Deadly Chemistry (Entangled Ignite)

by Teri Anne Stanley

  “The thing in Cincinnati didn’t work out so well,” he said. “I decided that I was better off working on my project under my own supervision.”

  “Your project?”

  “Yes, mine. The one you stole from me.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “All that help I gave you when we worked together, all those suggestions. Those ideas were mine. The drug is mine.”

  She wasn’t going to argue with him about this right now. Clearly he was delusional or under the influence of some sort of drug. Her drug?

  “Alex, have you taken the step two drug yourself?”

  Sighing, he ran a hand under his nose. “I had to make sure it was ready for the clinical trial phase of things. You’re never going to get it there on your own.” He reached into a drawer and pulled out a small vial. A vial that resembled those Lauren used to store step two.

  Alex took a pipette from the bench and sucked a few microliters into the tip, then tilted his head back and dropped it into his nose. Pinching his nostrils shut, he looked down at Lauren again. “I’ve been working out some alternate delivery options for your drug. Of course, I have to deliver it in dried powder form for the junkies. I know you were planning to have it delivered in pill form, but it turns out that this intranasal method works much better. Gets straight to the brain through the olfactory nerve, much quicker.”

  And much more likely to cause brain damage, Lauren thought. She was fully alert and terrified now. Alex had clearly lost it.

  “I figured that you’d get stuck somewhere along the line and need me to bail you out. And I was right. You thought you were having trouble purifying the step two from your algae, didn’t you?”

  He scratched his arms, the itching a sign that the drug was working. “I know how sensitive you are about doing everything yourself, so at first I was just pinching a little at a time to get you to see that you couldn’t make a success of your project without me. And then maybe you’d see that you couldn’t make a success of your life without me.” He smiled at her in that way he had—he probably thought it was affectionate, but it was really condescending.

  “But then I realized that the University of Cincinnati had its ivory tower up its ass”—he flipped his hands around in a so what gesture—“so I left there but had to finance my new lab, so I found a market for step two. Which is nice, because this way cuts out the messy FDA approval process. We can make so much more money and not have to answer to institutional bullshit. What do you think?”

  He smiled and looked at her, waiting. Was…was he waiting for her to praise him?

  “Alex—that’s just—” Crazy. Delusional. Insane… “That’s not the way science is supposed to be done.”

  His eyelids had fallen to half-mast, and he frowned. The drug he’d dropped into his nose had fully landed in his nervous system. Jerking, he seemed to have processed her comment. “Well, maybe, but I knew you needed me, so I was just speeding things along.”

  Lauren tried to push herself upright and realized she was bound with duct tape. “Alex, when did you first take step two? I mean, try it as a drug?”

  His head snapped up. “When you said we needed a break, I took some with me. I thought that since I wouldn’t be there in the lab with you every day, maybe I should do some more experiments with the drug, so that when you realized you still wanted to be with me, I would be ready to help you with your career.

  “I did some experiments with it at U.C., but the lab animal people saw that I was using something that wasn’t on my protocol, and they closed me down. Assholes. So I tried it on myself.”

  “Jeez, Alex!”

  He swore, then jumped to his feet and began to pace.

  Crap. She hadn’t meant to set him off, only to try to understand what was going on. She should have let him nod off. She should have stayed home. For that matter, she should have stayed at Mike’s house. Why on earth had she thought she didn’t want his help? Oh yeah. She remembered now. She wanted his help, she just didn’t think she should take it. Some crazy shit about needing to take care of things herself.

  “It’s good you’re here,” Alex said. “Your fucking step one pellets aren’t working right. I think you left something out of your notes.” He motioned at the notebooks stacked on the counter next to her laptop. “You’re going to have to show me what secret trick you use to extract the drug.”

  “I can’t do that. I can’t let you continue. You’re a better person than this!”

