by Jenna Ryan
The cabinet key slid into the lock with a quick zip of metal on metal. In the same instant, one of the dark patches next to her moved. More correctly, it exploded. She caught a glimpse of white as she swung her flashlight Unfortunately, no more than that flash registered, because the person who flew at her made a point of knocking the light from her hand.
The beam went out as Nikita landed with an unceremonious thud against a dusty wall. More correctly, she was tackled into it. The hands that shoved her were large and weighty, covered with a pair of thin rubber gloves and unswerving in their intent. She was in the way and must therefore be plowed out of it.
She saved her head from slamming into the plaster, but only just. Clearly, her silhouette attacker was not pleased. Just as plainly, there was no time for a second shot. Nikita’s reeling brain scarcely had a chance to steady itself before the door closed, shutting her in the pitch-dark room and allowing the intruder to escape down the hall.
Feet pounded on the carpet. Whoever it was had turned left, away from the direction she’d come. The person would undoubtedly emerge in the basement and work his or her way through the maze to one of the central staircases.
Fear and tension zinged through her, stiffening her muscles as she groped her way to the door. The furnaces pumped heat into this room for the sake of the medical supplies. It must be shock that made her skin feel clammy and cold, her fingers like pieces of ice.
Two thoughts registered as her trembling hands finally located the doorknob. One, she had to find Vachon. And two, whoever had shoved her into the wall had been too wiry and much too strong to have been a woman.
IT WAS BENEATH HIM and totally against regulations to break into a suspect’s private quarters, but Vachon did it anyway. He’d waited too long to talk to Donald Flynn. Now they had a third corpse. Flynn was going to answer a few questions.
Using a slender file, he picked the old-fashioned lock. Then he removed the outer computer panel and bypassed the security code. A tiny pop, and he was in.
He didn’t draw his gun, but he could get to it in a pinch. He doubted that Flynn would retaliate against his intrusion with anything more violent than indignation, followed by—unless Vachon had read the scientist completely wrong—false contrition and trepidation.
The lab was dark and still smelled of smoke. Pools of fibrous light radiated from battery-powered lanterns at strategic points throughout the room.
“Flynn?” He switched his flashlight beam to high. “It’s Detective Vachon. I know you’re here. We’ve had round-theclock surveillance on all the doors.”
Nothing, not a scratch or scrape or shuffle. Vachon contained a sigh. He hated games. But that didn’t preclude his ability to play them.
“Have it your way, pal,” he muttered, turning his attention to Flynn’s file cabinet and paraphernalia The drawers were all locked. Calmly, as if it came naturally to him, he drew out his lock pick and inserted it in a tall cupboard.
His flashlight revealed shelf upon shelf filled with stringtied shoe boxes. Interesting. The good doctor must have been performing his sordid little experiments for years. What had he said when Vachon talked to him after Laverne’s death? That attitude in females intrigued him, that it superseded physical appearance as far as sexual appeal was concerned.
Personally, Vachon wouldn’t have argued the point. But attitude and personality came from inside, from the brain, if you wanted to get clinical, and Flynn had a great deal of odd-looking equipment down here, including long wires with padded electrodes on the tips.
Was he twisted enough to believe that one person could read another person’s mind? Or were his experiments of a strictly response-to-stimulus nature?
Vachon ran a canny eye over the neat rows of shoe boxes and debated going through them. That would almost certainly bring Flynn out of hiding. It would also be an arduous task. It could wait, he decided. Better to get a search warrant.
He left the cupboard open and moved to the large file cabinet Within five seconds, he was rummaging through the top drawer. Socks, underwear, shampoo, deodorant, toothpaste and a pair of green-striped pajama bottoms. Not quite the jackpot he’d been hoping for.
The second drawer contained a handful of old files. The third held a bunch of dusty medical texts, and—now this really was interesting—way in the back, a black box measuring eighteen inches long by twelve inches wide by four inches high. It looked older than the texts and had a triple combination lock on the front.
