by Julie Frost
She didn’t hang up, and he heard her drumming her short, unpainted nails on some surface or other. Finally, she said, “You know what? I think I’ll take my chances with him. Because maybe I deserve it if he comes after me.” A click and the “call ended” screen told him that he’d lost her.
Most of the people who worked for him didn’t have that much of a conscience, and he wondered if she’d perhaps become yet another liability he needed to clear up. He scraped his hand over his face. Rather than making his life simpler, Idna’s cure had filled it with complications.
It wasn’t fair.
O O O
Michelle McFoucher unknowingly mirrored her ex-boss’s gesture, rubbing her face with frustration. Her elderly long-haired dachshund Franz licked her hand, and she absently scratched him behind the ears. She’d managed all of four hours of sleep, broken by nightmares and prickled by guilt. She had no idea what she was going to do as far as her career went, but not working for Ostheim Industries seemed like a step in the right direction.
Her phone rang again, and she stared at it as if it were a particularly venomous snake. The caller ID said “Alex Jarrett,” but that had to be a joke.
Didn’t it?
Why would her boss’s chief rival call her out of the blue like this?
Hesitantly, she picked up. “Hello?”
“Dr. Michelle McFoucher, please.” She’d met Jarrett, of course, and she recognized his voice—he was calling her personally instead of having his hyper-competent personal assistant do it. The day couldn’t possibly get more surreal.
“This is she,” she answered, as if in a dream.
“Dr. McFoucher, Alex Jarrett. I’d really like to talk to you about some work you’ve been doing for Hans Ostheim.”
She snapped to attention. “I can’t do that, Mr. Jarrett, even if I want to. I’ve signed a non-disclosure agreement.”
“I think you might be interested in one of the side effects of your research.”
That particular carrot wasn’t tempting, so she cut it off at the pass, wearily wondering how he knew. “Is he mad? Because I wouldn’t blame him.”
“Why, Dr. McFoucher, him who?”
“Mr. Jarrett, let’s not play games here. We’re both too smart for that. Should I hide? Because I do have a bolt-hole. Is that why you called, to warn me?” She started planning on what she’d take, what she’d leave behind—and was saddened by how little she had that she valued. Franz. A few family keepsakes. That was it.
“Ben’s not holding a grudge. Very much. But I’d really like it if you’d talk to me about the specifics of the procedure, just to set my mind at ease and see if there’s anything I can do for him.”
“Mr. Jarrett, I’ll be blunt, okay, because that’s the only way I know how to be.”
She took a deep breath. “Last time I saw Ben Lockwood, a heart monitor and my own medical knowledge told me that he’d died as a direct result of something I did to him—against his will and in a particularly cruel manner. I’m less than comfortable with this knowledge, and I’d really rather pretend it never happened. In fact, I’m just about ready to change my name and go get a job on the East Coast as a waitress, frankly.”
She hadn’t meant to be quite that blunt. She hadn’t even been that blunt with herself, yet.
“That would be a tragedy. I’ve seen your work, Dr. McFoucher, and you’ve done some amazing things. Come talk to me,” he urged. “What can it hurt?”
Alex Jarrett was one of the few people on the planet who might understand a discussion about this, and she knew that she should talk to someone about it. A psychiatrist was right out, because they were for crazy people. A priest would work … if she believed in God, which she didn’t, so, no. Her mother had been dead for over a year.
Her mouth twisted. Alex Jarrett, Father Confessor. She wondered if the role would suit him, if he had a couch and would take notes, if he’d make her cookies. If he’d help her make sense of the chaos her mind had become since she’d violated her own ethics out of fatalism and the notion that if she didn’t do it, Ostheim would simply have found someone who would, who might be less gentle about … killing a man. She remembered the silver chain and Lockwood’s smoking skin and panicked struggles. Not that she’d been gentle. “Fine. What time?”
“I’ll have my driver pick you up at one, how’s that? We’ll have lunch.”
If she wanted to escape, at least he was leaving her a window. “Okay.”
