Shiver of Fear (19 page)

He pushed the door open, snapping the security latch. “Devyn!”

She peeked through the two-inch opening, her face bone white.

“What’s the matter?” he asked.

She closed the door partially, then opened it for him, stepping back to let him in. She held the envelope in one hand, a piece
of paper in the other.

“What does it say?” Whatever it was, it couldn’t be good.

“Absolutely nothing. It was blank.”

S
haron touched the switch and waited for the familiar flicker of milky yellow fluorescent lights to illuminate the two lab
tables and glass-enclosed shelves that ran alongside the row of airtight coolers against the back wall of the room. The basement,
not ten by twenty feet, had become her workplace for the past several weeks.

Stuffing her fingers into sticky latex gloves and pulling them tightly over the cuffs of her lab coat, she checked her mask,
grateful that it not only blocked a deadly spore from finding its way into her system but also covered the distinct smell
of wet earth that permeated the basement walls. From the cemetery, no doubt. So close to this house, so full of tens of thousands
of dead Irish men and women.

The little people who thought they were dying for a cause.

She slid clear goggles over her eyes and crossed to the coolers, her sneakers making no sound. Using a key to
open the first cooler, she tugged the handle until the airtight rubber strip made a suctioning noise, assuring her that the
contents inside were sealed.

The bacteria was growing nicely. She peered at the blackened dishes, needing no microscope to tell her that she was looking
at raw botulinum toxin, grown from spores harvested from Irish soil.

“Got anything yet?”

She jumped at the voice, nearly dropping the dish.

“Jesus Christ, Baird,” she mumbled behind her mask. “You want to kill me?” She turned to see him, bare face, bare hands, no
lab coat. “Or yourself?”

“I thought they weren’t toxic yet.”

She lifted the petri dish. “This one is. Get suited up and I’ll show you.”

He left and she breathed into her mask, her body tensing as usual around this deadly young man. She forced herself to relax,
setting the dish back in its proper slot.

She slid the microscope out and switched it on, finding a glass plate and swab. Baird would want to see for himself, of course.
He was, after all, the paying client.

“I don’t have good news for you,” Baird said as he returned, a mask hanging around his neck as he tugged on some gloves.

Don’t react, Sharon. Don’t take the bait.
“Does that mean there hasn’t been another deposit in my account?”

“The money is there,” he said coolly. “You know damn well it is because you logged into your account today.”

No secrets here. She couldn’t forget that. “Then what’s the bad news?”

“It’s about the young woman on your tail.”

She looked up, surprised at how much his next words mattered. “Yes?”

“She’s a wily one, it seems.”

It’s in the blood. “How so?” She lifted the petri dish full of deadly toxins.

“She’s working with someone.”

Her fingers tightened on the glass, but her voice was utterly unconcerned. “What do you mean, working?”

“Working to find you.”

A lifetime of freezing out emotion took over by instinct, icing down the tendril that threatened to wrap around her heart.
No feelings
. They were dead, like the people buried in the cemetery next door. “Who is it?” she asked.

“We don’t know, but he pistol-whipped one of our men.”

Oh, sweet Jesus. This was not good. “Did your runner get the message to her anyway?”

“We shall see, won’t we? What do you have here?” He pulled the stool out, taking it for himself without even offering it to
her, his hands greedy for the microscope.

“Be careful,” she chided. “What we have is phase two of the project. As you know, the spores were easy to harvest. But now
we’ve grown bacteria, and this is when they start to become dangerous.”

“If I touched one?”

“Nothing would happen, unless you had an open sore. This has to be ingested, but in this form it is not easily ingested.”

He looked up, excited. “So it’s nearly ready to go?”

“The chain is thickening nicely.”

He had no idea what she was talking about, which was exactly how she liked it. Fighting a smile behind her
mask, she continued. “The light chain of the type A toxin degrades the SNAP-25 protein, and the SNAP-25 protein is required
for the release of neurotransmitters from the axon endings.”

