Damned If You Don't

by Linda J. Parisi

  “You use the word so well. Well, Rebecca begged me,” Elaine blurted in a rush. “She knew what we were working on. She wanted so badly to lose weight. She’d been obese all her life. I was just giving her what she wanted.”

  Tears filled Morgan’s eyes. Pain ripped at her insides as she thought of that sweet, tenderhearted young woman whose only mistake in life was to trust.

  What little respect remained for her mentor died, as had her friend. “You’ll both burn in hell for this.”

  She watched Elaine shrug and begin to button her blouse. Then she walked over to where her suit jacket and pocketbook sat on a counter. Elaine made sure to catch and hold her gaze. A cold, calculating look entered her eyes. “I’m sorry to disappoint you all, but I have no such plans. No more fun and games.”

  “I don’t think so,” Huan told Elaine. “Enough is enough.”

  “What? After all this time you’re finally growing a spine?” Elaine shot back at him.

  Morgan stared at her, not quite understanding. But obviously Huan did. A frown creased his forehead. “You were always such a fool, darling,” Elaine began, as she shrugged into her suit jacket. “So oblivious. But I tolerated you because it’s so hard to find true submissives.”

  She turned and stared straight at Morgan. “You thought I was screwing Anton, didn’t you?”

  Morgan nodded. “Well I was,” Elaine answered. “But he was starting to get tired of our little games.”

  A horrible thought came to her. “You murdered him too?”

  Elaine smiled. “Now that’s where he surprised me. He split before I could. So he’s next on the list.”

  She watched Elaine rummaged around in her bag and then turn to Huan. “Get on your hands and knees, Lee.”

  “I think not, Elaine.”

  Surprise crossed her face. “Get on your hands and knees, Lee. Now!”

  Morgan watched them stare, each one fighting for the upper hand. “I’m not going to jail, and I will not crawl,” Huan stated. “Not now. Not ever.”? To her surprise, Elaine merely waved her hand in dismissal. “You were such a wonderful wuss, darling. You still want me, though, don’t you? You see, I’m never wrong about that. Come here and tell me you don’t want what I can give you.”

  He barked out a shaky laugh and caught her gaze with his. He seemed bewildered as if the day had turned surreal. Morgan had to warn him it was worse than that.

  “Don’t give in to her, Huan. If you do, she’ll kill you. Don’t think she won’t. She’s crazy.”

  He blanched as reality reached him. “No you won’t. Come on, Elaine,” he cajoled, trying to buy time. “Let’s get out of here, and I’ll take care of that insatiable appetite of yours.”

  Elaine smiled at him, and Morgan felt a chill run up her spine. “I’m sorry, darling. I really would love to, you know. But you’ve become a liability now. So it’s time to clean up the loose ends and get out while there’s still time to leave.”

  Huan tilted his head as if he didn’t quite believe what he was hearing. Elaine turned and pulled a gun out of her pocketbook. She caressed the muzzle, lust flaring in her gaze, and then she shook her head.

  “Do you know whose gun this is, Morgan?” Morgan shook her head. “Do you know Sam Ormond?”

  Morgan nodded in shock as Elaine pulled on a pair of latex gloves and wiped her fingerprints off the gun. Her gaze flicked to Huan, who simply stood there, frozen, unable to believe this betrayal.

  “You know, screwing Sam wasn’t that much fun,” Elaine continued. “Really. He was boringly straight. But I had no trouble stealing the key to his office one night. This is his gun.”

  Morgan’s throat locked up. She tried to swallow as disbelief hollowed her belly as the barrel pointed straight at her. “Put it down, Elaine. Now. You don’t want to hurt anyone,” she cried, having no idea how to deal with insanity.

  “She’s right, Elaine,” Huan insisted, his tone terrified. “You really don’t want to kill anyone.”

  For a moment, her mentor seemed not to be able to accept the reality of the situation. Then a stern frown creased his forehead. He swallowed hard, and his shoulders locked. “Elaine,” he repeated. “You need to put the gun down. Now. Before someone else gets hurt.”

