Chameleon Assassin (Chameleon Assassin Series Book 1)

by BR Kingsolver

  “No one heard anything?” Wil asked.

  “No reports of gunshots,” the campus cop said. “The alarms never went off. We got a call about the guards about nine o’clock.

  That was around the time Wil and I were at Sheridan’s house.

  We wandered around, and I paid especial attention to the lab equipment. No one tried to stop me as I went from room to room. An open notebook lay on a counter. I put on latex gloves and paged through it. Someone old fashioned, who didn’t dictate their notes. I slipped it into my bag.

  The next room held more cops and forensics people. A woman with a blonde ponytail and wearing a white lab coat lay on the floor in a pool of blood.

  “Who is that?” I asked.

  “Lab assistant. Grad student named Gretchen Montoya.”

  “Was she the only one inside?”

  The cop shook his head. Stoney-faced, he pointed to the room beyond. I went through and found two more bodies, both young. A pretty brunette and a skinny guy who still hadn’t outgrown his acne, both wearing white lab coats. She had been shot in the head, and he’d taken at least two bullets in the torso.

  I bent over her. The entrance hole was the same size as that in Sheridan’s housekeeper.

  “No one heard anything?” I asked a cop standing there.

  “No reports.” He pointed at a wall. “One stray shot there.”

  “So, at least seven shots—”

  “Ten,” the cop said. “The two guys outside. One took two bullets, the other one three.”

  I wandered back the way I’d come and found Wil in Sheridan’s office. I expected the place to look like Sheridan’s house, but it was remarkably clean—and empty.

  “Looks as though they took everything,” Wil said.

  I handed him the notebook. “Usually lab notes and all experimental data are dictated. Have you found the system?”

  He nodded. “Wiped clean and all the backups are gone.”

  “Looks like a professional hit. At least ten shots and no one heard them.” His eyes darted toward my bag. He’d noticed the silencer on my pistol when I’d drawn it earlier.

  “This is a dead end,” he said.

  “Who’s Mateo Hudiburg?”

  “Huh? Oh, head of CanPharm security. He lives in Ottawa.”

  “Good guy? Competent?”

  “Yeah, Mateo’s a good guy.”

  “This looks more and more like an inside job,” I said. “Someone panicked. With CanPharm’s help, we can isolate who knew about Sheridan’s research, who was involved. Other scientists would have peer-reviewed his work, someone supervised this facility, someone oversaw his budget. Let’s go through all those people, and we’ll find out who saw gold in a failed drug prospect.”

  “Libby?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Are you any good with safes?”

  My head snapped around to look at him. I must have reacted a little too much because a slight grin appeared on Wil’s face. “Why?” I asked.

  “Everything in here is gone, the system’s wiped, and we can’t find any samples of any drugs Sheridan might have been working on. All we can find are identifiable chemicals, what I assume are raw materials.”

  Wil led me to a coat closet next to Sheridan’s office. Pushing some winter coats out of the way, he pointed.

  A very thin line in the corner didn’t go all the way up the wall. I knelt down and felt around. A tingle of electricity in one spot prompted me to disrupt it, and a small panel popped out of the wall. Behind the panel was the door of a safe with an electronic keypad.

  I glanced up at Wil.

  “Do you think you can open it?” he asked.

  “Not a problem,” I said, passing my hand over the keypad as I stood up and took a step backward.

  He opened his mouth, then glanced down. His jaw snapped shut. “How the hell did you do that?”

  I shrugged. “It wasn’t locked.”

  He pursed his lips and stared at me. I stared back, daring him to call me a liar. Shaking his head, he knelt down and pulled a liter jar of clear liquid and another jar of white powder out of the safe. I leaned over and picked up a plastic clamshell with a couple of storage chips.

  I peeked in my bag and decided it was time to do a little housekeeping. All the old tissues, napkins, dead cosmetics bottles, business cards of people I couldn’t remember, and a petrified half-eaten hamburger went into a trashcan.

