Mind Games Page 4

  “Are you about done?” he asked the detective. “Dr. Evans has had a long day. I need to get her out of here.”

  “To where, exactly?”

  “I can’t tell you because I don’t know. If you need to speak with her, call the office and Nash will pass along a message.”

  The cop frowned. “That’s not how we do things, Mr. Sorenson.”

  “For now it has to be. Honestly, it’s best for everyone that way.”

  Eventually, the detectives took off and she and Eric were alone.

  “Pack a bag,” he said. “You won’t be back until this is over.”

  Jane pulled her suitcas e from the closet beneath the stairs and carried it up to dump it on the bed. “Where are we going?”

  “Didn’t you hear me say I didn’t know?”

  “Yes, and I didn’t believe you. Even in college, you were all about strategy.”

  He shrugged. “It’s not precisely a lie. We’re going to stay with a friend who occasionally contracts with HSE. He and his fiancée have a place about a half an hour north of here, but I don’t know exactly where.”

  She slipped the throw off her shoulders and folded it carefully before putting it into the bag. No one cared what she wore to work, so the only important outfit was the one for the press conference where they would announce the sale of the drug, if that even happened: gray suit, cream silk blouse, appropriate shoes, even pantyhose. Everything else she tossed in willy-nilly, barely counting to be certain she had enough underwear.

  “I have to change.”

  Eric looked up from his cell phone, where he’d been tapping away on the screen. “Go for it. Jake’s already here.”

  In the bathroom, she shucked her pajamas and pulled on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt with a cartoon of a giant microbe on it, along with a zippered hoodie. She gathered her toiletries into a travel bag and was out the door in under a minute. With a last look around her room to be sure she wasn’t missing anything vital, she snapped the suitcase shut. Eric lifted it from the bed, then led the way back downstairs, where Jane picked up her crochet project bag. No doubt about it, she was going to need the calming influence of a hook in hand.

  Chapter 3

  OUTSIDE, THE BIG black SUV idled at the curb. Her neighbors were probably sure she was some kind of criminal. First the explosions and the alarm, then the police, now this. So much for her quiet, anonymous life. Eric handed her into the car, threw her case into the trunk, and crossed the street to stoop next to the hedge they’d hidden behind. A moment later he stood and returned to the car. When he slid into the passenger seat, she realized he was holding a gun.

  “I thought you told the police your weapon was in your duffel.”

  “One of them was. I didn’t feel like wasting time explaining why I was carrying, or waiting for them to take the gun and run ballistics on it while trying to see whether it matched anything those guys might have fired with the flashbangs in the house.”

  “You play fast and loose with the truth.” Way to whine at the guy who saved your life, Jane. But weren’t they all on the same side?

  “I tell them as much as they need to know, and I don’t lie unless I have to. But you’re my first priority.” He introduced her to his friend Jake, then turned in his seat so he could fix her with that icy blue gaze. “What’s going on, Jane? This is more than a simple delaying tactic. They really want you. And they took your computer, which means they want your thoughts, your ideas as well.”

  “You’re thinking corporate espionage?” Jake asked.

  “Aren’t you? It’s the only thing that makes sense.”

  “Dammit.” Jake pulled the car over and made Jane get out. Eric got out, too, and stood beside her. In the dark, on the side of the road, she wished he’d take her hand again, but instead of reaching for him she pulled the sleeves of her hoodie down over her fingers. When Jake joined them, he was holding a gadget that reminded her of the wands airport personnel used. He waved it over her head to toe, then made her turn around so he could do her back.

  “Do you have a purse or anything?”

  She nodded.

  “Get it.”

  When she had collected her purse and project bag, he used the wand on them and it immediately began beeping.

  “GPS,” he said. “Those boys want you badly. They must have seen the purse in your house and figured there was a good chance you’d take it. Same with your phone. We ditch the bug and pull the phone’s battery right here. You have a backup of your contacts?”

