed hard. All Watson had seen was Masters sticking me with something and me passing out.
He ran a shaky hand over his chin. His eyes were haunted.
How could he have done anything? He was tied up.
“I lost my mind. The damage done to him was by me.”
“Oh, Watson,” I breathed. Shock, disgust, and empathy all welled within me. “How?”
His throat worked. “My feet were not tied. There was a wall behind him. I—”
The nurse said nothing. No kind words. No words of admonishment. She merely nodded once and took him by the arm. She led him over to a row of chairs and encouraged him to sit. I followed and took my place beside him. The look she sent me wasn’t unkind, but it was guarded and a little disapproving.