Perfectly Toxic

by Kristine Mason

  “Here we go,” he said, then opened the door. They were met with a wall of dense gray smoke. His eyes immediately burned. Knowing the layout of the house, that they didn’t have far to go before reaching the back door, he could endure. He wanted to glance back and check on Mel, but didn’t want to lose his bearings in the smoke.

  Heat suddenly blasted him from the right. Mel tugged his shirt when a flame shot through a wall. The fire on the other side of the wall roared as if it were a wild beast. His heart pounded. Sweat poured from his scalp. The kitchen was around the corner. Almost there…

  Frustration devastated his confidence. The fire had spread to the kitchen, licked at the wooden cabinets and blocked the back door. Not willing to give up and let his wife die, he glanced to the window above the farmhouse sink.

  “Stand back,” he said, moving her away from him. He grabbed the coffee maker from the counter, then tossed it through the window. The glass shattered. Drawn to the fresh oxygen, the smoke and flames shifted pattern, moved along the butcher-block counter toward the sink. With no time to lose, he pulled the towel from his face, wrapped it around his hand, and knocked the remaining glass out of the way.

  He lifted Mel and sat her in the sink. She held his face in her hands, kissed him, then swung her legs over the sill. “Go,” he said, helping her turn to her stomach.

  Through the cloud of smoke pouring from the window, he saw Vlad’s outline. The Russian ran toward the house. With the way he hauled ass, he could help Mel the rest of the way. Relieved, he motioned for Harrison to follow Mel through the window. As Vlad assisted Mel to the ground, Harrison climbed into the sink.

  “Get this over your face,” Harrison said, throwing his towel at Cash.

  As he waited for Harrison to go through the window, he covered his mouth. The flames traveled faster, growing as they moved. Sure they’d reach him before he escaped, he jumped into the sink. Once Harrison made it over the sill, Cash heaved himself out headfirst. Vlad and Harrison latched onto his arms, just as heat seared his legs. When he hit the ground he and Harrison slapped the towels around his calves and feet, snuffing the fire.

  Breathing hard, tasting ash, he turned toward the field in the back. Together, he, Vlad and Harrison ran to where Lola and Mel stood, a man—with his hands behind his back—was on his knees and between the two women.

  When they reached them, Harrison kicked Rodney Archer in the face. Blood flew from the man’s nose, as Rodney fell backward.

  Lola jerked him back to his knees. “Don’t,” she shouted when Harrison lifted his leg as if he were going to use Rodney’s head to practice punting.

  “Why not? The prick deserves to die,” Harrison said, turning on Vlad. “Fucking Russian pussy. Why didn’t you kill him? Cash said you were on him.” Before Vlad could answer, Harrison reached for Vlad’s gun holster. “I’ll do it myself.”

  Vlad released a right hook, sending Harrison onto his ass. “Harry do not touch Vlad’s gun. Ever.”

  Harrison rubbed his jaw, but didn’t rise. “I think your gator has made you soft. Or maybe the Florida sun has fried what little you’ve got in your thick skull.” He glared at Rodney. “I don’t need a gun to kill him.” He started to rise, but Mel pushed him down.

  “Enough,” Mel shouted, then turned to the rest of them. “This is the drug talking. Not Harrison.”

  “The hell it is,” Harrison said.

  “Really? You called me stupid after I set you free. The Harrison I know wouldn’t have.”

  “Wasting your time to save those two homeless guys was stupid. Now one of them is dead, and the other practically knocked you out cold. Oh, and do we know where he is?”

  Laughter rose from Rodney’s direction. They all looked at him. “Care to let us in on the joke?” Lola asked.

  Harrison pulled a chunk of grass from the ground and threw it. “Should have let me kill him.”

  Rodney looked over at Harrison. “I wish you would.”

  “Death too simple.” Vlad backhanded the man. “Answer question.”

  Rodney gave Vlad a bloody grin. “Harry was right. Melanie is stupid. She just set Adeline’s creation free.”

  “Meaning?” Lola prompted.

  “A lot of people are going to die.”