He blew out a disgusted breath. “I don’t care. How soon will we be ready?”

“You want toxin purified and stabilized to work, not one that will be like what the Shinrikyo tried in Tokyo back in the early
nineties, correct?”

“Did you do that, too?” He sounded impressed.

“I can’t take credit for that.” But they’d asked her, that was for sure. “And I assume your client wants to transport this
material into an aerosol that will impact a large segment of the population.”

“Impact…”

“Paralyze and kill, Baird,” she said, impatience in every word. “Aerosol or not?”

He pushed off the chair and left the room, returning a few seconds later with a large crate that he dumped on the table. Opening
the lid, he pulled out a long silver canister with a black top. “Aerosol.”

That would do the job. “I’ll have quite a bit of work to do to get this into a gas that fits in there.”

“And you say that’ll take a week still?”

A day, maybe two. But no need for him to know that. Everything had to be lined up just so. “That’s what I said.”

“Speed it up.”

“I fill orders, Mr. Baird, not work miracles.”

He dragged off his gloves carelessly and threw them on the lab table. She worked with the dishes for a moment, and right before
he left, he said, “I’m going to take care of the girl. Permanently.”

The vial in her hand didn’t even wobble. “An American woman killed in Ireland would attract a lot of attention. I strongly
suggest you use a less high-profile means of getting rid of her and simply get her out of town.”

“She’s stubborn.”

Like her father. “Be creative.”

“Trust me, we are.”

“Trust you.” She gave a scoffing laugh. “That’s rich.”

He glared at her. “She pissed off one of my men, and I really can’t say what he’ll do for retribution.”

“Don’t you have control over your men?”

“We’ll take care of her.”

She set the petri dish down hard, damn near cracking it. “You do that.”

He responded with a slightly surprised look, and she turned to hide any reaction she might have, modulating her breathing
as his footsteps landed on the concrete stairs heading up.

She had to
do
something. If they got to her… No, that was just bad on every imaginable level.

Deep in the lining of her lab coat, a soft vibration alerted her. Certain Baird was gone, she took out the phone and read
the text, a tight smile pulling. Their network was remarkable, really.

Returning the dishes to their proper places, she locked the cooler and stepped out of the lab, stripping off her coat, goggles,
mask, and gloves to properly dispose of them in the bin, unlike Baird.

She locked the door and shuffled through her options again, finding only one, despite the risk of it.

In her second-floor bedroom, she slipped on a Parka, the feeling of silky down always reminding her of another
dark day in her past. The day all of this was set in motion. The day she became a criminal.

And a mother.

Quietly descending the stairs, she jumped when Baird stepped out of the first-floor parlor, where several other men were meeting
with him.

“Where are you going?” he demanded.

She gave him a haughty look. “I’m not your prisoner, Mr. Baird. And as I’m not in your meeting”—she nodded pointedly to the
room behind him—“I’m going for a walk.”

“The cemetery’s closed.”

“I’m aware of that.”

“It’s not smart to just walk around the Falls Road neighborhood at night. Some of those bastards from Shankill love to cross
the Peace Line and harass our girls over here.”

“No one will mistake me for one of your
girls
,” she assured him. “And I know the safer areas to walk.”

He eyed her suspiciously. “Did you finish in the lab?”

“I did what I could,” she said, lowering her voice, tucking her hands into the deep pockets of her coat, the outline of her
phone pressing against her palm. “Can’t rush the process,” she reminded him. “Good night, Mr. Baird.”

“How long will you be gone?”

She just closed her eyes and shook her head, like he was nothing more than a nuisance to her.

Without another word, she continued to the door, aware that he watched her. She walked out, the crisp night air a welcome
sensation on her face. She splashed through a puddle as she marched down the hill to Milltown Road, away from Liam Baird’s
house.

With each step, she played out what she would say when she made this call.

No words sounded quite right in her head.

