“Wyatt?” she called. But nobody answered.
Her night blindness faded quickly, but the blue-and-purple sunset haze coming through the windows wasn’t enough light to see by. Squinting, she scanned the room. Maybe it was a security guard who’d come in and thought the lab was empty.
“Hello?” Her throat spasmed.
The silence was ominous.
Her initial startled response catapulted into outright fear. Someone was in the lab with her.
Someone who wasn’t identifying himself.
Stay calm, stay calm. It was probably students playing a prank. Maybe they’d popped in, hit the light switch and run.
Suddenly a flashlight came on, blinding her for an instant. It panned across the room. Nina ducked. Maybe it really was a security guard. She opened her mouth to identify herself. Then dread certainty closed her throat.
No. It wasn’t a guard—or a student. Whoever was here with her was not harmless.
Her throat was so tight she couldn’t breathe.
Run, her instincts said. Try to make it to the other door. But the fire exit was as far away as the front door from where she crouched.
At that instant the flashlight’s beam passed over her—and paused.
She froze. Could he see the top of her head?
The harsh beam moved, sweeping the room. Then heavy footsteps echoed on the concrete floor, coming closer. He wasn’t even trying to stay quiet. She could hear him breathing, even over the pounding of her heart.
Then an electric hum drowned out all other sounds, and with a dull thump, the emergency lights kicked on.
Adrenaline rushed through her like a cold chill. The lights were dim, but they were better than the pallid glow from the windows.
She stood carefully. The flashlight beam’s source was near the door. The beam moved, giving her a view of a large figure clothed all in black. He held the flashlight in his left hand and what looked like a mallet or a large hammer in his right.
Right-handed. Over six feet. One hundred ninety to two hundred pounds. Male. Her brain ticked off the attributes so she could later describe him—assuming she lived.
The flashlight’s beam stopped on the bones she’d left on the counter next to the lab sink.
With a satisfied grunt, he rushed toward them.
He was going to destroy her bones.
“No!” she shouted.
The beam pinned her and the man cursed. Brandishing the mallet, he started toward her.
Dear heavens, he hadn’t known she was there. She should have stayed quiet. But he was going to destroy her bones.
He hesitated while she stood frozen, pinned like a rabbit under a hawk’s piercing gaze. Then he turned and rushed toward the table, with the mallet raised over his head.
Nina knew she couldn’t stop him. He was much bigger than she. Even if she had the courage to confront him, she had nothing to use for a weapon.
She watched, helpless, as he swung the mallet.
“No!” The protest was wrung involuntarily from her lips as she cast about for anything she could use to stop him.
But there was nothing, unless…
She reached behind her, feeling for the jar of sodium. Even a freshman lab student knew that pure sodium exploded in water.
Although the jar was heavy, the rock of sodium inside it weighed no more than a couple of ounces. It was suspended in mineral oil to keep it from reacting with moisture in the air. Even if she could toss it into the water-filled sink, it might be too insulated by the mineral oil to flash, much less explode.
Still, it was her only chance to save her evidence.
And her life.
So she picked up the jar and held it over her head. “Hey!” she shouted. “Over here!” She prayed he’d take the bait and shine the light her way. At least enough so she could take aim at the edge of the sink, where she hoped to smash the jar.
He did.
She threw.
The jar swirled through the air in slow motion, spewing big, glistening drops of mineral oil in spirals.
The intruder ducked.
From somewhere, a voice shouted her name.
The jar hit the edge of the sink and shattered.
She heard a loud splash.
Then with a bright yellow flash, a huge fireball exploded straight up—like a volcano—and bright sparks rained down.
Nina dropped to the floor and covered her head.
DESPERATELY, HIS HEART in his throat, Wyatt slapped the tiled wall with his left hand, searching for a light switch. He clutched his weapon in his right hand, aimed at the blinding explosion. He couldn’t see anything but the yellow light, and couldn’t hear anything but the bang echoing in his ears.
“Nina!” he shouted, unable to hear even his own voice.
