Authors: Tina Folsom
“Why should I believe you?”
Again her eyes darted past him. If she was still hoping for the police or the security guard to arrive, he’d have to sorely disappoint her.
“Because you’re an intelligent woman.” Maybe if he appealed to her intellect, he would get somewhere. “If you look at it logically, you’ll see that it’s impossible. I was with you the entire time until you went to take a shower in the motel.” He scoffed. “Well, I guess I fell for that old trick. Nevertheless, do you really think I would have left you alone at the motel while I believed you were in the shower?” He locked eyes with her.
For a few seconds she stared at him, then she finally shook her head.
“Then who did this, if not you?” She pointed to the floor.
Aiden followed her outstretched finger and saw what she was looking at. On the floor in front of the safe lay a human thumb, a tiny pool of blood around it. He shot her a confused look. “What the fuck?”
Tears brimmed in her eyes now. She still pointed at the bloody human thumb, her voice trembling as she answered, “The only way to open the safe is with a thumb print, either mine ...” Her voice broke.
Instinctively his eyes searched her hands even though he knew what he’d find: flawless, perfect fingers.
“Whose thumb?” he urged.
She swallowed hard. “Mr. Patton’s. My boss. He’s the only other person who could have opened ...” A solitary tear rolled down her cheek. “Tell me you didn’t do this. Tell me I’m not in the clutches of a madman,” she begged through the sobs that now started.
He lifted her head with his thumb and forefinger. “I didn’t do this. You have to believe me.”
He fought against the urge to pull her into his embrace. There was no time for that now. He glanced past her into the safe. “The safe is empty. What do you normally keep in it?”
Leila hesitated, chewing on her lip once more. “A backup drive of my research data.”
A curse left his lips. “The Alzheimer’s drug?”
Her head shot up, her eyes widening. “How do you—?”
She sidestepped him, trying to get to her desk, clearly in order to bring distance between them.
“It doesn’t matter. Was it the Alzheimer’s drug?”
Her eyes looked at the door, hope that rescue was on its way fading in them. Reluctantly, she nodded.
“Fuck!” He ran a shaky hand through his hair. He’d been too late. “Now the demons have it. Please tell me the data alone won’t help them recreate the drug.” If it was all they needed, then he’d failed again.
“The demons?”
Was she finally starting to believe him? He hoped so.
“Why do they want my research? Why?”
He saw the horror in her eyes. “They need it to cement their power over humans. It’ll help them gain the upper hand. The drug you’ve been working on will help them influence humans and pull them to their side.”
“Oh God.” Then she stared back at the safe. “It wasn’t in there,” she murmured so softly he almost didn’t hear her. She sounded confused.
Maybe the entire night had been too much for her. After all, she was a human, and there was only so much they could take before they cracked. He should make allowances for that.
He gestured toward the open safe. “Well of course not, it’s empty, they took it. The demons took it.”
Leila shook her head. “It wasn’t in there. The disk.”
He focused his attention back on her words. “What do you mean?”
“A couple of days ago, I took it out and erased it.”
Could he trust his ears? “You what?”
Her ocean blue eyes looked up at him, wide, beautiful, still glistening with tears. “I destroyed the backup drive. I had a strange feeling ... I just felt it wasn’t safe there. So I took it and erased the data.”
“Where is the original data?” If this was only the backup, there had to be another drive. Had they gotten to that one instead when they’d realized that the safe was empty? If it was still here somewhere, there was only one thing to do now that the demons had gotten brazen enough to attack outright.
“We’ll have to destroy it.”
***
Leila’s heart stopped beating for a moment. “Destroy?”
She shook her head in disbelief. He couldn’t mean that. She’d devoted years of her life to this and couldn’t simply wipe out her work as if it had never existed.
When she’d seen genuine shock in his eyes the moment she’d told him that a backup drive with her data was kept in the safe, she’d realized that he wasn’t the one who’d broken it open. But the revelation that he wanted to destroy her data didn’t make the situation any better.
“You don’t understand. This is my research. I’m going to cure Alzheimer’s.”
And she would get her parents back. They would have a chance to recover enough of their faculties to remember that they loved her and each other.
