Mine, p.3
Mine, page 3
“You gave me something,” he mumbled.
“Sodium pentothal,” said the male voice.
Truth serum? What the fuck.
From out of his sensory swamp, he babbled, “Is this a Jean-Claude Van Damme movie? And it’s sodium thiopental. So you really are European, huh.”
“My accent betrays me.”
“That and the fact that the compound was outlawed for production in the U.S. in January of 2011 and there can be no official importation from European sources, either.” He frowned—and promptly cut that out because it made his eye sockets throb even more. “Then again… you don’t worry about the law, do ya.”
There was a pause. “I’m afraid you’re rather strong-willed, Dr. St. Claire.”
“Been called worse.”
“Indeed. Well, we are going to have to provide you with a secondary dose.”
Gus laughed in a burst—and then grimaced as his ribs hurt. “Careful,” he grunted. “You might kill me.”
“I shall be of great care.”
When he felt fingers brush the inside of his forearm, he swung his face down.
“Wait, no rubbing alcohol? You managed to get truth serum, but can’t go to a Walgreens and buy some—ow!”
When he went to massage away the pinch at the crook of his elbow, he discovered that both arms were bent at a forty-five-degree angle and tied down at the wrist—and this brought into focus that he was sitting up in a high-backed, hard-seated chair. His legs were likewise restrained at his ankles.
Like he was a prisoner in an old school electric chair.
And yet, there was something soft behind his head, as if a pillow had been tucked into the nape of his neck for comfort.
“Forgive me,” the voice said. “I am not formally trained in matters of infection. Such as yourself.”
“So drugging people is more a hobby for you.” Gus tried to lick his dry lips, but his tongue was sandpaper. “You wouldn’t happen to have any Coke around… and I’m talking about the soda kind, not the nose—whoa. That shit is fast-acting, isn’t it.”
“Perhaps we have finally reached the proper dose for you.”
With a fresh wave of woozy cresting over his consciousness, Gus abruptly remembered being back at his condo. He’d walked in from the garage after having quit Phalen’s lab… found some crazy paperwork in an envelope on his doormat… and then discovered he wasn’t alone. A male figure in black had pointed a gun at him and shot him in the chest—but not with a bullet. A dart. And just as his brain had started making connections, he’d fallen forward and landed on his—
Face. Which explained the mouth.
Shit, he thought. He needed to stall. Maybe someone would be looking for him. Maybe he’d been missed—nah, that was wishful thinking. He lived alone and he’d just quit his fucking job and his new one didn’t start for two weeks. And the one person who might have missed him now hated him because he—
“You’re not following the script,” he mumbled.
“I beg your pardon?”
“The script. You know, as in a movie?”
“On the contrary,” the accented voice said. “Everything has gone right to my plan. Which makes me the writer, does it not.”
Aware that he was going in circles in his head, Gus tried to get with the program. What the hell had he been—
“No, no, no, if this were an eighties action movie…” His tongue clicked inside his desert mouth. “… the stakes would be higher. We’d be hanging off the side of a building… instead of wherever we are. Where did you say we… were?”
“I did not,” came the haughty response.
As another wave of whoaaaa hit him, it was like he’d been injected a third time. “Wow. DIY tip—if you ever do this yourself, get ready for the chaser. It’s a doooooooooooozy…”
“I suspect the tranquilizer has not completely worn off yet.”
“Which one did you use?”
“Does it matter?”
Keep talking, he had to… “No, it doesn’t—hey, where are we? I can’t see a thing.”
“You have an eye mask on.”
“Ohhh, that explains it.” Gus swallowed hard as his saliva glands started to tingle like his stomach was considering an evacuation. “You know… I think I might be sick.”
“Oh, good. We are where we need to be. Worry not, that will pass.”
“So you’ve done this before, huh.” Coughing a little, he told his goiter reflex to calm the hell down. “I need a drink, my man… my mouth is a dessert. Wait, I think that’s the wrong word.”
As his head listed off to the side, it was promptly reangled with gentle hands, the strain in his neck relieved, the pillow likewise rearranged with comfort in mind.
“Thanks,” he murmured. “You know… this whole kidnapping thing doesn’t work… out, you have a future in the hospitality… industry.”
“Why thank you, Dr. St. Claire.”
“You’re welcome. You can anticipate a good review… on Goodly… Google, I mean…”
“Yes, I believe we are ready, Dr. St. Claire.”
“Yeah, you better…” See, this was the problem with the thiopental. It made you too agreeable. “… get the questions done. I’m running out of time before I lose… consciousness.”
He should probably be more scared. It was doubtful he was coming out of this conversation alive, and he didn’t think anybody was going to find his body—
“I need to know how to get into C.P. Phalen’s house, Dr. St. Claire.”
Annnnnnnnnnnd there it was. No surprise.
“You try Zillow?” Gus laughed a little, then had to cough his throat clear. “Have you seen the SNL… skit they did on Zillow—”
“You are going to tell me the code to the entrances. And then we can be finished with our business.”
