The Mountain's Shadow (25 page)

My mind flashed back to the night my lab burned. The sound of my car alarm had broken my concentration and called my attention to the smoke that crept under the door.

It's nothing to worry about.
But there was something else, some small noise I couldn’t identify. My heart thudded in my chest and sent roaring waves through my throat and skull. Every instinct told me something wasn’t right. Iain opened the door to the lobby, and I ran after him.

“Don’t go out there!” I gasped and held on to the sleeve of his jacket.

“I have to see what set it off! It’s going to eat up the battery!”

“Give it a minute. Maybe it’ll go off.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Joanna! All I have to do is click the lock button to stop it.”

My stomach clenched as he opened the heavy wooden door and pointed the remote at the black Lexus. I forced myself to watch as he pushed the button so I could yank him inside as soon as the alarm stopped. We tumbled to the floor just inside the door and knocked over an end table.
 

“Joanie, what the hell?”

The wooden door with its metal core saved us from the brunt of the explosion. The whole building rocked with its force, and the windows shattered inward. If we had been farther into the room, we would have been shredded. Smoke poured under the door, and we coughed, holding each other tightly as we cowered by the wall. We didn’t dare move.

“Are you okay?” he finally asked.

I almost didn’t hear him over the ringing in my ears. “I think so. You?”

“Yes.” The stubble of his chin scraped against my forehead. I picked up my hand from the floor and hissed in pain—it was the same one Leo had adjusted a few nights before.

“You’re hurt.”

“An old injury.”

“Is everyone okay in there?” a voice called from outside. “It’s the fire department. Please respond.”

“We’re fine,” Iain called back.

“Don’t move! We’re concerned you may be injured. Someone will get you out in a second.”

“That was fast,” Iain commented.

“I guess they don’t get many big explosions in Little Rock. And the fire station is just down the road.”

“I didn’t hear the sirens. Must be the ringing in my ears.”

The inner door opened, and Galbraith looked out, his expression one of concern, then shock.

“Doctor Fisher, Doctor McPherson? Are you all right?”

“I think so. Don’t come any further—there’s glass everywhere.”

The outside door swung open, and a fireman in full gear came through. “Is everyone all right in here?” he asked.

“Yes. Can we get up now?”

He held out his hand and helped me up first—by my uninjured hand—and then Iain. Galbraith picked his way across the debris.

“We have to make sure the building is still sound,” the fireman said. “And the two of you should get checked out at the hospital just to make sure you are. The paramedics are here if you want to talk to them.”

I wondered why he didn’t say the same to Galbraith, but then realized that Iain and I both had soot on our faces and dust in our hair. My left hand throbbed.

“I’m fine, but Doctor Fisher has injured her wrist in the fall.” Iain stopped when he saw the smoldering wreck of what had been his car. “My god!”

“Was anyone on the road?” I asked, craning to see.

“No, luckily there was a lull in traffic when the car exploded.”

A policeman walked up to us. “Was this your car, sir?”

Iain ran a hand through his hair. “It was a rental.”

“And when did you pick it up?”

Something still didn’t add up. I let the paramedic look at my wrist as Iain answered the policeman’s questions. No, he hadn’t let anyone else have the keys to the car, no he hadn’t valet parked it anywhere, yes, the rental place would know the history of the vehicle better than he would, yes, he had called ahead and requested a luxury vehicle…

I started, and the EMT apologized for jarring my wrist.

“No, it wasn’t you,” I told the earnest young man.

“Well, you should put some ice on it. It’s swelling.”

I nodded but was too busy following my own train of thought to hear him. There had been a noise outside the window, a noise I’d heard before. It was what had warned me of the impending explosion. But that was as far as my memory would go.

Again, that feeling of being watched, those invisible fingers across the back of my neck that raised all the hairs. I tried not to be obvious about it as I looked around. A shadow at the corner of the building detached itself from the other shadows and moved into the alleyway beside Galbraith’s office. The shadow turned, its tongue lolling out at me, and my heart stopped. The black wolf. Before I could be sure, it was gone, but I could hear Louise’s warning in my mind.

The black wolf knows.

That was the noise I had heard—the sound of an animal prowling outside the window. It was the same noise I’d heard the night of the fire before my car alarm went off and before the explosion in the hallway that started the fire. I remembered it now.

“What happened?” Lonna pulled up with Leo in the car, and he leapt out of the passenger seat. He stopped short when he saw Iain.

“Who’s this?”

“Iain McPherson. He’s another CLS researcher.”

“And you are…” Iain raised an eyebrow.

“Leonard Bowman.” He looked straight into Iain’s eyes. “Doctor Leonard Bowman.”

“Leo, that’s enough.” I pulled him aside. “Do you remember the black wolf?”

His nostrils flared. “Why?”

“I think I just saw him.”

“Give me five minutes, then get my clothes out of the alley.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Track him.”

“Isn’t that dangerous?” I glanced over my shoulder and saw Iain watching us. Poor guy, he had no idea what he’d just gotten himself into. But he’d be so excited to hear about what we’d found if he could get past the shock.

“No more dangerous than letting him roam around and making cars explode.”

“Touché. Fine. Good luck.”
 

He made sure that no one watched him, then darted into the alleyway and disappeared into the shadows.

“Is he...?” asked Lonna when I returned to the group alone.

“Yep.”

She nodded. “You’ll have to fill me in later.”

