Page 68 of Accidental Murder
Once in her early twenties, Eve experimented with cocaine, but she’d hated what it had done to her, especially the paranoia. She’d quit and never regretted the choice. With this drug, she felt sluggish, not hyper, which meant K2-4 had to be a date rape-type drug. Had she been raped? Did she care? All she wanted was to get the heck out of here.
Troy brushed his fingers along her collarbone. Her skin crawled.
Thewhooshof hydraulic doors opening resounded again. Cool air swept across Eve’s face.
“Troy!” a man thundered.
Troy yanked his hand away from Eve’s shoulders. Did she detect fear in his eyes?
The new man drew nearer. Troy’s jaw started to tick. Yeah, he was afraid of whoever had entered. Excellent. The guy had to be higher in the chain of command.
“You imbecile,” the man barked. “You screwed up one too many times. You will do penance.”
Penance? Was he a holy man? A priest? The man’s shadow glided across Eve’s body, but she couldn’t catch a glimpse of his face. His voice was clipped and concise and somewhat familiar to her. Where had she heard it before? If only she could get her mouth restraint off, she knew she could persuade him to release her. Eve’s sister said Eve could sell heaters to Ecuadorians.
“Penance for what?” Troy asked, a catch in his voice.
“For screwing up the suicide at the jail. You’re lucky the guard is your pal.”
Eve blinked. They were talking about Ventano.
“Zach, move patient five to the Redemption Room,” the man ordered.
“Yes, Sir.”
Redemption room?Eve shuddered. Had a religious cult abducted her?
The man—the leader—padded across the room and slapped something that opened another door. A rush of cool air brushed Eve’s face.
Troy whispered, “I’ll be back soon for some fun, babe,” and then raised his voice. “Let’s go, Zach.”
In the numbing silence, Eve struggled to remove her restraints, but she couldn’t bend her arms. Couldn’t rip open the Velcro blinds. Exhausted from the effort, she surrendered and closed her eyes.
As long as Kayla is alive, there’s hope,she told herself. As long as Kayla is alive . . .
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
Now is notthe time to panic, Kayla thought. Eve was okay. Maybe after she’d eluded their pursuers, she’d hooked up with that customer she liked from the diner, work be damned.
Kayla needed more caffeine and signaled the waiter who reminded her Peter. Tousled and tired.
Peter. How would he feel when he realized she’d run off with his car and computer? Betrayed, scared, used? As good as lying next to him on the bed had felt, the timing had been wrong. Plus it was disrespectful of Ashley and everything her love had meant to Kayla.
She sighed. Never in her life had she been spontaneous. She was a planner, an organizer, the person others counted on to get things done. Her need to be in control wasn’t genetic. It stemmed from her mother’s and brother’s deaths. For years because of that incident, she believed if she planned her life down to the last detail, everything would work out as designed. No surprises. But now, with her father’s untimely death as well as Ashley’s, her theory had been blown wide open and rendered ridiculous to the extreme.
She opened up Peter’s laptop, double-clicked the browser icon. A Google page materialized. She typed the words she’ddreamed,brain freeze,into the search bar. Links to sites populated the page. Over five hundred thousand of them. As expected, the first dozen, according to the strings of data beneath the lead lines, related to what happened to your brain after eating ice cream. She erasedbrain freezeand entered the wordsbrainjuice. The term proved to be as popular as the first. More than nine hundred thousand sites existed.
“Geez,” she groused. There were days when she was sorry the guys who’d dreamed up Yahoo! had ever met. She pressed on, but her hope to find answers in a matter of minutes dwindled.
The first few websites pertaining to brain juice marketed puzzles and brainteasers. There was also a candy confectioner that sold lollipops with liquid centers. And one of R.L. Stine’sGoosebumpsseries was titledBrain Juice.On the second page of entries, she noticed a link to the Guys Like Us website. She clicked on it. The home page was devoted to their revolutionary discovery vitamin,Coming Soon!Kayla hadn’t done a search like this before. Jacob hadn’t asked her to help with his web design. She read on. According to hype, the supposed benefits of the vitamin were heightened mental acuity and memory enhancement. Other vitamins made similar claims. No big deal.
She couldn’t remember having seen anything about Brain Juice’s ingredients during her visits to the warehouse. All proprietary info about the structure or chemicals used was confidential and kept in top secret files. In addition, someone, either a security guard or partner or both, had been in the room when she’d worked on the mainframe. Granted, being denied access wouldn’t have kept her out—she could have found a way in if she’d wanted—but she hadn’t.
Knowing she could might be why Jacob was worried.
Kayla scoured the website searching for the basic ingredients. She came up empty. Without specific amounts, the formula couldn’t be duplicated, so why keep the ingredients asecret? The profit would derive from marketing, not the patent or composition of the merchandise.
What if the product was something like Eve suggested—an illegal drug? Had Jacob designed an athletic performance enhancement disguised as a vitamin? Sports unions were up in arms about illegal products marketed to athletes.