Gus’s scrambled-egg brain spit out an image of the blond woman in question, so tall in those heels she always wore, the black suits tailored onto her body, her hair all camera-ready. Fucking Phalen. She’d been too important to him from the second he’d first met her—and then things had gotten so much deeper that he’d had to quit her underground lab and defect to her biggest competitor. And the punchline? In the law of unintended consequences, it appeared he was taking Vita-12b with him thanks to her paperwork.
Not that he was going to be alive much longer.
Their goodbye had sucked, he thought. His and fucking Phalen’s, that was.
But how was it ever going to be a good one? He was in love with her.
“Oh, Hans,” he said sadly. “I think this is the end of the best part of our relationship.”
There was another pause. “My name is not Hans.”
“I’ve Gruber’d you in my head. Just so you know.”
“I’m complimented. Ivan Reitman is one of my favorite actors.”
“Alan Rickman, you mean. Reitman did Ghostbusters as a producer.”
A soft chuckle was almost a purr. “You are very smart, Dr. St. Claire. And the time for obfuscation is over.”
“Big word, there, Hans—and it’s too bad. I was enjoying our back-and-forth. The initial stupor is receding and I’m feeling quite chatty now.”
“Good. For you.”
As some kind of second phase ramped up, tremors began to go through his body, a buzzy energy making his teeth rattle.
Seizure coming? he wondered.
“Not that you care,” he chattered, “but I hate the fact that Alan Rickman died so young. And you know another thing that’s always bothered me? Alex Trebek. Which then makes me think of Patrick Swayze… Michael Landon. John Hurt. Do you know what those five have in common?”
“Dr. St. Claire, we are off track—”
“Pancreatic cancer.” Gus shook his head and felt the facial mask move, the band around his ears shifting. “Silent killer, most don’t find out until it’s too late, and then it’s a fucking bitch with conventional treatments—and even if you do the Whipple procedure, the five-year survival rate is only twenty percent. We need to do better with so—”
A sharp, thin line of pressure across the front of his neck stopped him.
“The codes, Dr. St. Claire.”
Gus swallowed, and felt the blade cut into his Adam’s apple. “Is that a knife, Hans?”
“It is not a pencil.”
“Look at you, quite the jokester.”
Abruptly, another image of C.P. Phalen came to the forefront of his mind. No suit or stillies this time, and her pale hair was all frazzled, her face younger without the makeup. She was wearing one of his fleeces, the soft folds of navy blue fabric billowing around her upper body, and sitting on a hospital bed down in the lab. She had been scared and keeping a lid on the fear as best she could, just like all the other patients he’d ever had.
She was just like that Daniel Joseph. Stage four. Different kind of cancer, though, not that that mattered because hers couldn’t be treated anymore, either.
God, he hated that woman.
Fine. He just wished he could hate her. And on that note…
“You might as well use that knife now, Hans,” Gus said softly. “Because I’ll die before I help you hurt that woman.”
FOUR
SO WHY’D YOU give Vita to Gus.”
As Catherine Phillips Phalen glanced over her shoulder to the Suburban’s middle row of seats, two things occurred to her. One, given the angle of her view, apparently she was driving. This was a news flash that shouldn’t have been a surprise—and probably a contraindication for her being behind any wheel. Secondly, with the way Daniel was propped up against the rear door’s blacked-out window, his shoulders collapsed into his chest, his mostly bald head at a bad slant, one arm lying dead across his lap, she probably should have laid him out flat in the back-back.
“We’re almost home,” she heard herself say as the great stone wall marking her acreage started to run beside them on the shoulder of the rural road. “Less than a mile.”
The guard next to her nodded, but didn’t look up from his phone. His role in this fast-track back to her estate was monitoring an overhead drone feed. Meanwhile, his assigned partner for this shift was in the rear bench seat and on a constant pivot, his eyes swiveling an owl-worthy three-sixty. The other two she’d brought with her were still in Plattsburgh going through Gus St. Claire’s condo, looking for what she was willing to bet they would not find: fingerprints, footprints… hair and fiber samples that were not the doctor’s.
Her hand went to rest on her abdomen. Gus. I’m going to find you, I swear.
As she looked down, like she intended to make the vow or prayer or whatever it was stick, it was as if the child she was carrying were God or something.
Which would make her the Virgin Mary. Or the Virgin Catherine, as it were—
Okay. It was official. She’d lost her mind.
Daniel spoke up again. “You might as well have put a target on the man’s back. He’s not like you and me.”
That’s right on too many levels to count, she thought.
Gus was the finest oncologist, researcher, and doctor she’d ever met—but he was also a prince among men, an Afro-sporting counterculture rebel with a Nobel Peace Prize brain, the moral compass of a saint, and an inexplicable, yet somehow charming, penchant for concert t-shirts from the seventies. He also liked basketball. Coke from a can.
What was she, his eHarmony profile?
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Daniel demanded.
“About what,” she said with a low warning.
Which naturally went ignored: “That you were going to give that drug away.”
“You decided you weren’t going to be our patient one. So why do you care.” When there was no response, she glanced up into the rear view. “Funny, how when something is out of reach, its value to us becomes more clear, isn’t it.”
Wow. She was an asshole saying that to a terminal patient. But the shit applied to her as well.
And she missed the man just as much as Daniel did.
