by Anna Collins
“Stop shooting, Leslie. It’s us, Willa and Tristan. There’s no reason to feel threatened by us. You know we mean you no harm. Let us come in, and we can talk about this. I’m not armed, and I have my hands up in surrender in case you feel I’m not telling you the truth. I’ll come in alone, and Tristan can stay in the hallway if that makes you feel any better. I know your first instinct is to shoot and ask questions later. You do know Spencer said that because he wanted there to be some kind of subliminal message in your head. Think about it. Don’t you think he has it in him to mastermind this whole thing?” I said while holding my breath, turning to see her sitting there in her lab coat on the floor looking frazzled and ready to fire the weapon which was smoking at the end.
“Are you…saying he was screwing with my head? I can’t believe he would do something like that. I thought we were connected. For him to put me through unnecessary hell is unconscionable. Do you really believe that he…that he would do that? I know the answer, and I’ve seen the way he was before the illness got a hold on him. I don’t want to think he would be that careless with my life, but I have seen him do it before with others. I just never thought he would do it to me of all people. I know he loves me in his own misguided way. I have grown accustomed to his face,” Leslie said as she still held the weapon outstretched in her hand probably not even aware she was doing it.
I crawled on my hands and knees, pushing the gun down, hoping that in a knee jerk reaction she wouldn’t pull the trigger. I managed to pry it out of her hands. I reached up and put it on the counter with several beakers and glass vials.
“You know the truth better than anybody, Leslie. I bet giving him the cure doesn’t feel like it was a good idea now. He has made a remarkable recovery, but he has been quite adamant about getting us to leave. He wanted you out of the way. He wanted to use his position to get us to vacate. I think he was a bit surprised we were willing to stay and fight for his cause. He wasn’t expecting that. He had to improvise, and his words fell short. It shouldn’t come as any big surprise he decided to use force. Unfortunately, Tristan was more than up to the task of protecting the both of us,” I said as she was trembling. I took hold of her hands and held them into mine, so she knew there was nothing to worry about.
“I told him he should tell you the real reason why you were called here. You were under the impression it was to help with your poisoning. He’s not suffering from any disease. It’s the same damn poison he has infected you but in a different strain. I found there was really only one way to prevent his untimely demise. I needed something specific, and I didn’t know it was possible. I didn’t just take blood from you when I had you on the table. Without your knowledge and without Tristan being aware, I was able to procure what he needed. He told me it would work, but I had my doubts until I saw the proof for myself. You deserve to know the truth. I don’t know the full story, but I do know the only way he could procure what he needed was from a blood relative. A familiar connection is hard to come by when he doesn’t have any kids,” she said with the weight of her words making more sense in the aftermath of Spencer going off the handle because we were in his office.
I didn’t know what to say. I flashed on the photo in his office, and I couldn’t believe I didn’t recognize it before. The image of the woman with Spencer was my mother at an early age. They knew each other, and from the look they gave each other in the picture, it was more than just platonic. That was the kind of love nobody could get in between without realizing their mistake.
“It can’t be. I know who my mother and father are. They raised me, and there was never even a mention I wasn’t his. I don’t know what kind of game you’re playing, but I’m not very happy about any of it. You’re just saying this to leave me confused and vulnerable. I thought you at least were on my side. I’m starting to think maybe you had your own agenda. What is it exactly you took from me that saved his life? I believe you owe me that at least,” I said with Tristan now coming forward, staying close to the door.
“You still might feel the pain where I did an emergency lumbar puncture. I’m sorry. He didn’t want to take the risk of you saying no. I don’t understand all of it myself. He was quite frank that there was no blood relative when I came to help him. Something happened. It gave him a kind of hope I had never seen in his eyes before. It was a few days ago. He was raving like a lunatic. I tried to get him to think straight, but he was all over the place. He claimed there was somebody and he was going to bring them here so I could get what was needed. I didn’t feel very good about taking that kind of action against you. I can’t be entirely sure you’re his daughter. Is there any reason you can think of that would make any sense for him to think you are his?” She asked me as I began to ponder the photo I had seen and the way he had reacted.
“I can say with some degree of certainty he did know my mother. They shared something. This would mean they have been lying to me all of my life. I can’t wrap my mind around this. Everything that has happened…it’s like I’m in a boxing ring, and I have no idea where my opponent is. The blows keep coming, and there’s no way for me to protect against them,” I said beside myself with worry and now wondering if my parents knew something I didn’t.
I thought about all those times there was awkwardness around the both of them. There were times my father would sleep on the couch. I figured he had done something to warrant the doghouse. It was starting to dawn on me my mother was at fault for the way my father kept her at a distance. I knew they had gotten over it. They reconfirmed their vows to one another during a ceremony, and I was the flower girl.