  He laughed. “I think we’re beyond that whole ‘You’re a misguided good guy’ thing. I’m the production department of a big-ass drug distribution operation. And I need to get a shipment to my sales force, so you’re going to help me. It’s convenient that you showed up, because your lab notes are like reading hieroglyphics, and your lackey hasn’t been as helpful as I might have hoped.”

  “My lackey?” Lauren had a very bad feeling that she knew who Alex meant.

  “Dylan, of course.” Alex walked across the room to the door to a large storage cabinet. He opened it.

  Dylan and his girlfriend were inside, back-to-back, mouths, hands, and feet wrapped with duct tape. They both stared at Lauren, their gazes pleading with her to do something to save them.

  She shuddered and fought back against the bile filling her throat. Oh God, this was bad. Very, very bad.

  …

  Mike parked the truck at the bottom of the drive, out of the line of sight from the house. The lawn had been cut, but no one had pulled any weeds, and the dead foliage from the summer perennials hadn’t been cut back or removed. The place looked deserted, except for Lauren’s vehicle.

  But wait—there was another one almost out of sight behind the house. Was that Alex’s? Or—oh, shit—the one that he’d seen Angela Romain driving when she’d dropped Dylan at Evan’s last night.

  Next to him, Evan’s breath caught in his throat with a barely audible sound. Mike looked at him and knew he was thinking the same thing. Dylan was probably inside, too.

  He hoped Dino Romain wasn’t on the premises—and said a little prayer that the leader of the Devil’s Rangers would take a back seat to this meeting, or whatever it was.

  No sense in taking risks, though. He reached behind the seat for his shoulder holster and a jacket to cover the gun he slid into it. Evan watched silently as Mike prepared for battle, leaning out of the way when he took his pistol from the glove box.

  “Stay here,” Mike told his brother. “If I’m not back in ten minutes, call Crawford.”

  “Do you really feel that the situation calls for a firearm?” Evan asked.

  “I’m a cop, even if I am on suspension. I’m qualified to know when to use it,” Mike said. And for the first time in a long time, he believed it. He was qualified. Not only to use the firearm—he’d never doubted his aim—but to defend someone he loved.

  “I’m coming with you,” Evan sounded nervous, but there was a light in his eyes that Mike recognized as determination.

  Mike looked at his brother, tempted to hug him, but was afraid the ground might open up beneath their feet to swallow them whole if he did—and he wouldn’t be able to help Lauren if that happened.

  Would she even want his help? Well, fuck it. She was going to get it. She could hate him later, and that was fine. This had gone beyond just getting his job and reputation back and wanting to stop the people who set him up and ruined Dylan’s life. This was about giving the woman he loved the opportunity to do everything with her life that she aspired to. Didn’t matter what happened to him—he wasn’t going to see Lauren suffer.

  Careful not to make a sound on the gravel driveway, they made their way the couple of hundred yards to the property edge, then detoured through the woods when they got close to the house. Edging through the trees, they made their way around to the back. The door to a walkout basement was opened a few inches.

  “If we can get over there,” Mike said, pointing to a tall stand of elephant grass that was falling over next to
the southwest corner, “I think we can check things out without being in view of any of the windows.”

  “What, exactly, are we going to do when we get there?” Evan asked.

  “See where everyone is, what’s going on, and then get everyone out of there in one piece.”

  “Good. That’s good. Gather information, build a hypothesis. But the ‘getting everyone out in one piece’ part. How does that happen?”

  “One step at a time.” He wished he were as certain as his words suggested that everything would be okay.

  “All right.” The trust that Evan was putting in Mike helped push his own self-doubt further out of his own line of sight. This was good, he needed to focus.

  Mike paused and looked at Evan. No longer pale, his brother’s cheeks were flushed. “Dude, you okay?”

  “I’m torn between paralyzed with fear and ready to dive through a window without protective gear.”

  Mike nodded. “Okay, then. You’re fine. Let’s go see what we can find out.”

  …

  Lauren’s stomach lurched and she fought to keep from puking. How had someone like Alex—a man with a brilliant mind—come to this? Good God, the man had kidnapped Dylan and his girlfriend!