The rest of the day was a whirlwind. First we had to talk to the cops. Then to the bomb-squad guys. Then to another policeman, this one in plainclothes, at the station. Iain had to make a call to his travel-insurance company and straighten out things with the rental-car company as well as replace everything that had been in his suitcase in the trunk. Luckily he’d taken his laptop as well as his wallet and passport into Galbraith’s office, so the difficult-to-replace items had been spared. Lonna had left us at the police station to go to her office and finally rescued us just as the sun was setting. She suggested that we go out for dinner, but I wanted to be safely indoors if the black wolf was prowling about.

“So who do you think wants to kill you?” Lonna asked Iain as we sat with Italian take-out in front of us and glasses—big ones—of Chianti in hand.

“Are you always this direct?” Iain asked. He leaned forward and snagged another calamari ring.

“Yes. And you’re evading the question.”

Here we were again, Lonna taking the lead, and me just sitting quietly and keeping my mouth shut. Back in the city with the same old patterns. I couldn’t concentrate, though, not with the black wolf prowling around out there and Leo trying to track him.

“I honestly have no idea. I haven’t received any threats. I haven’t noticed anything suspicious. The first inkling I had of something being out of the ordinary was when my car alarm went off while I was in Galbraith’s office talking to Joanie.” He raised his glass to me. “I don’t know how to thank Joanie enough for saving my life.”

“She’s got a knack for self-preservation.” Lonna grinned, and the red wine gave her purple teeth. She looked like she’d been sucking the lifeblood out of a wine barrel. “Don’t you, Joanie?”

“I guess.” I swirled the wine in my glass. “I just knew something was wrong. Just like the night of the fire. Just like the night Louise died.”

“Wait a second.” Iain set his glass on the table and turned to look at me. “You mentioned her earlier, and it slipped my mind. Just how did she die?”

“She showed up one night bloody and hurt, badly hurt. She died on my suede couch. Or maybe it was microfiber. Either way, they took it.”

“She died in your house?”

“She knew my grandfather, was helping him at the house. I guess she knew how to get there from the village. It’s not like it’s a difficult path, just straight up the hill.”

He arched an eyebrow, his expression serious. “Then maybe I need to get as far away from you as possible.”

“That’s not nice, Iain.”

“Oh, forgive me, Doctor Fisher.” He stood up and shoved his hands in his pockets as he paced back and forth. “If you may recall, I just survived an explosion, one which you also witnessed. I lost my favorite luggage set, my rental car, and likely a few years off my life! I don’t know if I’m in the mood to be nice.”

Lonna opened her mouth, but I held my hand up. “If you’re not in the mood to be nice, then I’m not in the mood to deal with you. I suggest you call a cab and go find a hotel for the night. Then you can skedaddle right on back to Stirling tomorrow.”

“Skedaddle?” He frowned, then the corner of his mouth twitched. “I don’t think that a Scotsman would skedaddle.”

“Whatever. You can leave whenever you want to.”

He sat back down. “You know I can’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“Because that bastard Robert should be here to protect you, not me. He’s the real reason you’re in this mess. If he’d stood up for you at Cabal, none of this would have happened.”

“And what do you know about that?”

He looked down at the wineglass cradled in his hands. “Robert didn’t want to fire you, but he said he was under a lot of pressure from his bosses—who were getting heat, if you’ll forgive the pun—from the bigwigs at the pharmaceutical company that bought Cabal.”

“Wait a second. Cabal was bought by a pharmaceutical company? I thought it was another research organization.”

“It was the research arm of one of the big ones, I forget which one. I think it only has one word in the name. The information should be online.” He opened his laptop and waited for it to boot up.

“Lonna, did you have any luck figuring out where those vaccines came from?”

“I’d almost forgotten. Yes, I talked to Jasmin, who looked in the state database. I could only get an idea of which ones were distributed in the region. The only company that had both the flu vaccine and the Tdap vaccine came from…”

“Hippocrates Pharmaceuticals,” she and Iain said at the same time.

I wish I could say that everything became clear at that point, but I felt as though I had been punched in the stomach. My foe—and the threat to me and my friends—had just gotten a lot bigger. I also knew with certainty that I was going to have to talk to Robert and find out what this “pressure” was and how my projects had changed since I had been “terminated”.

I didn’t think I would be able to sleep that night considering the events of the day, so I was surprised when the ringing of my cell phone woke me up.

“Doctor, is everything okay?”

I rolled over and looked at the clock. Midnight.

“Yes, Gabriel, everything’s fine.”

“I was just checking the news online and saw the piece about the explosion in the Local/Arkansas section. Your name was mentioned.” He didn’t say anything about Iain’s, although surely his must have been as well. “Were you injured?”

“Only my left wrist again. You weren’t there to save me this time.” I couldn’t keep the resentment out of my voice.

“That is something I will always regret.”

The genuine sorrow in his voice tugged at my heart, particularly since I had meant to tweak him, but then the conversation with Galbraith and Iain popped into my head.

“You knew Iain McPherson? He said you were on his research team and left, then you showed up when my grandfather started looking for domestic help.”

“You sound suspicious.”

“Something doesn’t quite add up.”

“Did Doctor McPherson also tell you I had collected everything I could find on your work? That I was your ‘biggest fan’, so to speak?”

“He mentioned that you were very interested in it.”

“What would you say if I told you I took the position for the chance to be near you?”

“I would say that that’s creepy, almost stalker-ish. How do I know you weren’t trying to use me for my knowledge? Or my grandfather? Leo said you were a lab rat.”

Silence. I could tell that I’d really hurt him. Gads, I hated how those late-night conversations could strip away the facades we put up. But he had kept information from me, and right now I couldn’t trust anyone, not even Lonna, whom I heard moving around in the living room. At least I thought it was Lonna. Maybe it was Iain because whoever it was didn’t sound like they knew where everything was. I held my breath and listened hard.