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Von Brutten’s silver eyes flashed with what might have been humor. “Of course I don’t. I care about the bottom line. So do you. You only want your guardian to survive. You don’t care about the patients who might die because Cradion can pull the wool over the FDA’s eyes.”
“That’s pretty harsh,” I began, but he kept going.
“Stop pretending we’re not the same, Dr. Robards. If you were perfectly honest with yourself, you might find you don’t even care that much about your great-uncle because you’re too busy hating Cradion.”
“Bullshit!” I reached for the doorknob.
He raised his voice. “I can take Cradion down with your help. And save the old man.”
The door handle’s coldness penetrated my palm. I was too much of a pragmatist to obsess over ethics or consequences, but I resented his assumption that my hatred of Cradion overshadowed my love for Scooter. Being successful had made von Brutten arrogant. And offensive. On the other hand, experience had taught me he was also a man of his word, twisted as it was.
He turned my pragmatism against me to get what he wanted: the Death Orchid. And he’d use my bottom line—Scooter’s life—to get it.
Damn.
I let go of the doorknob. “Show me,” I said.
“The Death Orchid is real. I’m told it contains the compounds necessary to create a lifesaving heart medication.”
“Terence Harrison published a paper that refuted claims the Death Orchid exists.”
He inclined his head. “He did so at my request.”
“You mean he lied?”
“I mean he massaged the data so we could continue our work with the plant unmolested by competitors. But that’s old news, Dr. Robards. My researcher ran out of specimens for testing and I need you to bring me another.” His lips quirked. “Or two.”
He opened the envelope and slid its contents onto the table as I walked over to see what he had. It wasn’t much. A blood-streaked, ripped-out page of a spiral notebook. A brass key.
I raised one eyebrow at him.
“Harrison’s last work,” he replied.
“Harrison’s been on sabbatical for a year.”
“I know. He was working for me.”
“What?” My brain struggled. “Harrison isn’t the kind of guy to give up his precious scientific detachment to squander his talents in a commercial effort.”
Von Brutten beamed a pitying look my direction. “If you only knew how many idealistic academics I have on my payroll. Harrison was your mentor, wasn’t he?”
I nodded. “Plant Biology, specializing in taxonomy and biochemistry. And he works for you now?”
“He did, yes.”
“Did?”
“May still do. I’m not sure.”
“Why not?”
“He’s missing.”
A chill shot through my gut. The mild-mannered and anal-retentive Dr. Harrison was physically no match for one of Scooter’s nursing home girlfriends, much less a hired thug. The shock subsided a little in time for anger to take over. Harrison was harmless. They didn’t have to get rough, whoever they were.
I turned the notebook page over, studying the brown stain’s irregular edges sprawled on top of scribbled black ink. The writing beneath was illegible, partly because of the blood and partly because of Harrison’s trademark chicken scratch and the torturous, self-invented shorthand he’d used. Shorthand I’d spent long hours deciphering, keying his lab observations into the best taxonomy and morphology database in the country.
My mind flashed on Harrison’s characteristic fastidiousness, his fondness for bow ties and cheap cologne, his weirdly pale green eyes. Dedicated to the cause. He wouldn’t work for von Brutten unless he had to, no matter what von Brutten had said. I’d sat through too many ad hoc lectures about ethics and the purity of intellectual scientific pursuit to believe otherwise.
But there was that day I’d come back to his office early from lunch and settled down in my cubicle to catch up on some tedious cataloging. Over the high wall that separated my desk from Harrison’s, I heard the door snick shut and him pace quickly to his desk. We worked in silence for a few minutes until I popped up from behind my cube to ask a question. His desk faced mine. Behind it, he stared intently at his computer screen, like a kid lost in a video game. When I spoke, his eyes snapped to mine and his face flushed. Caught. I couldn’t understand what he said to me then, he was stuttering so badly. It’d taken most of the day for his hands to stop shaking and his face to resume its normal pallor.
I’d never cared to know what he was looking at and I still didn’t. All I knew was that beneath the hard core scientist lurked something weak, maybe even shameful. But hell, we all had our weaknesses, our frailties. What had happened to make Harrison sell out his principles, to work for someone like von Brutten? To possibly get him killed? The anger took on an edge of sadness as I ran a finger over the stain’s edge.
“Harrison’s blood, perhaps,” von Brutten offered.
