The skirt came free, and she pushed herself upright just as David sent Peters crashing to the floor. Across the room, Victor raised the tip of his cane.
Too late, Paige remembered a scene from The Baron of The Night, the one in which a dark, brooding hero brought down an attacker with the rapier hidden in his walking stick. Although the ivory-handled instrument Swanset held clutched in both hands was similar to the cane in the movie, Paige suspected it now housed something far more lethal than a rapier.
“David!” she screamed as she lunged toward the console. “Look out!”
She didn’t have time to dig either her mascara or the switchblade out of her bag. Instead, she used the small gold purse itself as a weapon. Swinging it by the chain, she slammed it into Swanset’s outstretched arm with every ounce of strength she possessed.
The walking stick bucked in his hands a split second before Paige’s purse connected. She glanced over her shoulder and gave a terrified sob as David crumpled to the floor.
“You bastard! You damned bastard!”
Raging with fury, she swung the bag once more. Swanset threw up an arm to block the blow to his head and jerked backward. He toppled over, just as Paige had during her first encounter with him, taking the console chair and the keyboard with him. The monitor teetered unsteadily on the console table for a second, then settled back with a thud.
Paige kicked the cane out of the fallen man’s grasp, then whirled and raced across the lab. Ignoring the semiconscious, twitching Peters, sprawled a few yards away, she dropped to her knees and dragged David into her arms.
“Are you all right? Where were you hit?”
She knew the answer as soon as her palm made contact with his shoulder. A sticky warmth smeared across her hand and oozed through her fingers. Her arms convulsed around David, who grunted and gave a little jerk.
“Stay still!” Paige panted. “Let me take a look at the wound.”
“I’m—I’m all right.”
“No, you’re not! You’re bleeding!”
Cradling him in her right arm, Paige stretched out her left to unbutton the black dinner jacket and peel it back. The spreading blossom of red on David’s shoulder sent terror streaking through her every vein.
“Don’t move!” she sobbed, clutching him even tighter while she grabbed at the hem of her gown and wadded it against his shoulders.
“I’m all right.” He twisted upright in her arms, his voice slowly gaining in strength. “It’s just a flesh wound. I’m all—Jesus!”
At the startled exclamation, Paige threw both arms around David and crushed his head against her breasts. She was determined to shield him at all costs from this new threat, whatever it was. Shoulders rigid, nerves screaming, she waited for the attack.
None came.
“Paige.” His voice was muffled against her breasts. “Sweetheart. Let me go.”
Reaching up, he pried loose her stranglehold and eased himself out of her arms. With another small grunt, he pushed himself up on one knee. The effort sent a ripple of pain across his face, and he paused, panting a little. Paige watched him, her heart in her throat.
Only then did she absorb the unnatural stillness in the lab. There was no sound but her rasping sobs and David’s breath whistling through his clenched teeth. No movement other than the lift of his body as he forced himself to stand upright.
She twisted around on her knees, searching for the other two men. Peters she saw immediately. He was lying only a few yards away. His limbs were grotesquely rigid and outflung, as though he’d suffered some sort of electrical shock. A trickle of blood had traced a path from the corner of his mouth and pooled on the floor.
His jaw tight, David knelt beside the butler and searched for a pulse. After a moment, he reached up to close the eyes that would remain forever blurred.
“He’s dead.”
“How—?” Paige gasped. “What—?”
In answer, David swiveled on his knee and looked toward Swanset.
The aging film star lay sprawled where he’d fallen, his eyes fixed sightlessly on the ceiling, his lips blue. One bony hip rested squarely on the keyboard, depressing half its keys. On the console above him, a steady stream of electronic messages raced across the computer screen.
“Evidently his program wasn’t as far past the experimental stage as he thought,” David said grimly. “When he fell on the keyboard, he sent several million bits of visual imaging data pouring into Peters’s cells. The poor bastard must have exploded internally.”
