Prescription: Makeover (18 page)

He stood there a long moment, watching her taillights dwindle in the darkness. Then he cursed and headed back into the hotel room for his jacket, palming his phone and jabbing Max’s number on speed dial.

This mess was almost over, and once it was, he could walk away from her without looking back. But until then, he was damn well going to watch over her whether she liked it or not.

Ike was still fuming as she let herself into the Kupfer lab. How dare he analyze her. What, he thought just because they’d been to bed, he had the right to crawl inside her head and take up residence? Not likely.

She stepped into the lab lobby, then stopped dead in her tracks when she heard a strangled, gurgling sigh like the one Zed had given as he’d exhaled his last breath in her arms.

Panic lunged through her. Oh, God. They’d pulled the HFH protection detail following Firenzetti’s arrest. What if he’d gotten out earlier than expected?

She bolted toward Kupfer’s office — and nearly tripped over him where he lay sprawled just inside the door, partway beneath the desk. She dropped to her knees and saw blood. “Dr. Kupfer.
Lukas!
”

She checked him over quickly, finding a bullet wound in his gut that oozed blackish blood, along with a cut on his scalp and a large bump on his head, suggesting someone had hit him from behind, knocking him out. Other bruises and a few gashes on his fingers indicated that he’d been worked over, an impression that was reinforced by the sight of zip ties at his wrists and ankles.

Dear Lord, she thought. He’d been tortured. Had he given up the adjunct formula? Is that why his assailant had left?

She pulled out her .22, whipped out her cell phone and speed-dialed Max’s number.

The line clicked live and Max said, “We’re on our way.” She heard road noises in the background, along with the squeal of tires.

“Drive faster,” she said and tersely outlined the situation, ending with, “Who’s ‘we’?”

“I’ve got William with me. He called to say you’d taken off in the rental.”

Her blood flared at the name, but she forced herself to be a professional. “Good. I want you two up here pronto.” She hung up without waiting for a response and ignored her cell when it rang back with William’s name and number in the caller ID.

No doubt he wanted her out of the building. Hell, she’d love to run, but she wasn’t leaving Kupfer behind.

Just then the researcher stirred and groaned, blinking fitfully against the overhead fluorescents. He turned his head and squinted at her. “Eleanor? No,” he corrected himself. “Ike.”

“Well, at least your memory’s intact,” she said briskly. “Can you move?”

He shook his head feebly. “We both know that won’t work. The bastard shot me when I wouldn’t give him the formula.” His eyelids drifted shut, then flickered open again. “He thinks he’s won anyway, that I won’t be able to publish the adjunct.” He clutched at her. “You’ll have to do it.”

“I don’t know the formula,” she said, pressing a hand to his wound, which had begun to bleed in earnest again. “Just hang on and we’ll get you out of here.”

“No,” he said. “I wrote it down just in case. I hid it in Matt’s blog.” His breath rattled in his lungs and he slid back toward unconsciousness, possibly for the last time.

“Damn it.” Ike looked from the computer to the door and back, blood humming, trying to decide what her priorities should be.

Moments later she was seated at Kupfer’s computer, bringing the machine to life.

“T
RY HER AGAIN
,” William snapped, keeping his foot jammed on the accelerator. “She’ll pick up if she knows it’s you.”

Maybe he shouldn’t blame her for ignoring his calls — he’d pushed too hard too fast earlier. His only excuse was that he’d wanted so badly to hold onto her and convince her what they had together was real. In the end, he’d scared her.

Then he’d gotten in her face, which had sent her running even faster.

Hang on, Ike,
he commanded inwardly, wishing she were still wearing her earpiece.
I’ll make it up to you, I promise. We can work this out.

He just had to get them to the Markham Institute and get Ike clear, and they could —

“Look out!” Max threw himself across the interior of the car and jerked the wheel to one side as the windshield spiderwebbed. The car flew across the road just outside the Markham Institute, swerved and smashed into the guard shack, where it came to a shuddering halt.

William’s seat belt locked on impact and the air bag detonated, buffering the jolt. He cursed, fighting his air bag and the seat belt, which held him trapped. When the belt finally gave, he yanked it aside and lurched for the door, kicking the dented panel open and moving fast, knowing whoever had shot at them wasn’t likely to leave it at that. “Come on,” he called to Max. “Let’s move!”

