by Rachel Grant
“Shut up and get up.”
“You know, I don’t think this relationship is working out. I’m going to find a new doctor, and I will insist you release your notes on our sessions.”
The doctor pulled the gun back and slammed it into Hazel’s cheek. Not enough to break the zygomatic arch, but damn, it hurt.
“Well, now you’re breaking your Hippocratic oath.” She raised her bound hands to cup her cheek as she got to her feet. Sean was listening. He’d get to her when he was done with whatever was happening in the hall. And no matter what happened, there would be a recording. “But then you aren’t big on the Hippocratic oath, are you, Doc? How many men did you implant with the chip? How many are like Chase and still have the chip in their head?”
Parks said nothing as she shoved Hazel toward a door on the side of the room opposite the hall.
Dammit. The woman had an escape route, and she intended to use Hazel as a hostage. “You realize it’s all over, don’t you? The FBI knows everything.”
The door led to a short hall, at the end of which was a staircase. It was an old building in DC, a house converted into elegant office space. Of course it had a back staircase. Servants needed stairs too.
Hazel had no idea if there were any other tenants in the building, but it had looked and felt empty when they arrived. A cry for help would do nothing except entice Parks to pull the trigger.
“So are you racist like the others, or were you in it for the science? I mean, you’d have to be racist to do what you did to the victims, but was that your primary motive, like Small?”
She pushed Hazel down the narrow staircase and surprised her by answering. “The science is really quite fascinating. Westover worked the pain end. I worked with pain too—you have to for it to be fully effective, plus the memory element works better with the pain—the human brain is so eager to erase trauma. But I learned to incorporate the pleasure receptors first. To get the subject into a trancelike state quickly. You know I never used anesthesia for any of the surgeries? I just told them it didn’t hurt, and they believed me.”
They reached the bottom of the stairs. She pushed open the exterior door, then surprised Hazel by shoving her through an archway, into a narrow corridor and then to another set of stairs. “You’re taking me to the basement?” Sean would hear that and know the open back door was a decoy. “I hate basements. I think it might send me into a panic attack.”
“Then I’ll just have to shoot you.”
“What does the implant do? Isabel thinks it’s an infrasound translator of sorts. So you don’t need a mask like Westover did.”
“Isabel is very smart. It’s a shame Westover didn’t have more time with her, or I’d have put the same device in her head too.”
The basement was dank, and Parks didn’t turn on any light to guide Hazel down the dark steps.
“Did you know that Robert Beck is turning on you and Small?” Hazel asked. She had no idea if her words were true, but it might trigger a response. “He said you rounded up all your test subjects when he was arrested, and you gassed them, then pulled the chips from their heads and stripped them. You burned them, but because you couldn’t use the incinerator in the compound, the fire wasn’t hot enough to turn them to ash. So you dumped all the bones in the lake.”
“That was Taylor’s bright idea. Small and I had nothing to do with that, and Beck didn’t know about it because he was in custody at the time, so anything he said is pure speculation without proof.”
It wasn’t good that the woman said that so freely. She clearly didn’t intend for Hazel to leave this basement alive.
“Why did you send the threatening letters?”
“That was Small. He was panicking about Isabel finding the bones. He was trying to get the project delayed so it would be impossible. I wasn’t nearly so worried until you stepped into my office and I realized you’d be right there, ready to examine any bones Isabel found. Taylor figured he could hire someone to play county coroner who’d insist the bones were part of a burial ground. He planned to salt the area with artifacts once the bones were located. But then you walked into my office, and I knew that if Isabel found the bones, she wouldn’t waste time with the coroner, and Taylor wouldn’t have a chance to salt the site. She’d call you, the state-certified forensic anthropologist living in her goddamn mansion. We were fucked.”
In a burst of anger, Parks kicked Hazel in the back, and she fell down the steps into a void. For the half second she was airborne, she wondered if she’d fall forever or if death would be swift. But then she hit earthen floor covered with torn plastic sheeting and guessed she’d only fallen about four feet.
