Chain Reaction Power Failure Book I

by Andrew Draper

  “No, I’m not. It’ll be a cake walk…if we stay focused.”

  His confidence didn’t bolster hers. She thought he looked a little too pleased with himself, a sure sign of a disaster in the making.

  She tried again to fight down the gentle warmth spreading throughout her body. She attributed the wayward sensations to both the liquor and his proximity.

  He placed a warm hand on her shoulder, sweeping all her fears to the back of her mind. His fingertip, tracing a line from her shoulder to her earlobe, sent her heartbeat into double time. She could feel her resolve slipping.

  “It’s the boldness that makes it so brilliant.” He said, the words breaking her concentration on his caress. “No one would ever suspect a kidnapping. Everyone will see her leave and assume she did this on her own.”

  Shaking her head, she got off the couch and went to refill her glass. As she padded across the spacious suite, he tried to reassure her. “Trust me. The plan will work if we just stay focused.”

  She stopped and turned back, shooting him a long stare. “You mean it will work once we find her.” She said, dropping ice into her glass with a clink. “That might be easier said than done.”

  “Don’t worry, we’ll find her. She can’t stay gone forever.”

  Taking another sip of the fine bourbon, she returned to the couch. She kicked off her shoes and sank deep into the leather cushions, pulling her legs under her.

  “So what’s our next move?” she asked.

  “Well, I say we wait until about one or two and then go to her house see if she comes home. If she does, we grab her.”

  “And if she doesn’t?”

  “Then we wait until tomorrow and watch her office”

  She downed the last of her drink and put the glass on the table. “What do we do until then?”

  He leaned over and kissed her, taking her only partially by surprise. Her pulse vaulted up, driving the heat inside her body into pulsing, incendiary waves.

  After a long moment, he broke the kiss. “I think we should get re-acquainted. It’s been a very long time.”

  “Yes it has,” she said between quickening breaths. “But still…I don’t know about this.”

  He pulled her into a firm embrace and she felt the beating of both hearts against her ribs.

  Pushing her hands against his muscular chest, she held him off. She hesitated for a moment, tasting the liquor on his lips. “If we’re going to pull this off, do you think getting this involved again is such a good idea?”

  He smiled a devil-may-care grin. “I think that’s part of what makes us a great team…that connection.”

  “I remember it being a disaster. You slept with that agent, you bastard! How can I trust you? You hurt me!” She said. “You got shot and I wound up with a broken heart. I can’t go through that again…I won’t.”

  “Come, come, now. Paris was a lifetime ago,” he chided in mock formality. “We’re not children anymore, are we?”

  He leaned forward against the pressure of her palms and kissed her again, harder this time.

  With every shred of her common sense raging against it, she acquiesced. Unable to help herself, she returned the kiss and let the warmth of his embrace envelop her. As their passions began to rise, he slid his hands under her shirt, ardent caresses of her shoulders searing her breathless.

  Again their lips parted as he gently slipped her sweatshirt off over her head, leaving her half naked, save the black lace bra barely containing her firm breasts.

  She watched the garment hit the floor next to the couch. She whispered in his ear. “How much time do we have?”

  “We have about two hours.” He told her as his shirt and her pants joined the growing pile of discarded garments lying on the floor.

  “Prefect.” she kissed him again, melting into his arms.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Jenny finished her coffee and waited for Aaron to return. She desperately wanted to take a hot shower and put on her own clothes.

  He said he’d be back around noon and then we could go get some of my stuff. Where is he?

  She walked into the living room and flipped on the television to kill time. Channel surfing, she stopped on the twenty-four hour news network and listened to the broadcast. It was the same as always. The talking head went on relating the gruesome details of several violent crimes and other disasters, both natural and man-made. She shook her head in disgust and aimed the remote.

  Just as she was about to turn off the set, she was stunned to see Jack’s face appear on the screen. She quickly kicked up the volume, listening as her heart raced in astonishment.