  “This is proprietary, you know,” I said, taking the jars from him and putting them in my bag. “CanPharm won’t let us take them.”

  Wil pushed the safe door closed, and we heard it latch. He gave me a dirty look, but closed the panel over it without saying anything.

  “We wouldn’t dream of taking any of their property,” he said, “assuming we found anything interesting.”

  I nodded. “Yeah, a whole lot of uninteresting around here.”

  Chapter 11

  The sun coming through the window woke me up. That meant it was close to noon. Wil had dropped me off sometime before dawn, and I’d barely been awake enough to take off my clothes. Mercifully, I hadn’t dreamed.

  You’d think that seven dead bodies wouldn’t bother an assassin, but none of those people did anything to deserve death. The three graduate students and the housekeeper were totally innocent. The security guards’ only crime was being slow.

  After breakfast, I took the two jars from my bag and put some of the contents of each into small bottles. I took a shower and got dressed, then pulled my motorcycle out of the garage.

  I rode over to Vincent Overton’s and parked my motorcycle in an alley a couple of blocks away. If he was surprised to see me, he hid it well.

  “Come in, Miss Nelson. How may I serve you today?”

  I pulled out the two bottles and handed them to him. “I’d like a chemical analysis of these. I’m assuming they are similar to the drug we discussed last time I was here.”

  He took the bottles and set the one with liquid aside. “What do we have here?”

  “I’m not sure, but I saw a drug being used as a date rape aphrodisiac in a mutant nightclub. I had it analyzed, and it turned out to be an analog of luvdaze.” I nodded at the two samples. “Those are the last things Dr. Sheridan was working on.”

  Vincent’s brow furrowed.

  “Sheridan was killed last night, and all his research notes were stolen.”

  “And this powder is from Dr. Sheridan, or from the club?”

  “Both of these samples came from a safe in his lab.” I pulled out my tablet and showed him the chemical structure for the drug I had purloined at the mutie bar. “This was the powder from the bar.”

  Vincent scanned the picture to his tablet. “Come back tomorrow. After ten in the evening.”

  I held out my credit card and he scanned it for a thousand credits.

  “That’s a down payment, Miss Nelson. I don’t know how extensive an analysis will be necessary.”

  I met Wil at a bar near the university. To my surprise, he suggested dinner at a very classy place.

  “I’m not dressed for Maison Rive Gauche,” I protested.

  “Then go get dressed. I’ll pick you up at six-thirty.”

  I have a thing for French food, so I wasn’t about to turn him down. I could have a thing for him, too. That was the first time he’d suggested anything that wasn’t entirely professional.

  As I got dressed, I realized that I’d agreed to him picking me up. It seemed natural, since he knew where I lived, but he would be the first man ever to come to my house for a date. I’d slept with Ron, but never given him my address.

  Since I didn’t have to drive, or take public transportation, I went all out. A teal knee-length silk cocktail dress that did an admirable job of displaying my cleavage, such as it was. Diamond choker and earrings. I even painted my nails, such as they were. Rock and mansion climbing didn’t lend themselves to long elegant nails.

  Wil’s reaction when I opened the door made all the effort worthwhile.
His eyes popped, and his expression went blank for an instant, but he recovered quickly.

  “Good evening. Could you please inform Miss Nelson that Mr. Wilberforce is here to see her?”

  I smiled and struck a pose.

  “My,” he said, “you do clean up nicely. One might say spectacularly.”

  A flush of heat hit my face. “You are a flatterer.”

  “And you are beautiful.”

  I knew he was just being polite, but a four-alarm fire exploded on my face and ran all the way down to places my outfit covered.

  “Be careful,” I told him as I walked out and closed the door. “The last man who convinced me he meant a bunch of flowery words like that got all he could handle.”

  “I shall keep that in mind,” he said with a grin as he opened the car door for me.

  Our table was off in a private corner, and the candle in the center of the table provided most of the light. Every eye in the restaurant followed us as the maître d’ showed us to our table. Wil wore an expensive dark suit cut to his figure. He was always handsome and dashing, but that night he was elegant and sophisticated as well.

