by Leigh Tudor
She refused to break eye contact.
“You think you’re so special, Ava?” The muscle in Jasper’s jaw ticked, and she realized it was his breath that smelled like ass. “You think anyone here gives a damn about your opinion? You’re nobody. Person non-grata. You’d do well to remember that you’re anything but special.”
Her eyes turned to slits, willing to play the baiting game to see what he had up his sleeve. “I guess you could say I have a healthy self-image. How about you?” She moved around him slowly, purposely antagonizing him. She stopped inches from his ear. “Still telling yourself you’re a big man despite a less than average-sized ball sack?” She purposely glanced at his crotch and then backed up to watch the vein in his neck pulsate. “Not to worry. I’m sure even your lackluster sperm count could muster up a sea monkey or two.”
He chuckled, atypical bravado considering he didn’t bring any orderlies with him for protection.
“Oh, Ava, you needn’t worry your little head about my ability to procreate. Time will tell. But right now, there’s so much yet to be done.” And then his thin lips turned up. “With Charlotte.”
Ava’s heart missed a beat as he turned toward her cowering sister. “Come here, Charlotte,” he said, with an overly large grin, waving her over theatrically. “Come on now, don’t be shy.”
Charlotte made her way toward Jasper like she was working her way through sludge, or a Cambodian mine field.
“That’s it,” he said, putting his arm around her shoulders and pulling her into his side.
Charlotte swallowed as if she might purge, standing stock-still and hunched over.
“I have some good news,” Jasper said, running his spiny fingers down Charlotte’s braid. “You’re looking at the only son, and sole heir of Dr. Halstead’s assets, as well as the new director of this fine research facility.”
Ava tried to absorb his words as she contemplated how many bones she could break in the hand fondling her sister’s hair.
“On top of that, and this is the really good part, ladies, so pay close attention,” he paused for dramatic effect, “I have been named as Charlotte’s guardian.”
Charlotte sucked in what sounded like a sob.
And that’s when Ava knew.
That sick fuck.
Mara shook her head, not quite catching on. “You’re his son?” she asked, pointing toward the windows overlooking the hall, and then as if to clarify, “Halstead’s son?”
His eyes turned from his perusal of Charlotte to Mara. “And they call you a genius. Wow. Yes, I’m the doctor’s son. Blood-related.”
He pulled Charlotte closer to his side in a jovial manner, speaking to Ava and Mara as if they were challenged. “So, when I say Charlotte is going to perform at a piano concert in Prague—Charlotte is getting on a plane to perform at a concert in Prague. In the meantime, you two have an assignment on the books. You depart in the morning as well.”
“We could refuse,” Mara argued, but Ava already knew Jasper’s answer. She’d heard it too many times from the doctor.
She felt her pulse race as their options diminished.
“Please do,” he said, as if an open invitation. “And I will tell every criminal you and Mara have ever crossed paths with, who you are. Heck, I’ll even lead them to you.” He lowered his voice. “Exonerating the Center of any wrong-doing, of course. I mean, you are evil geniuses. There was only so much we could do to contain you.” He repositioned his grip, clasping Charlotte by her upper arm. “I think we all know the great lengths some of them would go to track you two down. And there’s no telling the extent of their revenge.
“And what about the artwork you pilfered?” he said to Mara. “I’m sure there’s a number of investigators who would love nothing more than inside information on the individual who painted all those replicas.” His beady eyes moved to Ava. “And the woman who masterminded the swaps.”
Ava waited for it. The prick wasn’t done yet.
“At the very least,” he said with a shrug, “I’ll make sure you never see Charlotte again.”
And there it was.
A sick feeling lodged in Ava’s chest. It was like he’d memorized the doctor’s personal handbook, Mind Manipulation for Assholes.
Grinning, he moved toward the door, oblivious or uncaring that he pulled a resistant Charlotte with him.
