Chain Reaction

by Rebecca York

  “I’m used to it. It just rolls off my back.” She gave her sister a direct look. “I need a big favor. The police are following me. I want to get out of here without their knowing.”

  “How can you do that?”

  “I was thinking that if you change clothes and cars with me, they’ll follow the wrong sister.”

  Pam grinned. “Clever. I was wondering why you wore a scarf on your head.”

  “You’ll do it?”

  “Of course. Where are you going?”

  “It’s better if I don’t tell you.”

  “Right.”

  “We should say good-bye to Mom and Dad now. If they don’t see us leave, they can’t tell anyone later about our clothing exchange.”

  Pam nodded. After thanking their parents for lunch, they went back to the powder room and swapped clothes.

  Pam was now wearing Lily’s cropped pants and top, while Lily had on Pam’s sundress. Since they were both the same size, the clothing fit perfectly.

  When Pam refolded Lily’s scarf into a triangle and tied it under her chin, a wisp of blond hair peeked out, but that was good because it was similar to Lily’s.

  They switched sunglasses and swapped car keys. Pam took the big purse, minus the plastic bag of clothing.

  “You go first,” Lily said. “Then whoever is lurking out there will follow you.” She dragged in a breath and let it out. “Sorry about your car. I’m not sure when I can get it back to you.”

  “Don’t worry about it.” Pam thought for a moment. “I guess I shouldn’t go right home or the cops will wonder why you’re driving up to my house.”

  “Do you need an excuse to go shopping?”

  Pam grinned. “No. I’ll go to the mall and hit the women’s clothing sales. That should stupefy any guy assigned to follow me.”

  “Yeah, take him on a trip through the bra section.”

  They laughed together. Then Lily sobered. “Oh, Pam, thank you,” she breathed, fighting not to choke up as her vision clouded.

  After they embraced, Pam walked out the front door and climbed into Lily’s Toyota.

  Lily watched through the window. Down the street, a car slipped away from the curb. Presumably her tail.

  She’d find out soon enough if she’d fooled the cops.

  Chapter Ten

  Lily Darnell had given her tail the slip. That trick with the sister had been pretty clever. Rand had to give her that.

  And he had another case of tricky maneuvers to investigate as well.

  Maxine Wallace had called with some startling news. In her interviews at Beech Grove, the officer had discovered that a Cranesbrook employee named Hank Riddell had been at the hospital keeping tabs on Gage Darnell and Wes Vanderhoven.

  What the hell was that all about?

  Rand and Richard did a little research on the man and found he was a recent PhD from Cornell University who had joined the staff nine months ago. He was unmarried and living in a rented house about twenty minutes from the facility.

  When they called Cranesbrook, they were told he wasn’t on site. At his house, they found out from a neighbor that he’d been living at the research facility since Darnell’s escape from the hospital.

  “Son of a bitch,” Richard muttered. “Either the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing or somebody out there is deliberately sending out false information.”

  “Let’s see what the president of the company says.”

  They drove back to the campus. In Sid Edmonston’s office, Rand kept his gaze fixed on the man as he said, “We have some questions about Hank Riddell’s role at Beech Grove. Apparently he was sent out there for some purpose after two of your employees were admitted as patients.”

  “He was dispatched there to protect our interests.”

  “How exactly?”

  “We wanted to be kept informed of Darnell’s and Vanderhoven’s conditions.”

  “You could have gotten the information in a phone call,” Richard pointed out.

  “As you might have noticed, Dr. Morton isn’t very forthcoming with reports on patients.”

  “Vanderhoven’s still at Beech Grove. Why isn’t Riddell still there?”

  “Vanderhoven’s status hasn’t changed, so we decided to call back our valued employee.”

  Rand listened to Edmonston’s convoluted speech. The man was obviously nervous about answering these questions. “So why did you send a PhD scientist to do the job?” Rand pressed.

  “He was available and he’s a personal friend of Wes Vanderhoven’s. Riddell was worried about him, so we let him do the work.”

  “Why did the switchboard say he wasn’t here when we called this morning?”

  “He’s been working the night shift. He was sleeping in one of our dorms, and he’d left instructions not to be disturbed. Apparently he simply chose to say he wasn’t here.”

  “Well, we’d like to talk to him,” Rand said.

  Edmonston hesitated. Then he must have decided that the best policy was to give in gracefully. He picked up the phone and called the dorm. When he got off the phone he looked up. “He’s up. You can go over there now.”

  They got directions and left the executive offices.

  “You think Edmonston is talking to Riddell on the phone right now?” Rand asked.

  “Yeah, I do,” Richard agreed. “So let’s get over there before they cook up a story together.”

  Quickly they strode into a building that looked like an upscale motel. When they arrived, Riddell, a sandy-haired young man of medium height, was in the small cafeteria, pouring himself a cup of coffee. He straightened his spine and rose up on his toes when they came in. They both noted that he was standing eight feet from a wall phone.

  “We appreciate your talking to us,” Rand said.

  “Not a problem.” The scientist took his coffee mug to a small table and sat down.