  Wil ordered wine, and I noticed that his French, like mine, was Quebecois, the dialect spoken in Quebec.

  “You speak very well,” I said in French as we perused our menus.

  He replied in the same language. “I grew up in Montreal, and went to university in France.”

  Glad for a chance to practice, I stayed in French. “Then perhaps I should say that you speak English very well. I’ve never noticed an accent.”

  He laughed, a sound that made me feel warm inside.

  Wil was urbane, witty, and educated. His manners were impeccable. All the little things that made a man a gentleman came naturally to him. At times, I caught myself comparing him to Ron. Wil had all the polish that Ron lacked.

  I asked lots of questions, and he told me about his family and his life growing up. I had learned it didn’t take a lot of prodding for men to talk about themselves. In my case, the less I divulged about my family, the better.

  He walked me to my door after he took me home. I unlocked it and turned around, back pressed against the door. I wanted him to kiss me, and didn’t do a thing to play coy, smiling at him expectantly.

  His hand stroked my cheek, and his long fingers curled behind my neck. Leaning forward, he kissed me, long, deep, and sweet. I curled my arms around him and held his head. Kind of hard to curl your fingers in someone’s hair when they’re shaved bald. We kissed again, and again, our chests pressed together. Heat built between us, and I felt something insistently poking me.

  I broke the kiss and hugged him. We were both panting.

  “I thought you had the hots for my friend Nellie,” I said.

  He drew back and a shadow passed briefly over his dark, sparkling eyes. His hesitation told me all I needed to know. I put a finger over his lips as he opened his mouth to speak.

  “I’m not a clingy type of girl, and I’m not a paragon of monogamy myself,” I said. “But know this about Nellie and me. You get one choice. There’s no tasting menu, and no deciding you want the other one instead. Take me tonight, and she’ll never warm your bed. Take her, and we’ll be friends, but never lovers.”

  I smiled at him. “Figure out what you want, Wil. I’m not going anywhere.” I gave him a quick kiss, then slid out of his arms, turned, opened the door, and stepped inside. Then I spun around, leaned forward, and said, “I had a wonderful evening, you incredibly sexy, wonderful man. Thank you.”

  I shut the door very slowly.

  I woke in the morning from a dream that left me with an aching need. That wasn’t surprising. I’d gone to bed with that same need. A long hot shower followed by a blast of cold water helped. Vindictively, I hoped that Wil was aching just as bad. Probably not. I could picture him cuddled up with some cutie he had picked up on his way home. All the man had to do was crook his finger and sort out how many women he wanted to keep.

  It was Sunday, so Ron was doing funerals. I called Nellie. We met for breakfast and I told her about my date the night before.

  “He is a fine lookin man,” she said. “If he does come sniffin around, I’ll let you know.”

  I smiled as I reached out to squeeze her hand. “I know you will.”

  After breakfast, we went over to Mom’s and spent a couple of hours working with Glenda. She didn’t seem interested enough in learning to read. I left her and Nellie, and went down to the kitchen. When I came back, I handed Nellie a pastry and Glenda a piece of paper. The girl eyed Nellie’s pastry and the one I was eating.

  “Don’t I get one?”

  I pointed at the paper. “Dominik said that as soon as you can read the recipe, he’ll help you make your own. Until then, no pastries for Glenda.”

  Her eyes about bugged out of her head. “That’s not fair!”

  “Life’s not fair, kid. I thought you had that figured out by now.”

  Nellie held her cherry Danish out for Glenda to take a bite, which the girl did.

  “Ain’t that good?” Nellie asked. “Better learn to read quick.” She proceeded to eat the rest without offering any more.

  The lesson went a lot better after that. By noon, Glenda was sounding out all the words and had the measurements down.

  “So, you got all that?” I asked her. She nodded enthusiastically.

  “Okay, scoot. Go tell Dominik you want to make pastries this afternoon.”