Ava’s heart pounded in her chest as intricately laid plans began to fall to pieces. It was happening all over again. They were being blackmailed, but this time by someone who had more to gain than just funding the Center and furthering his research.
And Charlotte was going to pay the price.
Charlotte openly cried, making Ava wonder how long and to what extent this had been going on.
Today, it was going to stop.
Jasper turned toward the exit, and with nothing more than a nod to Mara, the microphone was moving across the room with the speed and precision of a Chinese flying guillotine, landing a clean strike to the back of his head. The force was insufficient to take him out, but enough to give them time and the upper hand.
Releasing Charlotte’s arm, he fell to one knee, his shaking hand moving to the back of his head where blood dripped on his white coat. Ava, in position, knuckle-punched him in the temple with enough force to cause death, or at the very least, hemorrhaging. Jasper fell face forward onto the floor.
“Mara, tie him up,” Ava instructed, searching his pockets for his key badge.
Charlotte backed into a table and fell into a chair with her hand to her mouth. “Oh, my God.”
Ava felt for his carotid artery and found his pulse. She glanced at Mara. “Alive.”
Mara’s head ducked underneath the audio console and lifted a set of bundled cables. She pulled a small Bushcraft knife from her combat boot, found the locking mechanism on two cable ties. Moving beside Ava, she took the ties and methodically slipped them over his wrists and loafers.
“How do you know how to do that?” Charlotte asked, watching Mara. “What was he talking about? He mentioned criminals and . . . and replicas?”
Ava ignored her questions, working in lockstep with Mara, as if it were a pre-orchestrated event.
Charlotte didn’t know quite everything about their circumstances. In this case, certain assignments and a variety of crimes they were blackmailed into committing. But now wasn’t the time to explain.
Ava reared back on her haunches, talking to herself. “The badge will only get us so far. We’ll need his fingerprint to get out of the Center.” She looked up at Mara as she pulled the last cable tie taught.
Mara nodded, pulling the Bushcraft back out of her boot. “Fingerprint.”
Ava lifted and extended his arm as Mara firmly gripped his index finger, lowering it to the floor and lifting her knife.
“Oh my God, no!” Charlotte shouted, holding out her palms to stop them.
Ava looked over her shoulder, and her heart wrenched at her sister’s stricken face. “Char, we don’t have time for this.”
Charlotte shook her head frantically. “Please, don’t do it. We just . . . can’t.”
Ava looked toward the ceiling and sighed; mercy was not an emotion she embraced much. But Charlotte was innocent, and blissfully unaware of what she and Mara had become.
Giving Jasper’s repulsive, prone body a quick glance, she made her decision and gave Mara a look that said today was a day of firsts.
Mara nodded and lifted Jasper’s arms as Ava helped heave his inert body over Mara’s shoulder.
“Lead the way,” Mara said, as she repositioned him for better balance.
Chapter Three
“The highest form of pure thought is in mathematics.”
—Plato
Athenian philosopher during
the Classical Period in Ancient Greece
* * *
Ava skirted through hallways, scoping out the corridors, which were uncharacteristically empty. Apparently, the longstanding employees of the research facility
were busy standing graveside.
She navigated each hall with a growing sense of relief. The empty corridors allowed them to move swiftly and avoid unnecessary force.
In truth, the entire staff wasn’t a horde of evil scientists. The real shit heels were the ones who knew the truth behind how the sisters came to the facility, the doctor’s personal sycophants: Jasper; Ms. Garmond, also known as Charlotte’s “handler”; and the facility’s neurosurgeon, Dr. Vielle, dubbed “Dr. Vile” by Ava and Mara.
The others? They bought into the doctor’s mocked-up psychological profiles labeling Ava and Mara as borderline psychotics, struggling with reality and spewing conspiracy theory nonsense.
Why all the cutting-edge security? Just as the doctor explained to his existing staff and new hires, the means necessary to ensure the older sisters didn’t escape the grounds and wreak their psychotic havoc on the unsuspecting locals.
