“What was?”
“The fact that coincidence might just see someone else unlock that office too early, before you were dead. I was sitting at my work desk—preparing plans for my next project, you know; an extension of the Cripple—and the thought of you turning up was just playing on my mind.”
“So you hid in the lab all day?”
“No, detective. I wired up my own link to the security camera at the entrance and kept one eye on it. I’ve also brought my gun into work, as you can see. It has this little gadget called a silencer on it, because—as you must know—I’m going to have to kill you myself. I guess sometimes you just have to get your own hands dirty.”
“How you going to hide our bodies?” Aubrey asked.
“Aubrey, dear,” he mocked. “You’re in a building of multiple science labs and there are many favors owed to me here. We find uses for dead bodies all the time. Usually they’re worthless convicts or volunteered in the name of science but—and this might surprise you—faking the paperwork isn’t beneath me.”
“You really are sick, you know that?” Jesse said.
“Indeed. There’s just one thing that’s holding me back.”
“Oh, we’re very sorry to keep you.”
Jesse’s sarcasm caused just the slightest grin appear on Marshall’s face, before he repressed the notion of laughing at a shifter’s joke.
“What was with the dance?” Marshall asked.
“That’s what was keeping you?” said Jesse. “Well, Marshall, it might surprise you to discover that shifters have rhythm and sometimes it just gets you, you know. The need to express yourself.”
He began a series of random dance moves again, and Aubrey’s eyes widened. What the hell is he doing?
Marshall laughed before shrugging his shoulders and saying, “I’ll almost be sorry to lose this one, he’s amusing.”
Then Marshall pointed his gun at Jesse to shoot.
Chapter 15
Seriously, what on earth was Jesse doing?
Aubrey had been looking to appeal to whatever conscience Marshall had left and even sensed it was lurking somewhere. There had always been the impression that he preferred to let nature do his dirty work for him, out of sight, when he had left them at the reservoir—just as murdering shifters via rare diseases offered a certain distance from the crime. Now he was talking to them, rather than shooting as soon as he had the chance. He was spiteful and deceptive, but had he ever actually murdered with his own hand? Aubrey didn’t think so, and she was hoping he would shy away from it now within the familiar surroundings of their workplace, where he had feigned pleasantries and supportive gestures and perhaps grown some respect or affection for her, no matter how faint.
Finding them there had not been a part of his plans, she knew. It was clear to her that Marshall was talking himself into being a worse monster than he actually was, because circumstance now demanded it. He had to kill them or else it would be his downfall, but the villain and the human being were in conflict.
As offensive as the idea was, Aubrey’s final suggestion, when it looked like he was indeed going to shoot, would have been to bargain. She would have to convince him there would be no police involvement and he would not do any time for his crimes, so long as he agreed to retire and never work in the sector again, as well as giving up his secrets on the Cripple. A man who boasted so many evil deeds deserved to be behind bars, she knew, but right then it was the only card she had. Otherwise they would both die, and Marshall would probably get away with it and continue finding ways to infect shifters for the rest of his days.
Just when she was about to give in and offer this distasteful compromise, Jesse started acting weirdly and dancing like an idiot. Was there method to his madness? None of her research so far had found any bizarre dancing behavior among those infected with the Cripple.
There he was, still dancing away, maybe to draw Marshall’s attention away from her. If so, it looked like it was working, but it would only serve to make him the first one to be shot.
Aubrey had to bargain, but she almost opened her mouth too late. Marshall was about to pull the trigger when Jesse’s jig turned into something else entirely. Because of his laughable behavior, the distraction looked innocent, playful, but Jesse soon dived behind one of the laboratory tables, temporarily disappearing from Marshall’s vision.
“Stand back up, shifter!” Marshall yelled, thinking he was trying to hide—but Jesse had other plans.
Jesse stood up, all right…he leaped back up, in fact, and he brought chaos with him. The large lab table flew up into the air in Marshall’s direction with the kind of power that showed how impressive Jesse’s strength was even without shifting into his tiger form.
Aubrey could admit she had probably underestimated him. More importantly, Marshall was completely unprepared for the table flying his way. If he hadn’t moved in time it would have crushed him, probably breaking his legs. In this case, his agility was just enough to avoid it landing, but his aim was off, and Jesse was not finished yet.
Before the table had even crashed to the floor, Jesse was leaping over it and towards Marshall, shifting in the process. He always said he could shift in a matter of life or death and he was proving true to his word. Also, the shift was quick.
Mid-air into tiger form, teeth and claw then reached out for Marshall. A shot was fired. In horror, Aubrey knew it was accurate, but it wasn’t enough. Her colleague’s worse nightmare was upon him—human turned to beast and pointing all its savagery in his direction.
With those claws and such superior strength, not to mention his animal instinct, it must have been difficult for Jesse to resist ending Marshall’s life there and then; a man who would have hunted every last shifter down to extinction if possible and was happy to murder others just for getting in his way. Their tormenter was at his mercy, but Jesse disproved all negative stereotypes of shifter nature there and then. Finding their target, two great paws smacked Marshall to the floor. If Jesse’s claws had been extended, the villain’s throat would have been slit, but they weren’t and didn’t need to be. The blow from his paws was still weighty enough to concuss Marshall, and probably still more powerfully than a professional boxer. Even in this action, restraint was shown, and Marshall collapsed to the floor with tiger paws pinning him there.