  “Again, why are we letting him live?” Harrison asked. “Come on, Lola. Admit it. If we were back in the Everglades, you’d already have Mel moving his dead body to her daddy’s swamp.”

  What in the hell was Harrison talking about? The drugs, like Mel had said, were affecting the man.

  “Shut up, Harrison,” Mel said, and Cash recognized the warning in her tone.

  Lola wipe her forehead with the sleeve of her black jacket. Now that he looked at her, the burning fire revealed a cut across her forehead, and a swollen lip. “Mel’s right. You need to keep your mouth shut. If you keep it up, I will personally gag you.”

  “Whatever the hell.”

  Damn, did he want to kick Harrison’s ass.

  “Vlad have no problem to gag Harry.”

  Lola raised a hand, then rested it on Rodney’s shoulder. “I’m going to fill you in on why Vlad spared your life. This way my colleagues, who you drugged and left for dead in a house you set fire to, can understand.” She cracked the man in the back of the head with her knuckles. “Your twin sister, Adeline. We know about her and that she’s a murderer.”

  “Twin sister?” Harrison asked. “Are you kidding me?”

  “Last warning,” Lola said to Harrison, who still looked dumbfounded. “You were trying to help her get better, correct? But the only way to find out if your drug worked would be to create someone as psychopathic as her. Am I right?”

  When he didn’t answer, Lola nodded to Vlad, who lifted the man off the ground by the throat. “Vlad will hurt, torture, but not kill.” He shrugged. “Vlad have all night,” he said, then dropped the man to the ground.

  Rodney coughed and wheezed. “Who are you people? I want a lawyer?”

  Lola knelt. “Yeah, well, we’re not lawyer kinda people. No worries, we’ll let the police have you. More likely GBI or the Feds, but in the meantime, we’d like you to answer a few, easy questions. I suggest you do that, or my friend here will make it look like you broke several bones as you tried to escape from the house fire. Clear?”

  “Fuck you.”

  She nodded to Vlad again.

  Rodney shrank back. “Wait.”

  “He killed his sister,” Mel said.

  Lola smiled. “All the more reason to keep you alive. I’m an only child, but I longed for a brother or a sister. To have that bond…but to have a twin? That had to be something special.”

  As the house behind them groaned and pipes burst, Cash wondered how much longer they’d have before the authorities would be alerted. And yet, he didn’t want to cut Lola’s questioning short. The tears in Rodney’s eyes were priceless. Once the man lawyered up, he doubted they’d be able to force him to talk again.

  “And you killed her,” Lola continued. “Why’d you do that, Rodney?”

  He shook his head, as tears streamed down his face. “I didn’t mean to, I was trying to humiliate her in front of him.” He glared at Mel. “And that dumb bitch let him go. You have to live with that, not me. Every person he kills is on your head.”

  Cash wanted to go to Mel, tell her the man was insane, talking shit, but knew they needed what they could get from him. He might not be part of ATL, and Mel would be exiting out of the agency once this man was turned over to the authorities, but he also wanted to understand why. Why would these people do this? And what did they do to the man, who might or might not have escaped, that would turn him into a killer?

  “Why would he kill?” Lola asked, dabbing at the blood along her lip.

  “Oh, my God,” Mel gasped, looked to Harrison, then to Rodney. “He said you’d break him, then fix him.”

  “Who did?” Cash asked.

  “Liam, the man I cut loose. He also said Roderick—Rodney—did fix him. Th
at all the voices were gone, but one. Hers.” Mel pushed her hair from her face. “He told me that the only reason he wouldn’t kill me was because I set him free.” She doubled over and hugged herself. “Oh, God. We need to check the house. We need to make sure he’s dead.”

  Cash rushed to her, pulled her close. “Don’t. You didn’t know, you don’t know.”

  When Rodney laughed again, she stiffened in his arms. “You people are so fucked.”

  Lola shoved him to the ground and pressed her foot against his chest. “Explain.”

  Rodney grinned. “I’ll tell you one thing about Liam, then you can either kill me or get my attorney. Otherwise, I’m not talking. I have nothing to live for now, so it’s really up to you as to how far you want to take this.”

  Lola drew in a breath. “What’s the one thing?”