“I know I’m going to regret asking this, but is there any way that he can get this cure without me? I have to know for certain if he is my father. I can’t believe my mom and dad would keep something like this away from me. You would think with Spencer’s kind of money he would want to know his daughter, but I have never heard of him. He has never stopped by, and there has never been any surprise visitor who looked out of place at any of my birthday parties,” I said while spying a Prada bag on her WorkStation. This was one of the most sought after bags in fashion history. It was said to give anyone who owned one this instant status within high society and the elite.
“I wish I could tell you one way or the other, but there’s really no way to know without a DNA test. It could be that you just have the same markers. It is rare, but not unheard of. I do have his samples and yours on file. It would take very little to extrapolate from that whether or not you are father and daughter. I would need some time, but I’m not sure we have it with the enemy coming to get Spencer,” Leslie said as she sat down and put her hands on her knees to control her emotions.
“We both know there is no one coming after him. Spencer made up that story only to scare the living daylights out of you and send us packing. What he wasn’t contending on was we were going to stick around and put up a fight. I want you to be assured there is nothing and no one who is going to get to you down here with the both of us looking out for you.” I said while putting my hand on the fabric of the yellow bag, feeling the material and the craftsmanship that went into making such an expensive accessory.
Looking at her, I noticed that most of her clothing was Prada and this was a fashion designer label which had become her mainstay. There was no way she could afford any of this without Spencer fitting the bill. It was one of the perks of working and sleeping with a man who had more money than brains. I could say this, but underneath it all, he may have looked like he was inept, but there was a certain genius you would have to recognize to see it for yourself.
“I’m going to have to have a very frank discussion with him about boundaries. He needs to know his actions have consequences. I was going to surprise him on his birthday with an interesting get-together. I have a couple of my girlfriends flying in for the occasion. I told them all about him, and they were most anxious to jump on the bandwagon. I have no doubt he would shower them with gifts and expensive baubles that would have them pret
ty much doing anything he wanted. You know couples have a tendency to go all out when they want to celebrate the big day with their significant other,” Leslie said as she went over to where the lab samples were kept refrigerated and ready to be used at a moment’s notice. The refrigerator was a Revco, and I could see the logo displayed on the door. I didn’t know the price, but I certainly could imagine it would cost an arm and a leg.
“I can see he takes care of you. Are you sure you’re not his daughter? I would hope not because what you have been doing with him would be wrong on so many levels. I want to believe you’re not a part of this scheme of his to get me here under false pretenses. I will admit the injection you gave me did help to lessen the symptoms. It has made me a little foggy around the edges. It’s nothing I can’t handle, but it makes it hard for me to see what is right in front of my face,” I said as I walked around. It was the first time I had actually looked at the equipment which would be right at home in any laboratory.
“I see you have noticed some of the equipment. It is the best money can buy, and I never scrimp on those things that will make my job easier. There are times I wished I was related to him. It would make things a whole lot easier, and I wouldn’t have to do some of those things which make me look at myself in the mirror and not recognize the person looking back,” Leslie said as I looked over at Tristan and I could see he was not very happy.
The gun he had was one which would not hold up to the kind of firepower that might be coming out of the elevator. He kept looking back to make sure the elevator was still out of commission. I could tell he was worried. It was possible Spencer had left a few things out of his story about the exit and entrance of this place. I thought he was aboveboard, but to have something of an escape route only to his knowledge would be exactly the kind of man he was.
Chapter 21
I could literally hear my heart beating. It was as if we were waiting for the other shoe to drop. I was expecting the ceiling to come apart and men clad in black armor sliding down on ropes to infiltrate the lab. It was this uncertainty that had us with our backs in the air. I had no idea if Leslie was being straight or if she was just buying time for Spencer to get to her before she had to reveal anything that was going to cause him harm.
“I know you are a nervous girl, but there’s no point in wringing your hands over something out of your control. I would tell you, you need to leave and find something else to do before I give you these results, but I don’t think I can do that. It’s obvious Spencer has been keeping things from the both of us. Like I said before, I haven’t known him for that long, but in this time, I have come to realize he is a man of action. If he suspects you are about to learn something you shouldn’t, then you can expect a push back like you have never seen before,” Leslie said as she was looking into the microscope with glass slides which had droplets of my blood on them.
“I know you’re only trying to warn us, but there are extenuating circumstances. Let’s say for argument’s sake he is my father. If that were true, then he has been doing everything he can to selflessly solve his problem and leave mine to fate. I don’t want to die. I have come here hoping he was the answer to my prayers. I haven’t even begun to fight. This whole thing has given me a new confidence, and it made me see life needs to be lived,” I said thinking it would have been better had I run away to someplace tropical for my last days on this planet.
“The only thing we have in life is hope. We lose that and then we may as well give up and throw our hands in the air in defeat. I’ve been in tight spots before, and I have always come out on the other side a little weathered but still breathing. I can’t say that for a lot of my friends who lost their lives unnecessarily during battles nobody will ever know about,” Tristan said as I was getting to know him and feeling the man I knew as Trevor was dead and buried. There was still something of him there, but it was very faint and hard to see if you didn’t know him back in the day.