“And he’s missing.” I swallowed. “Or do you really mean dead?”
“Kidnapped is another option.”
Great. I was not Nancy Drew. “Right,” I said, “and he could have nicked himself with a penknife, thought, ‘to hell with it,’ and is now stretched out in a hammock in Belize. I can’t find him based on this information.”
Von Brutten pressed his silk hanky to his upper lip. “Dr. Harrison’s whereabouts don’t interest me, Dr. Robards. I want you to find another Death Orchid.”
“You want me to find a phantom orchid at the possible expense of my life, Mr. von Brutten. I know you play your cards close to the vest but I need you to flash me an ace here.” His mild eyes flickered when I looked at him hard and asked, “Is Harrison dead?”
“I honestly don’t know. He hasn’t reported in, and this is what was brought to me when I made inquiries.”
It wasn’t brain surgery to figure out the henchmen von Brutten had sent hadn’t found either Harrison or Harrison’s corpse. “Is this the best your goons could do?” I waved the page. “Where’s the rest? And what’s it from?”
“It’s from the project notebook he used during new lab tests. He was double-checking his initial results before heading into the field to obtain another Death Orchid. My associates didn’t find the notebook.”
So whoever did something, whatever it was, with Harrison probably had the bulk of the research. I struggled with the image of Harrison frumping around the forest, red bow tie and green cardigan, a trowel in one hand and bug spray in the other. As far as I knew, the closest he’d ever gotten to a jungle was a springtime stroll through Edgerton Park.
“Where is ‘the field’?” I demanded. “South America? Africa? The Pacific Rim?”
“I don’t know.”
“That’s crap. If the Death Orchid was so important to you, you’d know where it could be found.”
“Dr. Harrison disappeared before he could convey that information to me. He was working in San Antonio.” Von Brutten picked up the brass key and dangled it from his elegant thumb and forefinger like a gift. Or bait. “His lab.”
“Will whoever jumped him be waiting for me when I get there?”
Von Brutten’s shoulders lifted a quarter of an inch, then dropped. A shrug, I interpreted.
“For a guy who knows everything, you don’t know much,” I informed him. “You know what happened to him, and you know whether I’ll be next if I use this key.”
The smile that briefly tipped up the corners of his lips chilled my blood. “You won’t be next. After all, I’m counting on you to bring back my orchid.”
His orchid. Right. Keep your priorities straight, girl. This ain’t ’bout nothin’ but the flower. Remembering that might keep me alive.
“You do know Thurston-Fitzhugh knows you’re after it,” I said.
Von Brutten’s sculpted eyebrows rose slightly. “A leak.” The brief flash of steel in his eyes said heads would roll within the hour. “There is a detail of which you should be aware,” he added.
I didn’t like it already. “What’s that?”
“My lab will require a week to produce the serum that will save your great-uncle.”
Fear clutched my stomach, choked my lungs. “And my great-uncle will last a month at the outside. So you’re telling me I have a little over two weeks to figure out what Harrison knew, get to wherever he was headed, find the orchid and then get back?”
Von Brutten shrugged. “Sixteen days, technically, if you leave today. And if the old man hangs on.”
Shit.
There was no way. Finding a plant you’d never seen took months, not days. But I had to try.
“You have copies of these things?” I asked as I shoved the evidence back in its envelope.
His smile suggested I was terribly naive. “Have a good trip, Dr. Robards. Keep me informed. I’ll have the lab on standby, awaiting your return.”
I leveled a look at him meant to tell him bad things would happen if he didn’t honor that promise. His own expression was mild, vaguely fatherly, the look of a man who had nothing to lose.
And because I had everything to lose, I grabbed the envelope and left.
Not one to walk into trouble blind, I decided to call in a couple of favors before heading to Harrison’s lab. In a previous life, I’d done a little contract work for the CIA, helping them with the Danube violet poison case. Nearly getting killed then would come in handy now: this particular science office owed me some serious favors. I planned to get the straight story on Cradion Pharmaceutical and my missing graduate advisor. If anybody could dig up the real dirt, it was these guys. After a short conversation with the Man In Charge about some pharmaceutical industry snooping, I took the elevator to the basement to find Marcus Donovan.