Dear God, don’t let her be hurt.
Then his fingers touched the switches and he flipped them, flooding the lab with light. When his eyes focused, he saw a figure flopping around comically. Each time the intruder tried to get a foothold, he slipped in the thick liquid that coated the floor.
Wyatt squinted, wondering if his eyes were playing tricks, but no, they weren’t.
The intruder’s hair was smoking.
Holstering his gun, Wyatt crossed the distance between them in two strides and grabbed the man’s collar. He dragged him away from the sink, leaving streaks of thick liquid on the concrete floor. He dumped him next to an adjacent lab table and yanked a pair of handcuffs out of his jacket.
Once he’d cuffed the man’s hands around the steel table leg, Wyatt straightened and scanned the room. He’d figure out who his perp was later.
Right now he had to find Nina.
The explosion had died as quickly as it had erupted, leaving the room thick with smoke and a distinctly vile and caustic odor, like rotten eggs.
“Nina!” he shouted. “Nina, damn it! Where are you?” He heard something—clothes rustling maybe—and whirled in that direction. “Nina?”
“Wyatt?”
He didn’t see her. He wanted to sprint around the counters and tables, searching for her, but while his instincts told him that her voice sounded more relieved than scared, his training kept him from rushing headlong into a trap.
“Are you okay?” he asked, retrieving his gun and holding it at the ready.
She didn’t answer. He heard a small sound, like a sob.
His pulse throbbed in his temple. Was there a second intruder? Was he holding Nina? “You’ve got to answer me, Professor. Tell me what’s wrong. Should I call the doctor?”
“No…” Her voice caught. “I’m fine.”
He tensed. Her voice sounded stronger, as if she was finally getting it together after a bad scare, but he still wasn’t taking any chances. “Can you stand up? I need to see you.”
More rustling of clothes. Then he saw the top of her head. He waited until she’d straightened completely and he’d had a good look at her before he lowered his weapon.
Her dark, dark eyes were wide as saucers. Her face looked impossibly pale, and she was shivering, but she was okay.
It took him two tries to slide his gun back into his holster. “Damn it, Professor,” he growled. “What were you doing here alone?”
He held out his hand, and with a small cry, Nina ran straight into his arms. For a split second, he pressed his lips against her hair and held her as close as he could, wrapping his arms around her.
She didn’t seem to mind. In fact, her arms slid around his waist and held on tight. After only a few seconds, her shivering stopped, and she took a long, shaky breath and sighed, warming the skin of his neck.
“Hey, help me over here!”
It was his perp, complaining.
Nina tensed, then pushed away.
“Help, damn it! My hair’s on fire!” yelled the man.
Wyatt squeezed Nina’s shoulder, then stalked over and looked down at the man’s brown hair. “It’s just smoking,” he said. He eyed the lab table. Sure enough there was
a sink with a sprayer attached to the faucet. “Here, I’ll put it out.” He jerked the sprayer to the length of its hose and squirted water on the guy’s head.
A stream of curses, some in Spanish and some in English, spewed from the guy’s mouth. “Madre de Dios! What the hell? I’ll sue you!”
“Yeah? When? After you’re convicted of breaking and entering and assault?” Wyatt barely restrained himself from kicking him in the ribs. He’d attacked Nina.
Luckily for the man, at that moment sirens screamed and blue lights flashed. Within seconds, Sheriff Hardin and three men in fire gear burst through the door.
And stopped in their tracks.
Hardin scowled at Wyatt. “What the…?”
Then two men whose shirts said Security came running in.
“Sheriff, I was just about to call you,” Wyatt said. “Looks like this guy was trying to blow up the lab.”
“The hell I was,” the handcuffed guy said. “That was her!”
Her? Wyatt turned to stare at Nina.
“He was smashing my bones,” she said. “I had to stop him.”
Hardin cleared his throat. “What’s going on here? I need some answers now!”
Wyatt ignored him and the firemen, who headed over to the sink to look at the damage from the explosion. He stepped over to Nina. “Professor? What the hell did you do?”