O O O
Alex looked up from a microscope as the sound of Megan’s heels on the stairs alerted him to her presence in the basement lab. She gave him a wan smile. “Rough night?” he asked.
“You could say that. I saw Ben upstairs—I guess he had a hard time, too?”
Alex frowned. “Ostheim came after him. I have no idea how he got away, but he managed it somehow.”
“Then it’s not over yet. Why can’t that idiot man just be happy his wife is cured?”
“Vampires are weird about their offspring. There’s a whole psycho-sexual dynamic that goes into it, emphasis on the ‘psycho.’ Maybe Ostheim’s jealous.”
She lifted an eyebrow. “Been doing some research?”
“Eh, a little, in between all this. I have to admit it’s interesting.” He waved a hand and leaned back in the chair. “Of course, a good ninety percent of what’s out there is bullshit, but enough of it isn’t that I’m getting a good idea of what’s what. Werewolves are a lot simpler. They’re basically big dogs with an inflated sense of pack.” Which explained why Ben had torn that one guy to pieces—the man had injured his mate.
“I can see you’ve been busy.” She gestured around at the controlled chaos of the lab. “What have you found out? And did you remember to eat something besides one of those horrible shakes?”
“I’ve figured out the nanotech, for one thing. Very tricksy stuff, that is—I should have been paying Reed more because the man was a genius. And I have a lunch appointment with Dr. Michelle McFoucher, so I’ll eat something good for me there.” He couldn’t keep the smugness out of his voice; he had made an appointment all by himself that he had every intention of keeping. Ha. “Could you print out that email about Ben dying? I’d like to take it along.”
“Gotcha,” Janni said from across the room.
“Who’ve you caught now?” Alex asked with good humor.
“Brandon Kincaid. His phone records tell me he talked to Ostheim on Saturday, not too long after Reed used the nanotech on Ben. And guess who checked into a no-tell motel last night and used his card to put gas in his car and eat dinner.” Janni tapped her teeth with her pen. “Either he isn’t worried about being found or he’s dumb as a stump. Want me to go get him?”
“Oh, yes. I’m betting he knows something. The timing of him taking off is just too coincidental.” Alex shrugged. “And if he doesn’t know anything, we can just cut him loose.”
“Back in a flash.” She got up, checked her purse and her gun, and strode out the door. Alex knew exactly why Ben called her “Hermia.” Five-foot-nothing of fire-forged steel; little and fierce, indeed.
Alex looked at his watch. “And I have to go too, Miss Graham. I have a lunch appointment with a lovely scientist.”
“Here’s that email,” Megan said, handing it to him.
He gave her a jaunty grin. “Things are looking up.”
His grin slipped a little when he realized that Phelps wouldn’t be driving him, and why—but Harris, one of his backup drivers, was waiting on standby. Alex grabbed a laptop to do some work on for the trip over to McFoucher’s place and piled into the back of the Bentley, ignoring the tightening in his chest and focusing on what he had to do.
He was just glad that Megan hadn’t asked him if he’d slept at all. Glossing over that sort of thing wasn’t ever easy because she had a tendency to nag. But he fed off the energy he generated in the throes of really good research, and sleeping wasn’t really an option. He knew he’d pay for it later, he always did, but for n
ow?
Getting chased by an angry Pamplona bull had nothing on this.
O O O
After pouring herself a cup of coffee, Megan dove into the wreckage of Alex’s schedule. The first thing she needed to do was placate the Board—several members were wildly unhappy with her boss, and a couple were making noises about injunctions and no-confidence votes.
The current emergency seemed to be winding down, and she hoped it would be completely over within the next couple of days. With this in mind, Megan fired off some properly apologetic emails, setting up yet another teleconference for Thursday at nine in the morning.
Her phone rang a few minutes later. She looked at the caller ID and cringed. Calls from board members never boded well.
“Hello, Mr. Clarke. What can I do for you today?”
“Nine in the morning seems ambitious,” he said without preamble, “knowing Alex the way I do.”
