Sizzle and Burn (32 page)

She inched forward, trying not to make any sound on the carpeted surface. The gleaming knob that spelled escape was almost within reach. A draft of fresh air was coming in under the bottom of the door. All she had to do was jump to her feet, yank the door open and run for her life.

Another peculiar sound intruded on the silently screaming voices. Someone was pounding on the front door of the shop, demanding admittance.

“It’s the clerk,” Cassidy snapped from the far side of the red curtain.

“She sees us,” Niki said, her voice rising. “Probably thinks the door got locked by accident. If we don’t open it, she’ll know something’s wrong.”

“Let her in. We’ll have to get rid of her. The other two didn’t see us but she’ll be able to give a description to Jones and the cops.”

“You said no guns.”

“I said no guns. I didn’t say no weapons. I’ve got a company product with me. A double dose will be more than enough to stop her heart.”

They were going to murder Pandora simply because she was an innocent bystander who had seen them. Rage crashed through Raine.

She heard the outer door open.

“Hey, thanks,” Pandora said. “Who locked the door? Where’s my boss? And the big man who was sitting in that chair?”

“Back room,” Cassidy said coolly. “They’ll be right out.”

Raine took one last gulp of the relatively untainted air seeping in under the door, surged to her feet and, holding her breath, half-stumbled, half-ran through the wispy vapor toward the crimson curtain.

Adrenaline drowned most of the pain that shot through her injured ankle. Not all.

She thrust the velvet curtain aside. Pandora was in the act of crossing the threshold into the shop. She held the pizza boxes in both hands. Cassidy and Niki were on either side of the front door waiting to jump on her as soon as they could get the door closed.

“Run, Pandora!” Raine burst out of the opening, heading toward the front door as fast as she could on her bad ankle. “They’re going to kill you. Get the cops.
Run
, damn it!”

Pandora hesitated, mouth open in surprise and confusion. Cassidy reached for her.

“
Run
,” Raine shouted again, putting every ounce of authority she could muster into the single word.

Pandora dropped the pizza boxes, whirled and fled straight out into the middle of the street. Horns honked. Tires shrieked. Drivers shouted. Somewhere in the distance a siren wailed.

“Forget her,” Cassidy said to Niki. “We’ve got to get out of here. The back door. Help me with the bitch.”

“Guess that would be me,” Raine said. She gave Cassidy a really super version of her special, patented
screw you
smile.

She did not stop. Fueled by desperation and fury, she continued her unsteady headlong rush. Cassidy and Niki were directly in her path. The plan, such as it was, consisted of ramming through them with enough force and momentum to carry her outside onto the sidewalk.

But her injured ankle gave out just as she reached the pair. She lost her balance and staggered wildly to one side, colliding with Niki.

The impact sent them both down in a tangle of arms and legs. Raine lashed out, frantically trying to free herself.

“Hold her still, damn it,” Cassidy ordered.

Raine caught a glimpse of a silver, pen-like object aimed at her neck.

But nervous Niki was in a full-blown panic now.

“This is crazy,” she screamed. “The cops are on the way. Do whatever you want, I’m getting out of here.”

She freed herself from Raine, lurched to her feet and streaked out through the front door.

Raine rolled away from Cassidy and grabbed the feet of the nearest mannequin, the one used to display the ballerina costume. She yanked hard and managed to topple the figure. It fell between her and Cassidy, who was forced to jump back out of the way.

“Damn you.” Cassidy’s face was a snarling mask of rage and frustration.

Raine rolled again. This time she grabbed Marie Antoinette’s elegantly shod feet and pushed with all her might.

“Eat cake and die,” she yelled at Cassidy.

Cassidy barely avoided tripping over the elaborate skirts. She suddenly seemed to become aware of the commotion going on outside the shop. She hesitated a fraction of a second, then evidently arrived at the sensible conclusion that the situation was not going well.

Whirling, she ran toward the red velvet curtain, whipped it aside and vanished into the back room.

Raine lay on the floor, trying to catch her breath. She heard the back door of the shop open, followed by frantic, scuffling sounds.

“No,” Cassidy shrieked. “Let me go, you fucking
bastard
.”

“If you hurt her, you’re a dead woman,” Zack said. His tone was lethally cold.