Nina scraped her teeth across her lower lip, a gesture that in another circumstance would have had him groaning with lust. But all he could do was wait, stunned, to hear how she’d caused the explosion.
“I just threw some sodium into the sink. It’s a simple chemical reaction. Sodium oxidizes quickly upon exposure to air and violently when it’s dropped into water—”
“Okay,” Wyatt said. “I get it. You blew up the sink.”
Her eyes widened and she whirled around. “Oh, no!” she cried.
Wyatt sprang toward her and wrapped his arm around her shoulders. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
She pointed at the sink. “I destroyed my evidence!”
Chapter Sixteen
Wyatt quickly and efficiently patted down the intruder and found his wallet and car keys in his pants pocket. “Good idea,” he muttered. “Carry your ID when you’re planning an assault. Saves the law enforcement officers a lot of time. We appreciate it.”
He handed the keys over to campus security and ordered them to find and search the car, then take it to Impound.
“Let’s go,” he said, jerking the perp up and cuffing his hands behind his back. “You’re going to have a long night.” Looking around, he saw Nina over by the sink, examining the smashed bones. “Nina, come on.”
“I can’t leave. What about my bones? He smashed one of my skull fragments, and I was in the middle of a test for acid residue.”
“Leave it until tomorrow. I’ll make sure campus security assigns someone to the lab for tonight.”
“They’ll be inside? But what if they touch something? I can’t afford to have them—”
“Call Todd to spend the night. Can he do some of that testing?”
“Yes, but—”
“Professor, that first night Todd nearly passed out from excitement just thinking one of the bodies might have been murdered. Let him guard the bones. He’ll think he’s Indiana Jones. Now come on.”
Wyatt hauled his prisoner out of the building and to his Jeep. “Oh, by the way, Jeffrey Marquez,” he said, holding the guy’s driver’s license up. “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say…”
By the time Wyatt finished reciting Marquez’s Miranda rights, they’d reached the Jeep. He shoved him into the backseat and propped a hip against the door to wait for Nina.
Within five minutes, she was walking toward him. Twice she looked back, as if to make sure the lab was locked.
He held up his keys, then tossed them to her.
“What’s this?” she asked.
“You drive. I’ve got to keep an eye on your attacker.”
Marquez shifted uncomfortably. Wyatt had the distinct impression that he’d never been in handcuffs before.
Interesting.
When they got to the sheriff’s office, Kirby Spears was waiting. He wrangled the prisoner out of the backseat and took him inside.
Nina reached for the door handle.
“No,” Wyatt said, laying a hand on her arm. “Take the Jeep. Go back to the inn, and relax. You’ve had a long day.”
Nina’s gaze snapped to his, and her dark eyes burned with irritation. “Relax? I’m not going anywhere, cowboy. Not until I find out who this man is and why he tried to destroy my bones.”
Wyatt opened his mouth to protest, but he’d seen that look in her eyes before, and he was pretty darn sure she wasn’t going to change her mind. So he shrugged, got out and headed inside. Behind him, he heard the driver’s-side door slam.
NINA MADE IT INSIDE IN time to hear Wyatt give Deputy Spears an order. “Everything about him. Where he works, lives, hangs out. Where his parents live. Who he’s dating. Everything.”
When Spears got through writing everything down, he waited, pen poised above paper, but Wyatt didn’t say anything else. “Uh, Lieutenant?” Spears said. “What about pulling his record?”
Wyatt nodded. “Right. We need to verify it, but I’ll guarantee you, he hasn’t got a record.”
Nina stepped up beside Wyatt. “You can’t know that. He was sneaking around like a pro.”
Wyatt leveled his blue gaze at her. “There’s no yardstick or calipers for measuring how an ex-con acts, Professor. It’s experience and instinct.”
“Okay, then. What in your experience makes you so sure about him?” she asked.
“Today’s the first time he’s ever had to sit or walk with his hands cuffed behind his back. I’m telling you, he’s an amateur,” Wyatt insisted. “Whatever he was doing in the lab, either it was to protect himself, or he did it for a friend.”