  “He was schizophrenic.”

  “And?” When he didn’t respond, she pressed the heel of her boot against his groin. “You need to give me more.”

  Rodney’s breathing grew labored. “If he told Melanie the voices were gone, all but Adeline’s, she’ll be in his head, constantly talking to him. My drug might’ve gotten rid of the voices driven by his schizophrenia, but she dominates his mind now.” His face crumpled as he let out a sob. “She was brilliant…”

  “I didn’t get a good look at him when I ran into him in the living room, except to say smoke was rising off his burned clothes and he had a mean punch.” Lola stepped back and rubbed her swollen lip. “Mel, could you describe him?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Good,” Lola said. “I know the side entrance was blocked by the fire, and Vlad didn’t see him come out the back door. Cash, do you think he could’ve made it out the front?”

  “With the height of the flames when I came inside, I don’t see how.”

  Lola let out a frustrated sigh and scanned the dark fields surrounding the house. “We need to make sure he’s dead.” She nudged Rodney with her boot. “If not, we’ll need everything you know about him.”

  Rodney laughed as the House of Archer—a home that had stood for two centuries—collapsed. “Then I guess you better hope Liam is dead.”

  Chapter 21

  Cash and Mel’s House, Tallahassee, Florida

  Tuesday, 3:23 a.m. Eastern Daylight Saving Time

  MEL STARED AT her reflection, wondering how long it would take for the few eyelashes she’d lost to grow back. As the ridiculously vain thought passed through her mind, the memory of the way Adeline’s monster had snapped Eliot’s neck replaced it.

  Oh, God. What had she done? How many innocent people would die because of her mistake? Despite the hot steam lingering from her shower, she shivered as a knot grew in the pit of her stomach. Lola had called Ian while Cash had been rescuing them from the burning house. That had been before Lola had known about Adeline’s monster, Liam. Even then, Ian had reached out to a contact with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. The owner of CORE had wanted the situation contained without any mention of ATLs involvement. The GBI agent and his partner had made it to the plantation house before the local police and fire department, and had suggested Lola, Vlad and Cash leave. As far as anyone had been concerned, she and Harrison were victims—heroes for not only escaping, but detaining Rodney Archer.

  If only they knew the truth. She doubted anyone would consider her a hero once the monster began killing.

  The knot in her stomach had her doubling over as a wave of fear and guilt rushed through her. Her throat tightened, but she held back the tears. Cash was waiting for her in their bedroom, and she didn’t want to add to his worry. At the hospital, he’d hovered over her, over every doctor or nurse who’d come near her. Once they were home, he hadn’t wanted her out of his sight and had insisted she keep the bathroom door open. She’d closed it anyway. She had needed privacy, a moment alone to digest everything that had happened, and to think through what she dreaded telling Cash.

  “I can’t hear anything,” Cash said from the opposite side of the bathroom door. Her guilt compounded. He’d probably been pacing the hallway, waiting for her.

  She reached for her brush. “I’ll be out in a second.”

  “Do you feel okay? Are you hungry or thirsty? I can make you something.”

  Tears misted her eyes. “I’m good.”

  “Your pain meds?”

  She wasn’t in any pain, but the ER doctor had written her a prescription for the discomfort she might experience around her eyes, along with a mild sedative should she have trouble sleeping. After her urine sample had come back clean, and she’d been thoroughly examined, they’d sent her home. Harrison hadn’t fared as well. He’d still had trace amounts of Adeline’s drug in his system, along with the symptoms. The doctors were hopeful he could be released as early as tomorrow. Even though he’d been mean and nasty toward Vlad, the Russian had remained at the hospital with him, while Lola had gone back to the hotel to confer with the GBI agents. She should be with Lola now, discussing what they needed to do next.

  Setting the brush aside, she slipped into some underwear, then pulled one of Cash’s old t-shirts over her wet head. After dragging in a deep breath, she opened the door. Cash stood in the threshold wearing nothing but a pair of athletic shorts. She was glad to see that he’d left his post outside of the bathroom long enough to use the guest bath to shower. She preferred the smell of soap to smoke, and didn’t need any more reminders about their time in the plantation house.

