She sat in her bed for a good ten minutes, testing her breathing.
Was it easy? Any pain? Was she getting enough air?
Ten minutes left.
All systems good. At least for now.
Taking out the IV was a small task in comparison to the chest tube. She left the pumps on and running, the ends of the lines in the bed. She didn’t want any beeping to alert the nursing staff.
After she eased out of bed, she opened the closet. One waft of her smoke-infested clothes caused her to cough and a sharp pain tinged at her side.
Did that mean air was getting back in?
She pushed the thought from her mind and wiggled into the clothes, then placed all the items back into her purse. With the door open, she peeked into the hall. The door to the staircase was close to her room, and she hurried over the linoleum until she was safely hidden behind the door. She ripped her patient ID bracelet off and let it fall to the floor.
Raven should be out front.
When she exited the hospital, she didn’t have a jacket and only red, fuzzy slippers for her feet. She watched as people passed her by to get inside the building, curious looks on their faces followed by a dismissive shrug.
It paid to be waiting outside the emergency room entrance. People questioned odd clothing less.
A car waited. Keelyn bent forward to look as the window rolled down, the fine whine of electricity like static in the air.
“Hey, Sis.”
She was beautiful. Dark red highlights wove through her black hair, its loose curls framing her flawless ivory skin. Red lipstick against plump pink cheeks. It was a strange greeting considering the distance of their relationship. Raven patted at the passenger seat.
Keelyn held her left side. “Tell me now what you did to Sophia!”
Raven leaned over and opened the passenger door. Her dark chocolate eyes held a welcome invitation. “Get in the car and I’ll tell you. You can call her doctor after we’re on our way.”
“You would really let Sophia die if I didn’t go with you?”
Raven tilted her head, a soft sadness washed over her face. “For now, it’s more important you come with me.”
The wind rustled through Keelyn’s hair. “You need to turn yourself in. Get your life straightened out. The police think you’re involved in Dr. Freeman’s murder.”
“The only way you’re going to learn the truth about everything, Keelyn, is by getting in this car. Now get in!”
“Tell me first!”
Raven drummed her fingers against the seat with an expectant stare set in her eyes, the others clenched tightly around the wheel. “She’s been infected with meningococcus.”
Keelyn heard the faint swoosh of the sliding glass doors open behind her. A rush of warm air caused her flesh to tingle in the cool day. She turned to look.
In the gap stood Rebecca’s kidnapper in a black leather jacket.
Her heart jumped. As he closed the gap between them, her mind culled an image from her recent past.
Closer up, it was obvious what she’d missed before. He was the man who had followed her downtown when she hung the fliers.
He eyed her devilishly. Keelyn lunged for Raven’s car door, but in two short steps the man grabbed her and secured his arm around her neck, the open barrel of a gun at her temple, and he pulled her up and back.
“You’re a hard woman to track down.” He walked her back toward a pickup truck. The same one that had dropped Rebecca off at the park.
Raven scrambled out of her car. “Let her go!”
A hospital security guard stepped out of the main doors. “Hey!”
Keelyn reached up and gripped her hands on the man’s arms to ease the pressure on her neck. The guard’s radio squawked. If she didn’t break free from him in the next few seconds, Raven would be gone, and so would be her chance to set things right.
The man continued to pull her back.
Keelyn shifted her weight up. “You know Rebecca is going to put all this on you.”
That stopped his motion. He leaned his mouth close to her ear. “It was all her idea. So we could be together.”
Keelyn struggled to stay upright. “I know, but you’re the fall guy. You need to stop now. Tell your side. Show them where Bryce and Sadie are.”
Every muscle in his body tightened.
“Are they alive?” Keelyn whispered.
“She killed them. In front of me . . .”
“Why do this for her then?”
The Taser aimed at the man behind her caught Keelyn’s gaze. It was held by the guard, his stance firm, a determined look in his eye.
Keelyn raised her hands in surrender. “I’m too close!”
Adrenaline raced through her veins. She remembered Lee saying a Taser shouldn’t be fired at someone holding a gun. The muscle contraction could cause the weapon to fire.
And the gun was pointed right at her brain.
“Please, stop!”
The guard’s arm tensed as he yanked the trigger back. Keelyn dropped like dead weight to get her head out of her kidnapper’s line of fire. The pop of the weapon firing was louder than Keelyn would have imagined. A small harpooned dart hit her arm and all her muscles painfully seized up like they’d been flash frozen into ice.
She fell to the ground and pulled the man with her.
Her muscles tingled as if her whole body had fallen asleep. She could hear footsteps racing toward her. Raven hovered in her vision. A knife in her hand.
The guard approached as well. Raven waved the hunting blade in his direction.
“Back off!”
Raven yanked the probes from Keelyn’s skin. The man began to get up and Raven stabbed at him to keep him down.
