Chapter Thirty-Four
Claire breathed a sigh of relief as the doors slid closed. Just having Jean-Luc beside her, she felt safer. He passed her the shoes, and she sat down to pull them on. “What about Marcus?”
“I’ll keep trying to call. Your safety has to be my first concern. How many are there?” he asked Dayo and checked his weapon.
“Too many to take on by ourselves. Our best option is to run.” Dayo stopped her from pressing the lobby button and instead hit the one marked basement. “I have a car waiting in the loading dock.”
The elevator doors slid open, and Dayo led them through a series of hallways. Finally, he opened a metal door and there was indeed an SUV waiting in the loading dock for them. He ushered them out, shut the door, and stepped in front of it as if blocking it.
Only then did Claire get an inkling that something was wrong. “What…? Dayo, what’s—?”
Jean-Luc pushed her behind him and swung his weapon from Dayo to the SUV. “Putain! You’re setting us up.”
The SUV’s doors opened and three men got out. All of them had blond hair and blue eyes. All of them were muscular and well armed.
“I’m sorry,” Dayo said softly, tears rolling down his face. “My family is all infected. Without Sunday and without them, I’ll have nothing to live for. He told me you have a cure and you weren’t going to use it to save anyone. He said he would save my family if I brought you to him. He could give them the cure then give me money to move them away from here. I had no choice!”
Desperate people. She had warned him weeks ago about the dangers of desperation, and she hadn’t listened to her own advice. “Dayo, there is no cure. Not really. Not yet, at least. Please, don’t do this.”
His face contorted. He was no longer the easygoing, happy man she’d come to know and like. Instead, this was the man she’d gotten a glimpse of at the militant camp, the one who had kicked over an oil drum out of anger.
“You’re lying!” His eyes bugged, even more wild now, and she noticed the spider webs of red in the whites of his eyes. Spittle flew from his lips. “There is a cure and you have it! You used it on him. Give it to me!”
“Don’t touch him.” She backed away, pulling Jean-Luc with her by his shirt, which had the unfortunate consequence of putting them closer to the SUV. But that was not her main concern at the moment. “Dayo, you’re infected.”
Jean-Luc glanced at her, horror in every line of his expression. She read his thoughts loud and clear because they echoed her own. Dayo had touched her.
Her heart beat a wild rhythm, threatening to knock right out of her chest, but she tried to keep her voice even. “It’s spread through bodily fluids. I should be okay.”
Dayo lunged forward. “Give me the cure!”
Jean-Luc brought his gun up and leveled it on Dayo’s chest. “Touch her again and I’ll drop you.”
That cold, implacable tone raised the hair on her arms. This situation was bringing out the worst in everybody that meant anything to her. First Dayo, and now Jean-Luc. The man standing next to her now wasn’t the sweet, funny man she was falling in love with. This was the version of Jean-Luc that scared her. Ruthless. A killer. She set a hand on his arm and felt his muscles tense under her fingers. He wouldn’t let her push his gun down, so she stepped in front of him instead. He cursed.
She ignored him and pulled her shirt up over her nose and mouth as a makeshift mask before focusing on Dayo. The man was scared for his family and hurting. He’d made bad decisions but that didn’t mean he deserved to die. “Dayo, please listen to me. I only have research. It’s not complete. Who filled your head with this other nonsense about a cure?”
“I did.” A fourth man climbed out of the SUV, carrying a cooler Claire recognized. He had a German accent. She recognized him, too, but she couldn’t place a name with his pock-scarred face.
She dug her fingers into Jean-Luc’s arm to get his attention. “He has Akeso.” And just like that, she flashed back to the first time she’d seen the man. She couldn’t recall his name, but he’d approached her at a conference last year and offered her an obscene amount of money for Akeso. When she flatly refused, he’d offered her a job working for…
“You’re with Bioteric.”
“I own Bioteric.” He tsked. “We could have done this the easy way, Dr. Oliver, but you refused my every offer.”
She huffed out a breath in disbelief. “So you killed Tiffany and Sunday and all of those people in Martinique and here at the field hospital—”
“Claire,” Jean-Luc said with a soft bite of warning in his tone.
She ignored him. “All for what? To corner the market with Akeso so you can make more money?”
The man gave a serene smile that contorted his scarred skin, pulling it tight in weird ways, making him look like a Halloween skull. “No, Dr. Oliver. Don’t you understand by now? This is much bigger than money, as you’ll soon see.” He made a slight hand motion and his bodyguards drew their weapons in unison, performing like trained dogs. Every single barrel targeted Jean-Luc. “Now get in the car and we won’t kill this man.”
She didn’t believe that for a minute. As soon as she set foot in that car, they’d open fire on Jean-Luc. They couldn’t leave him alive to come after her.
“No!” She didn’t think. She just ducked under his arm and used her body to block his. “If you want Akeso, you can’t kill him.”
She’d piqued his interest. She recognized the flare of it in his eyes as he considered Jean-Luc. She could also feel Jean-Luc all but vibrating with rage at her back. Whether he was angry at her or Bioteric was anyone’s guess.
“And why not?” the man finally asked. “He’s not a scientist. He’s nothing but a mercenary.”
She glanced back at Jean-Luc, hot tears blurring her vision. But she still saw his features pulled taut, his eyes spitting hatred at the scarred man. “I’m sorry,” she mouthed. Because although she was about to save his life, she was likely also about to condemn him to torture.
“He has to come with us,” she said, turning back to the Bioteric man. “He’s the first human test subject of Akeso.”
He studied Jean-Luc with cool calculation in his blue eyes. “Interesting. I had no idea you’ve made so much progress.” He motioned to his bodyguards. “Bring them both.”
The guards crowded in, one keeping his weapon aimed at Jean-Luc while another disarmed him. Jean-Luc struggled until she caught his gaze and mouthed, “Please, don’t.” They’d kill him. After all, they could harvest a corpse for samples as easily as a living specimen.
He shook off the guard’s hands and didn’t look happy about it, but climbed into the SUV without a fight.
“What about my family?” Dayo said. “The cure?”
The scarred man looked at him for a long moment, then gave a subtle nod to one of his guards before climbing into the SUV beside Claire. “Of course. I’m a man of my word. Audric will give you the cure.”
As the SUV pulled away, Claire saw the guard pull on gloves and a mask, then raise his gun and shoot Dayo in the head. The guard then discarded the protective gear and very calmly walked over to another car that was waiting.
Claire twisted to stare out the back windshield. Dayo collapsed where he stood, and a pool of blood spread around his head. “No! Why did you do that?”
“He was infected,” the scarred man said without much concern. “Surely you knew.”
“But you didn’t have to shoot him!” Something sharp pricked her upper arm and she whipped around to find he’d stuck her with a needle. She immediately felt light headed.
“What…? No. Jean-Luc…” She crawled across the seat toward him, but he’d also been drugged while she was distracted. They must have given him a higher dose, because his eyes rolled back and he barely had the energy to close his fingers around hers.
And then blackness engulfed them both.