While Paige watched, stunned, David crossed to the unmoving Swanset. Hunkering down in a stiff, awkward movement, he felt for a pulse. After a few seconds, he shook his head. Easing the keyboard from under the man’s body, he set it on the console. The screen flickered, then went blank.
“Oh, my God,” Paige moaned, burying her face in her hands. “I killed him. I killed them both.”
David covered the short distance between them in a few strides. “No, you didn’t.”
“I did!” she cried, rocking back and forth on her knees. “I hit Victor in the head with my purse. I knocked him out, and he fell on the keyboard. I killed them both.”
Using his good arm, David reached down and pulled her to her feet. It took some doing, but he finally managed to pry her hands from her face.
“Paige, listen to me. You didn’t kill him. You didn’t kill either one of them. Swanset had a heart attack. He was probably dead before he hit the floor.”
She turned her tear-streaked face up to his. “What?”
“His lips are blue. He had a heart attack. A massive coronary, by the looks of it.”
“Are you sure?”
Doc folded her into his arms. This wasn’t the time to remind her that he was an engineer, not a medical examiner.
“Yes, I’m sure.”
He held her until her sobs dwindled to watery hiccups. She lay against his chest for a moment longer, then jerked out of his arms.
“Oh, David, your shoulder! Let me look at it.”
Doc stood quietly while she fumbled with the studs on his shirt and lifted the edge to peer at the wound. He’d had enough experience in the field to know that the hit wasn’t fatal, although white-hot pain ripped through his shoulder with his every movement and bright red blood seeped from the wound. Paige’s face whitened when she saw the ragged hole in his flesh, but she swallowed a couple of times and glanced around the sterile lab. Her gaze fell on the footed silver tray.
Shuddering, she stepped around Peters’s rigid body and snatched up a handful of white linen napkins. Within moments, she had eased off Doc’s dinner jacket and shirt and pressed the folded napkins against the bullet hole. While he held the compress in place, Paige dug Henri’s switchblade out of her evening bag and sawed a long, ragged strip of green satin from her full skirt. Her brows knitted in fierce concentration as she brought the makeshift bandage under his armpit and wrapped it around his shoulder.
Doc gritted his teeth against the lancing pain and focused his concentration on Paige. This frowning, intent woman held little resemblance to the Paige he’d kissed and left behind in L.A. less than a week ago. This one looked as though she’d been through a small war. Which she had.
Her hair had tumbled free from its elaborate braid and hung in wisps about her face. Her brief bout of tears had left smudges of mascara under her eyes. When she buried her face in her hands, she’d smeared his blood across her cheeks, and one of her gown’s tight sleeves had ripped at the shoulder seam when she swung her lethal little purse. Yet her hands were steady as she tied the edges of the green strip, and her eyes intent as she surveyed her handiwork.
“You’re pretty handy to have around in a tricky situation, Jezebel,” he told her, his lips curving into a smile.
“Yes, well, I’d prefer to avoid tricky situations in the future, if you don’t mind. And don’t grin at me like that! I know I insisted on being part of this team, but I do not want any more excitement like this. Not in this lifetime. Or
the next! Or the one after that!”
Doc curled a knuckle under her chin and tilted her face to his. “As soon as we get out of here, my darling, we’ll generate a whole different kind of excitement. Enough to last us through this lifetime. And the next. And the one after that.”
When he bent to brush a quick kiss across her mouth, Paige almost forgot his bleeding shoulder and her slowly receding terror and the two still forms just yards away. His mouth was warm and hard and tasted of David. Her David.
She closed her eyes, savoring that brief kiss. An image of the man she loved imprinted itself on her every sense. She felt the strength and the gentleness in his touch. She heard his rasping, indrawn breath. She drew in the salty tang of his sweat, or perhaps it was his blood.
She didn’t need any visual imaging wizardry to see him in the mirror of her mind. Tall and broad-shouldered and incredibly handsome, his brown hair disordered for once, his steel blue eyes filled with an emotion that set her heart thumping painfully. She ached with the need to hold him, to feel his body against hers, to arch her hips into his and take him into her.