Aiden gripped her shoulders tightly. His chocolate brown eyes bored into her. “I understand. But this is more important.”
More important than curing a killer disease? “No!” She shook off his hands and stepped back. He couldn’t be serious. Instinctively, her hand shot up, wanting to touch her pendant. She forced it back down to her side, hoping not to have drawn attention to it. Protecting the last copy of her research data was vital now, because not only did the demons want it—she believed that much now—Aiden wanted to destroy it.
“If this drug is brought to market, it will open the minds of humans and make them more susceptible to the influence of demons. It’ll be child’s play for them to infiltrate their minds, play with them, manipulate them. Don’t you see? Your drug will cause this. We can’t allow this to happen.”
Leila shivered at the determination in his voice. He wouldn’t listen to her arguments. There was only one thing she could do: lie.
She nodded, pretending that she agreed with his reasoning. She’d given up hope that Max would come to rescue her. “The only other copy is on my encrypted laptop.” She pointed to the door. “In the lab.”
Aiden turned, and she followed him.
“Where?” he asked.
She passed him and went to her bench where only minutes earlier she’d confirmed that her laptop had been wiped clean. All she needed now were some acting skills to convince him that the last set of research data was destroyed too. Maybe then he would leave her alone, thinking there was nothing else the demons could take. And she would get her life back.
“Oh no!” she cried out, hoping she sounded convincing.
She let herself fall into the chair and stared at the monitor where the ominous ‘c:/’ still pulsed in silence.
“What’s wrong?”
She looked up at him, forcing tears to her eyes. “They tried to hack into my laptop.”
“Shit!” he cursed. “Did they get in?”
Shaking her head, she continued her charade. “No, but they activated the self-destruct feature.”
“What do you mean?” he asked, looking over her shoulder, hovering far too closely.
“I had a security program on my laptop. If anybody tried to access my data and there were more than two failed login attempts, the program would initiate, wiping the entire hard drive clean.”
“You mean there’s no data left on the computer?”
She shook her head. “None.” Feeling that she should show despair about the loss of her research, she turned her face away and let out a sob. It’s wasn’t too hard to produce. The thought of the bloody thumb on the floor in her office gave her reason enough to cry her eyes out. It struck her out of nowhere: the pain her boss must have suffered.
“Oh, God! Patten. I must find him. He needs a doctor. Oh, God, those bastards!”
She jumped up and almost bumped into Aiden, who instantly steadied her with a hand on her hip.
“Where’s his office?”
“On the eighth floor.”
“Let’s go,” he ordered.
As they rushed to the door and opened it, a loud alarm sounded from the hallway. Strobe lights flashed.
Aiden tossed her a questioning look.
“They’re locking down the building.” And she could guess what that meant.
FOURTEEN
Aiden by her side, Leila raced toward the elevator, hitting the call button impatiently.
“Come on, come on,” she coaxed it, shifting from one leg to the other, her concern for her own safety overshadowed by worries for her boss. She might have had a disagreement with him the last time they’d met, but that didn’t mean she didn’t care about his wellbeing. And she couldn’t help but think that part of this was her fault.
Aiden grabbed her elbow, making her look at him. The grim expression on his face confirmed that he had the same suspicion as she and feared the worst. It didn’t exactly calm her nerves.
A ping announced the arrival of the elevator. As soon as the doors opened, she squeezed inside quickly and hit the button for the eighth floor.
They didn’t speak while the elevator ascended. Instead, Leila fixed her gaze on the display panel that showed their movement from floor to floor. It felt like it moved at a snail’s pace. The local bus could have gotten them there faster.
“We should have taken the stairs,” she muttered.
Then she felt Aiden’s hand on her arm, squeezing it in reassurance. She glanced at him and noticed a flicker of compassion in them. It disappeared as quickly as it had appeared. Maybe she had simply seen what she wanted to see, even though she guessed the hard man next to her had no capacity for such emotion. Hell, he’d coldly demanded that she destroy her own research without as much as flinching. If somebody could do that, knowing he would deprive thousands if not millions of people of a cure for a devastating disease, what else was he capable of?