And what a pitiful picture he painted for himself. The benevolent doctor taking in three orphaned sisters, only to discover the older ones harbored severe mental disorders, including, but not limited to paranoid schizophrenia and antisocial personality disorder, not that dissimilar to the diagnoses of several notorious serial killers.
Lucky for the sisters, and the community at large, the doctor was the best guardian possible in terms of studying their psychotic tendencies, potentially discovering new treatments and at the very least, controlling and subduing their erratic behavior.
And let’s not forget the sisters were certified geniuses, making it all the more critical that the staff avoids buying into any elaborate stories or emotional pleas for help.
Which meant Ava and Mara had no one to talk to or confide in, other than each other. With few exceptions, the staff worked around them, dodging them at all costs and treating them as if they were virtually invisible.
Ava’s greatest fear was that after years of endless tutoring, questionable experimental treatments, and constant threats of separation from her sisters due to non-compliance, that she might, in fact, be just a little bit crazy.
At the very least, a tad unstable.
Ava had reached another badge-reader, and they were fast working their way through an area of the facility they’d only used when departing on assignment.
Thankfully, with Mara’s ninja level of fitness, her pace never slowed, nor did her breathing become labored.
Ava turned a corner, waved them through, and stopped in front of a security door with a biometric reader. Mara turned, and Ava lifted Jasper’s finger. The door opened, and they stepped into a small, enclosed room with another door at the end, a mantrap.
Unsure as to why alarms weren’t sounding off from the security cameras lining each of the corridors, Ava kept moving forward until they reached the door at the end of the mantrap, lifted Jasper’s finger, and placed it on the last reader.
The door began to open, and they held their breath as to what they might find on the other side. Ava half expected a team of combat-trained security guards at the ready to bring them down. After inflicting some gratuitous pain, of course.
“Don’t let them touch Charlotte,” Ava instructed as they leaned against the wall.
They held their breath and then—nothing.
To the left was an office behind glass. A single security guard sat with his back to the window as he watched the graveside ceremony from one of twelve surveillance monitors.
Ava sighed with relief at their luck. The doctor’s funeral was a gift that just kept giving.
Ava turned to Mara and Charlotte, forefinger to her mouth, indicating to be quiet and quick. They each moved past the window to the front vestibule, stopping short at an outdoor exit. Ava waved Mara and Charlotte back as she peeked outside at the parking lot. Her heart began to beat wildly. Jasper’s Mercedes was parked in the space next to the doorway.
She turned to Mara, her two fingers turning in a circle. Mara nodded and moved accordingly, allowing Ava access to Jasper’s pockets. She shoved her hand into his lab coat and then a pants pocket and grinned as her fingers touched metal, pulling out a ring of keys.
Ava whispered, “I’ll open the trunk. The lid will help shield us as we dump him inside.”
“Just let me throw him in a closet and be done with it,” Mara argued.
Ava shook her head. “It’ll buy us more time if we leave him in the woods outside of town.” It would be hours before Jasper woke up, found the trunk release, and managed his way out of the woods. Without allowing further argument, she slipped out the front door.
No one in sight.
Her fingers brushed the trunk icon on the key fob and it popped up soundlessly.
Gotta love German technology.
She motioned Mara over, and they moved quickly through the door toward the car, dumping the man into the cavernous trunk. Charlotte bounced on her toes behind them, scanning the parking lot for witnesses.
Ava pushed the trunk icon on the key fob, and the trunk lid lowered soundlessly.
“Hand over the keys,” Mara said, holding her hand out toward Ava.
Ava shook her head. “I’m driving.”
“We both know I’m the better driver. Give me the keys.”
Ava balked. “We’re not doing this ‘fast and furious’ style where you crash through the security gates, alerting everyone within a fifty-mile radius.”
“Fuck that shit. We need to burn tires if we expect to make it out of here.”