Suddenly there was red everywhere. Keelyn turned to see his hand at his throat, a look of panic set in his eyes as the blood flowed between his fingers. She tried feebly to offer aid but her muscles couldn’t coordinate any useful movement. Raven’s fist bunched up her shirt at her back and pulled her away from the injured man and dragged her on the sidewalk to her waiting car.
“Come on! We’re leaving.”
She looked up and saw the amber globe covering a security camera and mouthed a message for Lee.
Chapter 38
GETTING BACKGROUND INFORMATION on an extinct company had proved difficult. After brainstorming during the hour-plus drive down to Colorado Springs, Lee and Nathan surmised it would be best to approach the government agency responsible for employee background checks. All defense contractors required government clearance.
That meant contacting someone at the Department of Defense or FBI. Considering Nathan had worked as a hostage negotiator with the FBI during the Samuals incident, he called an old friend to see if he knew of anyone still around who worked at NeuroEnterprises.
That contact led them—with a stern warning about his paranoia—to the home of Charles Burns.
The home was in an older section of the Springs. The small cottage was tucked into a sheet of dead ivy, dried from the temperature drop of late autumn. Nathan’s contact wove a tale of a widowed, lonely man but one who had been in the upper ranks of the NeuroEnterprises board.
They were warned he always approached the door with a rifle.
A loaded one.
Lee knocked and edged to one side. Nathan had a hand on his service weapon as they waited for a response. The sound of shuffling feet carried through the door. Its hinges squealed like a haunted house in the dead of night, and through the open crack eased the bad end of a long-arm rifle.
“Who’s there?”
Lee drew his weapon but kept it at his side. “Mr. Burns. My name’s Captain Lee Watson, and this here’s Detective Nathan Long. We work for Aurora Police. We’d like to ask you a few questions about a company you used to work for.”
“You’re a long way from home base. Why do you want to talk to me?” The man neared the screen and pushed his face up against it so hard Lee could imagine his skin oozing through like Play-Doh.
Lee stepped a little closer to the door and waved with his hand. “Mind putting your gun down?”
“Not until you clarify your business.”
Nathan gave a quick wave. “We’re concerned that some of the technology you developed is possibly being used in a string of murders.”
The statement caused the man to ease back from the door, the waffled impression from the screen red against his paled face.
Lee returned his weapon and placed his body in full view of the door. “Sir, someone is trying to kill my fiancée. If you could give us any information, I would be forever indebted to you.”
He lowered the weapon. “You know, my Martha died a couple years back.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, sir.”
“Wish she were still here.”
“I know.”
He lowered his gun and set it next to the door. “Because of her I’m going to talk to you. She always said there would come a day when I’d have to tell the truth about that awful company. I guess today is it.”
Nathan arched his eyebrows. Lee shrugged as he followed the man inside.
The house spoke of love suspended. Several pictures showed the couple throughout their life together. Children and grandchildren. One floral armchair sat empty, an unfinished quilt with a wooden hoop placed on the seat, apparently where Mrs. Burns had last left it.
Lee glanced around the small living room for another place to sit. Nathan leaned against the doorway leading into the small kitchen.
“What is it you want to know?” Burns eased himself onto the sofa, his joints crackled with the movement.
Lee pulled a small footstool from the nearby sofa and sat a few feet away from the older gentleman.
Burns was bald with intense hazel eyes. They were chameleonlike in the way they roved between his two guests.
A quiet suspicion.
“Would you mind giving us some background on the company? What position did you hold?” Lee asked.
He cleared his throat and reached for a water glass. “I was head of research and development.” He gulped too quickly and the liquid dribbled down his chin. He wiped it with a forward swipe of his index finger. “What do you want to know?”
“What kind of research did they do?”
“Medical research.”
“Narrow it down a little?”
“We were looking into ways spider venom could be used for medical purposes.”
The scar at Lee’s side tingled. “There’s a good use for spider venom?”
“Absolutely. A couple of areas under investigation were based on spider venom’s affinity for ion channels. One was using it to prevent a particular arrhythmia after a patient had a heart attack. Another was as a coating over implanted medical devices. Even looked into its use as a pain killer and cancer treatment.”
“That’s amazing,” Lee said.
“You see the news in the last couple of days?” Burns asked.
Lee shook his head.
“Spider silk as the mesh to grow skin grafts. The creatures really are amazing. Those fine threads are proportionally stronger than steel. Can you imagine? A lot of the work we did at NeuroEnterprises was the basis of what’s being done today.”
“But no one is using any of those therapies.”
“The company stopped looking at medical applications once the government got involved. All good things are eventually used for evil.”
Something disturbed Lee. He couldn’t place his finger on whether it was the paranoid man or his worry over Keelyn doing something desperate.
“That’s an interesting perspective.”
“Can you deny it?” The man’s eyes roved to meet Lee’s and pinned him where he sat.
Lee shuffled his hands together. “You mentioned something about a day you’d have to tell the truth. Want to tell me about that?”
