“Stop!” I wheezed. “You stubborn bitch!”
My eloquent plea had no effect, but Brian’s arrival did. In about five seconds he had her face down, a knee between her shoulder blades, and was efficiently zip-tying her wrists behind her back.
Breathing hard, Heather continued to fight, though there was no budging Brian. Blood seeped through the bandage over the gunshot wound in her bicep, likely reopened by her struggles.
Brian finished securing the zip-ties. “Jacques!” he called, then looked up at me. “Let’s get her back on the bed.”
I helped him get Heather up to her feet. I expected her to go limp, but she continued to try and twist away, even though she had to know there was no possible way she was breaking free from two zombies, one of whom was no doubt tanked to the gills considering how quickly he made it down the length of the hall.
“Jesus Christ,” I said to Heather, breathing a bit hard myself. “It’s true, isn’t it? What are you, her daughter or something?”
I might as well have been asking the wall. She kept her jaw clenched tight as we got her back into the room and onto the bed. Jacques arrived at a run, and Brian jerked his gaze to him. “Restraints.”
I stepped back as the two men efficiently removed the zip-ties and secured her wrists and ankles to the bed with medical restraints. Heather pulled futilely at them, a look of wide-eyed panic on her face. “No. Please.”
“What will you do now?” I asked Brian, worry rising.
“Make a phone call,” he replied in a tight voice.
Jacques looked from the still-struggling Heather to Brian. “Sedative?”
“Wait! No, wait!” I said. “Don’t sedate her yet and don’t call yet.” In reply, Brian stood back and folded his arms, face impassive as he regarded me.
Taking that as a temporary victory, I swung my attention to Heather. “It’s out now. For fuck’s sake, defend yourself! Are you related to Nicole Saber? Is that what this is all about?”
She gave one more useless tug on the restraints, then dropped her head back to the pillow. “Yes,” she replied, voice breaking. “I was born Julia Saber. Nicole Saber is my mother.”
I attempted to put it all together as Jacques unobtrusively replaced the bandage on the sluggishly bleeding wound on her arm, spread a blanket over her, and then quietly slipped from the room.
“You really were leaving town, weren’t you?” I finally asked her. “Leaving Saberton.”
A shiver went through her as she nodded, not meeting anyone’s eyes.
“Oh, man,” I breathed. “And so you figured if Pietro and Brian knew, they’d pretty much get everything you knew out of you, any way they could.” Then I frowned. “But they were planning to do that anyway since you were holding back, and you had to know that. What gives?”
“Better than risking getting ransomed back,” Heather said, voice breaking. She swung her gaze to Brian. “Please. Don’t. Don’t let them have me back.”
An odd scent filled the air, thick and cloying, and it took me a few seconds to realize what it was. Her fear. I can smell her fear. Oh my god. My gaze fell on the pile of drawings. She hadn’t wanted me to look too closely at them.
Narrowing my eyes, I scooped the pile up, pulled the bottom drawing out and peered at it. At first all I saw were the mesmerizing spirals. Then I took a closer look at the unfinished corner, fought to make sense of it. Tiny letters. I rotated the drawing and with much squinting made out “sc new orleans waterfront” followed by the word “key” and a series of numbers. The key code for a Saberton Corporation building? In the finished sections of the drawing, more hidden lettering, cleverly disguised as part of the picture.
“I don’t understand,” I said, dragging my eyes back to hers.
Sighing, she gave a half-hearted pull at the restraints. “That was for after I was dead…or escaped. It’s all there. On the drawings.” Her breath shuddered. “I wanted to help, no matter what happened to me.”
My amazement increased as I flipped through the pages. In each of the dozen or so finished drawings, I picked out tiny lettering worked into the intricate and beautiful abstract designs, or curving around the edges of the figures. Without a magnifying glass, I couldn’t get much from them other than the realization that she’d meticulously offered a shitload of information. More details. More confidential and proprietary information that I had no doubt would be damn useful to Pietro and his organization.
I looked over at Brian, passed the drawings to him. Expression grim, he took them while I returned my attention to Heather. “What would happen if you got ransomed back?”
“Best case scenario is they’d kill me,” she said. The cloying scent of fear thickened. “Worst is they’d use me.”
Brian tucked the drawings under his arm and exited the room, expression not shifting at all from grim.
I had a feeling I knew, but I had to ask it anyway. “Use you? How?”
“They need test subjects.”
Zombie research. Yeah, I bet they did. “I’ll tell you right now I won’t let that happen,” I assured her.