  Rand and Richard also sat.

  “You’ve been here for the past week and a half?” Rand asked.

  “I’ve had a lot of work to do. It was easier to stay on campus, particularly now that we’ve got security problems.”

  Richard pulled out his notebook and wrote it down.

  “You were at Beech Grove keeping tabs on Darnell and Vanderhoven?”

  “Yes. Project Cypress is an important project.”

  “Project Cypress?”

  Riddell looked flustered. “Yes, that’s where we had the lab accident.”

  “What’s the purpose of the project?”

  “I’m afraid I can’t tell you that. It’s proprietary information.”

  “Okay,” Rand agreed, since he knew they wouldn’t get anywhere digging into that.

  “Who sent you to Beech Grove?” Richard asked.

  “Dr. Ulrich.”

  “Why?” Rand asked, keeping up the flow of questions.

  Riddell took a sip of coffee. “Wes and I are friends. I wanted to keep tabs on how he was doing.”

  “But Vanderhoven is still in the hospital. Why did you come back to the lab?”

  “Wes’s condition hasn’t changed. I wasn’t accomplishing anything by hanging around there and I needed to get back to work.”

  He was giving the same answers as Edmonston, which probably meant that they’d just synchronized their stories.

  “You had a specific assignment at the hospital?”

  “We wanted to monitor any damaging effects from the lab accident.”

  “Were there any damaging effects?” Richard pressed.

  “Both men were initially violent. It looks like Darnell stayed that way. So they’ve kept Wes under sedation.”

  “What’s his prognosis?”

  “There’s no use asking me medical questions.”

  “But you were sent over there to make medical observations,” Rand said.

  Riddell sighed. “I was sent to observe.”

  It was obvious this guy was hiding something—and they weren’t going to get it out of him at this inter
view.

  “Thanks for your time,” Rand said before they went back to have another try at Sid Edmonston.

  “Did you get what you needed from Hank Riddell?” he asked pleasantly when they were back in his office.

  “He’s pretty closed up.”

  “He’s an introverted scientist type,” Edmonston shot back. “And he’s worried about his friend.”

  Rand switched tactics. “Are the experiments in your lab back on track?”

  “Yes,” the company president answered.

  “Since the incident, have any of your employees given you reason to be suspicious of them?”

  “A lab assistant and one of the women on our administrative staff quit abruptly. But they could just be nervous about the fallout from the explosion.”

  “I’d like their names,” Rand said.

  Edmonston wrote them down and handed the paper across the desk.

  “What about security? Any more problems?”

  The executive’s gaze shifted away. “Security is fine,” he said.

  Rand thought he detected a lie, and he wanted to probe that answer. But Edmonston switched the subject abruptly.

  “I keep wondering if Darnell is hanging around the area.”

  “Why?”

  “He left a lot of valuable equipment in the security office when he cleared out.”

  “If he’s still around, where do you think he would be?”

  Edmonston was silent for several moments.

  Finally, he cleared his throat and said, “I’ve talked to a lot of people on the staff about him. I’ve learned he went camping out. That would avoid contact with motel owners, wouldn’t it?”

  “Where did he camp?”

  “I heard he liked the state park. And an estate along the river.”

  “Named?”

  “Oak Lawn.”

  Since Edmonston didn’t have any other suggestions, they left several minutes later.

  “If he’s around here, do you think the wife is with him?” Richard asked.

  “She went to a lot of trouble to give us the slip. I don’t think she just wanted to get away to a beauty spa. And she was willing to risk getting fired, since she hasn’t shown up to work.”

  Rand switched back to the interview with the company president. “What about Edmonston? You think he was telling the truth?”

  “He’s lying about something.”

  “So is Riddell. But what?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe it’s got to do with the work the lab is doing. Maybe he and Riddell are working something dirty and they don’t want us to know about it, so they switched the focus to Darnell. I’d like to know what Project Cypress is exactly. Riddell was upset that he’d blurted out the name.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Back to Edmonston. Maybe he wants us to take down Darnell but he doesn’t want us to know it.”

  “What would be the point of that?”

  “Maybe he knows Darnell could give us some embarrassing information about Project Cypress.”

  “Which brings us back to the theory that Darnell is innocent,” Rand mused. “I’d give a lot to ask him some questions about what happened the night of the explosion and then later in the hospital, since we haven’t gotten anything but psychobabble from Dr. Morton.”

  Richard nodded.

  Often, their conversations ran along the same track. They were the perfect working team—and also good friends. Rand wasn’t married, so he spent a lot of holidays at Richard’s house with his wife and two kids.

  “Even if Darnell is innocent, he’s made it clear that he’s determined not to get caught. We can’t take a chance on his trying to shoot his way out of an ambush.”

  “Which means we’d better approach him with extreme caution.”

  IT WAS ten in the evening. Gage had fixed another great camp meal—ground beef and flavored rice. After cleaning up, he sat down on a log where he could indulge in a chocolate bar and stare at the river while he contemplated his next move.

  He was watching the lights of a speedboat go by when the vibration of the alarm system intruded on his evening.