Aubrey’s anxiety was not quite driven away yet. Responding immediately on hearing the gunshot, she was by Jesse’s side to ensure the finger clinging on to that trigger could not fire again. Jesse had Marshall pinned by the arm and chest, so the reality was that no more harm could be done with bullets anyway, but Aubrey took no chances, stamping on the hand as hard as she could and then kicking the gun away when it came loose. The stamp caused a yelp of pain from her pinioned superior and she thought one of his fingers was broken. Despite being attacked by a tiger it looked like Aubrey had caused him the most harm with her shoes, but she did not pause to worry about that. Her concern was for Jesse and where that bullet had struck.
Putting her hands to his stripy forehead, then neck, Aubrey sought to make sure that a fatal wound had not been suffered, but she found nothing. Lastly her eyes fell on Jesse’s right shoulder and she saw a graze that was surely where the bullet had hit. At last she breathed a sigh of relief. The wound was not bad at all and, in his high adrenaline state, it was likely Jesse was not even aware of it.
Once she was convinced that no serious hurt had been caused, Aubrey went to pick up the gun herself and pointed it at Marshall.
“It’s okay, Jesse,” she said. “I’ve got him covered. You can let him go and shift back to human form if you need. Might be wise in case someone comes; his silencer didn’t work after all.”
Jesse obeyed and bounded off into the laboratory’s far corner.
“Stay exactly where you are, Marshall,” she ordered. “And don’t worry…unlike you, I don’t have any reservations about pulling this trigger.”
In reality her words were not needed. Marshall looked dazed
and quite unlikely to go anywhere. Soon Jesse was back by her side in human form, wearing a lab coat he had found; his own clothes having stretched and torn as he shifted. Seeing him dressed like a colleague brought a smile back to her face.
“Now that’s something I never expected to see,” she said.
“It’s either this or my bare ass, I’m afraid.”
“Just warn me if you’re going to dance again. I might not be able to contain myself.”
Right then the doors burst open, and in came Claire. After a brief assessment of the situation she told them, “I’ve called the police and they’ll be here soon.”
“How did you get past the guard?” Jesse asked.
“I just ran past him when I heard the gunshot,” she replied. “He’ll catch up soon if he doesn’t have a heart attack first. Hey! I like the outfit, Jesse.”
Aubrey then handed the gun to Claire so as she could take another closer look at Jesse’s wound without all the fur in the way.
“It looks okay,” Aubrey assessed, despite the blood staining the lab coat. “I’m pretty sure the bullet hasn’t gone in, though you’ll probably need a couple of stitches.”
“I guess we’ve got you banged to rights, fella,” Claire said to Marshall as he was able to focus on her for the first time… and she was right. Very soon the sound of many footsteps were heard and a squad of police entered the lab, pointing their guns. All three of them put their hands up before pointing down to where Marshall lay.
The whole scene took some explaining. Aubrey regretted not calling for everyone’s attention immediately and starting the story from the beginning, because she ended up telling it many times to different faces and in various orders. All of the police acted as if their own questions were the most important, regardless of whether they started at the beginning, middle or end. Eventually Aubrey was able to get the message across that she was on the ball and that Marshall had been overcome due to illegal medical activities that had caused the deaths of many shifters.
At last the attention was turned to Marshall and one of the officers asked, “All right, Mr. Collins. What do you have to say for yourself?”
When Marshall then turned to Aubrey as he thought how to respond, she took the opportunity of holding up her notes and saying, “Don’t worry! I’ve got all the evidence I need here to back up what I’m saying—and you know we’ll find lots more, Marshall.”
“That’s right,” Jesse added. “And I have footage of you going back and forth from the reservoir with your little chemistry kit.”
“So, what do you have to say?” the officer repeated.
“I need to speak to my lawyer,” was his response.
“That’s funny. Usually people say that after we’ve arrested them. Okay then, put the cuffs on him and read him his rights.”
Just before he was about to be led away, Aubrey couldn’t help approaching Marshall and asking him why. He was a man she had once held great respect for and she was sure he must once have had much to offer the world of medicine, before personal vendetta drew him into unsavory choices.
“Aren’t you sorry, Marshall?” she asked. “Why hate shifters so much that you have to do this?”
Marshall was either still quite dazed or else did not care what the police officers who overheard him thought, because he responded like a man given the chance of getting years of rancid bitterness off his chest and showed her his true colors.
“You’re young, Aubrey,” he said. “It’s trendy to appear liberal. You want to know why that shifter over there is nice to you? Because he’s learned fear, that’s why; he knows we outnumber him. All his kind know, and they also know we’re onto them. That’s the only reason some of them have stopped killing, because they’re afraid. But let them grow in number and things will soon be different. They’re not people; they’re monsters and they shouldn’t be allowed to spread. They’ll become a threat without people like me. You’ll realize that someday and think differently of me. You were lucky not to inherit your father’s genes, Aubrey. He was a freak and one day you will see.”