“He’ll be there if I have to drag him by the scruff of the neck,” Megan said.
“See that he is. Barnhardt and Peterson are getting restless again, and they’re not the only ones. Canceling three meetings in a row was … impolitic.”
“I know.” The problem was, she fretted, that she couldn’t exactly say that the reason they’d canceled the Saturday meeting was because Alex had been shot while rescuing someone he’d hired off the books to look into industrial espionage they thought might be coming from inside the house. Even though Clarke and Alex were actually friends, Clarke could only be pushed so far, and he’d be less than pleased at this latest turn of events. Megan could have lived without it herself.
“Especially since we specially scheduled the one on Saturday.” He clearly wanted to know why, without coming right out and asking.
“It was a real emergency, Mr. Clarke. I wish I could tell you more, but I really can’t without clearing it with Mr. Jarrett first. But Thursday should be fine.”
“Make sure that he’s there, and sober. He doesn’t have many friends left on the board, Miss Graham. I don’t know how much longer I can hold off some of the more vociferous members.”
Her mouth turned down at one corner. “I’ll do my best.”
“I know you will. He works you too hard.”
“I’m used to it.”
“Thursday. Nine. He won’t get another chance.”
“Yes, sir.”
They said their goodbyes, and Megan blew a wisp of hair off her forehead. She would get him to that teleconference. It wasn’t like he even had to leave the house, for heaven’s sake.
O O O
Janni pulled into the lot of the Sleepy-Time Motel, which had seen better days and declared on a faded sign that it had kitchenettes by the day, week, or month. She knew they also had rooms by the hour because it was her job to know things like that, but Kincaid had paid for a week, and his was the only car in the lot beside the rooms with kitchens.
For someone who’d cut and run as abruptly as he had, he wasn’t covering his tracks too well.
The motel only had one floor, and she knocked on the door directly in front of his car, even though surely he wouldn’t have parked right—
The curtain twitched open, and Kincaid’s unshaven face stared blearily at her. She recognized it from his employee badge picture, and he looked like he’d either been drinking heavily or hadn’t gotten any sleep. Maybe both. But he shrugged and opened the door, giving her a come-hither look he completely spoiled by slurring the first sentence out of his mouth.
“Knew someone’d find me sooner’r later.”
The reek of cheap whiskey hit her in a noxious wave. Yep, both. Great.
“C’mon in an’ have a drink, baby.”
Yeah, no. Janni grabbed him by his ear, dragged him to her car, and tossed him into the passenger seat, while he yelped a protest. “Your boss wants to talk to you,” she said. “Throw up on my upholstery and I’ll take it out of your hide.”
“No, no, no,” he said, as they pulled out onto the freeway, “I don’ wanna talk to Reed. Reed did some bad things …”
“Reed’s dead. It’s Jarrett who wants to see you.”
Kincaid scrambled for the door handle, but they were at freeway speed, and the locks were controlled from her side—for several very good reasons. “What killed him?” Kincaid asked, breaking into a sweat.
That was an interesting question. He hadn’t asked “who” or “how did he die,” but “what.” That told her he knew something, all right, and that their instinct to hunt him down had been correct.
Janni just hoped that he wouldn’t vomit in her car, because he’d turned distinctly green when she’d said Reed was dead, but she decided to poke him a little just as a test. “Werewolf. You know anything about that?”
He turned even greener, if that was possible. “Please take me home. I told him it was a dumb idea. I told him not to use it on a subject we couldn’t control. He’d never listen to me, though, would he, because I’m just a lowly assistant with one Ph.D instead of three.”
Janni glanced at him sideways. She had the feeling that he was a lowly assistant because his first instinct was to cut and run and disappear into a bottle at the first sign of a crisis. “Yeah, well, my boyfriend wasn’t too happy with it either, even if it saved his life,” she pointed out acerbically. “Side effects, my ass.”
“Side effects?” Kincaid giggled. “Is that what he told you?”
“We know now that it was the intended effect. But you need to help us with this, Kincaid. Just to salve your own conscience, if nothing else.”