Leila let out a sigh of relief when the doors finally opened on the executive floor. She rushed out, heading for Patten’s office. As she approached, she found the door wide open.
She stormed in, Aiden on her heels.
The room was lit, the fluorescent lights illuminating the space, the small lamp that normally stood on Patten’s desk lay broken on the ground in front of it—next to Patten’s body.
A choked cry tried to leave her throat but didn’t quite make it. Her breath deserted her. But her feet carried her closer, almost as if some perverted part of her wanted to gorge itself on the sight. She needed to know how he’d died.
Leila stared at the lifeless form at her feet. Blood oozed from his neck, having soaked his shirt and tie. The wound looked straight and almost ... perfect, as if the murderer knew what he was doing. Her gaze drifted to Patten’s hands. And there, as if she needed a confirmation, one thumb was missing, cut from his right hand.
A sob worked its way up from her chest and past the lump in her throat that prevented her from speaking. She’d seen dead bodies before: in medical school, and during her time as a medical resident. But this was different. This wasn’t clinical, this wasn’t expected. This was a brutal crime.
All this so somebody could get to her research? Didn’t that make it her fault?
Sounds from the corridor made her lift her head. Aiden’s eyes bounced to the door, then back to her.
“Somebody’s coming. Not a word, promise me, don’t say a single word,” he ordered.
She nodded automatically. As if she could say anything while she fought the bout of nausea that developed in her stomach as the metallic scent of blood drifted into her nostrils.
Aiden pulled her aside, away from the body, and she didn’t have the strength to fight him this time. By now, somehow, her brain had figured out that he wouldn’t hurt her, even though she knew she couldn’t fully trust him—and could never tell him that a last copy of her research data still existed.
He pulled her closer to him as suddenly several people trampled into the room. The first one, she recognized instantly: Max. Behind him three other men barged in.
“Right here, officer,” Max pointed at Patten’s body. “I was doing my rounds when I found him.”
Police, she registered instantly, relieved that they had finally arrived.
As two of the men knelt down next to the body, the heavy set one Max had addressed, spoke. “Are you the only one in the building, Mr. Flanagan?”
Max shook his head. “No, Dr. Cruickshank is still working too, actually ... I should check on her in her lab, make sure she’s all right.”
Why would Max need to check in her lab when she was right here? Leila opened her mouth, wanting to speak up, but Aiden’s hand clamped over her mouth to prevent her from talking. Before she could protest, his mouth was at her ear, his warm breath caressing her skin as he whispered to her so low she barely heard him.
“Don’t make a sound. I’ll explain later.”
Confusion made her vocal cords constrict. Why didn’t Max or the other people acknowledge her presence or the fact that Aiden was holding his hand over her mouth? Wouldn’t that look suspicious to them? What kind of detectives were these people that they couldn’t see what was right in front of them?
“Kowalski,” one of the officers next to the body called out. “Looks like a clean cut through the throat. He was probably dead instantly.”
“The forensics team should be here in a moment.” Officer Kowalski’s gaze swept the room, never pausing on the spot where Leila and Aiden stood, as if he didn’t see them at all.
“Holy shit!” the other officer suddenly exclaimed. “Look at that.” He pointed to Patten’s hand.
Kowalski stepped closer. “Christ, the murderer cut off his thumb. What the—?” Then he turned to grace Max with a questioning look. “Do you know what that could mean?”
Max’s face turned almost as white as a sheet as he clutched his stomach. Oh, God, if he started to puke, Leila wasn’t sure she could tamp down her own nausea any longer.
“Oh, God, the safe. There’s a safe in Dr. Cruickshank’s o-o-office ...” Max’s voice stuttered, then came to a halt.
Aiden’s mouth was at her ear again. “Let’s go. Now.”
He yanked her toward the door, the brusque movement making her stumble over her feet.
“Did you hear that?” Kowalski asked.
“Hear what?” one of the officers replied.
Kowalski rubbed the back of his neck. “Nothing. So, you were saying something about a safe ...”
Aiden guided her outside, the voices behind her drifting into the distance as they walked along the corridor.