There were many responses to this vicious diatribe but, as Aubrey listened to him waffle on, she came to the conclusion that he simply was not worth it. His was a mind too far gone to heal. It only disturbed her to know that there were more people like him out there, who would only ever see shifters as monsters.
Once Marshall was gone, Aubrey still found dealing with the police difficult. They wanted to take her down the station as well and ask her question after question. Although insisting she was not under suspicion for anything, they still insisted there were important matters for discussion, and her frustrated response was to stress time and time again that she needed to work.
“You don’t understand,” she said. “There are shifters with this condition and I’m the only one who can find a cure for them. You need to let me be for forty-eight hours while I sort out a vaccine, otherwise they’ll die.”
Finally they relented, but only when something awful looked like happening.
Although he had received a stitch for his wound, Jesse suddenly announced he could not stand anymore and curled up in the corner of the room. Aubrey was horrified; the Cripple had gone into its later stages at last, but seeing it first-hand caused the police to fear for their jobs. In part, this was helped by Claire’s claim that they could also catch the Cripple if they lingered too long—which wasn’t true—but eventually they were left alone to man the laboratory and find a cure.
And not a moment too soon.
Chapter 16
Time was of the essence, but Aubrey was in her element and she also had all she needed. Her research was also sped up as soon as Marshall’s backpack was found in his office, revealing that the toxin he had been using to infect the water supply was sodium hydroxide laced with water-soluble potassium. The find was exactly what Aubrey needed. Within an hour of her initial panic at Jesse’s deterioration, she was able to put a comforting hand on his shoulder and tell him, “It’s okay, my love, I have all I need and you’ll be back on your feet in a day or two’.”
In this she was as good as her word, though once again she had reason to be eternally grateful to Claire. Her new friend refused to leave, other than to make a quick call to ensure the store was manned, and essentially worked as Aubrey’s assistant over the next two days. The science may have baffled her but she ran every little errand Aubrey needed, whether for food and drink, messages to reception and emails to colleagues in other hospitals that were treating shifters.
Aubrey didn’t see any of it, but the entire affair with Marshall being taken away in handcuffs had caused a huge scandal about the whole research site. In the fallout, none of the crisis management succeeded in noticing there were two people on site who were not supposed to be there. Jesse was able to stay in the laboratory on a hospital bed they had commandeered, while his two friends worked away long into the night.
Getting there had demanded a stranger and more perilous route than Aubrey had been aware when setting out on her field research, which included seeing her fall in love on the way, but when the time came she performed wonderfully. Knowing what chemicals she was dealing with enabled her to ascertain exactly how the Cripple behaved when first invading the bloodstream. Within twenty-four hours she had a blueprint for an antidote, and halfway through the second day she made a successful test of a vaccine. Although the vaccine itself would only halt the progress of the Cripple, rather than actively working to reverse its work, the theory was that the body’s natural immune system would respond to its absence by doing this work for them. This was what they were holding their breath for once Jesse had been injected. Only then did Aubrey stop and collapse onto the sleeping bag she kept there, realizing she had been on autopilot for quite an unhealthy period of time.
Had she not passed out the wait would have been unbearable, watching Jesse lie there helpless and praying that the science was worth the faith she placed in it. A few hours later—and less than forty-eight h
ours after Jesse had curled up in the corner, as she had promised—Aubrey was woken gently by Claire, and she looked up to a wonderful sight. Jesse was sitting up in his bed with a relieved smile on his face, looking lovingly back at her.
Immediately she rose to embrace him, not caring that tears of joy were streaming down her cheeks and onto his shoulder, and for a long time they found no words and just held onto each other. Jesse still felt numb, and she told him it would probably take a week or two to be completely back to normal, but this did not matter. The main thing was he was going to be okay. They had both survived and could look forward to a long life together.
Neither of them were in the dark right then as to what they wanted from their lives. Jesse did not have to urge Aubrey to make Colorado her homeland; she said so herself, ‘I want to go home with you’.
Professional responsibility had a way of intruding upon personal happiness, however, and the blissful lifestyle that seemed but a reach away ended up being delayed. There was a lot of work to do in the lab, not just in relation to the Cripple but undoing all of the evil work Marshall had been involved with. Difficult as it was to say goodbye, Jesse and Claire left for Colorado the next day, accepting that there were too many lives at stake for Aubrey to go with them.
“I’ll be back in Pine Valley as soon as I can,” she promised, though the truth was she could not see the way ahead at all. There was a chaotic situation at Lampack, in the midst of which Aubrey continued to work on various cures and new avenues of research. For the first few days she corresponded with medical staff in multiple states where the Cripple had been reported. In some cases she was able to send instructions on how to make the vaccine, but for many who did not have access to talented researchers it became necessary to produce a sufficient amount and distribute accordingly. In this, Aubrey was able to round up a few assistants (the bad publicity, which seemed to grow every day, meant that the Cripple was something of a national embarrassment for the company and it gave Aubrey a certain authority she had never really enjoyed there), but the effort was still one that she had to lead until someone else could claim to be up to date with her expertise.
Roar For More (Online Shifter Dating Agency Romance) Page 13