I heard a loud bang, and both Tristan and I looked around for the source. There was nothing that was of any consequence. The place was sterile. You could tell it was clinical and had no real character. The lab could have belonged to anybody. There were no feminine touches, and Leslie hadn’t put any kind of personal stamp on the place.
“I don’t know what this was, but I think you should take a look around. If there is any place they can infiltrate, then you will be able to ferret it out before I would be able to. I need to stay here and see this through to the end,” I said holding vigil over where Leslie was looking down at the microscope. I wanted nothing to interfere with her work, and this included a possible father figure I didn’t even know I had.
“I want you to know I haven’t given up on a cure for you. I looked at it from every angle and the one I found for Spencer can’t work for you. There might be a way, but it means a sacrifice I’m not sure Spencer is willing to entertain,” Leslie said with a promising statement which had me anxious to learn more.
“I’m getting very close to the end of my rope. I have no idea what I’m capable of. I don’t want to think I could be as ruthless and uncaring as Spencer. I need to hear what this cure might entail and who I have to kill to get it. At this point, I’m willing to get my hands dirty and not care about anything other than my survival. I know it sounds immoral as if I have no feelings, but I can’t help to think this way,” I said thinking about the photo and shaking my head at the very idea I could be Spencer’s daughter. It seemed so impossible, but it did make a lot of sense when I began to think about it.
“It would be a desperate act and one which may not yield the kind of results you’re looking for. I hate to say this, but Spencer would have to give his life for even the possibility of you keeping yours. If you do come from the same DNA, then I would need a biopsy of his organs. The likelihood he would die could be in the high percentage. There’s still a good possibility he could live. He’s stubborn, a fighter and I doubt he would allow his life to be snuffed out by something of an experiment. Like I said, nothing is for sure, but I won’t know anything until after I get through with checking out his organs,” Leslie said.
“I know what I said about not caring about anybody but myself, but I’m really not sure I could go through with something like this. It’s one thing to think about it, but it’s another thing to put it into action. I don’t want to be the kind of person who can do that and then live with the memory of killing somebody else. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself. I would make everybody around me miserable with bouts of depression, throwing myself into the bottom of a bottle to forget,” I said thinking about what Spencer had put me through, wondering if maybe two wrongs didn’t make a right.
“There’s no point thinking about it. The only way it would work in the first place is whether or not you are related and this has not been confirmed. I don’t know if you would even want to be related to him. He’s a hard man, and there’s very little he does I understand. He takes chances and the only reason why is because there’s the possibility of a high reward. He lives his life like a lottery. He knows that eventually, his number is going to come up, but in which way is anybody’s guess. He steps on toes walks over those who get in his way and this, unfortunately, makes him a target for his enemies. That’s the reason why his claim was so plausible. He said he had to fortify himself in this way away from those who wanted to do him harm. That’s the reason why his story made sense. I didn’t question him because there was no reason to. We have been in this position before when ill-advised, we went on vacation and found ourselves running for our lives. He took me here because he wanted there to be no way for anybody to stop me from getting him what he wanted. Others would contest his time had come and gone, but he was not of the same sentiment,” Leslie said as I was getting a better understanding of who Spencer was, not liking the full picture being unveiled.
“The more I get to know about Spencer; the more I don’t want to be related to him. I’m starting to think the likelihood of us sharing the same blood
line is uniquely possible. He didn’t look at me with any kind of love, but maybe he thought that because he didn’t know me, he would be able to get what he wanted from me and then discard me like yesterday’s garbage. I want to believe my so called father would feel something of a parental connection,” I said while looking towards the door, seeing no sign of where Tristan might have gone.
I looked at my watch, and I could almost hear his voice in my head telling me not to worry. It was kind of soothing, but a little on the weird side I would have this audio hallucination about his voice. It could be that the drug was having an adverse side effect. It could be that the poison was taking its toll, doing immense damage to my mind along the way. I didn’t know, and I wasn’t going to pull at those threads to make sense of it all.
“I’ve been a doctor for a long time, and I have seen many things which have left me drinking at the end of the day. I had one child in obvious distress and yet I was expected to put him back together again so he could go back to that living hell. I was lucky. Any sense of morality was burned out of me a long time ago. I just recently began to get a semblance of who I was before all of this happened. It’s coming back even stronger than ever. Seeing how people react and behave to one another put me on the defensive. I wanted to distance myself, but then I had that accident during surgery. I look back, and I’m not even sure it was an accident. He was a wife beater, and I think my hand might have slipped on purpose. I claimed otherwise. My license was revoked, and I think I’m happier for it,” Leslie said as I realized I knew exactly how she felt.
