by Rebecca York
How?
We’ll have to play it by ear, he answered, wishing he had more information about this place and the doctor. The only thing Luke had learned for sure was that the man wasn’t fussy about his methods or his morality.
Do you think he’s eavesdropping on us? Gabriella asked.
Probably.
Then we shouldn’t talk about him.
Was that the right strategy? He wished he knew, but his brain still wasn’t functioning well enough to work through the logic.
“I need a drink,” she said aloud, and he decided that it would be better not to remain silent.
“So do I.” He untangled his fingers from hers and sat up cautiously. The movement made his head spin, and he waited a moment before easing off the bed, then braced his hand against the night table.
When he felt comfortable in a vertical position, he walked cautiously across the tile floor and into the bathroom, where he found two plastic cups. Not glasses, he noted.
He ran cold water and took a long draft, then brought water to Gabriella. She had pushed herself up and reached for the cup, then drank.
“How do you feel?” he asked.
“Not great.”
“Don’t get up yet.”
He walked to the wall with the draperies and pulled them aside. As he’d guessed, there were only cinder blocks behind them.
“It looks like we’re in a basement,” he said.
“There aren’t many basements in Louisiana. Well, except for the kind at the plantation house.”
“Then a room without windows.”
“Oh, great.” She swallowed and gave him a direct look. “Why are we here, do you think?”
“I wish I knew.”
Too restless to settle, he walked around, opening drawers in the dresser, and found clothing that looked as if it would fit them. He also started looking for anything he might use as a weapon. The lamps were bolted down. As far as he could see, the room had nothing that would help them escape.
He was thinking about trying the door when it opened. Dr. Solomon stepped inside. A man with a tranquilizer gun like the one they’d seen earlier was right behind him.
Luke started back toward Gabriella, but Solomon shook his head. “Stay where you are.”
Luke stopped in his tracks.
“How are you feeling?” the doctor asked.
“Like I’ve been hit over the head with a sledgehammer. Thanks so much.”
“I’m sorry for the inconvenience,” Solomon answered.
Luke snorted. “I’ll bet.”
The doctor studied them with curious eyes, then turned to the guard. “Step back a few feet. I want to talk to my guests.”
The man followed directions, and Solomon walked into the room, then pressed a button on a remote control he was holding. A plastic panel slid into place, blocking the exit but not the gunman’s view.
“If you’re thinking of trying anything tricky, disabuse yourself of that idea,” the doctor said. “The plastic has two purposes. To block the exit and to act as a seal. At the first sign of trouble, I can flood the room with gas. We’ll all pass out, of course, but Marvin will bring me out. And you will be punished for your disobedience. Is all that clear?”
Luke swallowed. “You’re thinking in very draconian terms.”
“At this point, it’s my best option.” He pulled out one of the chairs at the table and sat down.
Once again, when Luke took a step toward Gabriella, the doctor spoke quickly. “I’d appreciate it if you stay where you can’t touch.”
“Why?”
“I believe the two of you can communicate mentally when you are touching.”
Luke kept his gaze steady. “How did you come to that conclusion?”
“You need to know the background of my old experiments. But let me back up. With the fertilized eggs from my clinic, I was doing microsurgery on blastocytes. As I said, the goal was to produce children with increased intelligence, but I got a normal intelligence distribution among the offspring. Which was disappointing from a scientific point of view.”
“Yeah, I’ll bet.”
“But then that other couple showed up in town asking questions about the clinic. Actually, they weren’t the only ones. There was another man and woman. The two couples seemed to have had some kind of psychic battle out in a swampy area.”
“What happened?”
“There were no witnesses, but only one couple survived.”
“How do you know all this?”
“By direct observation of the battleground and the information I pieced together. There were trees and foliage with burn marks. And we did find some partial human remains in the swamp—chewed by alligators and other creatures.”
Luke winced.
“It appears that people with your abilities may not be friendly to each other.”
“Why not?”
“Perhaps we can find out.”
Luke took that in, longing to cross to Gabriella, but he stayed where he was. And he didn’t allow his mind to flick toward hers—lest the doctor have some way of detecting that, too.
“I do have to congratulate you,” Solomon said.
“About what?” Luke snapped. He was damn tired of the doctor’s condescending attitude. Too bad he couldn’t just punch the bastard in the jaw.
“The two of you could be dead. And not from a battle with others of your kind.”
Your kind. A nice way to put it. Did that mean the doctor didn’t think of them as human? That would be too bad because it would mean they’d sunk to the level of lab rats in Solomon’s eyes.
The man was speaking again. “Did you experience any headaches or mental disorientation when you were establishing your mental bond?”
Gabriella spoke up. “Why do you ask?”
“Well, after I found out about those other couples, I started going back through the clinic records, cross-checking to see if anyone else had gotten together. It turns out they had. There were several other couples where the man and woman had been born as the result of clinic procedures. The others were found dead in bed together.”
Gabriella sucked in a sharp breath. “That’s the truth?”