There was no answer from the other side of the car.

Gut clenching, William leaned back in. In the passenger side, Max hung limp against his belt, blood trickling down the side of his head. “Max!”

William bolted around to the other side of the car. Seeing no sign of the gunman, he yanked open the door and reached in, trying to free his partner from the seat and air bag, knowing he shouldn’t move the injured man but equally sure he couldn’t leave him where he was.

The scrape of a footfall on pavement was his only warning. William stood and spun in time to see four of the black-on-black bodyguards standing in a row. Three held M16s, one a rocket launcher.

He didn’t bother with his own weapon. He reached into the car, heaved Max’s body up and out of the vehicle and over one shoulder and turned to run, knowing it was too late when he heard the
whump
of the launcher and the scream of the rocket and the world around him lit like the Fourth of July and —

Nothing.

I
KE LEFT THE COMPUTER
and raced for the window at the first chatter of gunfire, reaching it just in time to see Max’s rental explode in a ball of orange flame and dirty black smoke. The shock wave rattled the building, and Ike’s knees gave out, sending her to the floor. She clutched the edge of the window.
“William!”

He and Max had been coming for her. Now they were gone, just like that. In a blink. Dead.

“No!” Deep belly-wrenching sobs tore through her, doubling her over with the pain of a loss still not fully comprehended, and she heard herself babbling a litany, a mantra of denial, of prayer.
“No. Dear God, no. Please, no.”

Then a new voice spoke from the office doorway. “Hush, darling. Everything’s going to be fine now.”

She gasped, jerked around and scrambled to her feet, still clutching her stomach, where a screaming, empty pit had opened up, threatening to suck her inward until there was nothing else left. She stood frozen for a moment, struggling to connect what she was seeing now with what had just happened.

A light-haired, vaguely familiar man stood in the doorway, wearing a pale gray suit with a light blue shirt beneath. His steel-gray tie was perfectly knotted, his elegant brown belt perfectly flat, and when he stepped over Kupfer’s motionless body to come toward her, she saw that his brown shoes were a perfect match and gleamed with a perfect shine.

His eyes were the palest blue, with pinprick small pupils that sent a jolt of fear lancing through Ike’s pain as he held out a hand. “Come with me, Celeste. Let us never be parted again.”

She wanted to shout,
I’m Ike, not Eleanor and
certainly
not Celeste.
But the almost fanatical lucidity in his strange eyes warned her against the denial. So she nodded, playing along, even as she heard a secondary explosion outside and her heart ripped in two. “I’m ready…Mr. Smith?”

It was a shot in the dark, a calculated risk.

He looked at her for a long moment, then suddenly smiled, a charming expression that was ruined by those god-awful eyes. “That’s my girl.”

He stepped forward and took one of her hands.

Ike went for her .22 with the other.

Her captor exploded into a blur of motion. Just as she touched the butt of the small gun, he grabbed her and spun her around, snatching the weapon and tossing it on the floor beneath the desk. Using the hand he held as leverage, he whipped her arm up behind her back and leaned into her.

They wound up plastered together, with his front against her back and their arms twined together, one across her belly below her breasts, the other behind her in a painful, punishing grip.

She screamed and kicked back in a move that should have driven her boot heel into his instep, but he dodged neatly and sandwiched her legs between his, immobilizing her.

Panic spurted, and she was helpless to stop the whimper that bubbled up from her soul, could do nothing but press her eyelids together and fight for air. “Please,” she whispered. “I can’t breathe.”

He immediately eased his grip, surprising her. “I’m sorry,” he said. Then he pressed his face against her neck and inhaled. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

“Then let me go.”

“I can’t.” He sounded almost sorry. “I need you. I had to have you, had to get you away from the others so you’d understand.”

At first she thought he meant William and Max, and fresh pain wrested a cry from deep in her gut. Then slowly, terribly, she remembered where she’d seen him before. On the ski slope, wearing gray. He’d come to her aid and tried to convince her to stay down while they’d waited for search and rescue.

He’d really been keeping her occupied while her lover had bled out into the snow. Now he kept her captive while William’s body burned.

