He handed it to her and she punched in Linc’s number. While it rang, she turned back to Forsythe. “You’ve been here before.” She pointed to the television. “Where’s that room?” Allie moved back to the door.
“Linc St. John.”
“Linc? Is it really you?” Never had she been so glad to hear a voice.
“Allie!”
Tears flooded her eyes and she blinked them back. “I’m at Henry’s house. His other house. It’s—I don’t know where—”
“We know where it is. We’re right outside.”
“Then get in here. Nevsky shot Henry, but he’s not dead.” At least she didn’t think so. He’d been breathing and talking, the last she’d heard, and no more shots had been fired. “Nevsky doesn’t know Forsythe and I are in here.” Yet.
“Is Forsythe a part of this?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Do you know of any booby traps? Trip wires? Anything like that?”
“I don’t know. Nevsky didn’t have any problem getting all the way to the door, but I have an idea he’s been here a few times.”
“We’re on our way.”
“Be careful.” Allie left the phone on and tucked it into her pocket. She turned her attention back to the doctor. The poor man looked shell-shocked. “The room,” she said. “Where is it?”
“I . . . I don’t know. I think it’s the one at the end of the hallway to the left of this room,” Forsythe said. “He showed it to me when he had it almost finished. Said it was going to be some kind of lab.” He scrubbed a hand down the side of his face. “Who was that at the door? Do you know?”
“Yeah, I do. Tell me about the room.”
“Um . . . he said it was his special project for research, that he was still studying insects. In fact, I think I remember those enclosures that the insects are in.”
“I saw that door at the end of the hall and just figured it led to the garage,” Allie said.
“It does, but then there’s a small hallway to the right and that room is just off of it.”
She had to get Forsythe to Catherine. It was very possible the woman was dead, but if she wasn’t and had any chance at all of surviving, Allie had to get her help. But how was she supposed to do that when Nevsky was here with what was obviously his own agenda? Would he shoot her on sight? Could they sneak out of the bedroom and get to the room that held Catherine without Nevsky or Henry seeing them?
Her eyes landed on Henry’s keys on the counter. No doubt, one of those keys fit the door that would lead them to Catherine.
She stood still. Listening. Heart and head pounding together. You can do this, Allie. You don’t have a choice. Catherine’s family needs you to do it.
A hand landed on her shoulder and she barely stifled the sharp cry. She spun. “What?”
“You can’t go out there. Wait until help gets here.”
“Right now they’re making sure they’re not going to get blown up on entering. We can’t wait on them.” She darted out, grabbed the keys, and returned to the room to sort through them. “Car, house, office,” she muttered as she eliminated the ones she recognized.
That left about five she would need to try with no one seeing her.
“You can’t do this,” Forsythe said.
“So we should just leave Catherine to die?”
He swallowed. “No. Of course not.” A pause. “Tell me what to do.”
“FBI may breach. If they do, you stay in here and stay low. Keep your hands where they can see them when they come in. They know who you are.” Had probably followed him here. She loved the brilliant people she worked with.
“But I need to help.”
“You can help when I know for sure that Catherine’s in that room.” For a moment the room spun and she shut her eyes to let the sensation pass.
“What if they see you?”
“Just be ready.”
He raked a hand through his hair and narrowed his eyes. “I’m ready. I can’t believe what a schmuck I’ve been.”
“Not a schmuck. A friend to someone who took advantage of you.”
His eyes widened. “I put a tracker in you. He said he needed to do that because you were being threatened and if someone managed to get you, then he had to be able to find you.”
Glad to have the explanation, but impatient to get to Catherine, she pointed. “You ready?”
He nodded and Allie slipped out the door to hear Henry say, “. . . and . . . and . . . I can give you Linc St. John.”
“The man who killed my son?”
“Yes.”
