Dangerous Tides (Drake Sisters 4)

Tyson took two steps down, ducking his head for a better look at her. He frowned. "Get the hell off that chair. I'll get it. It's on the shelf on the other side."

He was in midstep when a blast blew through the left side of the laboratory, lifting Libby and slamming her backward several feet, shattering the windows and knocking him onto his backside. The concussion was deafening in the confines of the basement. At once flames licked up the walls and danced across the floor. The explosion triggered the overhead sprinklers so that water rained down, adding to the chaos.

"Libby!" He shouted her name, trying to peer through the swirling smoke and water to see her body. The world seemed to stop. His heart thundered in his ears and deep inside, where no one could hear, he was screaming in protest, in stark ugly fear.

She lay unmoving, curled up in a ball on the floor under an overturned table. One of the larger pieces of equipment was on its side, leaning against the table she was under.

"Tyson!" Sam was behind him, struggling down the stairs, holding his ribs, but following his cousin. "What the hell happened? Where's Libby?"

"She isn't moving, Sam." Raw fear edged Tyson's voice as he bolted down the stairs, jumping the last few feet to scramble through the rubble.

"Don't worry, Ty. We'll get her out."

"She's not moving," Ty repeated, terror ripping through his body. He'd never experienced panic, not in any situation he'd ever been in, but on some level he recognized he was close. And terror was mixing with rage, a lethal combination. He shook with it, felt it eating at his gut and battering at his mind. This couldn't be happening. Not to Libby.

He shoved chairs, a computer, glass even, out of his way to get to her. She lay like a broken doll, hair spilling across her pale face, hands over her head as if at the last moment she flung her arms up to protect herself. Her arms looked singed. Tyson dropped to his knees, uncaring of the glass and wreckage. "Libby. Baby. Open your eyes." He ran his hands over her body. She seemed so delicate, so small and fragile. She didn't move, but when he checked her airway, she was breathing. "She's alive," he announced to Sam. There were no visible signs of damage other than a few cuts, none of which appeared deep, and the singed hairs on her arms.

Sam examined the bulky stability chamber that lay partially across the table pinning Libby's legs. "This is what saved her. It was directly in front of her and took most of the blast. I've never seen anyone so lucky. If she's breathing and her heart is fine, help me get this thing upright. We can lift the table off her and get her out of here. She's moving her legs so they can't be damaged either. I can get the rest of the fire out if we move fast."

"Derrick?" The basement door opened and feet pounded down the stairs. The police had arrived with Jackson in the lead. "What the hell is going on?" Jackson took one look at Libby beneath the table and signaled to Sam to help him lift the incubator upright.

It was a struggle to remove the bulky chamber, but they managed to shift it enough to get to the broken table. "Get the fire out, Sam." Jackson crouched down on the other side of Libby, taking her limp hand.

"No broken bones that I can find," Tyson reported. "I think the blast knocked her out. I can't seem to find any real damage, unless she has a concussion."

"What about her neck or a spinal injury? Can we move her?"

Libby moaned, both hands coming up in a defensive position. Tyson trapped her arms to hold her still.

"You're all right, baby, but don't move. I have to make certain you haven't injured your neck."

Libby blinked up at him, looking dazed. She struggled to sit up. Tyson pressed her to the floor.

"Libby, stay put."

"I can't hear very well."

"That will go away."

"My neck is fine. I have a hell of a headache though and my ears are ringing. What happened?"

Tyson lifted her into his arms, cradling her close, his lungs fighting for air. He would never get over the sight of her flying through the air to land in a crumpled heap. He knew it would haunt his sleep and eat away at him during his waking hours. "Harry Jenkins was here in the lab just a few minutes ago," he said to Jackson. "And quite a bit of the damage to my equipment was done prior to the explosion by a couple of men Ed Martinelli sent to beat up Sam."

Jackson turned his cold gaze on Sam. "Now, why would they want to do that?"

"I owe Martinelli a lot of money," Sam admitted. "I tried to pay him off, but now he's decided he doesn't want the money. He wants to talk to Libby instead."

"Is there a possibility that the explosion was an accident? A couple of chemicals were accidentally mixed together that shouldn't have been?" Jackson persisted.