“Yes.”
“But why?”
“They died of cerebral hemorrhages. Somehow the connection between them triggered a buildup of pressure in the brain.”
Luke winced, remembering the terrible pain in his head the first times he and Gabriella had touched intimately. It had only stopped when they’d finally made love. Why had they survived? Maybe the others had backed away at the last minute. Or maybe it was what Gabriella had said before. If you didn’t trust the other person completely, the connection wouldn’t work.
The doctor was studying him intently. “Do you still get a headache when you’re intimate?”
“None of your business,” he snapped.
“I’m making it my business.”
“No,” Luke said in a harsh voice. “I mean, the headaches went away.”
“I’m glad to hear that.” He laughed. “It would be a little inconvenient to get a headache every time you wanted to have sex.”
Luke glared at him.
“I was watching you on closed-circuit television when you woke up,” Solomon continued. “You didn’t speak to each other—which would be the normal situation. Instead, you were holding hands and lying silently on the bed. But I could tell from your expressions that you were having a silent conversation.”
Oh, great, he couldn’t stop himself from projecting toward Gabriella.
My fault, she answered.
Of course not. We were both trying to figure out what to do, but don’t reach for me now.
“Do you have to be touching to communicate that way?” Solomon asked.
“Yes,” Luke answered immediately, thinking that the less this guy knew about their talent, the better.
“Well, we can test that later. What else can you do besides speak telepathically?”
“N
othing,” Gabriella answered.
The doctor stroked his chin. “After the other couples fought, it looked like they’d been hurling energy bolts out in the bayou. As I said, there was a good deal of tree damage.”
“Maybe they have talents we don’t have. Or they had a long time to develop them.”
“Yes, one of the couples had been together for years,” the doctor said. “Apparently they ran into each other in a twelve-step program in Baltimore.” He laughed. “From what I can tell, they made their living as scam artists. Do you suppose they were able to influence other peoples’ behavior?”
“No idea,” Luke snapped, thinking that this guy was a fount of information.
IN A BATTERED SUV SPEEDING toward Houma, Rachel Gregory gasped as she caught some of the conversation between Luke Buckley and Dr. Solomon.
“What?” Jake asked urgently, without taking his gaze from the road.
“Solomon’s taken them captive. He knows about the battle we had with Mickey and Tanya.”
“How?”
“He was doing research. He knew about couples like us—but who were found dead in bed.”
She opened her mind, giving him access to the scene she’d just witnessed. “He’s going to do something awful.”
Jake clamped his hands on the steering wheel. “Can we get to them in time?”
“I don’t know. But it doesn’t help that he’s made them think that we might be out to kill them.”
“Can we send them a message?” Jake asked.
“Not from here. We have to get closer.”
“Do we know where to find them?”
“I think he’s got some kind of laboratory at the home of a nurse who used to work for him. She’s his partner in crime and his mistress, I think.”
SOLOMON WAS SPEAKING. “I wanted to see what would happen when you woke up, but I think it would be wise to separate the two of you now so you can’t work up anything dangerous.” He kept his gaze on Luke as he pressed the remote again. “You will come with me.”
As the plastic shield slid open, Luke thought of trying to attack, but he knew that neither he nor Gabriella were in any shape to take on two men—one of them armed.
Luke turned to see panic written on Gabriella’s face.
“It’s going to be okay,” he said, wondering if he was telling a lie.
She simply stared at him, looking lost and alone. He ached to go to her and take her in his arms, but he knew that would probably earn at least one of them another tranquilizer dart. Struggling to control the anger rising inside him, he followed the doctor out of the room.
Behind him Gabriella was silently screaming, Luke, Luke, which made him feel as though he had a knife in his heart.
I’ll come back for you as soon as I can, he answered, unsure when that would be.
The room had looked as if it might be in a small motel, but the corridor outside was completely utilitarian with cinder-block walls painted green and the vague smell of disinfectant in the air, making Luke wonder what kind of experiments the doctor was doing. Not dissection, he hoped. But with this guy, he wouldn’t be surprised if Solomon kept cages of little animals to experiment on—just for fun.
The security guard with the gun stayed behind them as Solomon led the way down the hall to a laboratory. There were banks of computers and the kind of medical equipment he’d seen in emergency rooms.
When Luke’s gaze zeroed in on the operating table in one corner, he cringed, but the doctor gestured toward a wooden armchair bolted to the floor.
“Have a seat,” Solomon said.
With no other choice, Luke sat. He was trying not to focus on Gabriella, but he was aware of her in the back of his mind.
He could be using the hidden camera. Don’t react to any of this, Luke told her.
“Put your hands on the chair arms,” Solomon ordered matter-of-factly.
When Luke had done as directed, the doctor fastened his wrists to the chair with duct tape. Then he did the same with his ankles.
Luke tested the bonds and knew that he wasn’t getting up anytime soon.
HE KEPT HIS GAZE ON THE doctor as the man pivoted away and pulled a cell phone from his pocket, clicked open a line, hunched his shoulders and spoke in a low voice.