  Elaine looked up and a light of genuine regret flashed across her features as she whirled to Huan. “Sorry, Lee. It was fun while it lasted, but now the fun’s over.”

  Morgan tamped down on her horror as she realized she had no idea which way the woman would turn. Heads toward her, tails toward Huan. “Elaine,” she yelled, trying to take the woman’s attention away from her mentor. As she did, she realized she had to figure out how to stop Elaine and not get killed in the process.

  All of a sudden, the woman drew in a deep breath and pointed the gun, not at her, but at Huan.

  “No, don’t!” she screamed as Elaine very calmly shot Huan once, right in the chest. He crumpled to his knees and fell to the floor. Morgan wanted to scream and keep on screaming, but no sound would come out. She ran to Huan and slipped to his side. He stared up at her in shock. Falling to her knees, she watched his gaze grow sad.

  “Huan. Oh, Huan,” she said, her tone laced with pain, tears filling her eyes, as she cradled his head in her lap.

  He looked up at her, begging forgiveness. “Please.”

  “Of course, Huan. You know that.” Tears dripped down her cheeks. “No one should die because of a mistake.”

  Morgan watched the life drain out of his gaze, then lifted her own to Elaine. “You bitch!”

  Elaine simply stared at her as if the whole situation had become boring, as if she were above reality, as if nothing could touch her—that the mundane couldn’t hurt her. She gestured toward Morgan with deceptive nonchalance.

  “I’m an expert at everything I do, including marksmanship. So be warned, your death will be harder to explain, but I’ll explain it.”

  Morgan stared down at the trail of blood flowing out of her friend, knowing there was no way to save him. Her soul cried out in agony at the waste, and then ice filled her veins. There was no way this bitch was going to get away with murder. Too many people had died, people she knew, people she’d loved.

  Morgan let go of Dr. Lee with reverence and closed his eyelids. When she lifted her gaze, she hid the anger roiling inside, and refused to acknowledge the tiny sliver of fear. Instead, she decided to press the woman’s buttons, keep her talking, and find a way out of the mess she was in.

  “You’re not that good, Elaine. I know. I’ve seen your work.”

  Elaine tilted her head as if considering her words. “You think so? Did it occur to you that this is very easily explained?”

  She frowned. “How?”

  “You never realized that in order to be a great scientist, you also need to be a student of human nature. What are the most common, most visceral emotions that rack the human psyche?”

  “I don’t know. You tell me.”

  She inclined her head, as would a teacher with a beginning student. “Greed and jealousy, my dear. In this case, both work just fine.”

  Greed and jealousy? “How the hell are you going to work those angles?”

  Elaine’s brow furrowed in thought. Then she grinned. “We were having an affair.”

  Ewww.

  “You’re gay and I’m bi—” Elaine told her, licking her lips as if the thought were delectable. “I broke it off to be with Huan. You found out and came searching for me. You found us together, and you shot him in a jealous rage.”

  Morgan snorted in disbelief. “No one is going to believe that.”

  “Yes they will. They’ll believe it because you were also jealous that BioClin gave the project to Anton instead of you. And you found out I was screwing him too. Double motive.”

  Morgan couldn’t fathom how Elaine could justify murder so blithely. While she struggled with that, Elaine paused, a slow smile growing on her face. “Yes. Yes. This will work out so well. You decided to kill two birds with one sto
ne, no pun intended. You removed your rival, and you hurt me the only way you could.”

  Really? She smirked at Elaine, certain the woman was totally out of her mind. “You’re a fool, Elaine. That might have worked except for this other company you started.”

  She watched Elaine’s eyes widen in confusion. “Company? What company?”

  “You know. The one that gave Ralph Bernecky a job.”

  Morgan watched the woman’s face fall like a balloon with a slow leak. “First off, I didn’t give Ralph Bernecky a job. I wouldn’t. He’s a fat little pig without an ounce of brains.”

  After his treatment of her, Morgan was inclined to agree.