Vachon set it on top of the file cabinet and tipped his head, contemplating it. Visions of knives and barbiturates darted through his mind. It wouldn’t hurt to have a look.
He was roughing up his fingertips when the sound of hurried footsteps captured his attention. He turned and frowned. They seemed to be coming from behind the wall.
Drawing his weapon, he moved cautiously to the corner and waited. The footsteps continued, rushing toward him at an unusually rapid pace. He heard a creak and a swish, then saw a section of the wall disappear inward. Grime-covered, with cobwebs clinging to his blond hair and slender face, Donald Flynn stumbled through the opening and immediately tugged it closed behind him.
Breath rushed in and out of his lungs. His skin had a sickly green pallor, but that might have come from poor lighting and the fact that his herb garden sat directly beside him. Flynn closed his eyes for a moment, then snapped them open, startled.
He’d noticed the box, Vachon realized from the shadows.
Swearing under his breath, Flynn moved. He took two huge strides then snatched the box in his hands. Only then did he think to look around.
Satisfied that no further reaction of guilt would be forthcoming, Vachon detached himself from the darkness. He kept his gun concealed in his sleeve as he approached, noting the wild expression in Flynn’s eyes, which strongly hinted of an animal trapped.
“You!” Flynn declared in an accusing tone. “How did you—How long—When—How dare you invade my laboratory!”
Vachon’s smile was easy. Rattled suspects made poor liars. Eyes steady, he said, “We’re going to have a chat, Doctor. A nice long one. You’re going to tell me everything I want to know, starting with where you were right before you tore in here like a terrified jackrabbit, what’s in that box of yours—and why you asked Nikita Sorensen to meet you here yesterday afternoon.”
Flynn’s Byronesque chin came up. “And if I refuse to cooperate?”
Vachon shrugged. “That’s your choice. Personally I’d answer up, but as I’ve told thousands of people like you in the past—” his eyes glinted with something more malicious than humor “—you do have rights. First and foremost, you have the right to remain silent”
SHE’D FORGOTTEN the Seconal.
Nikita’s heart beat a ragged tattoo as she forced herself to return to the storeroom. She fumbled until she located her flashlight, switched it on, grabbed the necessary bottle and bolted.
It reminded her of dashing across her bedroom floor as a child after watching a horror movie, except that there was no bed here to offer her sanctuary. And no Vachon to steady her frazzled nerves.
Whoever it was had long since fled. There was no need to panic. But she kept running regardless, along the dimly lit corridor to the stairs, then down to where they took a sharp right turn.
For a split second, she thought a wall had materialized in her absence. But it was no wall she collided with, it was a man, and the impact unbalanced him more than it did her.
Manny caught himself, staggered into the banister and clung to the split wood by his fingertips. The curse he bit out echoed through the stairwell.
Lips thinned, he glowered at Nikita. “What the hell are you doing?”
Annoyed after her recent fright, she glared back. “I could ask you the same question, Detective Beldon.”
He pulled a splinter from his palm. “I’m trying to find Vachon. Deana thought he might have come looking for you.”
Nikita didn’t know if she believed him or not. In the ti
me it had taken her to retrace her steps for the Seconal, her attacker could easily have circled to approach from another direction. That being the case, she didn’t intend to hang around.
“I have a patient waiting,” she said, and started past him. She jerked visibly when his hand snared her wrist, halting her.
His eyes, pale by murky light, contained an eerie gleam. “Not so fast, Nikita.” He drew out his normal New England accent. “I’m not finished with you yet”
Chapter Fifteen
“Nikita?”
She spun so fast that Vachon almost missed the movement. A vague smile tugged his lips. “With reflexes like that, you’d make one terrific magician.”
Right hand pressed flat to her stomach, she managed to speak. “Don’t do things like that, Vachon. I thought you were—someone else.”