  “Yes. On my computer—well, on the cloud backup of my computer, now.”

  “Good. We can get you a new laptop and a burner phone at my place.”

  She handed over her purse, and he dug through it until he found a device no larger than a ticket stub inside the inner pocket. She’d likely never have noticed its presence. He dumped it on the side of the road, ground his heel on it, and then pulled the battery out of the back of her phone. Only then did he pronounce her “clean” and allow her to climb back into the vehicle. To her surprise, Eric slid in next to her rather than returning to the passenger seat.

  “How you holding up?” he asked as Jake pulled back onto the road. “And don’t tell me you’re fine, because I can see you’re not. Tell me what you need.”

  “I don’t know. I’m . . . in shock, I think. It still doesn’t seem possible that this could be happening to me. But it is.” She picked a piece of fluff off her jeans with shaking fingers. “I’m not handling it well.”

  “You’re handling it better than most would in your position. You should focus on the normal stuff for a while. Tell me and Jake exactly what you’re working on so we can get a handle on this. Neither of us knows squat about patents or chemistry, though, so keep it simple like before.”

  She composed her thoughts. This she could do. “How much do you know about schizophrenia?”

  “Almost nothing,” said Jake. Eric nodded.

  “Okay. Well, first of all, despite the media portrayals, schizophrenics are hardly ever dangerous to anyone but themselves. They have to be medicated to keep them in the mainstream of society, to allow them to hold down a job, pay bills, stuff like that, but if they stop taking their meds most of them aren’t apt to go out and murder someone. And we have a number of effective treatments. The problem is that the most effective class of drugs for treating schizophrenics—neuroleptics—have a number of unpleasant side effects, both physical and mental. Between that and the fact that they are feeling ‘normal,’ schizophrenics often stop taking their meds.

  “We don’t know what causes schizophrenia. That is, we know there’s a genetic component, but we can’t fix it or prevent it. As with most mental illnesses, what we do with medication is symptom alleviation, not a cure. So the ideal drug would be one that would allow patients to live symptom free without debilitating side effects. Under Clive’s direction, AHI has taken a two-pronged approach to the problem. First, a new base drug, a different chemical compound that would still act as a neuroleptic. Second, an additional compound to alleviate the tics, rigidity, and fogginess that occur for so many schizophrenics on current treatment regimens.”

  “Sounds logical.”

  “It is. And we were well on our way to a new drug, one that could change a lot of people’s lives, which was why Clive went out and found a buyer. But we ran into a snag that’s making it difficult to meet the deadline.”

  “And that snag is?”

  “You said you’re not chemists, so this is going to be tough. But basically, the secondary compound isn’t reacting properly to the primary compound. We know what we want it to do, and it’s almost doing that, but when we raise the dosages to the necessary therapeutic levels, something in the neuroleptic makes the secondary drug react badly.”

  “The theory behind this, could it be used with a different primary? Maybe someone else is working on the
same thing and wants your research, wants you to help them finish it before Clive finishes his?”

  “The theory is pretty basic. Doctors have been giving patients drug cocktails for years. A little of this, a little of that to get the desired result. This is just more sophisticated. Any decent chemist should be able to help them develop one they already have if they’re close enough, but I suppose taking me off Clive’s project and stealing our research notes might help them.”

  She finished her mini-dissertation just before Jake turned off the highway, and they drove in silence down a winding road to a gate set into a tall stone wall. Jake punched numbers into a keypad set into the wall, the gate opened, and they drove through. A dirt road wove through fields of grass toward an old-fashioned farmhouse lit from both within and without. They were still a good hundred yards out when what sounded like an entire pack of wild dogs began barking, yipping, and baying.

  “Stay in the car for a minute,” Jake said when they pulled up to the house. He slid out of the SUV and jogged over to a fenced area with a low shelter inside it. “Hush,” he commanded, leaning over the fence and letting the dogs smell him. Immediately, they quieted.