Nina frowned at Wyatt as her brain raced.
“Hey, Professor. What is it?” Wyatt waved his hand in front of her eyes.
“I don’t know,” she whispered. “Something you said. I don’t recognize his name, but I think I’ve seen him before.”
“Where?”
“I can’t remember. But I will.”
“Lieutenant?” Spears interrupted. “I’ve got something.”
Wyatt stepped around the desk so he could see Kirby’s computer monitor. Nina followed him.
“His work ID was in his wallet. He’s an emergency medical technician,” Spears announced.
“Some EMTs are well versed in anatomy,” Nina said.
Wyatt’s brows shot up. “Oh, yeah?” He turned on his boot heel and headed into Sheriff Hardin’s office.
“Wait,” Nina called. But he was already halfway to the door, so she rushed to catch up.
“Hardin, I want to talk to Marquez now,” Wyatt declared.
The sheriff didn’t even look up. “He’s waiting for you in the conference room.”
“Okay, then. Thanks,” said Wyatt.
Nina suppressed a smile. Wyatt was used to giving orders and taking control. The fact that he and Hardin were practically on equal footing had him off balance. He wasn’t used to working alongside someone else. He was more comfortable being in charge of—and responsible for—the people who worked under him.
He stopped with his hand on the doorknob. “Where do you think you’re going?”
She almost ran into him. “I want to hear what he has to say.” She took a quick breath and continued before Wyatt had a chance to interrupt. “Listen to me, Wyatt. He’s an EMT.”
“Yeah, you said that.”
“This is important. When he broke in, I was about to do a test for acid residue on one of the skull fragments.”
Wyatt looked at her for a beat. “Okay, I’ll bite. Why?”
“Because the bony surface of the skull was etched. That doesn’t happen naturally. That skull was soaked, or at the least washed, in a str
ong acid. I’m guessing hydrochloric.”
“Somebody poured acid on the bones?”
“Not exactly. Acid eats away at a bone’s surface. I’ve seen it before, on skeletons that are used for display. They’re cleaned with acid, then bleached before they’re put into classrooms. I had to clean one up when I was an undergraduate, for basic anatomy class.”
Wyatt’s eyes narrowed, then widened. “You think our perp here—”
“He may have planted a skeleton. And was trying to destroy it, or maybe steal it back.”
“Why?”
Nina had asked herself that question. The answer fit with what they knew and the clues they’d been given. She met Wyatt’s gaze and saw that he’d come to the same conclusion.
She also knew that like her, he couldn’t bring himself to state the obvious conclusion—that Marcie was alive and had faked her death.
“Good job, Professor,” he said softly as he pushed open the door to the small room and went in.
Nina followed. Jeffrey Marquez was handcuffed by one hand to his chair. He glanced sidelong at them. His face was sullen and he looked tired.
“So what’s your story, Jeffrey Marquez?” Wyatt asked.
Marquez didn’t respond. He barely acknowledged hearing him. Wyatt glanced at Nina and gave his head an almost imperceptible shake.
She got the message. Don’t talk.
He sat there, watching Marquez. Every so often, Marquez would give Wyatt a glance, then look back down at the table.
Nina surreptitiously watched the minute hand on her watch. Wyatt stayed quiet and still for a full five minutes. Then he stood abruptly, scraping the wooden chair legs across the hardwood floor with a screech.
Nina jumped, and so did Marquez.
“Okay, then. I’ve got all I need. We’re done here.” Wyatt gestured to Nina. “I think we’ll go with breaking and entering, destruction of state property in furtherance of a crime, interfering with an ongoing investigation and, of course—” he turned the doorknob and opened the door “—attempted murder.”
As Nina walked past Wyatt and through the door, she heard him whisper, “Wait for it. One…two…three…”
“Hold it!” Marquez yelled, his face draining of color. “Wait a minute. Nobody said anything about attempted murder.”
Classified Cowboy Page 15