“Watch out for her pen,” Raine shouted.

There was a dull thud.

Zack appeared in the opening, an elegant black and gold fountain pen in one hand.

“Got one of my own,” he said, slipping it back into the pocket of his leather jacket.

Bradley slammed through the front door of the shop, gun in hand. Two uniformed officers followed him. One of them had Niki in handcuffs.

Bradley looked at Raine. “You okay?”

“Yes,” she said, sitting up cautiously. “I’m okay.” She decided to ignore the pain in her ankle for the moment.

“Cutler’s in the back room.” Zack jerked a thumb in that direction.

Bradley ran toward the other doorway, one of the officers on his heels.

Zack’s hands closed around Raine’s shoulders, his face hard. “Did she inject you with anything?”

“No.” Raine shook her head. “She used the smoke again, a lot of it, but she didn’t get a chance to shoot me up with anything.”

He pulled her close and hugged her so tightly she had to struggle to breathe again.

“There’s something very dangerous in that silver pen of hers,” she mumbled into his shirt. “She said two doses would kill Pandora.”

“I’ve got her pen. Bradley will search her for other weapons.”

“What about the smoke in the other room?”

“You can still smell it but there wasn’t enough left to affect me when I came through.”

“Calvin and the mayor?”

“Unconscious but alive,” Bradley announced from the doorway. “So is Cassidy. What the hell did you do to her, Jones?”

“Nothing permanent,” Zack said. He eased Raine slightly away from his chest, no more than an inch. “It’ll wear off in a few hours.”

“Guess I won’t ask any more questions on that subject.” Bradley moved farther out into the front portion of the shop. “Which one of them tossed that damned smoke bomb?”

“Probably Cassidy,” Zack said.

Raine blinked, startled, and opened her mouth to correct him. His arm tightened a little around her. She closed her mouth.

“How did you know we were in trouble here at the shop?” she said instead.

“Don’t ask me.” Bradley smiled wryly. “It was Jones who realized something was going down. Must be psychic.” He paused and then added quietly, “Like you.”

Fifty-two

M
uch later Raine sat on the sofa, one leg curled under her, and sipped the tisane that Zack had brewed for her. She had showered and washed her hair as soon as they returned and now she was wrapped in her white spa robe. Robin was a warm, comfortable weight in her lap, Batman snuggled against her thigh. A medic had taped her ankle. Another package of frozen vegetables was wrapped around the badly abused joint.

Zack and Calvin sat in the twin chairs, drinking coffee.

Raine looked at Zack. “I’m very glad Bradley took your suggestion and agreed to let me give a full statement tomorrow. I really didn’t feel up to it this afternoon.”

Calvin snorted, amused.

She raised her brows. “What’s so funny about that?”

“Hate to disillusion you,” Calvin said, “but I doubt that Zack was thinking of your comfort when he persuaded Mitchell to wait for the statement. Zack here is what you might call a real focused kind of guy when it comes to details.”

Raine suddenly understood. She looked at Zack. “You wanted to make sure I got my story straight first.”

“Hey, give me some credit for thoughtfulness,” Zack said, managing to appear offended. “You were exhausted.”

“Hah. I’m not buying it. You felt I needed a little assistance with my facts. Admit it.”

Calvin grinned and drank some more coffee.

“Okay,” Zack said. “In my experience, I’ve found it’s usually best not to confuse the police with too much information.”

“In other words, we aren’t going to tell them that they got caught in the middle of an ongoing turf war between two secret organizations devoted to psychic research, is that it?” she asked politely.

“As a general policy, J&J prefers to let the bad guys give that version of events to the cops,” Calvin said.

She raised her brows. “Because it makes the bad guys look like nut-cases while J&J preserves its image as a legitimate private investigation agency?”

Calvin’s grin widened. “You got it.”

“It’s not as if there aren’t plenty of legitimate charges to go around,” Zack said. “What’s more, Mitchell has a strong personal incentive to make them stick. He doesn’t like the fact that Cutler played him.”

“Assault, attempted kidnapping and possibly attempted robbery will make a good start.” Calvin wrapped one big hand around his coffee mug. “Got a feeling Mitchell will dredge up some others.”