“Gus was your doctor,” she continued—because she always doubled down when it hurt and she was talking to herself at the same time. “Not your family, not your friend, not one of your black ops clients. Besides, when you witnessed my signature, you told me it didn’t matter what you were signing, remember?”
“I worked for the government, remember—so I didn’t have clients. And you lied to me. You told me it was a healthcare proxy or some shit.”
She glanced back at him again. “Considering all you kept from people at the beginning of your little adventure here in Walters, I wouldn’t throw stones in that glass house, if I were you—”
“He could have lived with you. Jesus, these interchangeable rent-a-guns you stack the house with would have protected him, too. Or maybe you could have spared one or two out of your hundred or so and had him watched—”
“I am not going to debate this issue with you.”
“Was it your last-ditch effort to try and get him to stay? Giving him the drug?”
“Here we are.” As the front gates to her property appeared up ahead, they were the only break in that twenty-foot-tall stone wall, and she snapped the turning signal upward even though there was no one behind them. “We have medical staff on standby for me—I mean you. You.”
“Well, I don’t need them.”
“And neither do I.”
Hey, two could play at being defensive.
Hitting the brakes in front of the security checkpoint, she was ready to crash through the iron bars as a way to release some tension. So she twisted around, popped an eyebrow, and continued to pick fights.
“You sound like a toddler being asked to eat his veggies.”
“Fuck you, Phalen.”
“Back at you, Joseph.”
As the gates began to open, she refocused on the steering wheel and didn’t wait until the two halves were fully wide before hitting the gas. On the far side, the allée of trees that had been planted by the property’s previous owner was a green chute directly to her sprawling stone fortress’s front entrance, and as she stopped under the porte cochere, people in white coats and surgical scrubs streamed out into the gray daylight. The flow of doctors and nurses swamped the SUV, and the guard next to her got out and opened Daniel’s door like he was a bellhop.
Conversation layered up as the medical staff clustered around Daniel like he was liable to go into cardiac arrest at any moment. And naturally, the worst patient in the world refused to cooperate—especially as a wheelchair was brought out.
Batting at his own personal 911 medical response, the man’s mouth started running. Because of course, fight with an offer of help: “Get off me, I don’t need that, where is—”
“Lydia’s right behind us,” C.P. cut in over her shoulder. “Relax.”
At the sound of her voice, everybody paused—which was what happened when you were paying all the bills: People listened to you, did what you told them, and went where you ordered them to go. She liked that part of her life.
Gus had been the only one who hadn’t marched to her tune.
As her hand went to her lower abdomen again, she forced her palm back onto the wheel. Why the hell did she always do that whenever she thought of him? It wasn’t his baby, after all—
The Harley’s deep-throated growl grew louder as the motorcycle was piloted through the allée—and then there the wolven was, no helmet, hair streaked back, eyes keen on the chaos convention at the front door, looking for the man she loved.
For a split second, C.P. renewed her appreciation for the woman. Wolf. Whatever the hell she was.
Nothing was going to keep her from her man.
“Mr. Joseph, I’m going to have to insist—”
“If you would just let us assess you—”
“Let’s get you into the wheelchair—”
The volume on the medical chatter got turned up again, and she rolled her eyes. “He’s not going to fight you people anymore. He has what he needs now.”
Although Lydia had maintained she’d never driven a bike before, she handled the halting like a pro, pulling up in front of the SUV, hitting the brakes, killing the engine. After she kicked out the stand and put it in a lean, she took the keys with her as she dismounted—and by way of greeting, she stepped through the sea of staff and gave them over to Daniel.
As her eyes searched his face, he did the same to her, like the pair of them had been away from each other for years.
“How’d you like it?” he asked weakly.
“Now I understand.” The wolven brushed his face. “The bike is freedom.”
“Yes.” He closed his eyes and sank into the SUV’s seat. “That’s right.”
“He doesn’t want that,” Lydia said to the nurse with the wheelchair. “He’s going to walk into the house himself. Aren’t you.”
As Daniel nodded and put out his hand for Lydia to help him, the medical staff didn’t force the issue—then again, they’d been dealing with him for how long? Six months now? They knew what the angle of his chin meant.
Well, and then he had his woman.
Wolven, rather.
“We going back to Plattsburgh now?”
The male voice in C.P.’s ear was a confusing interruption. But then she shook her head to clear it and glanced at the guard, who had leaned back into the interior.
Was that what she wanted to do? In a quick sequence, she replayed pulling up to Gus’s house. She’d been frantic. Distracted. But she knew she was never going to forget the bike in that short driveway, or the way the snow fell in lazy circles, or how neat and tidy everything had appeared from the outside, given what had happened in the interior. If she hadn’t known better, she would have—like anybody else—assumed all was well.
The residence should have been stained with smoke, or pitted with bomb holes, or rotted and decayed and about to fall in on itself.
As she’d gotten out, she had barked at the two guards with her that she was going first—which in retrospect had been more about her need to take control than any rational thinking. But she had wanted to be the one to go over and punch in the code to lift the garage door. Gus had given her the six digits for the keypad on his first day in the new lab site, when she’d asked him about an emergency contact.