  On the screen the pretty blond anchorwoman with the plastic boobs smiled her plastic smile and began to deliver her report.

  “Boston Police told ZNN affiliate WBBZ News that construction workers found the body of a local man early this morning behind a downtown high-rise. The man, identified as Jackson Verde, was discovered in a trash dumpster behind the Boston Tower building at around five this morning.”

  Jenny’s blood froze in her veins and tears quickly formed in her eyes as the finality of the anchor’s words wracked her brain. Oh my God! Jack’s dead! How could this happen?

  The disembodied voice of the anchor continued, but her insipid words were relegated to the background by Jenny’s shock and horror.

  “Public Information Officer Sgt. Mike Norman confirmed Verde worked for a company with offices in the building and said Verde’s death is being investigated as a homicide. No arrests have been made. However, police are looking for this woman, Jennifer Ryan, in connection with Verde’s death. Police won’t say if Ryan is a suspect or a witness, just that she is a person of interest.”

  Jenny sagged back on the sofa, her driver’s license picture filling the screen. Her initial shock and disbelief mixed as she trembled with a new, more intense fear than she had ever known in her life.

  This madness has to stop… even if it means destroying the project.

  She quickly rejected that idea and searched her mind for alternatives. She knew she had to tell Aaron what had happened. Wiping the tears from her wet cheeks, she rummaged through his closet and found a pair of old sweats, a flannel shirt and a coat several sizes too big.

  It will have to do. She thought as she put on her white leather cross-training shoes, the only things of her own that survived the attack. She pulled on the coat and closed the door behind her, stepping into the hall.

  Walking down the street, she reviewed the events of the past two or was it three? days. Her analytical mind struggled to put the seemingly disconnected fragments of information into some kind of logical order.

  She knew that someone had tried to kill her, but she didn’t know who. She knew that, from what Aaron said, the attackers were after the plans for the Ever-cell, and that it was probably someone connected to the lab.

  Who are these people that they know so much about me and my project? That information is supposed to be classified.

  The inescapable truth seared her mind in a hot flash of anger.

  Aaron’s right. The only way anyone would have access to that information is to have a connection…someone inside Diversified…someone who’s a traitor!

  The very thought of someone that she knew doing this sickened her. The more she thought about what happened, the more frightened she became, her pulse hammering in her ears as she walked. She needed to get to Aaron and see if he could help her sort this out.

  But first, some of my own clothes.

  Minutes later, she saw her townhouse finally come into view at the end of the street. A cute little one-bedroom affair with a pretty back-yard garden hidden under the snow, she’d lived there since going to work for Jack. As she approached the entryway, she noticed that the front door stood ajar and a new wave of fear-driven adrenalin swept over her. She always locked her doors and windows, a habit left over from college. She listened at the slightly open door. Hearing nothing, she went inside.

  The sight
that greeted her was almost too much to bear. Wide-eyed, she surveyed the scene as waves of fear played over her. The mementos of a lifetime lay tossed and broken on the floor, her favorite pictures and curios in ruins. The sofa lay overturned against the far wall, the cushions slashed open.

  In her shock and anger, she fell to her knees in the middle of the cluttered living room, picking up her things, and burst into tears. “You bastards!” she cursed aloud in the empty room. “Why are you doing this to me?”

  After a minute she composed herself enough to get up and more-critically assess the damage. The living room seemed to be a total loss. She noted the bookshelves and entertainment center emptied onto the floor, the chair cushions were cut open, the stuffing pulled out of them. She also saw the stereo system lay in a corner of the room, smashed into a small black pile of electronic rubble.

  As she came to her bedroom door, Jenny’s stomach turned swift cartwheels, afraid of what she would find. She quickly discovered her fears were well founded as she stepped inside and broken glass crunched beneath her feet.