The man withered into his chair. And his eyelids drooped, as if burdened with a secret he didn’t want to tell.
Lee understood the man’s dread of openly confessing his sin. “We’re not here about you. We just think it could help save some lives today.”
Mr. Burns inhaled and sat silent for several seconds, then exhaled slowly. Fine beads of dread spotted his forehead, and he pulled a handkerchief from his pocket to sop up the betrayal. “Once we took a government contract, nothing was the same. It wasn’t about helping people anymore. It was about finding ways to efficiently kill them.”
“Were you . . . successful?”
The man swallowed heavily. “Depends on how you look at it. Have you ever seen the consequences of a spider bite? ’Round here something like the brown recluse or black widow could get you.”
“We’ve seen a few recent examples.”
“Most often, the effect is local. The brown recluse venom rarely goes systemic. It will just stay in one spot and liquefy the tissue it’s deposited in.”
Lee’s stomach protested and the remnants of his encounter with the little tyrant seemed to bubble up and boil at his side. “What about the black widow?” he asked.
“She tends to be a little more interesting. Most often, her bites have just local effects as well. However, more often than the brown recluse, her venom will cause a system-wide cluster of symptoms to develop on the victim. The side effects are distinct. Massive, uncontrollable pain. Sweating. Hysteria.”
“What were the defense applications?”
“One: could the venom kill? Two: if not kill, could it be used as an instrument of torture?”
Why did the case have to center around this minute nefarious foe? He was infinitely larger. A single stomp of his heavy boot would annihilate his enemy. He needed to stay to know how the existence of this company set into motion the slew of events that cost so many lives.
He rubbed at his forehead. “You must have discovered something.”
“The problem with any biological weapon is how you transmit it. Aerosolized delivery systems are favorable because of the potential to expose and kill a large number of individuals. You can potentially keep your troops safe while everyone else is dying if you know how to protect them. Anything where you have to come into close contact is less favorable.”
“There was an accident?”
“I had two researchers focused on these different applications. Torture device and biological weapon. Both were trying to atomize black widow spider venom. It was a race between them. They were in constant competition with one another.”
There was healthy competition between men, and then there was unhealthy one-upmanship with deadly results. This seemed to be leaning toward the latter.
“Due to the nature of the work, they were required to wear biohazard suits. One researcher was successful in aerosolizing a mass quantity. Once the compound misted into the air, every creature in the room keeled over. The effects were immediate. The heart just stopped beating. Death was instantaneous.”
“Seems like a successful experiment. Goal accomplished.”
“Trouble is, somehow it leaked into the building. First place it leaked was the rival researcher’s lab. His whole staff succumbed. Several people died.”
“Why didn’t everyone die?”
“Fortunately, the compound broke down quickly. Had a really short half-life. That’s what spared everyone else.”
Lee found it hard to speak. “Is it still out there? This weapon?”
“That researcher had tremendous guilt. Inherently, he knew the implications. The government wouldn’t be able to keep their hands off something like that. He knew they’d want him to continue his work. Then there was the boy.”
“What boy?”
“I should say young man—just out of college. The other researcher had a son. At the funeral, the researcher responsible broke down at seeing that young man without his father. The lab had been shut down to investigate the accident so his notes had remained locked up. Right after the funeral, the whole site was torched. It was speculated he’d done it to prevent the formula from b
ecoming known but we couldn’t ever prove it.”
“What were the researchers’ names?”
“John Samuals and Lucent Donnely.”
There it was. A connection. A motive. These two families had tangled long ago, and the residual effects were bleeding down the generations.
Gavin wanted revenge on the man who’d killed his father. It was one of the most basic motives. Maybe Keelyn was right. Could it be that Raven was the victim? That, somehow, she’d been consumed by the suggestions implanted by Gavin? Was there a more perfect way to exact revenge on someone other than to victimize his own child?
Lee jolted as his phone vibrated. He pulled it from his coat and his hand shook as he took the call.
Keelyn was gone.
Chapter 39
AT FIRST, ALL KEELYN COULD do was stare at Raven, at the sister who had been absent from her life. At the ghost who had haunted her every waking moment. The constant wonder about how she was, where she was.
Slowly, her elation at being near her lost sister was replaced with a cloying apprehension. She sensed going with Raven to save Sophia’s life could have disastrous consequences for her own. There was a look of destruction in Raven’s eyes. A maniacal lilt to her voice as if she were coming to the close of something she’d long hoped to accomplish.
A physical ache spread through Keelyn’s chest. At first it was grief at having left Sophia behind. She questioned her wisdom at having broken off her engagement with Lee. The emotional distance between them now translated into a physical one. She fed on the moments of tenderness they had together as a way to set her resolve, hoping to edge away her isolation.
In reality, she was lost and not sure where to go for help. She’d asked God for help before, and she had been forced to take care of things on her own. She didn’t have the strength to do it again.
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