Bitter Angel (19 page)

Apparently, senator’s families aren’t in the public eye as much as I thought. That or Alpha has done nothing to really put himself in the spotlight.

Alright.
I delete and do a simple search on
John Prescott, senator of Tennessee
. I click on the link for his own personal website. It has the normal tabs— Biography, News Reports, Tennessee Services, Issues and Legislation, Contact Info. I click on the Biography link. Immediately, a picture pops up with a gray-haired man, an attractive middle-aged woman with jet black hair, and Alpha.

The image punches me in a soft place inside of myself.

He’s a few years younger, standing in the middle with his parents’ arms slung around his shoulders. Fresh spring trees are in the background, and everyone has their faces posed at just the right angle to make the picture seem spontaneous. His smile holds all the promise the world has to offer and I wonder if it was ever real. Did he ever want to just live or go to college? Find a career or fall in love? Get married or hold his newborn baby in his arms?

What a waste
. I have less than no sympathy for him, but that doesn’t stop me from speculating. How can a guy who’s been lathered in privilege get sucked into such evil? I’m sure he could’ve gone to any school or done anything. He could’ve been a doctor and a lawyer. Where did it all go wrong?

Don’t dwell
, I tell myself.

Since the bio says nothing about Hunter, I click on the Contact link. Up pops the office numbers and addresses for the senator’s offices in D.C. Does his dad even live in Tennessee? Where do senators live? I’m clueless.

There are also addresses for the Tennessee offices, listed by city. I bat my eyelashes at my skinny prey. “Hey, do you have a pen and something I could write on?”

“Sure, sure.”

I’m debating if that’s one of the only words he knows as he tears away a scrap of paper from the spiral notebook he’s been scribbling in. He hands me the scrap and the blue ballpoint pen that I just noticed he’s been chewing on. Sure enough, there’s fresh spit on the cap.
Ick.

I hold in a sneer. “Thanks.” Quickly, I jot down the Knoxville office address and phone number. I don’t think we’ll need it, but you never know. At least this way, I won’t leave empty-handed.

I click the X at the top to close out the page.

“Did you find your friend?” he asks.

No, just a boy in the running for Satan’s throne in hell.
“Yup.” I slide his laptop back to him.

“Well, good luck.”

“Thanks.” I smile one last time, signal Jay, and we’re out the door and back in the car.

“Anything?” Trigger asks right away, his knees bobbing like mine were earlier.

“Not really,” I tell him, holding back a sigh. “Anything on your end?”

“Uh, yeah.”

“What?”

“I called him.”

I don’t think I actually expected to hear those words. I admit, I’m impressed.

My heart is thumping. “What did you say?”
Thump, thump, thump…

“Uh…” He runs a hand through his frizzy hair. “I told him that I’m going back to finish the drugs, and I want to meet him somewhere personally to hand them over.”

Jay asks, “How is that different from what you were already going to do?”

“I-I-I told him my professor is coming by to check my progress on a project, and if I have that stuff around, I’ll be in deep shit.”

When he says “shit,” it comes out unnaturally. I wouldn’t have been surprised if he was about to say
doodoo
, but I’m way too keyed up to joke right now. “And is your professor coming by?”

“Of course not.”

Phew.
The last thing we need right now is any kind of authority involvement.

“Did he buy it?” Jay asks.

“I think so.”

“Where to now?” I ask him. The thumping is subsiding now that I know I don’t have to see Alpha quite yet. “Your dorm?”

Trigger laughs like I’m an idiot. “No.”

“Well, where are they then? Your super top-secret evil laboratory?”

There’s that smugness again. “Actually…yes.”

When we’re on the road, Jay asks me if I found anything.

“No, just an office address and number in case we need it, but I don’t even know if his dad lives in the state since he’s in the Senate. I wrote it down just in case.” I lay the paper down on the console between us.

Jay’s brows are creasing again, but he doesn’t say anything. I wish I could just wipe it all off his face. I wish I could kiss him and take both of our minds off of our task at hand. I wish…well, as long as I’m wishing for things I’d actually wish for my life to rewind two days, so I wouldn’t know about any of this. But that’s not fair, is it? If it weren’t for this strange rewind, dream,
whatever,
other girls would be hurt. It would be someone else’s daughters or sisters or girlfriends.

Trigger wasn’t kidding about the lab thing. When we arrive back at campus, he directs us to Landon Laboratory. He also wasn’t kidding about being a super genius. Despite my original prediction of his age, he’s actually twenty-two and a first year master’s student in the pharmacology program. The kid already has his Bachelor’s in science with minors in chemistry and biomedical engineering, and he’s involved in a research program with one of the prominent professors here. I can’t catch the name because it’s about fifty-nine letters long. I think the professor is Indian or Romanian or something.

He tells us all of this on the way, and all I can think is,
No wonder they wanted him. They do go for the best.

“So,” I recall something he said in the car, “when you said ‘finish,’ that didn’t mean…”

“Yup.” He grits his teeth. “I still have to make them.”

“Make? As in they’re not all finished?”

“Nope.”

He swipes his keycard for the front security door, holds it open for us, and we follow him in. We take an elevator to the fourth floor, dubbed the Pharm Wing. He swipes, holds the door again, and we’re in a lab.

