Chapter Forty-One
Claire looked at the clock ticking softly on the wall. Nearly one a.m. and no sign of Ostermann since he left her in this lab. She’d told him it would take time to study the effects of Akeso and produce it in quantities large enough for his purposes, and apparently he expected her to stay a prisoner in this lab until the job was done.
She had other ideas.
She sat back from a microscope and sneaked a peek at Audric, who had stood guard over her since arriving in the place. Hours ago, she’d tried talking sense into him.
“I hope you know Ostermann doesn’t plan to save you or your friends. You’re expendable to him.”
“Just shut up and do your work.”
Audric hadn’t shown even a flicker of unease. He trusted his employer completely, and it would mean his death if Ostermann’s plans came to fruition.
Now the man was watching something on his phone, unconcerned with her as long as she didn’t try to leave the lab. He didn’t see her as a threat.
His mistake.
She wasn’t a shrinking violet, but she’d played the part convincingly enough that he believed it. Her career had taken her to some of the most dangerous places in the world, and she’d learned how to defend herself.
And she had a whole lab full of lethal possibilities.
She got up from the microscope and walked over to a cabinet. She glanced over her shoulder, but Audric didn’t even bother to gaze up from his phone.
The cabinet contained anything she could possibly need to create Akeso. Ostermann had spared no expense in gathering supplies, and now she had a pharmacy at her disposal. One of the sides of the cabinet was refrigerated, and she checked the shelves for options. She needed something fast acting. Something that would drop a man the size of Audric in seconds.
She smiled to herself as she spotted the box of vials on the middle shelf. Succinylcholine. Sux, for short. An ultra fast-acting muscle relaxant used during anesthesia and lethal injection. She grabbed a couple vials and pocketed them. Picked up several other random bottles and a box of syringes and shut the door.
Audric stood right beside her.
She yelped and nearly dropped the armful of supplies. She wished she could say it was all an act to fortify her shrinking violet persona, but he’d truly startled her. She hadn’t heard him move. Hadn’t sensed him so close. A man who moved like a ghost had to be dangerous.
Without saying a word, he took the bottles from her hands and deposited them on the workbench. Had he seen her slip the sux into her pocket? She trailed after him, her heart banging in her chest. He took up position at he end of the bench, and seemed intent on watching her work.
Shit. He’d figure out she had no use for all these bottles she’d just taken out of the cabinet. And how was she supposed to get the sux into a syringe while he eagle-eyed her every move?
He lifted a brow at her.
Inspiration struck. This man wasn’t a scientist or medical professional. If he was, he’d know the bottles he’d helped carry meant nothing. He was hired muscle and had no idea about anything she was doing in this lab. She stepped forward and opened the box of syringes. Although her insides quaked, her hands didn’t shake as she withdrew a vial of sux and filled a syringe right in front of him. Just as if it was the most natural thing in the world for her to be doing.
“Before I continue,” she said conversationally, “I need to draw more blood from the test subject.”
He watched her cap the syringe, but didn’t ask questions. Instead, he took out his phone again and walked away from her, speaking in German to whomever picked up his call.
She uncapped the syringe and tiptoed up behind him. She couldn’t do it while he was on the phone. It would set off too many alarms if he suddenly stopped responding. But the moment he hung up…
She lunged, sticking him in the side of the neck with the needle. He swung out at her, a sloppy, last-ditch effort at defending himself. He was already losing control of his muscles, but his fist still caught her on the side of her face. She felt her lip split and tasted blood as she watched his legs give out from under him. He landed face first on the floor.
She had to hurry. No doubt Ostermann had cameras everywhere.
She knelt down and shoved Audric over to his back. His eyes bulged as he tried to draw breath and failed. That was the thing about succinylcholine. It was a paralytic, not a sedative. He’d be alive as he suffocated to death. He had killed Dayo and planned to take part in mass genocide. Maybe he deserved every agonizing second of his death, but she’d forever feel the weight of it on her conscience. After all, he was only the unwitting pawn in Ostermann’s chess match.
She searched his pockets and found a small ring of keycards. One of them had to open Jean-Luc’s cell.
…
Just…a little… more…
Finally, after hours of trying, the paperclip slipped into place and there was a soft click that sounded gloriously like freedom. Jean-Luc twisted his hand around to shove the lock out of his wrist restraint. With one hand free, the others were a piece of cake.
He leaped out of the bondage bed from hell and looked around for something to wear. He had no idea where on earth he was, but he wouldn’t get far outside these walls without some kind of clothing to protect him from the elements. So first order of business: clothes. Then he had to find Claire.
The place was set up like a surgical suite, all sterile and empty. He pointedly ignored the wall of torture devices and tried the rolling cart parked against the other wall. All kinds of surgical instruments, but not so much as scrap of clothing. Not even a hospital gown.
The scuff of a footfall outside his door caught his attention, and he froze. The lock gave a soft negative beep as someone swiped a card. Then another. And another.
He grabbed a scalpel and flashed back to the field hospital. At least there he’d had a hope of taking on the militants with nothing but a scalpel. Here? These guys were trained badasses. He was fucked without a real weapon.
He glanced over at the bed. Maybe it’d be better to fake it, pretend he was still restrained. He took a step toward it when the door gave a positive beep and swung open to reveal Claire. She still wore the lab coat over scrubs and her hair had mostly fallen out of a ponytail. Pink flushed her cheeks and her chest heaved like she’d run. Her lip was split and bleeding down her chin.
She was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.
He didn’t think. He just spoke the words that had been banging around in his head since last night: “Holy hell, I love you.”
She gave him a look that said, You’re saying that now? Really?