“Ironic that it might not have been an issue if Small hadn’t worked so damn hard to delay the survey. If Isabel had begun fieldwork when she was supposed to, she might have finished before you returned from Croatia. Or even better, she might’ve surveyed that part of the lake bed when the water was a foot higher. I just want you to know, Hazel, that everything that happens to you is Small’s fault.”
“I feel so much better knowing you’re on my side. Now why the fuck are we in this disgusting, dark basement?”
Parks pulled out her cell phone and directed the light at the back wall, and Hazel saw the small, three-foot high door. All at once, she realized what this was. “The building next door to this house was a speakeasy, wasn’t it? There’s a connecting tunnel, and we’ll come out next door?”
“Shut up and crawl.”
Hazel crawled on bound hands, which wasn’t easy. She hoped to hell the radios could transmit through several feet of earth and wood and whatever else separated them from the world above.
“The photos on Voigt Forum, those were a lure to get me here today, weren’t they? So you could put me in a trance and find out what I learned from the bones. What I’ve told the FBI.”
When Parks didn’t answer, Hazel continued, “What would you have done if I hadn’t seen them? What if I didn’t call for an appointment?”
“I’d have called you, expressing concern over the post, and invited you to come in for a session.”
“I’d have asked what the hell you were doing on Voigt Forum.”
“And I’d have said I have a Google alert set up on Alec Ravissant and Isabel Dawson so I can anticipate Isabel’s needs. I’m such a conscientious psychotherapist.”
Jesus. This woman had been inside Isabel’s head for the better part of three years. Hazel’s heart ached for her friend. For Chase.
“What about Chase? Are there others like him?”
They crawled in silence for a moment when the doctor finally said, “Sadly, no. But he is my crowning glory. If I can repeat my success with Chase, I will sell the process to Russia.”
At last, Hazel came to another door and was forced to walk through another dark basement and up another flight of stairs. She continued to pepper Parks with questions, but the woman was done answering. She was probably too busy freaking out over the fact that her only option at this point was a life on the run. No big Russian payoff. And there was no way she could claim innocence and return to her private practice.
They reached the top of the stairs. Before Parks had a chance to stop her, Hazel shoved the door open and lurched through it.
She caught a glimpse of a person to the left, but she dove forward, determined not to give anything away. Behind her, Parks caught her ankle and pulled her back. “Not so fast, bitch.”
All at once, there was the sound of a fist on skin, and her foot was released. She rolled to get out of the way as she heard Sean say, “You’re screwed, Doctor. We recorded it all.”
He dragged Parks out of the enclosed staircase and slammed her to the floor next to Hazel just as sirens sounded, roaring down the street and halting in front of the building.
Sean had Parks pinned and cuffed by the time the police entered.
He raised his hands as the cops circled all three of them, shouting orders. Hazel raised her bound hands too.
&nbs
p; “I’m the one who called it in,” Sean said. “This is Dr. Elizabeth Parks. The FBI is working on getting a warrant for her arrest. They’ll be here any moment.”
The standoff lasted ten minutes, with Sean and Hazel answering shouted questions. Not surprisingly, Parks said nothing.
At last the FBI arrived, including the Deputy Special Agent who’d spent hours with Hazel on Monday. Dr. Parks was taken into FBI custody.
Hazel’s hands were untied, and Sean pulled her into his arms. As she snuggled against his side, her whole body shaking with adrenaline and relief, she had a thought that made her laugh.
“What?”
“I was just thinking that after all this, maybe our first date isn’t the time to play with bondage. I might need another week.”
He chuckled. “You can have as long as you need. But sweetheart, I thought I was going to be the one tied up?”
Epilogue
Virginia
December
Their first party in their new house had Hazel nervously excited. The housewarming would be the first time Sean’s family and hers would all be together. With Christmas less than two weeks away, this would also be a holiday gathering.