She followed the road to a busier area, where more traffic made her feel less vulnerable, the grounds of Milltown off to her
left, some shops, more houses, and pubs to the right. A young couple passed her, nodding, and then two men, both on cell phones,
one rambling in an accent so thick it was unintelligible to her. She glanced behind her and saw no one, picking up her pace
to really get some distance between her and the house.

The smell of fresh paint on a pub wall mixed with the night air and scents of fried food and beer, the mural an homage to
the lost hope for a united Ireland.

The image and smells overwhelmed her with a memory of Finn. Amazing how, after thirty years, every once in a while, a sense
will awaken a memory. A selective, unrealistic, stupid-as-hell memory of a day with Finn, or a night.

Footsteps behind her pulled her from her reverie. She slowed her pace, and so did the steps behind her. She turned the corner
and rounded the building where the fresh mural had been painted. The sound of footsteps followed. She picked up speed and
walked back on a different street, and whoever was back there did… not.

After a few blocks, she looked over her shoulder into the dark shadows, seeing nothing move. She kept her pace up, her eye
on the walls of the cemetery so she didn’t lose track of where she was. She crossed two streets, then Falls Road, and reached
what she assumed was the southwest corner of Milltown.

She finally stopped in the shadows, listening. Her follower had given up, and none of the pedestrians who’d
been shopping or drinking made it to this remote end of the street, which was lined with parked cars.

After one more furtive glance up and down, behind and around, she dug the phone out, holding it close as she reread the message
she’d just received. She inched closer to the high, wrought-iron fence that enclosed this section of the cemetery. The “lesser”
were buried here, in mass graves. All those babies, all those victims of plague and poverty. These folks didn’t merit a brick
wall, just a fence with thick, thorny bushes.

After a moment, she dialed the number, squinting at the words when given the option to call or text.

Text would be the easier way, of course. But would it be as effective?

A nudge was all she needed, and Sharon was just the person to give it.

But something paralyzed her. Once contact was made, life would never be the same. Maybe she should text it. But Devyn would
never know who was texting her. What could Sharon say to prove who she was? What would she know about Devyn that no one else
knew?

Her birth name. If she had been resourceful enough to dig up long-buried paperwork, she would know that. And Finn wouldn’t.
If she responded to the name, then it answered a lot of questions, too. It meant Devyn was doing this on her own, and Finn
wasn’t behind it.

Yes, using “Rose” would be a brilliant move.

Text or call?

She typed a few words, just to see how they looked.

Rose, please go. I need you

Light poured over her, making her jump backward with a gasp.

The high beams of a car parked on a side street bathed her in yellow. The engine revved and the car shot forward, heading
right for her.

She started to run, the phone still in her hand, the message unfinished. The car swerved, continuing to head toward her. If
it hit her—when it hit her—she’d be smashed against the iron fence.

She turned, unable to let out the scream trapped in her throat as the vehicle picked up speed. She stumbled back, into some
brush and the fence, squeezing the phone.

Her hands clutched the phone behind her, squeezing every button on the pad.

The car bore down on her, the engine screaming, not twenty feet away. With one fast move, she whipped her arm backward through
the iron rails and released the phone, praying that it would be lost in the brush, destroyed by the next rain, the batteries
dead before anyone ever found it.

And as she opened her mouth to scream and held up her empty hands in a last-ditch plea for mercy, she threw out one more prayer.
That death wouldn’t hurt too much.

I
t’s blank?” Marc reached for the note, cringing. A light sheen of sweat dampened his face and temples, his irises nearly black,
adrenaline so thick Devyn could taste it in the air.

“What happened?” she asked, the disappointment of the blank note momentarily forgotten as her gaze moved to his hand, where
he shook off the pain.

“Cigarette burn. Son of a bitch got me.” He glanced at the paper she held. “Of course it says nothing,” he spat. “It might
as well have said ‘you’ve been duped.’ They wanted to find us. And they did. We have to get out of this room.”

She took his hand to examine the burn, sucking a breath at the raw, festering skin. “What son of a bitch?”

“I don’t know. But I don’t think it’s safe to leave the hotel right now.”