  “Impressive,” Jane said.

  “It is. I’ve never been out here, but Jake’s a good guy. He and his fiancée take in kids who need temporary placement. There are a bunch of them living here at any given time. You can’t see it from the front, but they added a big wing to the back for them. According to Nash, it caused something of a ruckus when they tried to get it past the planning board—this is a pretty ritzy area, I guess, and the idea of a bunch of fosters running around didn’t hold a lot of appeal.”

  “I can imagine.”

  She was going to ask what had changed their minds, but Jake returned and opened the door to let Jane out. Eric went around and grabbed her suitcase from the trunk, and they all trooped inside.

  The scent of baking cookies hit Jane hard. It was so utterly unexpected that she stopped with one foot inside the door and the other out, causing Eric to bump into her.

  Jake laughed. “That’ll be Tara. Over the past year, she’s become convinced that everything’s better with chocolate chip cookies. So when we have a late-night run or a complicated case, she bakes.” Although he smiled, a note of strain underlay his tone.

  “So what you’re saying is that after a couple of years, you’ll have to quit any fieldwork because you’ll be too fat to pass a physical?” Eric slapped Jake on the back.

  Jane didn’t see the humor. “I apologize for bringing trouble to your door.”

  A woman with a pile of blond hair stuck up in a knot on the top of her head came out of the kitchen, followed by a striking black cat whose green eyes never left her. “Don’t be ridiculous,” she said. “When trouble doesn’t find us, we go looking for it. It’s sort of a way of life when you’re a former police officer engaged to a former FBI agent.” She strode toward them and held out a hand. “I’m Tara Jean Dobbs. Just call me Tara or TJ.” She gestured to the cat. “This is Gomez. He runs the house. And you must be Dr. Evans.”

  “Jane, please.”

  “Great. So, Jane, do you want to go straight to bed, or would you prefer to stay up and unwind for a while?”

  “I don’t think I could sleep just yet, if you don’t mind.”

  “Not at all!” Tara plopped down in one of the chairs, and Jane realized she wasn’t wearing any shoes. “Sweetheart, will you take Jane’s stuff up to the green room while I get to know her? I made up the blue room for Eric.”

  “Your wish is my command,” Jake said, dropping a kiss on the top of Tara’s head before he grabbed Jane’s suitcase and led Eric upstairs.

  “I need you to tell me if this isn’t really okay,” Jane said once the men were gone. “I saw Eric in action today in my boss’s office, and I know he can kind of bulldoze over objections. I don’t want to cause a problem or be a burden.”

  A buzzer went off in the kitchen, and Tara invited Jane to come along while she switched out the cookies for a new sheet.

  “Look,” she said once the new cookies were in the oven, “I meant what I said about inviting trouble. It’s part of what we do. Both of us are tired of law enforcement, but we still want to make a difference. We have kids staying here. We run a shelter for abused women—and that’s not for public consumption, by the way—as well as taking in problem children for short periods of time while their parents are in rehab or the like. It works because Jake and I make sure we are on the same page. When Eric called Jake to ask him if he could drive you guys into the city tomorrow morning, we discussed the possibility of you staying here. I won’t have the women or the kids endangered, so if it looks as though your kidnappers are going to come after you guns blazing, we’ll find someplace else for you. But for tonight, for the next couple of days, you’ll be fine here.”

  “I’m not sure what to say. Thank you.”

  “Here, have a cookie. They’re better before they get cold.”

  The guys came into the kitchen discussing timing and strategy for the next morning. Jake put a phone on the table in front of her, then went to stand behind Tara, his hands massaging her shoulders.

  “I put a laptop on the bed in your room,” he told Jane. “It’s less than a year old and completely clean. Already hooked up to the house wireless, so all you should have to do is log in to whatever backup service you use and start restoring from your backup.”

  “Wow, thanks. You just have a spare computer lying around?”