There was a lot to celebrate. Katrina was done with chemo and getting stronger with each passing day. Ivy and Matt’s adoption of Julian had been finalized, and Ivy was twelve weeks pregnant.
Selena Ramirez and others had been identified. Others remained nameless, but they’d been counted. All would be buried, honored, and mourned. And their killers would face justice.
The search of Senator Small’s property had provided enough evidence of the human testing conducted by Parks that there was no need to cut a deal with Robert Beck to convict Senator Christopher Small, Dr. Elizabeth Parks, Sheriff Carl Taylor, and his deputies, who’d been the ones in the Audi in the high-speed chase, burned the cabin, and blown up the annex.
Dr. Parks had kept meticulous notes about the experimentation. With that data to reverse engineer the process came the best news of all, Chase Johnston was finally and truly on the mend. The implant had been removed and slowly, the memory blocks were being peeled away.
Boyish Chase was disappearing, and a new man was emerging in his place. His voice was deeper, and the occasional stutter was gone. He stood taller and projected a confidence that Westover and then Parks had stripped from him.
Now, at last, Hazel could see the man who’d been hired for Raptor’s elite team at a young age. He still had a long road to travel, but he had a chance now.
As far as he could piece together, he’d blown up his own Prius in a desperate act that mimicked his orders from Parks. He’d been instructed to put the explosive under Isabel’s car and set it so it would blow up during Alec and Isabel’s drive home.
Alec’s death would have solved many of Small’s problems and distracted everyone. Plus the blame would have fallen on Chase, his own employee known to have been obsessed with Isabel in the past.
Chase had driven one of Westover’s deputies onto the estate in Isabel’s Prius in the middle of the night. After his failure with the Prius, no one trusted him to see the job through. The man had rigged the gas furnace to explode. Afterward, Chase had driven to the compound and hidden in Sean’s quarters as his mind fractured. He didn’t remember the visit to the estate at all, but security had captured him on camera along with the use of his personal entry code.
Chase hadn’t sent Sean and Hazel to his cabin out of malice. He honestly hadn’t known that his cabin was the place where Dr. Parks ran her tests on him and reprogrammed him on a monthly basis.
Once Parks learned where Sean and Hazel were, she’d sent Taylor’s other deputy to burn the cabin down and destroy the evidence of her experimentation on Chase as well as her DNA. Parks had victimized Chase in every way possible.
Chase had also explained his decision to hide in Sean’s quarters. Every time in the past he’d tried to go to Keith or Alec to tell them he was missing time again or memories weren’t quite syncing, he’d shut down. Like he’d been programmed with an automatic off switch. With his success in evading the order to kill Alec and Isabel, he hoped that in making a plea to Sean, he’d be able to get the words out before his body shut down. The gap in his memory for that very night terrified him. He feared he’d hurt Isabel or Alec. He knew Sean might recognize the cause, having been one of the few who were in Alaska at the end.
Now, finally, Chase could talk about his ordeal.
But not tonight. Tonight would be fun only. A celebration. Food. Music. Family and friends. The buffet was set up, and the first guests were set to arrive in an hour.
Hazel did a walk-through of the kitchen. Food was warming in the oven, and the house smelled heavenly of sweets and spices.
She headed up the stairs to change for the party. She’d purchased a new backless dress that she knew would drive Sean wild. In the early hours of the morning, after the last guest had left, she fully expected he’d hike up the dress and take her against whatever surface was nearby to support her. She couldn’t wait for the after-party party. But then she was a party girl at heart.
In their bedroom, she found Sean at the bathroom mirror, shaving. She walked up behind him and ran her hands over the muscles of his bare back. “We’re just about ready. All I need to do is change and fix my makeup.”
He finished with a last swipe of his razor against his jaw, then wiped down his face. “I’m glad we’re doing this, but I’m already exhausted.”