  “Second, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  Elaine doesn’t know? What the hell? Confused, Morgan realized she needed to keep Elaine talking. “Maybe Anton did. And I’m going to bet he made sure you weren’t going to be a part of it. I’m going to bet that he was going to keep on trying to create a legitimate drug. It’s possible he even arranged that this company would be a subsidiary of BioClin. Unbeknownst to them, of course.”

  Elaine frowned and shook her head. “Impossible. I would have known.”

  Now that’s a woman talking from a secure position. Which made her wonder. “I don’t know, Elaine,” she taunted. “I think you might have to ask Anton that question before you decide to kill him, don’t you?”

  “No. I know everything that goes on in BioClin. There isn’t an executive I haven’t slept with. They all tell me what I need to know. Or their wives find out little tidbits of information.”

  Morgan laughed. “How would you know they weren’t lying to you? Just to get you off their backs?”

  Elaine smirked at her. “Domination, my dear. Domination. Fear works wonders.”

  With a sinking heart, she had to admit Elaine had a point.

  “Now, as much as I would like to hang around and chat, I have a plane to catch. And a little worm to find. But before I do, I have one more experiment to perform.”

  “Over my dead body,” Morgan cried.

  Morgan charged Elaine at full speed, pushing her with all her might. Once the woman was off balance, Morgan planted her feet to stop her momentum and turned to get the hell out of the room. She was just about out of the doorway when pain exploded in her skull.

  “That can be arranged, my dear,” she heard as the world went black.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Morgan came awake by degrees. She moved her head, and pain shot through her neck, making her want to sink back down into the darkness. But something kept niggling at her, warning her, forcing her to open her eyes. She fought the warning for a few moments, then focused on the pain. When she’d willed it into a manageable ball and tucked it down deep inside, she opened her eyes.

  She was in a laboratory. Her laboratory. In BioClin. Cabinets lined the walls filled with shadows and shapes that were beakers and graduated cylinders.

  She tried to move and found herself tied to a lab chair. The chair was on wheels, and she tried pushing on her feet to get it to roll, but she only moved a couple of inches in either direction.

  When she started struggling, Morgan bit her lip to keep from crying out. Pain scorched through her right shoulder. She had a feeling someone hadn’t been too kind about how she’d been transported here.

  Fear raced through her heart and closed her throat. She gasped, fighting for breath.

  Think. Deduct. Reason.

  Easier said than done, she acknowledged with a wry smile. Especially when her heart hurt almost as badly as her shoulder. Dr. Lee. Her mentor. A father figure for more years than she cared to count. She remembered family meals when Liu would insist she eat with them, knowing Morgan hadn’t had a decent meal in months because she was working so hard.

  A sad truth hit her like a ton of bricks. You never really knew a person. And that made her think of Jack. Dr. Lee, a person she’d thought was good inside, honorable, and true had turned out to be an imposter. The imposter, Jack, had turned out to be good inside, honorable and true.

  By now, she prayed, Jack had to be on her trail. He’d told her he was the best of the best.

  She willed her heartbeat to slow down and took several deep breaths to help the pounding in her head recede. What she wouldn’t have given at that moment for a couple of aspirin and a glass of water.

  Carefully, so as not to aggravate her shoulder too much, Morgan twisted her wrists and tested her bond with her fingers. Damn. Plastic strapping material that felt like a large tie-wrap. She looked down at her legs. They were tied together with the same type of tie-wrap.

  All right, getting out of these bonds wasn’t going to be easy.

  But that’s where she had a feeling her adversary had underestimated Morgan Mackenzie. Elaine thought of her as devoid of all common sense and deductive reasoning unless she was working in a lab. Well, hell, she was in a lab, wasn’t she?

  And she was surrounded by glass. A piece of broken glass would cut a plastic tie-wrap.

  Morgan wiggled her arms and ignored the pain. Her hands had been bound underneath the back cushion of the chair. So all she had to do was wiggle her arms around the back cushion, and she’d be free to get up.

  All?

  Her brain screamed with pain as she tried to separate her elbows enough to go around the edges of the cushion. Sweat beaded her brow, and she bit her lip to keep from crying out. Damn bitch had probably dislocated her shoulder.

  Breathe!