Ava spoke slowly. “I’ve got the keys and I’m calling the shots.” She hesitated, telling herself to address the topic later but just couldn’t hold back. “And don’t think for one minute that I didn’t notice the knife in your boot,” she hissed. “That knife is mine and you know it.”
Mara’s eyes narrowed, waiting too long to respond. “It’s my knife. I picked it up last month during the job in Vienna.”
“That’s a flat-out lie. It was hidden in the hole I made in the sheetrock behind my bathroom mirror. And it has my initials engraved on it.”
“Who the fuck does that?” Mara asked, throwing her arms up and leaning toward Ava. “Who puts their initials on a weapon they’re going to use to off somebody?”
Charlotte gasped, the older sisters forgetting she was there.
Crap. So much for protecting Charlotte’s innocence. Cooling her temper, Ava bent at the waist, holding her little sister by her forearms. “We don’t ‘off’ anyone unless we have to, Char.”
Mara snorted and rolled her eyes. “Oh, that helped.”
Charlotte looked at them as if they were strangers. “Who-who are you?” She looked at Mara. “You told me you were traveling to art exhibits”—and then to Ava—“and you were attending math conventions.”
“Those weren’t total lies,” Mara said with weak conviction. “We hit one or two . . . a few years ago.”
Again, they were wasting time.
“We’ll address this later,” Ava asserted. “But now we have to focus on getting past gate security.” She opened the driver’s-side door and slipped behind the wheel, and Mara entered through the passenger door, as Charlotte scooted into the back seat. Once everyone was settled, Ava pressed the start button. The engine turned over softly, almost purring.
So close. Just one more hoop to jump through. Security going out of the facility was just as stringent as going in. It was in their best interest to get through without causing any alarm or suspicion. But if that wasn’t possible, Ava would have to channel her sister’s driving skills and burn some tires.
Her heart pounded in her chest as she pulled up to the security gate and lowered the car window.
She didn’t recognize the guard. That was good. Freakishly good. Annnddd—he was young, early to mid-twenties. She twisted her body with one arm over the door, her cleavage in perfect view.
“Please, be straight; please, be straight. . . .” she repeated as he opened the sliding glass partition.
She glanced down to see if her heart might literally explode from her che
st, noticing that due to the amount of adrenaline coursing through her body, her nipples could literally cut glass. Huh, perfect timing for some sexual manipulation.
That said, despite seducing a number of marks over the years, this one was by far the most important. Failure was not an option.
She smiled brightly at the young guard who was gaunt, compared to the gorillas that usually manned the main entrance of the facility.
“Hi, we’re Jasper’s nieces. He told us to go on back to the hotel.” She lowered her voice to a sultry setting as if letting him in on a secret. “Uncle Jasper said we weren’t properly dressed for a funeral.”
His eyes were pasted to her chest. He folded one arm over the other and leaned down. “Yeah, uncles are funny that way.”
Bingo. Hetero at 11:00.
“Tell me about it.” She rolled her eyes. “We came for a visit and out of nowhere, some guy he works for ups and croaks. We show up for the funeral, like he asked, and well—” She leaned back so he could see the rest of her inappropriate ensemble. “He just about split a gut when he saw what we were wearing.”
He leaned farther out the window as his eyes took in her bootie shorts and candy-red stilettos.
He took a long swallow. “For the record, I think you look just fine.”
Ah, how cute, he was flirting with her. But this was no time for drawing out her sexy skills. “Really? Why, aren’t you the sweetest?”
Mara mumbled in the background. “Who are you channeling? Ellie May Clampett?”
Ava discreetly waved her back with her right arm. “If you could just let us through, we’ll be out of your hair.”
“No problem,” he said, and Ava’s heart palpitated with success. “Hand me your security pass. I can let you through.”
Hmm, a security pass.
Shit.
During assignments, when driving Ava and Mara to the private airport, Jasper always gave the guard a pass to get both in and out of the facility.