She laughed. “Me too.” They’d only been in the house for two weeks. It had been a marathon to get everything ready for tonight. “But I’m looking forward to introducing my parents to your mom and Julian to the girls.”
“Me too.” He turned and kissed her, then stepped into the bedroom and grabbed his shirt from the bed. “When you’re done getting dressed, join me on the balcony? I’d like to have a glass of wine, just you and me, before the crazy starts.”
“Sure. It’ll take me about ten minutes.”
She slipped on her dress and fixed her makeup, then grabbed a thick shawl from the closet. There was a heat lamp on their upper balcony just for nights like this, so they could sit outside and take in their view of lake and mountains. They weren’t on the lake, but they had a perfect view of it, and watching the sun set over the hills was a new ritual they both enjoyed.
She stepped out to see the sky lit with orange. Perfect timing.
Sean stood at the railing, looking out over the lake and trees. She stepped up beside him, and he draped an arm around her shoulders. A cloud of white formed when she expelled a deep breath.
He dropped a kiss on her forehead, then released her to pour the wine. “We do a lot of things out of order. Our first date happened months after I fell in love with you and a week after we became lovers.”
She laughed. “Well, we tried to go on a date sooner, but the worst psychotherapist ever screwed up our day.”
He smiled. “True, but it was still late for a first date. I was thinking for once I’d like to do something early. Can I give you your Christmas present now?”
“Now? Before the party? Sure, but it can wait until later. I don’t want to rush it.”
“Believe me, nothing about this present is rushed.”
“You better not have done anything big. We just bought each other a house. You promised to keep it simple.” Did this mean she should give him his present early too? She’d been looking forward to seeing his face when he opened the bag of sex toys on Christmas morning. She had other presents for him, of course, but that was the one that would make him laugh the hardest. And she loved making him laugh.
“Don’t worry. It’s simple.” He pulled a box wrapped in gold cloth with a black ribbon from his pocket and handed it to her.
“It’s beautiful.”
He laughed. “You haven’t even opened it yet.”
“The wrapping is gorgeous.” She ran the ribbon between her fingers. Slick, smooth silk. The texture grounded her. But eve
rything about this house and this man grounded her. She pulled at the end of the ribbon.
“Wait! Before you open it, I need to ask you a question.”
“What?”
He went down on one knee, and her stomach dropped. She might even be floating. He reached for her hand. “Hazel MacLeod, will you marry me?”
Tears sprang to her eyes before she could shout, “Yes!”
Sean stood and scooped her up and spun her around, then he set her down and kissed her. Hard and deep. He raised his head and whispered in her ear, “You can open your present now.”
She yanked off the bow and tossed it on the table next to the wine. The fabric fell open to reveal a jewelry box. Sean took it from her hand and opened it. A beautiful, elegant solitaire diamond sat in an antique filigree setting.
She’d never been a ring person, had never even thought about rings, but this, clearly, was the best, most beautiful ring she’d ever seen.
“You never wear rings, so I didn’t really know what you like, so if this isn’t what you want to wear every day for the rest of your life, we can take it back and you can pick out one you like.”
“No. I love it. It’s stunning.”
He took it from the box and slid it on her finger. “There. Now it’s stunning.”
She kissed him, then swiped at her eye. “There’s just one problem.”
“What’s that?”
“You’ve upped the ante. Now I need to go shopping. I really need to get you a better present.”
He laughed and pulled her into his arms. “Oh, sweetheart, you’re the only present I’ve ever wanted.”
The Evidence series will continue! While you’re waiting for the next installment check out the sizzling military thrillers in my Flashpoint series. In Tinderbox, Morgan and Pax are forced to work together in the Djiboutian desert heat, but it is the fire that ignites between them that threatens to combust them both. For the Green Beret, involvement with the woman he must protect is a threat to his career, while for the archaeologist, the soldier is everything she never wanted but somehow can’t resist.