“The murderer?” he surmised, watching her face closely as he tried to envision what might have happened to make her react like this. Something other than a third dead body, he decided, and started toward her. “What is it, Niki? You look shaken.”
They were in her office. The clock had just struck five. It was dark outside, snowing lightly and blowing in cold, heavy gusts, some of them nearing fifty miles an hour.
“I ran into your partner upstairs,” she answered in a tight voice. He noticed that her fingernails bit into her left palm as she began to pace. “That was after I ran into another man, of course. Or maybe they were one and the same—I can’t be sure. He knocked me into a wall in our temporary supply room, then took off like a bat out of hell—which he could have been, judging from the force of the push he gave me. I’m fine,” she said, forestalling his immediate question. “What I’m not, quite yet, is calm.” Her eyes implored him. “Why is it that I keep finding bodies, Vachon? Am I next on the killer’s hit list? Or do I just get the dubious honor of continuing to trip over corpses?”
He gave his head a silent shake, unable to answer her and frustrated because of it. All the questions he and Manny had asked since Laverne had turned up dead, and they were no further ahead now than they’d been then. No further ahead and two more corpses and an alarming number of attacks on Nikita down.
Halting behind her at the frosted widow, he ran his hands up and down her arms until he felt a portion of her tension ebb. Then he turned her and pulled her against him, stroking her spine and laying his cheek on the side of her dark, silky hair.
She trembled and pressed herself closer. “I don’t like him, Vachon.”
He didn’t need a name. “What happened upstairs?” he asked gently.
She related her story, ending with a shiver. “Manny appeared out of nowhere. When I tried to leave, he insisted I stay, said he wasn’t finished with me yet”
Vachon’s hand stilled. “What did he mean?”
“Nothing sinister, as it turns out. He just wanted to grill me about Martin and some incident he was involved in at college.” She lifted her head, and he could see her expression was troubled. “Manny says you know about Martin going to med school for a semester.”
“Manny found it on the computer.”
“Well, it wasn’t really a secret, although I wouldn’t go around bragging about it. Martin was wrong, and Sandy—I think that was her name—let him know it I thought she handled herself very well.”
“How did Deana feel?”
More of the tension ebbed from her as his hand resumed its rhythmic motion. Too bad the same couldn’t be said for the pressure in his lower limbs, he reflected with a wry twist of his lips.
“They were dating at the time,” Nikita replied. “She got angry, then got over it. That’s her way. She’s not a brooder. She accepts what is whether she likes it or not. She must have gotten that trait from her mother, because she sure didn’t get it from Dean. Once his mind’s set on a thing, he won’t budge. The only concession I can remember him making was when Deana and Martin announced that they were married. He had to accept it. I suppose it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. He and my father were friends, and you’ve seen him with Adeline. He adores her. I’m not sure why, but he does.”
Vachon frowned. “What do you mean, you’re not sure why?”
Again her head came up. To his relief, this time he caught a glimmer of amusement dancing in her eyes. “Because no one can control her.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Anyway, the point we’ve strayed from is that Martin, while he might have harassed a young woman, certainly wouldn’t have murdered her simply because she pulled out a few strands of his hair and broke a couple of fingers. I don’t like coincidences, either, Vachon, but that’s exactly what this is. My brother harbors no repressed anger or hostility toward anyone. Chances are, after he healed, he put the whole affair out of his mind. His triumphs sustain. His defeats are simply shrugged aside.”
Vachon regarded her somberly. “You’re sure about that?”
A flicker of uncertainty came and went. “Positive.” Shaking back her loosened hair, she stared at him, challengingly critical. “As a matter of interest, how did your day go?”
He made a distasteful face. “I broke into Flynn’s lab.”
“You make it sound like a city sewer line. Was he upset?”
“He wasn’t there.”
Since holding her was completely destroying his emotional balance, to say nothing of his professional objectivity, Vachon let his arms fall reluctantly to his sides. Now he knew how the Titanic passengers must have felt, adrift in an icy ocean, unable to hold or touch their loved ones. Helpless and with only a very little hope to sustain them. He loved Niki. But marry a shrink? He shuddered and walked to the far side of the desk.