  She hugged and kissed both of us, then ran past my mother, who was standing in the doorway, and down the stairs.

  “Hi, Mom. I didn’t see you there.”

  She smiled at us. “I didn’t want to interrupt the lesson. You two are going to make wonderful mothers.”

  “Oh, hell no. Don’t even wish that on me.”

  Nellie laughed. “Don’t wish it on no poor kids, either. I don’t want no kids until I got a nanny to take care of them.”

  From there we went over to the school before going to dinner. Amanda and her kids had moved in as soon as the utilities were turned on. I’d offered to help, but Nellie’s brother and half the neighborhood took care of it for me. Amanda showed me the fixed refrigerator full of food, and the kids’ rooms with their new beds.

  I started counting beds, then said, “Miz Rollins, do you have some new kids?”

  “Yes, two more.” She took me to meet the new additions. She also introduced me to two young women who looked like twins. “This is Dory and Cory,” she said with a smile I thought would split her face. “They’ve volunteered to help three days a week.”

  We left Amanda and went to dinner at An Poteen Stil, then I took Nellie home and headed over to Vincent’s, arriving exactly at ten o’clock.

  Vincent welcomed me in, and I could sense a sort of excitement.

  “First,” he said, “the powder. It is an analog of the powder from the club. A minor difference, but I have a feeling it’s closer to something that’s marketable as a legitimate drug. You might find out if Sheridan put out any feelers for clinical trials.”

  “What kind of dosage would you suggest?”

  “About fifty milligrams, I should think. The dosage being used in the clubs is two to four times that amount. You could get a rise out of a corpse with the dosage you said they were using. Now, about the other, the liquid. It’s luvdaze, pure and unadulterated.”

  “I wonder why he was keeping it in a hidden safe.”

  “You said you have a full liter of it?”

  I nodded.

  “Retirement plan, maybe? That’s two million creds at street value. My personal opinion is you could cut it fifty percent and still charge the same amount. I doubt the users would notice the difference, and it would have a larger margin of error.”

  “You mean it would be safer.”

  “Yes.”

  “If that’s the case, I wonder why the dealers aren’t doing it. What would you cut it with?”

  “Saline. Salt water.” Vincent studied the analys
is report on the table. “As to why? I think the people pushing this stuff are amateurs. I don’t think they know anything about the illegal drug trade.”

  That made all kinds of sense and fit in with my theory that someone inside CanPharm had seen an opportunity and taken it.

  I was on my way home from Vincent’s and passed the Drop Inn. Out of curiosity, I pulled in for a drink. I hadn’t been in there as myself since the first time I followed Mark and Susan. All my other trips had been as Jasmine.

  On a Sunday night, the scene wasn’t quite as loud and raucous as during my previous visits. I got a pint at the bar, and as I turned to survey the crowd, I heard a woman scream. It was quite a scream to be heard over the band.

  I drifted over that way, along with a hundred other people. Sometimes being taller than everyone else had its advantages. Standing on my tiptoes, I saw Mark Wellington’s girlfriend Shannon sitting on the floor.

  Making an effort to work my way through the crowd, I saw another blonde girl with her back toward me. Someone lay on the floor between the two women, and as I got closer, I could hear the other girl crying. She turned her head, and I saw it was Susan Wellington.

  The body on the floor was Mark, and a bouncer was giving him CPR. Kneeling down next to him, I felt for Mark’s pulse, but couldn’t find one. When I peeled back an eyelid, his pupils were fully dilated and nonresponsive.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Shannon said, her speech slurred. “He just passed out. It’s happened before.” She was so blasted that I wondered if she even knew which boy she was with.

  Susan, on the other hand, was sobbing and pleading for someone to do something. I grabbed her arm and pulled her to her feet.

  “Come with me,” I said, and began dragging her toward the door.

  “We can’t leave Mark.”

  I stopped. Holding her by both shoulders, I bent over close to her face and said, “Mark is dead. What we have to do is get you out of here.”