  Was it about the money? She didn’t think so. His family was pretty well-off and had always seemed supportive, if a little…helicopter-ish.

  Maybe that was why Alex had felt the need to be over-the-top involved in Lauren’s work. Maybe he was the second coming of Norman Bates and was working out his mommy issues with her.

  Why hadn’t Lauren realized how messed up he was? How had she allowed her own fears about losing control of her own life blind herself to the fact that there were just some people out there who needed to take over other people’s lives? Alex was one of those people. Mike was not.

  Lauren was suddenly very pissed off, which wasn’t helping things any, but at least the nausea had receded.

  “I’m going to set something up here,” Alex told Lauren. “And then you’re going to tell me, step-by-step, how to harvest step two from this ridiculous algae.”

  He looked pointedly at the bag of pellets sitting on the counter, and then back at her. “And if you don’t do it right, I’ll know, because I’m going to test it on him.” He nodded at Dylan, who was wiggling his jaw in an attempt to loosen the duct tape covering his mouth. “My own human test monkey.”

  Alex walked to the shelf of glass beakers. Within seconds, he’d mixed chemicals from the flammables cabinet and the one marked “organic acids,” and then added something from a white plastic jar. None of these chemicals were part of her research protocol.

  Lauren thought, somewhat hysterically, that it was a good thing that he’d clearly marked his chemical storage, because when the occupational safety inspectors came, he wouldn’t get any nasty notes about dangerous conditions. Her vision tunneled, and she fought against the rising panic. She needed to think. To figure out how to get her and Dylan out of this mess. But how?

  Alex always liked to be the educator. Maybe if she got him to talk, he would get distracted and—what exactly? “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “I’m making a booby trap. Or maybe I should call it a ‘Bobby’ trap.” He laughed. “See what I did there? I made a pun. Because your so-called maintenance man, the guy you’re screwing? He’s really an impotent has-been cop. Kind of like a London Bobby—they’re still forbidden from carrying guns, aren’t they?” He shrugged. “No matter. You get the irony, right?”

  “Alex, this is—” She stopped herself before she said “crazy.” Even though it was. He seemed to be a little on the sensitive side right now. “This isn’t necessary. I can tell you what you need to know about getting from step one to step two. Let Dylan and Angela go, okay?”

  “Nope. I think everyone’s going to stay right here for now.” Alex carried a set of beakers, nested in one another, each filled with something, over to the door. He set the beaker down just out of sight of the slightly open back door. Anyone who came in would kick it over. Brushing off his hands, he straightened and went back to the bench. “There. Now, if anyone tries to interrupt us before our work is done, they’ll get blown up.” He looked at Lauren. “Hopefully, it won’t blow you up, too.”

  Lauren thought about Evan, who might—this very moment—be on his way here to help her try to talk to Dylan. Would he burst in here, trying to save the day, and trigger the homemade bomb? Would he have called Mike and brought him? She’d asked him not to, but… It occurred to her that instead of helping this family, she might have single-handedly just managed to kill them all. The urge to empty her stomach all over the floor returned with a vengeance, and she had to take deep breaths to stay in control.

  Alex continued to putter about the lab bench, mixing things together. When he had all of his booby traps set up, he put the bag of algae pellets on the counter.

  “Now, Dr. Kane, let’s talk about step two production. AKA Methyl-oxy-morphicol. AKA Devil’s Dust.”

  Lauren prayed. She prayed that somehow, Dylan and Angela would escape. She prayed that if she didn’t survive this, if all that the police found was her burned, smoking corpse, there would be enough evidence left to yield the proof that Mike needed to put Alex away for a long, long time. And she prayed that, if for some reason she managed to survive, Mike would listen when she apologized for walking out on him.

  …

  Mike checked behind him to see that Evan was okay as they reached the back of the house and crept to the open door.