He stared at her owlishly. “But it saved his life, right? So I got nothin’ to feel bad about.”
“Other than the fact that you’ve been dealing with Ostheim under the table?” She smacked the back of his head. “No, nothing at all.”
He had the grace to look abashed. “Oh, you know about that?”
“We know everything except how to fix this.”
“Not sure it can be fixed.”
She glared straight ahead through the windshield. “Neither am I. But we’re damn sure going to try.”
O O O
Alex fidgeted in the back of the Bentley, waiting for Michelle McFoucher to either show up—or not. At five minutes after one, Harris opened the car door, and she slid onto the seat next to him.
“I was starting to wonder if you’d come,” he said. He noted, almost absently, that she was attractive in a severe sort of way, no makeup, all business, her silver-shot black hair pulled back into a bun that made the angles of her face stand out.
“I nearly didn’t.”
“I’m glad you did. First things first.” He handed her the email. “Did you send this?”
She didn’t react except for a lifted eyebrow. “Your people are good.”
“Ben figured it was you. I’ve found that everyone seems to be underestimating him.”
“It’s the baby seal look, I think,” she said thoughtfully. “He seems so innocent, until he hits you with something that tells you he knows exactly what’s going on.” She examined the stitching on the leather seats. “He knew we were going to kill him before I did, frankly.”
The car stopped, and Harris opened the door. Alex handed Dr. McFoucher out in front of one of his favorite seafood restaurants. “I hope this place meets with your approval.”
Startled, she said, “I didn’t really expect you to take me out to eat.”
“Far be it from me to invite a lady to lunch and then renege. Surely my reputation is better than that.”
“Well, yes, but under the circumstances—”
“The circumstances being that someone who works for me got hurt on the job and I’m trying to make it right, and you can help.” He opened the door to the restaurant for her.
“Even though I’m one of the people who hurt him.” Here she was being blunt again, and Alex found himself liking her.
“Who better to help him?”
The hostess greeted them and led them to their seats. Alex ordered a scotc
h, and McFoucher wanted a lemonade, and they perused the menu while they talked.
“I don’t know how much help I’ll be,” McFoucher said. “I know what we did, but I have no idea how it worked.”
“Any information you can give us will be more than what we have.”
The waitress came by, and they ordered. McFoucher got the lobster, which Alex noted with a grin behind his hand, because he could afford it and that meant she was sensible, and he picked the shrimp etouffee.
After the waitress left, he said, “And whatever Ostheim is paying you, I can pay more.”
She drummed her fingers. “I resigned from Ostheim Industries yesterday.”
“Perfect. I’ll call my HR department and set you up wherever you like.”
“I also signed an ironclad non-disclosure agreement.”
“Which Ostheim won’t enforce because you killed a guy at his behest.”
“Yeah? Prove it. Isn’t Lockwood walking around like a live person?” She shook her head. “Any evidence is long gone by now.”
Alex waved a hand. “I have lawyers. If he pushes the matter, I’ll push back. Harder.” He glowered. “He hurt a war veteran who works, indirectly, for me. I won’t let him get away with that. Also, he poached a couple of my employees while they were still in my employ. Poaching one of his is fair, especially since you don’t work for him anymore.”
“I still don’t see why you need me. What about your wunderkind Reed? He did most of the main work on this and knows the mechanics of it a lot better than I do.”
“Well. Reed’s dead.” Alex took a sip of his bourbon. “He made the mistake of thinking that tying Ben down was a good idea, and there was enough slack in the restraints that he ripped the railing right off the bed and took Reed’s throat out with his claws.” He drained the drink, wanting the fortification, and set the glass down with a thump. “It was … pretty horrific.”
“Holy crap.” McFoucher rubbed her arms. “Makes me glad we were a little smarter than that.”
Alex curled his lip. “Ben took one of your guys out too, in the lab after most everyone had apparently gone. That one got a little rough with Janni, and Ben took exception to it. Tattoos?”