The lie infuriated her. But . . . first things first. She stood in front of the door and twisted the knob. Locked, of course. She tried the first key. Nothing. She shot a glance over her shoulder and could see someone’s shoulder. Hurrying, she tried the second key. Wonder of wonders, it worked and she opened the door to a room-sized hallway. She registered that he’d probably converted part of the garage, resulting in the weird layout. The door on the left had a dead-bolt lock on the outside, but no key required. She turned it and shoved the door open.
And there was Catherine on the wet floor. The ants were mostly gone, drowned and washed away into the drains in the concrete floor. Allie hated to imagine what else Henry had in mind when he installed those.
She darted back to “her” room and motioned to Forsythe, who grabbed his bag and followed her to kneel beside Catherine. He placed two fingers against her neck and frowned. “I’ve got a slight pulse, but she’s got a lot of poison in her. If she were allergic, she’d be dead already.”
Insects buzzed behind their screens and Allie shivered. “What do you need?”
“To get her to a hospital.”
“Well, well, what have we here?”
Allie spun. Nevsky stood in the door, his weapon aimed at her.
28
Linc wanted to kick the door in, but he didn’t have to. Nevsky had kindly left it unlocked—and unguarded, now that the two bodyguards were down. He stopped just before entry. “Everyone a go?”
The chopper, with its thermal imaging capabilities, roared in closer. “FLIR shows several heat sources. Three at the back of the house, five or six . . . under it? No, wait. Three. Nope, there’s another one.” A pause. “Something’s not right. The number keeps changing.”
“Just be prepared for anything,” Linc said.
“Let’s do this,” Mark’s voice came over the COMMS.
Linc lifted the phone to his ear. “Allie? We’re coming in now in a dynamic entry.” Meaning fast and furious. “Be ready.”
“Put the gun down, Nevsky.” Her rock-steady voice laced with steel came over the phone. “It’s over.”
“Hold up. We have a hostage situation.” Fury slammed him. He knew they should have gone in earlier. “Mark, Izzy, Derek, Brady, follow me. We’re going slow and steady. Keep an eye out for Henry.” He had no illusions that the man wouldn’t shoot one of them on sight.
Linc stepped over the threshold, gripping his M4 carbine in one hand and the phone in his other. Blood on the wood floor greeted him. Henry’s? He stepped around it and turned the corner into the great room. The kitchen was straight ahead. He moved quickly. Through the door that led to the garage. Saw Nevsky standing there with a gun aimed into the room. “FBI! Show me your hands! Show me your hands!”
When Linc’s yell reverberated through the house, Allie took advantage of Nevsky’s split-second distraction and dove at him. She clipped him around the knees and he went down with a hard thud. His weapon discharged and the bullet whizzed past her cheek, then his gun fell to the floor next to him.
“He shot the bees!” Forsythe’s cry came from behind her.
Nevsky hefted his massive bulk into a sitting position. Allie swept out a hand and knocked the weapon across the floor. He lunged for it, and for a man of his size, he moved faster than she’d anticipated.
“Linc!”
She grabbed Nevsky’s hand as he closed his fingers around the grip of the weapon and tri
ed to slam his hand against the floor. Unfortunately, he was strong—and she wasn’t at her strongest. He pushed against her hold and Allie’s grip slipped.
In the background, she heard Linc yelling but couldn’t allow her concentration to waver. With her left hand latched on to Nevsky’s wrist, she hefted her body and managed to scramble on top of the man and jam an elbow into his throat. His struggles intensified and she held on, feeling like she was back in college trying to ride the mechanical bull at the local hangout.
“Linc!”
“I can’t get a good shot! You’re in the way!”
Finally, Nevsky released the gun just as her grip slipped. He growled and swung a fist at her face. She launched herself backward and he missed.
Only now Nevsky was unarmed.
“On your stomach!” Linc charged forward. “On your face! Let me see your hands.”
Bees swarmed from the room and Nevsky noticed. He screamed and threw his hands up. Forsythe had Catherine in his arms and was ducking against the onslaught of the angry insects as he ran down the hall to the front door.