"First of all, I don't 'accidentally' mix anything. And I wasn't doing that kind of experiment," Tyson denied. "I was analyzing reports and a very long list of compounds, but I hadn't mixed anything together in weeks. In any case, the blast was definitely directed. It came from the left and you can see the pattern of damage. Someone set it."

"Could Sam be a target?"

"Not in my lab. He might come down a couple of times a day to bring me a meal or tell me he's leaving, but he doesn't hang out there. Neither does Libby. No one would have known she'd be here." Tyson gently laid Libby on the sofa, stretching out her legs and putting a pillow under her head. "I want to take you to the hospital, just to check you out, Libby," he added.

"That's not necessary," Libby said. "My ears are the worst. The rest of me just feels a little battered."

"I think it's too dangerous for any of you to be around me. I can't protect you or Sam from whatever's happening here."

Jackson ran his hands over Libby's legs and arms, not in the least intimidated by Tyson's scowl of irritation. "You may as well stop giving me the evil eye, Derrick. Elle's upset and wants me to show her Libby's not hurt."

"I told you she wasn't. You don't need to be touching her."

"Elle wants to know for herself, so you'll just have to deal with it. That's what the rest of us have to do with the Drakes."

Sam came in, seating himself in a chair. "The fire's out, but it's a mess down there. Whatever you were working on is toast, Ty." He indicated Libby. "How bad is she hurt?"

Libby pushed Jackson away from her. "I'm fine, except I can't hear very well. Everything sounds muffled and I've got a terrible ringing in my ears. Do you think Harry did this to prevent you from finding out he's testing a drug before it should be given to humans?"

"There really is something wrong with the drug?" Sam asked.

Tyson nodded. "I can make it safer, but we need studies done on the adolescent brain. It isn't just this drug that has side effects specific to a young age. I was close to figuring out how to solve the problem."

"Really?" Sam said again. "I just thought maybe you were tweaking Harry because he's such a jerk. Is there any way to recover what you lost?"

"I always back everything up a couple of different ways. I'll check my equipment and see if I got lucky. What about you? You moved that heavy incubator. Your ribs aren't broken, are they?"

Jackson glanced at Sam, one eyebrow raised. "Your face is a mess. You think they broke your ribs, too?"

"Libby had gone to

the laboratory to get the first aid kit," Tyson explained. "Martinelli's men kicked the hell out of him."

"I'm going to go talk to him," Libby announced decisively. "I'm going to see Jonas, so I may as well drop in on Martinelli and see what he wants. At least he'll have to forgive Sam's debt and won't have a reason for sending his men around here again."

"I'm having a word with Martinelli's men myself," Jackson said.

"No!" Sam shook his head vehemently. "That will just make them madder. Tyson, tell him I'm not willing to press charges. Look how angry Harry was just with being questioned. He brought a baseball bat with him. He planned to tear up the laboratory or hell, maybe even use it on you, Ty."

"Harry Jenkins brought a baseball bat into the laboratory with the intent of destroying your research?" Jackson asked.

"And he broke into the house, too," Sam pointed out. "He hid under a table while Martinelli's men beat the shit out of me."

Libby sat up slowly, reaching for Tyson to steady herself. She leaned her head on his shoulder. "Life around you is certainly exciting."

His hand came up to the nape of her neck. "It's not the kind of excitement I want for you."

"What does Martinelli want from you, Libby?" Jackson asked.

"I don't know. My guess is that someone in his family is ill and he thinks I can perform a miracle for him."

"I wonder why he'd think that," Sam said, sarcasm dripping from his voice.

"Shut up, Sam," Ty advised. "I'm running on a thin edge and if you say anything else to Libby, your other eye is going to be swollen shut."

"Oh, for heaven's sake." Exasperated, Libby swung her legs over the couch to put her feet solidly on the floor. "The last thing we need around here is more violence." She pushed her hair out of her face and looked at Jackson. "Don't you think it's a little bizarre that I'm always around when these things are happening?"

"Who would want you dead, Libby?" Jackson asked.

"I don't know, but I'm going to find out."

Jackson's expression settled into hard lines. "You'll leave the investigation to the sheriff."

Libby rolled her eyes. "You've been around Jonas too long, Jackson. How's the investigation coming on who tried to kill him?"

"Why don't all of you get your things and get out of here for a while?" Jackson countered. "We need to take a look downstairs and gather as much evidence as possible."