  He heaved a silent sigh of relief when Lauren’s voice drifted through the open door. “Come on, Alex,” he could hear her say. “I’ll stay and do whatever you want, but please. You’ve got to let Dylan and Angela go. They don’t have anything to do with this.”

  Oh, God. His tension immediately rose as he registered the words. He looked at Evan, then at the door hiding Dylan and Lauren from view. Everyone he cared for was right here, and they all needed him to keep them safe. He hoped he wasn’t about to fuck it up.

  “You’re not going to do anything stupid, are you?” Evan asked in a voice quieter than a whisper, perfected many years ago to avoid the wrath of a drunken stepfather.

  “Define stupid.”

  “Try to go in there alone and get killed.”

  He certainly wasn’t planning to take Evan in with him. And he didn’t want to die, but he would if it meant his family—and that included Lauren now, and even Angela, since she was important to Dylan—would survive.

  What he needed was a distraction to pull Alex out of the basement so that he could get in there and free his family.

  The sound of a car pulling into the driveway met Mike’s ears. A door opened, then another. Then feet, doors slamming, and the telltale crackle and squawk of a police radio. Perfect. He grinned. “The cavalry has arrived.”

  They exchanged a silent fist bump and waited for Crawford and his men to draw Alex out of the basement.

  …

  “Alex, did you do all that damage to my lab yourself?” Lauren asked, trying to keep her voice steady, to keep Alex talking. Could she manage to get through to him on an intellectual level? Or was she just stalling the inevitable? Stalling was good. It might give her a chance to think of some way to get free.

  Alex looked at her. “I brought a friend.”

  “Was that who drew the graffiti on the wall?”

  He laughed. “That was brilliant, I think. I knew your little buddy here had been in trouble with the Rangers—that’s how I got in contact with them in the first place. I heard him whining to Evan Adams about wanting to see his girlfriend.” He walked over to Dylan and patted him on the head. “Evan actually thought that the little girlfriend could put Dylan’s probation at risk because of her affiliation with that ‘drug gang’.” He mimicked Evan’s formal speech pattern. “Adams is such a pansy. But after I had acquired enough of your step two to fund my little research and development program here, knowing about the Rangers did give me an idea for di
stribution. I took them some samples, they liked them, and I promised them more. Except you did something to the algae, didn’t you?”

  The sound of the doorbell echoed through the house.

  Alex said, “What the hell?”

  Lauren was about to shout for help when Alex stepped next to a beaker that was perilously close to Dylan’s bound feet. “Ah, ah!” he admonished. He tore a strip of duct tape from the roll and plastered it to Lauren’s face, covering her mouth, then picked up the beaker and set it between her knees. “There. If you drop that, we’ll all go up in smoke. Hold tight, I’ll be back in a few.”

  She glanced at Dylan, who looked concerned but not panicked. And Angela looked only mildly panicked. That was good. They all needed to keep a cool head. Or something. She really didn’t know what they needed. Besides Mike.

  Alex shut the door on the cabinet, hiding Dylan and Angela from view, then jogged up the stairs and out of sight.

  “Hello, officers. How can I help you?” Alex’s voice carried to the basement through a cold air return in the floor.

  The police. Thank God. Lauren tried to smile reassuringly at Dylan and Angela.

  “Are you Alex Barker?” A smooth, deep voice that Lauren recognized as Chief Crawford’s went a long way toward reassuring herself. “We’ve received a report of some unusual activity in this neighborhood.”

  “Glad you’re here,” Alex said, his voice carrying down the stairs. “I was about to call you. I’ve been in Cincinnati for the past few months, but when I came in, I had the distinct feeling that something was wrong here.”

  “Can you tell us what that is?”

  “Well, I’m not sure. I mean, I’m afraid…” Alex paused. “Okay, I hate to—well, it’s my girlfriend. Dr. Lauren Kane.”

  Lauren jerked then, nearly dislodging the beaker between her knees. She wasn’t worried about losing it, she’d always won the walk-with-an orange-between-your-legs contests at birthday parties. But the other beakers inside were floating rather precariously.