Marcus’s wizardry with all things clinical had broken the Danube case open wide and made him the leading expert on plant-based poisons. Before the CIA wags could start speculating on my joining their little hazplant team and before Marcus could start speculating on whether I’d move in with him, I’d bailed. As far as I was concerned, getting involved with anything for the long haul was bad news. This time I needed to keep things between me and Marcus professional.
I had to remind myself of that as I leaned in his lab’s doorway, watching him do his secret agent thing. Tall, he had to lean way over to look through his microscope, spilling locks of long, black hair over his forehead. His broad, white-coated shoulders made him look more like a sanitarium orderly than a scientist. His movements were large but precise. The impression I got was of a pro running back repairing an antique watch.
He must have sensed my presence because he said, “Not you again,” without looking up.
I waved the plastic envelope von Brutten had given me, Harrison’s bloodstained page safely sealed inside, and pushed off from the doorjamb.
The lab was stainless steel, glass, and bitterly cold. I wished I’d brought a sweater. Maybe it was why Marcus and his crew were confined to the CIA’s basement, leaving the innocuous, stucco-fronted HQ upstairs looking more like the San Antonio Visitors Bureau than the software company it purported to be.
“How’d you get in here?” He removed the slide from the microscope and filed it carefully in sequence on a tray.
“Everybody in this office owes me for the Danube incident.”
Marcus looked up finally, meeting my gaze. “I think I’ve already paid my dues.”
My face went hot. “You’re right,” I admitted.
“You could at least have left a note on my pillow.” His keen blue eyes sharpened. “A Dear John works better for me than a vanishing act.”
I nodded. I needed to apologize—for leaving without saying goodbye, for being scared, for hopping in the sack with him in the first place—but the words stuck somewhere around the base of my throat. Dear Marcus, I’m sorry I’m a selfish bitch. I’m sorry I left after one night and never looked back.
He nodded, apparently accepting the words I didn’t say. A deep breath later, he relaxed into his old teasing ways. I was forgiven. “What’d you do to your hair?”
I shrugged, felt the ponytail just brush my shoulder. “I needed a change.”
“You see the boss?”
“I did indeed. He wished me well.”
“He wished you to hell, you mean.”
“Yeah, but only after I’ve got what I came for. He’s checking into a pharmaceutical company for me.”
“A pharma?”
“It’s personal.”
He nodded, taking that in and leaving it alone. “I thought you’d moved far, far away,” Marcus said, rounding the gleaming worktable and smiling a little as he did it.
He was still a hunk, but I wasn’t here to resurrect ghosts. “I did. Now I’m back.”
“For how long?” He crossed one muscular arm over the other, prompting a nice burn of remembrance in my sweet spot.
“Long enough for you to tell me what this is.” I handed him the plastic envelope.
He took it, glanced at the page. “It’s a new excuse for not having your homework.”
“I’m serious.”
When Marcus smiled, that dimple quirked in his cheek.
“I’m really serious,” I said firmly, trying to ignore the dimple. “This is evidence and I need to read what’s under the blood.”
He exhaled loudly for my benefit. “All right.” He pulled the page out of its protective plastic to examine it. “I don’t see how you can read this scribble even if I can clean it up.” He frowned. “But it’s not blood. It’s something else.”
“What?”
“I’ll have to get back to you.”
“I’m short on time,” I said. “Can you at least make the writing visible?”
“Wait here.” He went through a side door that had a red bulb over the doorway, like a photography dark room.
While I waited, I took out Harrison’s brass key. Under the harsh lab lighting, the key looked crisp around the edges, like it’d been superimposed on my vision. I evaluated what I knew at this point. Harrison had set up a research lab in San Antonio and worked on some kind of miracle cure for von Brutten. Whoever had kidnapped or killed Harrison had probably already been to his lab since von Brutten’s henchmen had come up with nothing more useful than the stained page Marcus was working on. If the bad guys had taken Harrison’s project notebook, that meant they had some idea of what they were looking for. But as far as I knew, there weren’t that many assassin botanists running around, so I stood a chance of finding something the bad guys wouldn’t think important. Otherwise, I’d have to widen my search to Harrison’s house.
The dark room door opened and Marcus came back with what looked like a Photostat on clear film. It was.
“Here’s the page sans blood as best I can get it for now. If you want to know what the blood actually is, that’ll take a little time.” He leaned his hip against the lab table and smiled charmingly at me. “Can I call you?”
“Better leave me a voice mail,” I said, handing him my card. “I’m in a hurry.”