“Your Dr. Flynn,” he continued, mindful of her gaze on his back, “has a glib tongue and a store of lies that makes him difficult to pin down. He insists he had no part in the attack on you yesterday, that he wanted to talk to you on a professional level about his experiments.”
“Then why didn’t he come out and tell us so afterward?”
“Fear. He thought he’d be implicated. All the usual reasons. The guy has the backbone of a jellyfish—not to mention a locked box full of lewd photographs.”
“Male or female?”
“Both. By the way, did you know that there are hidden passages in this place?”
“No, but I’m not surprised.”
“Flynn’s aware of them. He came through one when I was in his lab. According to him, he needed to get out for fresh air. Knowing about the guards I’d posted, he decided to sneak out. He looked like a ghost when he reappeared.”
“Maybe the air in the walls is bad.”
“Or maybe he’d been running from something that rattled him. Possibly an encounter with you in the west wing?” Vachon suggested with a shrewd arch of one brow.
Nikita bit her lip. “That is possible. But he might also have seen Tom’s body being taken away. Vachon?”
“What?”
“Do you think Tom’s death might be unrelated to Laverne’s and Patti’s?”
“It’s possible, but not probable. Copycat killings happen, but the stab wound on all three victims looked identical to me. The coroner will determine that for sure. Until she does, we have to go on the assumption that we’re dealing with one murderer.”
“And you still want to go through with this dinner at my grandmother’s place tonight?”
“Absolutely.”
A shower of snowy light created an aureole of silver around her dark hair. Forget Manny, Vachon thought with a stab of fierce desire. Niki was the angel here. A Russian ice angel with a heart of gold.
A groan rose in his throat Closing his eyes, he vowed not to be swayed. Not now, when he was feeling so damned vulnerable.
Her voice drifted closer as she said, “You look tired, Vachon. Maybe tonight’s not such a great idea, after all.” He felt her fingers sliding through his hair. “We don’t have to go, you know.”
Unable to fight any longer, he reached for her, hauling her hard against
him and burying his face in her neck. “We do,” he said, inhaling the roses-and-spice scent of her. “But not for a few hours yet”
DEANA TRUDGED up the stairs of the condo she’d shared with Martin for the past seven years. Seven times three hundred and sixty-five days. God, what a trial to have endured.
“Deana?”
Her head snapped up. “Daddy!” His expression was harsh, but then it was often that way. “What are you—You shouldn’t be standing out in the cold like this. Your arthritis.”
“I just arrived,” he said with a chilly smile that set off a silent alarm in her head. “Invite me in for cocoa. I want to hear all about your day.”
Deana battled a prickle of fear, an unfounded prickle, she reminded herself, and nodded. “Niki found another dead body. An orderly. Tom Pratt.”
He blinked. “Really?”
“You don’t seem surprised.”
“I am—and I’m not.” A twisted knuckle came up to graze her cheek. “Where is your husband?”
Disparagingly asked—which probably accounted for the chilly smile. Deana shrugged. “I haven’t seen him today.”
The bluster seemed to go out of him. A scowl turned his mouth down. “The one time in your life you refused to let me advise you, and what happens? You wind up living in hell.” His features hardened. “You should have—Well, it’s done, isn’t it? He’s not worthy of you, my dear. You must realize that by now. Have you considered the possibility of—”
“Many times,” she interrupted. “And I’ve discarded it.”
His gaze became faraway as he appeared to stare through her. “Such a waste,” he said, his words scarcely audible above the gusting wind.
Deana sighed when he ran a finger through the hair at her temple and pulled lightly on a stray curl. “Are you ready for Adeline’s party?” she asked, sliding her key into the lock.
“What? Oh, yes.” His hand dropped onto his stick. “We’ll drive over together, shall we?”