She stepped back, breathing heavily.
“I was wrong,” she admitted, with a ragged sigh. “I’m ready for whatever excitement you care to generate.”
She couldn’t know, of course, that she’d regret those rash words not two minutes later.
David planted another hard kiss on her lips, then strode to the console. “Let’s insert that bug, then get the hell out of here. Swanset’s too smart not to have at least one, perhaps more, backup systems. We don’t want anyone accessing them before we can locate them and shut them down.”
Still shivering from the force of her own reaction, Paige blinked at his swift transition from lover to secret agent. Half-naked, his bare upper torso streaked with blood and bound by a ragged strip of green satin, he looked like a character out of one of Victor Swanset’s movies. The muscles in his shoulders rippled as he leaned over the console and punched one of the keys. The screen flickered back to life.
“Good. The program’s still active. I recorded his access code, but it looks like I won’t need it.”
With swift, sure confidence, he keystroked in a series of commands. A few moments later, he straightened.
“There,” he murmured in satisfaction. “Anyone who tries to—”
He broke off, his dark brows snapping together, as he studied the monitor. From where she stood a few feet away, Paige could see some kind of a message flicker across the screen.
“What?” she asked. “What’s wrong?”
“There’s a posthumous message here from Swanset.”
“There is?” she squeaked.
“The bastard knew he was just a heartbeat away from a coronary. He must have coded in this message months ago and triggered it somehow just before he died.”
David’s eyes scanned the print that painted across the screen. “Damn it all to hell!”
“I don’t think I want to hear this,” Paige said in a faint voice.
He whirled and grabbed her hand. “Good—because there isn’t time to explain. We’ve got to get out of here. Fast!”
Yanking her along behind him, he raced to the elevator. He stabbed the button, his breath harsh as he waited for the door to open. When nothing happened, he stabbed it again. And again.
When the door refused to open, David slammed the heel of his hand against the wood panel, listening intently.
“It’s reinforced with some kind of alloy,” he snarled. “The damn thing’s sealed tighter than a drum. The whole lab probably is.”
Spinning on one heel, he scanned the room. “Look for another exit. There has to be one.”
“How do you know?”
“Swanset told Peters to escort you ‘next door.’ For a historical tour of the dungeons, remember?”
“Oh, God! Yes!”
His eyes met hers. “We have approximately ninety seconds to find that door and get the hell out of here.”
They found it in less than sixty.
Actually, Paige found it. By the simple expedient of scraping her nails along the far wall as she ran the length of the lab. When she encountered a slight depression, she screamed for David. He was at her side in seconds. Endless heartbeats later, he uncovered a concealed latch. Yanking the handle upward, he slammed his shoulder against the panel.
Paige could imagine the pain that must have caused him. The green bandage darkened with a fresh spurt of blood as David turned and shoved her through the opening ahead of him.
Darkness and cold, dank air surrounded them like a smothering shroud.
These were definitely the dungeons. As they raced down the narrow corridor, Paige caught a glimpse of barred cells cut from solid rock. A rusted implement of some kind dangled from a hook on the wall. She almost tripped over a discarded tool, the use of which she didn’t even want to guess at.
Panting with fear and exertion, Paige thought she caught a faint glow of moonlight ahead. She twisted around, intending to tell David, when an ominous rumbling sounded in the laboratory behind them.
“Run!” David shouted.
Paige ran.
The rumbling grew to a roar, then exploded in a blinding wave of light and noise. David threw himself against her, knocking her to the stone floor and covering her body with his. Her head smashed against the stone, and she must have lost consciousness for a few seconds or minutes or hours.
When her eyes opened, she was trapped between David’s weight and the unyielding stone. Paige couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move.
Neither could David, she discovered.