His timing didn’t suck that badly. After all, this may very well be his last chance to tell her. “No, I mean it, Claire. I love you.”
She tossed him a pair of scrubs and turned to scan the hallway behind her. “We have to go. I killed one of his men to escape. As soon as they find him…”
He froze with one leg in the scrub pants. “You killed…?” He should’ve been there for her. He should’ve taken that blood onto his hands for her. Killing another human being, no matter how despicable that person was, would’ve stolen a piece of her soul. “Oh, cher.”
She whirled around in disbelief. “Why have you stopped? Jean-Luc! Get dressed! If he catches us, he will infect you again and I can’t—” Her voice broke.
Yeah. Yeah, she was right. He had to focus here. He didn’t want her to fall back into Ostermann’s hands any more than she wanted him to. He quickly finished dressing and followed her out into the hallway. “Did you see what he did with my rucksack? I need weapons.”
“I have no idea.”
“Do you know where we are?”
She shook her head. “It’s a castle, but I only know what he’s shown me. I woke up in a room down the hall. He took me to a lab and the room you were in, and that’s it.”
“That’s okay. You did good.” He threw out an arm to keep her back against the wall and checked around the first corner they came to. No guards. Just another long, harshly lit hallway lined with windows overlooking other rooms. The lack of windows to the outside made him think they were in some kind of basement. Which meant there had to be stairs somewhere.
He turned to Claire and held a finger to his lips, then motioned for her to follow him. Keeping the scalpel ready, he crept down the hallway.
“He has other hostages,” Claire whispered as she fell into step behind him. “Twenty people.”
He stopped short and glanced back at her. “Twenty?”
She nodded. “They’re some of the people he planned to repopulate the world with after he releases his virus. He’s been kidnapping them for months. We have to find them.”
“Well…fuck.” He continued forward and paused at the first of the windows to peek through. A man lay strapped down on a hospital bed like he had been. Despite the straps, he thrashed violently and seemed to be gasping for breath, swallowing convulsively. Saliva bubbled around his mouth.
“Oh my God,” Claire said and covered her mouth with one hand. “That looks like…rabies. He’s infected with rabies.”
She ran to the next window. After another horrified glance at the rabies victim, Jean-Luc followed. A skinny black man sat on the bed in the next room, staring blankly toward them—not at them—with bright yellow eyes.
“Jaundice,” Claire whispered. She grabbed a clipboard hanging on a peg by the window. “He’s been infected with Yellow Fever.” At the next window, she snagged the clipboard. “Measles.” She went from one to the next, reading off the viruses. “HFRS. Dengue. Lassa. Marburg. Ebola Zaire.”
Jean-Luc stopped in front of one window and stared at the empty bed inside. He knew the room, had studied every corner of it for nearly twenty-four hours. Slowly, he reached for the clipboard and saw the three words that terrified him more than anything else could have. “Claire.”
At the other end of the hallway, she let out a small squeak of shock. She turned toward him, a clipboard dangling from one trembling hand. She’d gone white. “He’s infected someone with smallpox. We have to leave right now.” The clipboard clattered to the floor and she ran toward him.
Jean-Luc took a step back and held up his hands to fend her off. “Don’t touch me.”
She skidded to a halt. “What?”
He opened his mouth to tell her, but found he couldn’t say it. Instead, his gaze drifted toward the empty room. She looked through the window at the familiar bed and gasped. “No. No, no. Where’s the clipboard?”
He set it on the floor and pushed it toward her with his foot. She stared down at it like it would bite.
“Delta Hemorrhagic Fever,” he told her gently. “Ostermann is not going to re-infect me. He already has. I don’t know how. He never injected me with anything, at least not while I was conscious.”
“He’s creating a weapon,” Claire said and looked up at an air intake vent above their heads. “He probably aerosolized it.”
Icy fear splashed through his veins. “You need to leave. Right now.”
She returned her gaze to his and tears gathered in her pretty blue eyes. “Not without you.”
He shook his head. “I can’t. I’ll risk infecting anyone I come into contact with. Including you. Oh, ma belle, you know this. You know this.”
She hugged herself and choked on a sob. “Jean-Luc, I…I can’t…”
He wanted to reach out to her, pull her into his arms, and wipe away her tears. Instead, he took another step backward. “You are Akeso. Not your research, not your drug. You and that beautiful, stunning brain of yours. If you don’t leave, you’ll give him exactly what he wants. He’ll release the viruses on the world if he has you to keep him safe.”
The sound of running footsteps thundered from a hallway nearby.
“Go. Find the other hostages and get out.” His own voice came out ragged and raw, but he forced a smile. “I’ll distract them.”
She opened her mouth as if to say something more, but he hushed her with a finger to his lips and blew her a kiss. She stared at him for a beat, then spun away and ran.
Thank God.
He sucked in several breaths. At least he could still breathe and wasn’t drowning in his own fluids yet. That was a plus. He looked down at the scalpel in his hand. Not enough. He might have an advantage if they didn’t want to infect themselves, but—
Oh. Oh, he was a coullion. He didn’t need a knife…
He glanced over at the man with the jaundiced yellow eyes.
…not when he had a hallway full of deadly weapons at his disposal.
He found an intercom on the wall next to the man’s cell and jabbed the button. “What’s your name?”
A stream of angry Arabic answered and Jean-Luc switched to the language. “I know you’re angry. What this man did to you is unforgivable. He took everything from you—your freedom and your life. You know you can never leave here, right? Not without endangering everyone outside these walls.”
The man said nothing more for a moment. Tears dripped down his cheeks and he nodded. “I know.”
“What’s your name?”
“Ra’id.”
“Hello, Ra’id. I’m Jean-Luc. So…are you well enough to at least get revenge before we die?”