  The bed, formerly against the wall to her right, now rested upside-down in the middle of the room and suffered the same fate as her chairs, the mattress stuffing tossed in a jumbled pile. Her closet had been ransacked and all her clothes were in mounds on the floor. Even the bathroom was a mess, the medicine cabinet stood open, the contents dumped in the sink.

  Jenny paused long enough to absorb the blow, new tears staining her face. Who would do such a thing?

  She thought about the intentional destruction and it suddenly occurred to her nothing of value seemed to be missing. Her computer was on the desk in the corner of her kitchen, same as always. The TV was still there, smashed to pieces in the bedroom. She began to look more closely and was shocked to find nothing really missing.

  Why would someone go through my house, trash the place, and not take anything?

  As she thought about the shambles of her home, her mind returned to the only thing not moved or broken. Of all the things in the house, her new computer was by-far the most valuable to a thief. The top of the line machine was worth about four grand and should have been the first thing to disappear into the bowels of some seedy pawn shop.

  Her hands began an uncontrollable trembling as she realized this was no ordinary home invasion.

  But the person who did it wanted it to look like amateur hour.

  She gasped as the answer fell to her like a stone.

  They didn’t find what they were looking for; the plans for the battery.

  “This can’t be good,” she said sarcastically to the empty room, now more frightened than ever.

  The “robbery” at her house meant that her attackers knew even more then she thought. Her panicked mind racing, she got to the front door before remembering what she came for. She turned and went back to her bedroom. As she hurriedly changed into her own clothes, she again heard Aaron’s words flash in her mind like a bolt of lightning.

  You can’t go home. It isn’t safe.

  She grabbed her gym bag from one corner of the trashed closet and quickly dug through the mess on the floor. After stuffing a few things into the bag, she was on her way to Aaron’s office again. She needed to tell him all that happened in the last few hours.

  Despite the cold temperature of mid-afternoon, dozens of people lined the sidewalks on both sides of Revere Street. Jenny warily eyed the people moving up and down the marble steps as she approached the entrance to the Boston Tower building.

  Treading the icy stairs carefully, she started up toward the long wall of glass doors. In her haste to find Aaron, she hadn’t noticed the tall man in the long tan coat coming toward her, not until it was too late. Ascending the final few stairs, the man’s quiet footsteps now caught her attention as they came closer.

  She kept moving toward the big glass and steel doors, the rising fear now tasting sticky in her mouth. Even in the sub-zero cold, beads of sweat began to pop out on her forehead. She chastised herself for being so silly.

  Certainly it’s someone just going to work…or something.

  Jenny reached for the elegant brass handle. Just as her fingertips made contact with the cold brass, a very thick, very strong arm reached around her neck, choking off her startled scream. Her assailant clamped a rough cloth over her nose and mouth, a thick medicinal vapor now filling her lungs. She kicked and twisted, trying to get free. Her mind recoiled in terror as she felt herself being dragged into the shadows behind an enormous granite sculpture of a Minuteman adorning the Tower’s entry portico.

  Lifted from her feet, her arms flailed in a desperate attempt to escape as black clouds gathered, obscuring her vision. Intensified by her weakened condition, the chloroform proved very effective and in only seconds Jenny sagged in Clark’s embrace like a living rag doll.

  With a quick glance to ensure they remained unnoticed, Majors grasped the now-unconscious doctor by the waist, holding her up as he half dragged, half carried, her down an access ramp to a narrow breezeway along the side of the building. Throwing the limp woman over his shoulder in a classic “Fireman’s carry”, he followed the concrete walkway for several hundred feet before crossing the snow-covered lawn to the edge of the property. He moved along a tall row of snow-covered cypress trees, looking for the small gap in the natural fence he’d spotted earlier in the day. Finding it, he pushed his way through the branches to a drainage culvert running beneath the property’s perimeter fence.