  “I don’t need my meds,” she said. “I just need to sleep next to you.”

  He pulled her into his arms and held her tight. “Every night. That’s all I want. Come on, let’s go to bed.”

  With his arm around her shoulder, he led her into their bedroom, then tucked her into bed. After he crawled in next to her, he drew her close to his chest.

  Although exhausted, she couldn’t keep her eyes closed. Her mind kept racing, going back to the House of Archer, to the monster, to how they were going to find him. She reached for her cell phone resting on the nightstand.

  “What are you doing?” Cash asked.

  “Setting my clock?”

  “For what? Neither one of us has to be anywhere in the morning. Jude has the garage covered, and Lola said Shane won’t be flying in to pick her up until the afternoon.”

  “Yeah, but I need to get home. If I’m on the road by noon, I’ll be in Everglades City by seven.”

  He tightened his hold on her. “You are home.”

  She set the alarm for ten, then tucked the phone under her pillow. “You know what I mean.”

  “Actually, I don’t.”

  To avoid an argument, she should have waited until he had fallen asleep, then set her alarm. But she’d worried she would doze off before she had the chance. “Look, it’s late. We’ll talk about it in the morning.”

  “You’re not quitting, are you?” he asked, the accusation and disappointment in his tone sat on her chest like a seven-ton elephant.

  “I am,” she answered honestly. “After we find Adeline’s creation.”

  He rolled away, taking his warmth and security with him. “That could take months, years. Unless Rodney starts talking, you know nothing about the man except his first name and what he looks like. And people can change their appearance.”

  “If CORE steps in to help us—”

  “I don’t care about CORE or ATL.” He sat up, then threw off the comforter and sheets. “I care about having my wife home and safe, not chasing killers or dumping dead bodies in a swamp.”

  Dread sucker-punched her. She reached toward the nightstand, then turned on the lamp. “I can explain.”

  “Don’t bother. Vlad filled me in on what you did.” He shoved off the bed. “Imagine how happy I was to learn that my wife is the agency’s cleaner.”

  “I’m not—”

  “You get rid of bodies, boats, cars, weapons…what the hell else would you call yourself?”

  “I’m the Ice Cream Lady.” Tired, hurt and defe
nsive, she kicked off the bedding and stood. “That’s all you were ever supposed to know. I cleaned up a few messes for ATL and CORE, so what? Instead of yelling at me for things that I can’t undo, admit what’s really bothering you.”

  He narrowed his eyes. “You know exactly what it is.”

  “Right. You want me home—in Tallahassee. I get it. I want to be here, too. But I’m obligated to go after that man.”

  “No. You’re choosing to go after him. No one is making you do anything. It’s all on you.”

  He was right. Staying with ATL until this case was officially over would be her choice. Since Liam was free because of her, she felt duty-bound. Cash, who’d spent his Army career ensuring soldiers could safely move forward without meeting with a roadside bomb, should comprehend her reasons.

  “It is my choice,” she said, edging around the bed. “I don’t want to fight about it, or disappoint you.” She wanted him to hold her, to understand that this was something she needed to do to waylay the guilt. When she reached him, she ran her hands along his arms. “If you were in my position, I think you’d do the same thing.”

  “I spent two years without you because I was too selfish to give up my job, and too scared to admit I was worried you’d reject me even if I did.” He took a step back, disengaging them. “At this point in my life, my number one priority would be you. Not getting off on the rush.”

  Tears filled her eyes. “I’m not staying with ATL because I get off on putting myself in danger. I’m doing it to clean up a mess I’ve made.”

  “Fucking up our marriage is the only mess you’re making,” he shouted, betrayal darkening his eyes. “Hey, but you’re the cleaner. You’ll make it all good, right? Sashay that sweet ass into town every few weeks for a weekend of sex to keep Cash happy.”

  “You’d know best how that works since you’ve been stringing me along for two years, and I was stupid enough to fall for it.” She hugged herself. “This is ridiculous, repo man. I don’t even know how you can compare stopping a murderer to your selfish need to keep the adrenaline rush going.”