  Son of a bitch. They’d found him.

  He left the camp lantern on as a decoy, then quickly reached in his pack for his night-vision goggles. The Sig was already in his waistband.

  He was never without it now. It even sat within reach when he was washing off at the water faucet.

  The alarm was sophisticated. He could have checked on the GPS screen in the tent but the kind of vibration told him from which direction the intruder had come.

  Putting on the goggles, he looked away from the light and toward the house, where he saw someone slip through the woods, moving stealthily from tree to tree. They seemed to be heading for the tent, and he’d guess that they hadn’t figured out he wasn’t inside.

  Big mistake. As far as Gage could see, the guy was on the small side, and dressed in a black T-shirt and dark jeans. Details were obscured by the trees and by the baseball cap that partially hid the intruder’s face.

  Maybe it wasn’t the cops. Maybe it was someone figuring to be a hero by capturing the unauthorized person camping on the estate.

  While Mr. Stealth snuck up on the tent, Gage got into position behind him.

  In the Special Forces he’d learned to glide through the natural environment with almost no noise. He was able to get directly behind the guy. Then, with a sudden rush of movement, he leaped from the bushes, grabbed the man around the neck and brought him down.

  Mr. Stealth made a gurgling sound as he hit the ground. Gage came down on top of him, losing his goggles in the process. But he didn’t need them to see what he was doing as he rolled the invader to his back and straddled him, clamping the guy’s arms to his sides.

  The man lay still for a second, then heaved up, trying to dislodge Gage’s knees, which were on either side of his body.

  “Shut up and don’t move, or I’ll blow your head off,” Gage growled as he shoved the Sig against the guy’s temple.

  The fellow stilled, except for the shiver that went through his body.

  Holding the gun steady, Gage reached to pull off the baseball cap.

  As they stared at each other, they both gasped.

  “Lily! What the hell are you doing here?” The shock of seeing her was like an electric current coursing through his body.

  “Hoping I’d find you,” she said in a voice that he knew she was struggling to hold steady.

  He glanced around. “And leading the cops right to me?”

  “No. I’m not that dumb. I worked out how to do it. I met my sister at my parents’ house and asked if she’d help me.”

  “Your parents! I’ll bet they loved that.”

  “They have no idea what I planned.’ Lily told him about the clothing switch.

  “When she left, I watched the cops follow her. After I got into her car and drove away, I spent a lot of time making sure nobody was tailing me.”

  “They could have been using two or three cars. Or a transponder.”

  “I know that. I said, we traded cars. So if they put a transponder on my car, they’d still end up following her.”

  “Okay,” he said slowly, suddenly aware that he was still sitting on top of Lily.

  “Gage?” she whispered. “How about putting down your gun?”

  “Not yet.” He hadn’t escaped capture for this long by being careless.

  He stood up, then reached with his free hand to help Lily to her feet.

  As soon as she was standing, he put the goggles back on and carefully surveyed the surrounding area, then motioned her to follow him through the woods.

  He knew he was using the time to collect his scattered thoughts. When the glow of the lantern in the tent hurt his eyes, he took off the goggles.

  “How did you find me?” he asked in a voice that sounded gruff to his own ears.

  “We came here together once. I thought it might be a good place for you to hide out.”

  �
�Yeah.”

  “I figured you’d stay in the area, and stay under cover.” She tipped her head to the side, trying to get a look at him in the darkness. “And I knew you’d change your appearance. I tried the campground at the state park first. When you weren’t there, I came here.”

  “Why did you think I’d hang around? It would make more sense for me to run away.”

  “Because you want to clear your name,” she answered, conviction ringing in her voice.

  “And now you’re confident that I didn’t murder anyone?”

  “Yes.” Her breath hitched. “I guess I can’t convince you I believe you by kissing you.”

  “Unfortunately, you tried that trick before.”

  “Last time it was a trick. This time it’s not.” She made a low sound and closed the space between them, clasping her arms around him and holding him tight.

  If he knew what was good for him, he would pull away, but the feel of her arms made it impossible for him to move.

  Warnings flickered in his brain. Last time he had convinced himself that she was feeling the same needs as he. And he’d let wishful thinking fuel his arousal. This could be an elaborate scam, and the cops could be waiting in the woods for him to drop his defenses.

  But he wasn’t exhausted and confused like he’d been the night he’d escaped from Beech Grove. Tonight he was pretty sure he could figure out the difference between glass and diamonds.

  Before she could speak, he brought his lips down on hers and felt a jolt of hot sensation arch between them.

  It was like being hit by a bolt of lightning. He wavered on his feet, then moved backward, dragging her with him as he braced his hips against the trunk of a tree—all without breaking the mouth-to-mouth contact.

  His tongue probed the hot interior of her mouth, and she made a sound that tasted of surrender.

  Yet he still couldn’t entirely relax. Even if she hadn’t brought the cops, he half expected her to be afraid of a man who had shown her what he could do with his mind.

  She should be afraid. She should run in the other direction. Instead, she had come looking for him. And now she was kissing him with all the passion he remembered so well.