He was unconscious. His breath rasped in her ear, and his body lay sprawled over hers. Paige felt his warm blood soaking through the back of her gown and wanted to scream with terror. Instead, she wriggled and scratched and snaked her way forward until she’d cleared enough of his weight to twist free.
With the last of her strength, she dragged at his good arm until she had him turned over on his back. She refused to cry, refused to let the blood seeping down his chest reduce her to the quivering mass of hysteria she knew she was.
Dragging the gold bag still chained to her wrist into her lap, she fumbled for the switchblade and sawed another ragged strip from her skirt. If—when!—they got out of here, she’d find some way to thank Henri for the gift he’d pressed on her. The knife had been his most valued possession. At this moment, it was hers.
Hands shaking, she folded the heavy satin over and over again, then pressed the pad against David’s wound with both hands. She held it there for what seemed like hours, murmuring his name, pouring out her love.
When he stirred, she wanted to cry in relief.
When his eyes fluttered open, she did.
“Paige!”
She barely heard his raspy whisper over the sound of her own gulping sobs.
“Paige, send…signal.”
“What?”
“Send…signal.”
“To Maggie?” Paige wiped the back of her sleeve across her nose. “Can’t she hear us?”
“Alloy…seal…lab. No emissions.”
“You mean she couldn’t hear us the whole time we were in the lab? She doesn’t know what’s happened?”
“Send…”
“David!”
His muscles slackened under her hand, and he slumped unconscious once more.
Moaning, Paige pressed the pad against his shoulder with one hand and reached for the crystal eardrop with her other. To her horror, it was missing.
Trying not to jar David more than she had to, she dragged him a few inches to the side. Frantically she brushed her fingers across the stone where she’d hit her head, sweeping the area over and over again.
She found the earring. Or what was left of it. The crystal drop had shattered upon impact with the stone, as had the tiny device it concealed.
Paige stared at the bits of glass and plastic in her hand in disbelief.
She wouldn’t panic! She wouldn’t!
She pushed herself to her feet. One glance told her she couldn’t go back to the lab. It wasn’t there. The explosion, or implosion, had dumped tons of stone into the subterranean chamber.
Her feet dragging, Paige turned and stumbled toward the opposite end of the dark tunnel. Toward the faint glow that she hoped, prayed, was moonlight.
It was.
“Thank God!” she whispered.
She wondered fleetingly why the small, square window wasn’t barred, as the cells were. As soon as she leaned over the sill, she understood why.
Given her difficulty with numbers, Paige couldn’t have said whether the cliff dropped for two hundred, or two thousand feet straight down. She only knew that it was a long, long way to where the sea crashed against the cliff’s base.
She twisted in the small opening, scanning the sheer rock on either side. There was no path, no ledge, no outcropping of stone of any kind. Nothing but a perpendicular wall of granite.
Her heart sinking, Paige realized that this tiny opening wasn’t a window at all, but rather a ventilation hole. It didn’t need bars. No one was going out through that opening. Not alive, anyway.
Slumping back against the wall, Paige felt her knees buckle. She sank to the floor in a dejected heap.
David seemed to think Maggie didn’t know what had happened. Even if the OMEGA team stormed the villa, it would be days, maybe weeks, before they cleared the lab and found this narrow subterranean tunnel.
She couldn’t wait, not for a day, not for hours. David needed medical attention. Now.
What was she going to do? Paige asked herself in desperation. What could she do?
She could send a signal, as David had instructed. But how? A fire, maybe. Or a flash of light from the other earring, when the sun came up. Or…
Paige’s heart leaped into her throat. Scrambling to her feet, she ran back to where she’d discarded her little gold evening bag. Tearing at the clasp, she dumped the contents on the stone. The mascara. A lipstick. And the compact! The diamond-studded compact!
With the introduction of the crystal earrings, the compact had been retired from active service as a communications device, but Paige had kept it for its more mundane and utilitarian purpose. She’d powdered her nose with it only an hour or so ago in the throne room.
Dangerous to Know Page 20