“Bastard.” Her voice shook on the word, and she couldn’t even bring herself to struggle. He took the opportunity, sliding his hands along her arms and forcing her other hand behind her back, his touch remaining deliberate and almost gentle, though he twisted hard enough to break bone as he overlapped her forearms.

Tears dripped down Ike’s chin, and her mouth opened in a silent rictus of grief, of disbelief. She felt a thin strip wrap around her wrists, heard the zip as he pulled the tie tight but couldn’t bring herself to care as she was swamped beneath the crushing weight of grief.

Oh, God. William.

“Come along.” He lifted his hands and eased something jingling down over her head. At first she thought it was a necklace, another gift.

When he pulled it tight and snapped on a leather leash, she realized it was a choke chain.

“Damn you,” she said hollowly. Some of her fighting spirit rekindled as he stepped away and knelt down to bind her ankles, more loosely than her wrists, so she could walk but not run. She sucked in a miserable breath that did nothing to fill the raw, aching void inside her. “Damn you. You’ll never get away with this.”

He smiled and stepped very close to her, then lifted a hand to trail a finger down her cheek. “Your face is so lovely. You remind me so much of my Celeste.”

“But I’m not Celeste,” she said, jumping on his admission that while she might look like the other woman, he knew they weren’t the same. “I’m Ike Rombout and I can’t just disappear. People will be looking for me.”

His look shifted to gentle pity. “What people?”

Her throat closed on her answer. Her family had been lost to her a long time ago. Her only close friend — Max — was dead. William was dead. Who did that leave to look?

“I made myself almost invisible in your precious databases,” he said. “I wiped all traces of Celeste’s existence, just like I’ll wipe yours after I e-mail your boss on your behalf, telling him you’ve decided to pull up roots and head out on your own. In a few weeks, your other acquaintances will forget to ask where you’ve been and you’ll be nothing more than a footnote on a couple of W2 forms next year.” He spread his hands. “Then you’ll be nothing.”

A black hole of raw panic opened up within Ike at the realization that he could do exactly that. William was right. She’d spent the past two decades trying to stand out in a conformist world, trying to get the attention and the raised eyebrows that meant she mattered. And in the end she’d wound up with so few real friends she’d be easy to forget.

Her heart raced and the walls closed in on her, stealing the oxygen from her lungs. Only there weren’t any walls. They were inside her.

Tears clouded her vision and spilled free, tracking down her cheeks as she wheezed dry, choking sobs.

“That’s my girl,” Smith said again, seeming satisfied by her response. He cocked his head at the rising wail of sirens, then glanced down at Lukas Kupfer’s motionless body. “Such a shame to lose him and Firenzetti all at once. But what the world doesn’t know it lost won’t hurt anyone, and Firenzetti’s usefulness has ended. He may try to turn evidence when he realizes I’m not coming for him, but by then we’ll be long gone.” He kissed her cheek.

Ike didn’t respond; she was too busy trying not to pass out. In the end she’d failed Kupfer just as she’d failed William and Max and Zed. She’d failed thousands of kids like Jeremy, too, because she hadn’t been able to find the adjunct recipe. Hell, she hadn’t even been able to find Matthew’s blog. She’d assumed the scientist had maintained a Web log in his son’s honor, updating it with the progress of the work, but there was no evidence of such a thing on the computer. Hell, from the looks of it, he’d used the word processing package, e-mail and not much else. It seemed odd that he’d —

Her head snapped up as she realized he hadn’t said
blog
at all. He’d said
dog.
Matthew’s dog.

She tried to dampen the reaction, but it was already too late. Smith followed her attention to the plush toy on Kupfer’s desk, and his strange pinprick eyes grew thoughtful. “What’s this?”

He crossed the room, yanking her along behind by the leash, and grabbed the small stuffed animal. He felt the thing for a moment before using both hands to give it a violent twist, ripping the toy in half. Then he gave a low cry of triumph and withdrew a small stenographer’s pad.

He flipped a few pages and then beamed at her with approval. “Lovely job.” Hearing the sirens shut off as the cops reached the burned-out car, he said, “Time to go. The limo’s waiting for us on the other side of the building.”