Breathing hard, Nevsky tried to scramble to his feet, screaming and swatting at the air around him. “Get them away! Get them away! They’re stinging me!” One hand dropped to slap his pocket, and Allie sat frozen, hoping none of the bees would aim for her. With all of Nevsky’s frantic movements, they were going after him.
“Be still!” she said. “Stop moving!”
He was too far gone to even comprehend her orders.
From the corner of her eye, she saw Forsythe helped out of the house by Izzy and Brady. Catherine was getting help. Nevsky was weaponless and helpless against his biggest fear.
She reached into the mess of bees, grabbed his arm, and pulled. Linc snagged his other arm and together they got him out of the house, where he fell to the ground, rolling and crying, screaming for help.
“Get the hose!” Linc ordered.
Seconds later, a hard stream of water covered the three of them, spraying for a good five minutes until all the bees were gone or dead.
Nevsky went still. His eyes caught hers and the absolute darkness there sent chills skating up her spine. “This is your fault.”
Allie swept up the EpiPen that had fallen out of Nevsky’s pocket during his battle with the bees. She popped the safety cap off and planned to offer it to him in case he needed it.
Linc still held his weapon on the man. Water dripped from his brow, but his focus never wavered.
“My fault?” she asked. “Why don’t you put the blame where it belongs?”
“What do you mean?”
“This started fifteen years ago when you convinced my brother to kill my family.”
“Your brother,” he gasped. “He wasn’t your brother. He was my son. Your mother kept him from me for the first seventeen years of his life, and your father”—he spit the word—“was going to take him away, so I took him first.” His dark gaze turned to Linc. “And you killed him.”
“It wasn’t him, it was Henry,” Allie said.
Nevsky stilled. “He would not.”
“But he did, because Henry was killing everyone who knew I was alive. And Gregori was one of those people.”
Nevsky seemed to have forgotten about the bees. “He said you were hunting Gregori and that it was only a matter of time before you found him with all of the resources available to you, that you wanted to kill him and that he was going to take you away forever if I would just help him.”
“And it didn’t hurt that he would be forever in your debt, did it?”
“Indeed. And you ruined all of that.”
“It was my pleasure. Enjoy prison.”
Nevsky rolled in a sudden heave of his bulk. Linc hollered at him to stop moving. A sharp pain shot through her calf. She cried out, turned to see a knife in Nevsky’s hand coming back at her. She ducked, felt the blade swish past her face. She swung out with the EpiPen and caught the man in the ear at the same time Linc fired. Nevsky’s body jerked, his eyes held hers, then closed.
Forever.
Brady swept the weapons away from Nevsky and cuffed him before turning to her. Linc dropped beside her and clamped a hand around her bleeding leg.
“It’s nothing,” she said, unable to take her eyes from him. “I can’t believe you’re alive.”
“Daria and I are harder to take out than we look.”
“Apparently.” A thousand needles shot up her hands and arms, and she realized she’d been stung a number of times. “Getting hard to breathe, Linc.”
“Are you allergic?”
“Not that I know of, but I’ve got a lot of stings and my throat feels a bit tight and—” She wheezed.
“Need a paramedic over here!”
Allie crawled to Nevsky and reached into his pocket—and pulled out the second EpiPen he was never without. She released the cap and jabbed herself in the thigh. Looking up, she caught Linc’s startled gaze. “Better safe than sorry.”
Then promptly passed out.
Linc awakened slowly with a crick in his neck. He turned his head to see Allie still sleeping in the hospital bed. His mother stood just inside the door, whispering his name. Linc drew in a deep breath and stood, then joined her outside the room.
“I decided to stop by on my way to the station,” she said. “How is she doing?” She touched the welts on his hands. “How are you doing?”
