Wildfire (Fire 3)

She raised her eyebrows. “Oh, really? And how is that? I can imagine its uses for civil unrest—you simply wipe out those who disagree with you. But how can you extort money . . . ?”

He sighed, washing down a huge mouthful of food. She couldn’t believe anyone that short could put away so much food, but he was making an impressive effort. “It’s the vaccine, you see,” he said in a condescending tone. “And the antidote.”

She stared at him. “I would think a biological weapon with a vaccine and an antidote would be less valuable, not more.”

“One would think that,” he agreed, pouring the very last of the wine into his glass. He paused a moment, remembering his nonexistent manners. “Did you want any more of this?”

She shook her head. “So why is RU48 more valuable?”

“The vaccine is prohibitively expensive to make, and the drug is cheap. Only the very few with power and money can get their hands on the vaccine, the same ones who can afford to buy the weapon in the first place,” he said smugly.

“And the antidote?”

“Also very expensive, though not as bad as the vaccine or the drug itself. All someone has to do is release the toxin and hundreds of thousands, even more, will fall victim to it. And it spreads from person to person, by touch, or even, if we’re extremely lucky and the batch is particularly potent, it can be airborne.”

“If you’re extremely lucky,” she echoed, smiling sweetly, wanting to throw up.

“The only problem was that people needed to get the antidote within twelve hours of being exposed, or it would be too late, and that doesn’t allow enough time to negotiate. I’ve been working on extending the window of opportunity to thirty hours, and I’ve finally succeeded.” He looked so pleased with himself Sophie considered shooting him with the gun she had tucked beneath the cushion. He yawned. “Good grief, I’m exhausted!” His small, slightly bulbous eyes blinked at her from behind his glasses. It wouldn’t be long now.

“Would you answer me one fucking question?” she said, unable to control herself.

The man frowned. “I don’t like your language, young woman. Or your tone.”

For a moment Sophie wanted to laugh hysterically. This monster was lecturing her on manners. She managed a tight smile. “You’re a brilliant scientist. A genius.”

He nodded, taking the words as his due.

“So why didn’t you take your remarkable intellect and put it toward something positive, like . . . like helping people like me to walk. Is it the money?”

He waved a hand, airily dismissing such a notion. “Of course I can understand your obsession with such paltry matters, but the fact is I have no wish to dedicate my life to the few people who’ve managed to cripple themselves riding motorcycles or driving too fast. Where’s the glory in that?”

She was calm now. His words were slurring just slightly as exhaustion set in. “So it’s glory you’re after?” she said.

“Certainly not! But it’s glory I deserve. I want to make a difference in this world. The Chekowsky Solution will stop people from their petty squabbles . . .” He yawned again, the muscles in his face growing slack. “And keeping . . . and keeping revolutions and wars . . . wars . . .” His head nodded, then drooped on his chest, and the room was silent.

Sophie didn’t move. What had she expected him to say? Most evil people thought they were the good guys. “Dr. Chekowsky?” she said in a loud voice.

He didn’t move. She stretched across the sofa, ending up flopping on her stomach, and tapped him on the leg. “Dr. Chekowsky? Are you awake?”

No response. She leaned back, glancing at his empty wineglass. The dregs of her crushed Vicodin lay in the bottom—it served the old glutton right for gulping his wine like that, she thought. He’d been much too trusting—in his line of work he needed to be more suspicious, like Mal had been. Instead, he’d gulped down what she’d handed him without a second thought.

She pulled her stash of pills from beneath the cushion and set it on the table. It had been a last-minute impulse that had made her grab the medicine along with the gun when she came back downstairs, and for once, just this once, things were going her way. Just to be on the safe side she waited another five minutes, sipping her undoctored wine, occasionally poking at the comatose man, before she rose to her feet, satisfied. If she remembered her training he should be out for a good six hours, maybe longer given his difficulty in getting to the island. Now the question was, where to stash him?

The obvious choice was the wine cellar, which was actually little more than a mud-packed cavern beneath the kitchen. The man probably weighed over two hundred pounds, and only that little because he was short. She was strong, but maneuvering him there was going to be difficult. And then she remembered her titanium wheelchair.

It was lying on its side by the foot of the stairs where she’d sent it tumbling, and when she set it upright it was, of course, undamaged. Archer never stinted in his loving care of his wife, she thought bitterly. After rolling it over beside Chekowsky’s chair, she set the brakes and turned to look at him.

It wasn’t the most graceful transition—he felt twice as heavy when he was a dead weight, and his arms and legs flopped everywhere as she tried to haul him into the chair. He kept sliding off it, and she pulled off his jacket and tied it around him, the sleeves around the back of the chair to keep him in place. He was so large the wheels rubbed against his body as she rolled him into the kitchen, but she persevered, determined.

There was a combination lock on the cellar door, but she already knew from her previous excursion that Archer hadn’t changed it—it was still his birthday. Idiot, she thought, spinning the dials and opening the door into the dankness. There was no light down there—Archer usually used a lantern when he went in search of wine—and there wasn’t much room. Dr. Chekowsky wasn’t going to notice these little inconveniences, and the glorified hole was on the far side away from the living room. If he woke up before she got out of there and started making a fuss, there was a good chance she wouldn’t even have to hear him.

She brought the wheelchair to the edge of the short, steep flight of stairs, untied his jacket, and tipped him forward. It sounded as if he hit every single step as he went down, ending with the crash of broken glass as he landed up against the wine bottles. Another crash, which sounded as if one of the fully loaded sets of shelves had collapsed on top of him. No, he wouldn’t be bothering anyone for a long time.

She threw his coat after him, closed the door and locked it again, then examined her conscience. He could die—from injuries, from exposure . . . hell, from an overdose of the acetaminophen in Vicodin. Did she feel guilty?

Nope.

She went back into the living room, stretched out on the sofa, and finished her glass of wine.