“Not that he’ll need them,” Zack said, watching the fire. “At least, not for long.”

Raine looked at him, startled. “What do you mean? Are you saying Cassidy and Niki will walk?”

“Yes. Straight into an institution for the criminally insane, and that’s assuming they make it that far,” Zack said.

She frowned. “I don’t understand.”

“From what we’ve seen, Nightshade doesn’t tolerate failure.” Zack swallowed some coffee and lowered the mug. “I told you, one of the ways it keeps its operatives in line is by making them dependent on a version of the formula that is specifically tailored to them. If they’re deprived of it, they go insane and usually commit suicide within forty-eight hours.”

Horror shivered through Raine. “Like Jenna?”

“Yes,” he said, watching the fire. “Like Jenna. One way or another, insanity has always been the big downside to every version of the formula ever created.”

“What about the stuff you found in Bradley’s apartment?”

“The vial was nearly empty. There was only a trace of the drug left in it. Not even enough for one dose. Cassidy left just enough to make sure I could identify the formula and leap to the conclusion that Bradley was the guy I was after.”

Raine swallowed hard. “So Cassidy and Niki are probably going to go crazy soon. Do you think they know that?”

Zack shrugged. “I doubt it. We don’t know how much the Nightshade leaders tell their operatives but the best guess is that they lie to them. No profit in telling them the truth. Might put off new recruits.”

She closed her eyes for a couple of seconds and shivered. Then she remembered something.

“What about the mayor? This afternoon when Bradley asked who threw the smoke bomb, I got the impression you didn’t want me to tell him about her role in this thing.”

He gave her an approving smile. “You were right.”

“But if she was involved—”

“She wasn’t,” Zack assured her.

“Explain,” Raine ordered.

“When I came through the back room I got a quick look around. The mayor’s purse was unfastened. The contents were scattered across the carpet. I realized that she was probably the one who brought the smoke bomb into the shop but there were no hot spots around her or her purse. She didn’t know what she was doing.”

“Then why in the world did she set off the smoke bomb?” Raine demanded.

“The most likely explanation is that either Cassidy or Niki is a parahypnotist,” Zack said. “Probably formula-enhanced.”

“In other words, you think that one of them hypnotized the mayor into carrying the smoke bomb into my shop and exploding it,” Raine said.

“Right.” Zack shrugged. “Which is why, when Her Honor came around, she had no memory of what she had done.”

Raine looked at him. “What are we going to tell her? What are we going to tell Bradley, for that matter?”

Zack stretched his legs out toward the fire and rested his elbows on the arms of the chair. He put his fingertips together.

“The simplest story is usually the best,” he said. “Mitchell will soon realize he can’t do anything with a drug charge because there is no evidence of illegal drugs. But what do you think about promoting the notion that Cassidy and Niki planned to kidnap the mayor and hold her for ransom?”

Raine blinked. “I think Mayor Escott would love it. Talk about great publicity for the upcoming election.”

Calvin grinned. “Very creative, Jones.”

“Cassidy and Niki will deny it,” Raine pointed out.

Calvin uttered a half-amused little sound. “They’ll deny everything. So what? They’ll both be in padded cells within a couple of days.”

“Wonder why they decided to grab me,” Raine said.

“Sheer desperation,” Zack said. “The idea was to watch you as closely as possible to see if you inherited whatever it is that Lawrence Quinn hoped to get from Vella. You were the only link left. When I showed up, it merely confirmed their theory that you knew something vitally important. They decided they couldn’t afford to wait and allow J&J to get the secret from you.”

“Those poor women,” Raine whispered.

The men exchanged looks. Neither spoke.

Raine sipped her tea and lowered the cup. She frowned a little at Zack. “You said the Arcane labs have a sample of the formula that they’ve been studying. They must know a lot about it by now. Isn’t there anything your experts could do to save Cassidy and Niki?”

Zack looked at her over the tips of his fingers. He seemed baffled by the question. “You want to save that pair? Cassidy Cutler is probably indirectly responsible for the murder of Lawrence Quinn, and it’s a good bet she’s the one who ran down the illusion talent the other night. She tried to kill Pandora and kidnap you. Niki was her accomplice in everything that took place.”