“We’re fine. Now. They gave me an antihistamine just in case and a topical cream for the itching. As for Allie, she’s been sleeping a lot. When she wakes from the nightmares, I think it helps that I’m here to talk her through them.”
“I’m sure it does.” Her lips tightened. “It was Henry all along?”
He nodded. “Working with Nevsky. Allie came to and explained a lot in the ambulance before the paramedics gave her something to sedate her. It was obvious she was in a lot of pain. Anyway, apparently Henry had some kind of obsession with Allie that started when she first interviewed with him a year ago. It grew until he decided to fake her death, then spirit her away to his well-secured house on the lake where she was to live out the rest of her days with him. When he saw that Allie and I were getting close, he decided he had to get rid of me in order to have any chance at all of winning Allie’s affections.”
His mother shuddered. “What a sick man.”
Linc rubbed his eyes. “Thank God that Allie is Allie. If he’d gone after anyone else, he probably would have gotten away with it.”
“Yes. Thank God. I think that’s what we should all be doing.”
“I agree.”
“What was Nevsky’s role in everything?”
“He agreed to help Henry pull everything off, only he didn’t count on his daughter helping Allie and us bring him down.”
“Daria.” His mother smiled. “I like that girl.”
“Thanks for letting her stay with you until we can figure out what to do with her.”
“She should be in custody of CPS.”
“She’ll be eighteen in three weeks, Mom. And besides that, she needs police protection. Henry’s still out there. I wouldn’t put it past him to snatch Daria to use as bait.”
She frowned. “True. Then again, he could be gone, never to be heard from again.”
“I’m not willing to take that chance.”
“I don’t think I would be either. Daria’s fine where she is.”
“I know Allie would take her in, but she’s got a few days before she’ll be back on her feet. She’s got some powerful antibiotics running through her, and her fever spiked last night.”
His mother nodded. “How did Henry manage to escape? I’m still flabbergasted at that.”
Linc sighed. “He’s a brilliant man, Mom. He had everything planned down to the last detail. Including an underground escape route. He built a tunnel with thermal imaging in mind.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning, he had dummies with heated coils in his tunnel. They were on some kind of timer. Wh
en they were on, it looked like a person was there. The timer turned them on and off, making it confusing enough that he got the response delay he was after. He was gone before they knew what to do.”
She shook her head. “I’ll request to be Daria’s guardian until she turns eighteen. I’m pretty sure I’ll pass the background check.”
Linc hugged her. “You’re amazing.”
She gave him a tight squeeze and he held her for just a moment longer. When she pulled away, a sheen of tears stood in her eyes. “I hate what you’ve just gone through, but I’m so glad that darkness that was hanging over you is gone.”
“Darkness?”
“You know what I’m talking about.”
He did. “Thanks. For everything.”
“How are you feeling about having to shoot Nevsky?”
He rubbed his chin and sighed. “There’s always that heaviness for taking a life, but it was either him or Allie. There aren’t any regrets.”
“Good.”
Ruthie appeared around the corner and headed straight for them. “Hi, Mom, you checking up on the troublemaker?”
Linc put on an affronted frown. “Hey now. Seems to me you’ve had your own share of being the troublemaker. Better be careful throwing those words around.”
She laughed. “I guess you’ve got me there.” Turning serious, she nodded to the room. “How’s she doing?”
“She’s sedated for now,” Linc said. “She’s got a lot of healing to do.” Ruthie had been tied up in surgery when they arrived almost twenty-four hours ago. She’d been by twice since.
“Does she know Henry’s still out there?” his mother asked.
“No.”
“Then where are the guards for her room?”
“We’re not putting them on it.”
Ruthie raised a brow. “You’re drawing him here, aren’t you?”
“Every person on this floor is an agent. Including the doctor and two nurses. The patients in the other beds are also agents—ones Henry’s never met before. If he sets foot on this floor, he’s done.”
“And if he doesn’t?”
Linc sighed. “Then we go looking for him.”
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