  Morgan sat back and waited for the pain to subside. There was no way to know how badly her shoulder had popped, but she did know one thing—she could make this work to her advantage. If she could dislocate it completely, she could get it around the back of the chair.

  Taking a deep breath, Morgan put her right arm behind the cushion and pulled. A loud pop reverberated through her ears as pain roared through her brain. She closed her eyes and pictured Jack lying on a hotel bed, concentrating on that picture so she wouldn’t pass out.

  Once she was able to function again, Morgan leaned back and to her right as her arm, now hanging limply, slipped around the back of the chair. Then she leaned to her left to unwrap her other arm, and she was free.

  The chair had been secured to a pole that carried water to an emergency shower. Every lab had one, which meant she was also by a sink. The easiest place to find glassware would be inside the sink. Anton wasn’t the type to do his own dishes.

  She planted her feet and lifted up to stand. When she looked inside, she found a 100mL beaker filled with water.

  Now all she had to do was figure out how to break the beaker without making a ton of noise, grab a piece of the glass without cutting herself, and figure out how to start sawing at the plastic without bleeding to death.

  Then she bent over and looked at a dark shape next to the sink. Eureka! A box cutter.

  Morgan felt tears well in her eyes. She blinked them away, sent up a silent thank-you, turned, and lifted up on her toes to grab the box cutter with her good hand.

  Oh crap!

  Footsteps. Someone was coming.

  Morgan had only one choice now and that was to act as if she hadn’t broken free. At least she had something she could use as a weapon if she had to. She certainly wasn’t going down without a fight.

  A bank of bright lights came on and she blinked several times to get her eyes to adjust. Elaine strode into the room, wearing a rather self-satisfied grin.

  “Ah, Morgan. You’re awake. How wonderful. And how lovely to see you again.”

  The comment had been made as if they were merely professional acquaintances greeting each other after a long absence, taking Morgan’s breath away. Indeed, after experiencing Elaine’s psychosis firsthand, she wondered if she would ever trust anyone or anything ever again.

  Apparently unaffected by anything that had happened, Elaine walked over to the lab counter and began inspecting the items on it. Elaine wasn’t playing with a full deck, making Morgan realize rather starkl
y she’d better be careful.

  Morgan bit down on the first comment that sprang into her mind and with a snort she replied, “The pleasure isn’t mine.”

  “Too bad. Too bad. You see, I thought you might want to discuss your findings.”

  Is she serious? She wants to discuss experiments now?

  Yes. And that meant her earlier appraisal was right on target. Elaine was seriously disturbed. Better to play along, at this point, than to antagonize. Her fingers tightened on the box cutter and reassurance flooded her being. “What findings?”

  “I’ve been able to speed up the process, you know. Rebecca took only two weeks to die.”

  She watched Elaine shrug without a touch of remorse.

  She was a human being! With hopes and dreams and… Morgan choked back her anger. “Why Rebecca? You knew the girl. Hell, she was just as much your admin as mine. Why didn’t you tell Rebecca no? She was no threat to you or to anyone else.”

  “I told you,” Elaine said, her tone exasperated. “She begged me to help her. In addition, I got an offer I couldn’t refuse.”

  An offer? Morgan’s stomach hollowed as she tried to figure out what that meant. “You were having an affair with Rebecca?”

  “She was so lonely, poor dear. She confessed it all to me, one evening at dinner. Just poured her heart out. So lonely. So desperate for companionship. She hardly had any friends. Male or female.”

  “She was a sweet young woman who had a medical condition,” Morgan cried.

  Elaine’s gaze narrowed. Then she shrugged. “She gave great head.”

  God that hurt. Morgan wondered if there would ever be an end to this woman’s madness.

  “You know,” Morgan continued, ignoring Elaine’s comment. “If you’d waited, upper management at BioClin would have come to you. You know they would. They would’ve ditched Anton,” she added, trying to keep Elaine talking. The more she stalled the more chance she had to survive.

  “Yes. Well. Timing is everything in life, my dear. You of all people should know that.”

  “I do, and a beautiful young woman is dead.”

  Her gaze narrowed. “That was my point.”