  Quickly descending the gentle slope into the man-made canal, he crossed the frozen stream and climbed the far bank, emerging next to the road on the opposite side. He glanced up and down the street, checking for any sign of pursuit and saw none. Just as he prepared to continue further down the sidewalk, the blue convertible appeared around the corner, darting toward him from the heavy traffic speeding along the busy avenue. He pulled open the door as the car jerked to a halt before him.

  Clark leaned forward, roughly dumped his unconscious charge on the cold back seat then climbed into the front, pulling the door closed against the frigid air.

  “Go!” He shouted.

  Behind the wheel, Trish hammered her foot down on the accelerator and the sudden inertia pushed them back in their seats as the powerful car shot away from the curb with a throaty roar. Trish yanked the wheel hard, vaulting into a left turn. The unexpected move brought a blare of honking horns from the other drivers forced to avoid them as they disappeared down a narrow alley.

  Clark turned around for a brief glance behind them. Seeing no one exhibiting any unusual interest, he turned back to his partner.

  “Now, back to the hotel. It’s time for you to earn your money, my dear.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Brent stood outside the terminal at Logan Airport, the freezing wind stinging his face, and waved desperately, finally flagging a cab.

  “And where might I be taking you today?” The driver’s thick East Indian accent instantly grated on Brent’s nerves.

  “The Boston Tower Building on Revere Street. Please.”

  The cabbie nodded and sped away, honking at the other drivers still marooned in the snake-like line at the cab-stand. Tires squealing, he threaded between the endless parade of limousines and buses, darting into the melee of speeding traffic.

  Brent looked out the window as the cab rushed along the freeway on-ramp and noticed it had started snowing again. Sitting in the back seat, he thought about his sister’s call. The obvious fear in her voice had chilled him to the bone and the more he replayed her cryptic message, the more it puzzled him, feeding his growing unease.

  The snow was now beginning to build up on the road, the accumulation of ice making the trip downtown a challenge for the man at the wheel. The driver, in his late fifties, struggled for control, the car dancing on the slick pavement.

  At last, the car stopped and Brent got out, trying to dodge the wet snow cascading down around him. Finally making it to the warm confines of the heated entryway, he brushed off some
of the flakes he’d picked up outside, watching them melt into small spots on the tiled floor.

  Apprehension and dread prickled at his thoughts. He was still worried about his sister. Something scared her, and he needed to find out what that was. He’d replayed her call in his mind all the way to Boston, arriving at the conclusion her trouble must be work related. It was the only answer he could think of.

  He knew his sister worked on military contracts. She wouldn’t tell him any specifics, but he figured it must be either weapons or intelligence. The possible addition of the military to the equation sent a new wave of gnawing apprehension surging along his spine. He knew that when it came to maintaining secrecy, the U.S. military could be as ruthless as any foreign enemy.

  Approaching the elevator doors, Brent made the decision to just get in, retrieve her computer and get out. The trip up to the twenty-eighth floor took only seconds. As the elevator glided up, he recalled his sister’s warning about staying alert.

  If she’s this scared, I better be on by toes.

  Footsteps muffled by the thick pile carpeting, he approached the offices of Diversified Research Inc. and noticed a caution tape across the doorway. He stepped up and read the message on the yellow plastic ribbon. Police line - do not cross.

  He promptly slipped under the tape and opened the door.

  He looked into the room on a scene of controlled chaos. The spacious lobby hummed, full of people. The vast majority of them police, the crowd moved around with deliberate precision. Brent watched, his adrenalin flowing, and realized no one saw him enter.

  Too busy talking to each other and trying to look important. He surmised, a sharp cynicism coloring his thoughts a dark hue.

  Some of the people in the room stopped momentarily at the sound of the door closing, but quickly returned to their work, their full attention back on taking photos and collecting evidence.

  Brent hid himself behind a mammoth potted plant decorating the entryway to the reception area and took a few calming breaths. Sprinting down the carpeted hall, he was able to get to Jenny’s office undetected and found it odd that he encountered no one along the way.