I’ve been in plenty of labs over the past year. None looked like this. There are three long stainless steel tables, lined up one after the other. There are no actual walls, only frosted-glass cabinets separated every few feet by skinny, long windows. Beakers, tubes, fancy thermometers, whoozits, and whatzits are already set out neatly on the tables.

In the pre-med program, we’re supposed to major in something bodily for our undergrad. I chose biology since I’m obsessed with the human body, but I’m only a sophomore. I don’t recognize anything in here.

Trigger goes straight to work, leaving Jay and me to stand here and watch him. He sets his phone and wallet on one of the small windowsills, then he slips into a white lab coat. Cabinet doors whir open and click shut as he gets things out, setting them at a station on the middle table. One is a small white box. As he foots around the room, collecting bottles and gadgets, I gently lift the lid. It’s an entire box of empty syringes.

Gasping, I step back, stubbing my toe on a metal stool.

“What is it?” Jay asks. He checks the box himself, and his face goes white. “What is this?”

“It’s what they wanted,” Trigger states simply with undertones of anger and fear. “The injections are for emergencies only, but they needed something as a backup. In case…” He doesn’t finish. It doesn’t matter. I know what the
in case
means.

I
was the
in case
.

“Guys,” I say really softly.

Trigger halts mid-stride. Jay and I make eye contact.

“We have to promise each other. Right now.”

“What?” Jay asks carefully.

“We have to promise each other that we won’t just stop these guys tonight. We have to make this permanent.” Meaning, we have to put these guys away forever. I think we’ve been tiptoeing around this very conclusion all day. Stopping tonight is one thing. Making this permanent, getting evidence, yadda, yadda. I want to wet my pants just imagining this undertaking.

“That’s a nice sentiment,” Trigger says. “But we still haven’t come up with any way to do that.”

I put a hand at the base of my throat. “Well, for starters we need to take pictures. Of everything we see.”

I immediately think of my camera discarded on the passenger floor of Jay’s car. So far, there’s been nothing to take pictures of. We need real stuff, like H getting girls and Brandon spiking drinks
or water
.
Remembering that leaves a sour taste on my tongue.

“We need real evidence, like them…” I can’t say it. I have to say it. “Doing things.”

Now I feel a full-on queasy, and it’s way too soon to have this strong of déjà vu. I brace my fingers tightly to the edge of the metal table, swooning a little to the left. Jay starts in my direction, and I ping back up, hiding my green face from his scrutiny.

I feel my breath running out as I speak. “We just need to decide that we’ll do whatever it takes tonight.”
To make sure there are no more nights like this for us or anyone else.

Jay’s jaw tightens. “What did we just discuss in the car?”

My shoulders sink. I walk over and stand in front of him, taking his hands in mine. “I don’t want to do anything dangerous.” I squeeze his hands. “We can do this and still stay safe. We’ll just…stay out of sight. Follow them. Do what we need to do, but at a distance.”

I’m counting on Jay to forget how unpredictable and reckless I can be. I want him to trust me more than ever right now. If I have to endure anyone getting hurt tonight just because we need proof that what these guys are doing is real, then it sure as hell better be a once-in-a-damn-lifetime kind of deal because it won’t be happening again.

Look away. Don’t cry.

I called Heather once more in the car on the way here. They’re still in the dorms, dutifully following my panicked instructions. They are safe, but it’s really hitting me that someone else is probably going to get hurt. All because I
screwed up with the police. Because I
couldn’t keep it together.

Or maybe it still would’ve turned out the same way. I don’t know. Maybe if this had really happened in the way that I described it to the police, and we had real
proof, then they would’ve listened. But it didn’t. And they didn’t.

Trigger’s frown deepens. “No.” He goes right back to collecting things and begins arranging everything on the table where he needs it. “We’re meeting Alpha. We’ll think of a way to…I don’t know, get the police to the place, maybe? I could make a call? It’s not gonna be easy. I told you, these guys are careful. They cover all their bases. They leave no room for error.” He makes quick eye contact with each of us and returns his attention to his work. “Either way, I’m doing this tonight and I’m done. I’ll just tell them that. That’s the deal.”

“Trigger.” I can’t help but call him that. I guess he’ll always be Trigger to me. “These guys don’t make deals. Didn’t you say something like that? You don’t think they’ll want more? Do you really think that you can just participate
in this, and then walk away?”

His hands go up, and his eyes dart back and forth like he’s misplaced something. A second later he finds it and adds it to his collection. “If you take pictures, I’ll be in them. My life and career will be over. Tonight was the deal. After tonight, I’m done.”

“What if you’re not?” Jay asks.

The whites of Trigger’s eyes are turning red. “Then nothing matters anymore.”

I go to the opposite side of the table where he’s carefully lining up bottles. “Why did they want you?”

“I told you why.” He pokes a needle into one of the bottles and extracts a fraction of the liquid. “They needed something new. A mixture. A cross between an anesthetic and GHB. Something that couldn’t be tasted in alcohol or water, that couldn’t be traced, that would slow the heart and erase all memory function. Rohypnol and ketamine can be traced, and GHB has a salty taste. It has to be absolutely foolproof.”

His knowledge makes me woozy, but something pushes me on. Call it morbid curiosity. “What is that?” I jerk a finger at the bottle he continues to empty.

“Methohexital. It’s a fast-acting anesthesia. Lyxo—”

I cut him off. “Never mind.” I don’t want to hear. I hate how he seems so business-like. My curiosity turns to despair.