Luke struggled to remain impassive as a disturbing scene flashed into his mind: two more tough-looking guards entered the room where Solomon had left Gabriella. She was sitting on the side of the bed and looked up in alarm as they stepped into the room.
“Let’s go,” one of them said.
“Where?” she asked, struggling to keep her voice steady.
“You’ll find out.”
Luke, she called to him. Luke.
Do what they say. We’re not in any shape to protest. Whatever this is, we’ll get through it.
When she stood, one of them used his gun to gesture her out of the room.
As she stepped into the hall and followed the same course he had, he struggled to stay in contact with her. They led her past the room where he was sitting to a similar facility a few doors down.
Again there was a wooden armchair in the center of the space.
“Sit down,” one of the men said.
Gabriella sat.
Just as Solomon had done with him, they taped her arms to the chair, then her ankles.
Aware that Solomon was watching him closely, Luke kept his eyes unfocused as though he had no idea what was happening outside this room.
“Now we’re going to find out if the two of you are aware of each other,” the doctor said as he pushed a button on a console whose screen was hidden from Luke.
He didn’t know what was going to happen next, but he knew it wasn’t going to be good.
Chapter Eighteen
One of the men raised his hand and slapped Gabriella across the face. She cried out at the unexpected pain.
She knew that Solomon was watching on a screen in the room down the hall. And she knew Luke had also seen—in his mind. But he sat without moving as though he had no idea what was happening.
She was also aware that Solomon was dividing his attention between the screen and Luke.
“What’s going on?” Luke said in an even voice. “What the hell is this all about?”
Solomon ignored him. In the next moment, the doctor raised his hand and slapped Luke across the face so hard that she saw his head whip to the side. He gritted his teeth and glared at the man while sending Gabriella a silent message.
Do the same thing I did. Don’t react. Don’t let him know that you can watch me.
Horror shot through her, but she knew she had to make the men who held her captive think that she didn’t know what was going on down the hall. She struggled to sit impassively through Luke’s abuse.
In the background, she could hear Solomon talking on a cell phone to one of the men with her, but his voice was too low for her to hear. She kept her vision turned inward, fighting to hide her reaction.
Had they passed the test?
Down the hall, Solomon raised his voice, talking to Luke again.
“I’m not convinced that you don’t know about what’s happening in the other room.”
“What are you talking about?” Luke asked.
“There are two of my guards with your girlfriend. Both men who have no compunctions about torturing a woman. Suppose I have them rape her? To stop them would you let me know that you’re in contact with her?”
Luke glared at him. “If you do that, I’ll kill you.”
The doctor kept his gaze on Luke. “How do you propose to do that?”
Even while she battled not to let her terror show, Gabriella struggled to pretend that she couldn’t hear the doctor.
One of the men was talking on the phone again. When he gave her a nasty grin and walked toward her, she cringed, but the chair prevented her from fleeing. Would the doctor really carry out his threat?
She prayed it was just a bluff, even when the sick feeling in the pit of her stomach argue
d for the worst.
Could she use her mind to stop him? She’d done it before when she was desperate.
Her heart was pounding so hard that it threatened to break through the wall of her chest.
But before the man reached her, she heard an alarm bell ringing.
LUKE HEARD THE SHARP CLANG of an alarm.
Solomon looked up in surprise.
“What the hell is that?” the doctor growled, shooting Luke an angry look.
Luke shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine.”
An intercom buzzed and Violet said, “We have another visitor.”
“Let me see who it is.”
He walked to a computer monitor.
Luke saw on the screen a car stop in the parking lot. A tall, white-haired man, possibly in his seventies, climbed out. He walked with a springy step toward the main door of the laboratory.
Luke stared at him. He was familiar. Had he seen him before?
Then it came to him. It must be Bill Wellington. He’d been wearing a disguise when he’d killed George, but he couldn’t disguise his walk or his aggressive manner.
He strolled toward a one-story, solidly built building, much like a warehouse. That must be where Luke and Gabriella were.
“Wait right there,” the doctor called out over his shoulder with an ironic note in his voice as he hurried toward the door.
Not if I can help it.
The doctor stepped into the hall. Once he was out of the room, the lock clicked, but at least Luke was alone.
Thank God, Luke silently shouted to Gabriella. Are you all right?
Yes. But…those men.
Don’t think about what might have happened. Think that we have a reprieve. A chance to get the hell out of here.
Yes. Right. Can we use our minds to escape?
I don’t know, but we’ll be a lot more effective if we’re together.
While he spoke, Luke was tugging on the tape. Unfortunately, there were too many layers for him to have an effect.
We almost started a fire in the cabin. Could we use heat to stretch the tape? Gabriella asked.
Yeah. Good idea, but don’t burn yourself. See if you can warm up the tape or soften it so you can pull your hands free. I think I’m doing it, he added as he felt the bond begin to give a little. How long would it take to loosen them enough for him to escape?