  Tara grinned and tilted her head back to look up at Jake. “I know he doesn’t look like it, but my fiancé is a certified geek.”

  Jake shrugged with an embarrassed half smile, and a peculiar emotion clutched at Jane. They were so obviously happy, so obviously in love. The closed circle was beautiful to look at, but it only emphasized for her how little human contact she had in her own life. Dani was the closest thing to a true friend she had, the only one with whom she shared even a fraction of the hopes and fears in her head. Her only connection to what she considered “reality,” the life outside the lab, the kinds of things normal people did every day.

  And now Dani was missing. How much did HSE charge? Could she hire them to look for Dani? Clive paid well and Jane had fairly inexpensive tastes, so she had a bit put away.

  The buzzer went off again, and Tara took the last tray of cookies out of the oven and transferred them to a cooling rack. She yawned.

  “Okay, you guys, I am going to bed. I’ll be up early in the morning, so I’ll see you then. If you want anything to eat or drink, take it. If you finish anything, leave me a note. The kids eat us out of house and home, so we go to the grocery pretty much every day.”

  Jake followed her up, leaving Eric and Jane alone in the kitchen. Immediately, Jane got up to do the dishes. Eric followed.

  “I’ll dry,” he said, pulling a cloth off a stack by the farm sink.

  It took only a few minutes to wash the cookie sheets and spatula. Jane rooted around and found a big rubber container to put the cookies in, and then they washed the cooling racks, too.

  “Time to grab some shut-eye,” said Eric. “I already told your boss you wouldn’t be in until ten at the earliest. Not only do you need the rest, but we have to vary your schedule.”

  “You could have asked first.” But it was a pro forma objection. Under normal circumstances, she hated people telling her what to do, but the situation had spiraled so far out of her control so fast that she appreciated him jumping in and taking over. His obvious experience and comfort with extreme conditions calmed her.

  “Sorry. I’ll probably irritate the hell out of you with that. Feel free to call me on it. It won’t make me change my mind, but if I have time I’ll explain to you why we’re doing things the way we are. Fact is, we usually ask clients to turn their lives over to us without question. But then, we don’t often work with people we know.�
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  “Is it strange for you? Working with me?”

  “Yeah, it is. That’s why I was downstairs tonight instead of right outside your door, or even in your room. It’s also why I haven’t read the file Nash compiled on you. If you were an average client, I’d know every man you’d ever dated and how those relationships ended—in case the assaults turned out to be personal rather than professional—whether your family had money that siblings or cousins might be after, all sorts of things. But I asked Nash to evaluate any possible threats and apprise me of them instead of me reading the whole file.”

  “And he didn’t find any?” Of course he wouldn’t. She didn’t inspire that depth of emotion, and she was sure the kind of research his company did would reveal that. Which made her very glad Eric hadn’t read the file himself.

  “Nope. So for the rest of it, you’ll have to tell me anything you want me to know. Just like normal people do. Later, though. For now, you should really get some sleep.” He led her upstairs to a room painted a soft, sandy brown with forest green drapes and bedding. Her suitcase sat next to the four-poster bed, and her purse and crochet bag lay atop the dresser.

  “The bathroom’s through here,” Eric said, opening a door. “And my room’s on the other side of it, right through there.”

  “And you think we’re safe here?”

  “Absolutely. With the exception of HSE headquarters, there’s no place better. I can even sleep here—that’s how safe you are.”

  “Okay, then. Eric?”

  “Hmm?”

  “How much do you guys—Harp Security—how much do you charge?”

  “Nash makes those decisions, but I don’t believe there’s a standard rate. It has to do with how many operators he has to assign, what kind of resources they’ll need, how dangerous the gig is. And, quite honestly, what Nash thinks you can afford.” He laid a big, rough hand along her cheek, and she resisted the urge to rub her face against his palm like a cat. “You’re worried about Dani?”