Another scraping sound. The man shuffled in what sounded like a chair scraping across concrete floor. She squinted in the dark and saw the silhouette of a rail-thin man with shaggy hair. He hopped the chair a few more spaces toward hers.
“They forced me to develop a bioweapon. They threatened my family. I had no choice.”
Dani didn’t want to voice the next question, but her reporter instincts were working overtime. “What kind of bioweapon?”
He sighed. “It’s a toxin that attacks the nervous system—derived from nightshade. They plan to detonate the canisters over American farms in the Midwest, spraying the toxin and poisoning the crops and soil. America’s breadbasket would be wiped out, leaving us to import the majority of our food.”
Dani’s heart thumped in her ears. Visions of bare grocery store aisles coupled with the skyrocketing price of staple goods filled her mind. Not to mention the United States’ total dependence on other countries for basic needs.
Reporter mode pushed the fear out of Dani’s mind. The more she discovered about this whole situation, the better their odds of stopping this terrorist attack from occurring.
Assuming she walked out of this alive to tell about it.
“How can we stop them?” Her throat tickled. What she wouldn’t give for some water. “If you know everything about the devices, can you tell me if there’s a way to deactivate them? We have to be able to stop this.”
He inched even closer, keeping his eyes glued to the one door in the windowless room. Definitely a basement. But where?
In a whisper, he said, “I put a kill switch in the coding that renders the whole system inert when the code is entered. The canister and the delivery system will fall to the ground without exploding and can then be safely retrieved. You just need to?—”
A noise silenced them both. Light flooded the room from the open door.
“Oh no you don’t, Dani.” The senator stood in a doorway. “Don’t think for even a second that you have a chance to save the day. I hadn’t expected you to wake up so soon.”
Had the senator overheard Doctor Cortez’s confession about a kill switch in the canisters?
There had to be a way for her to get this information to the good guys in time.
“I was just a pawn in your political game, Deville. I can’t believe you let me take the fall for you.” Shecouldbelieve it but needed to keep the man talking. If he was as narcissistic as she suspected, maybe he’d reveal his endgame.
He scoffed. “That was all you. Every story you put out just garnered more sympathy for me. I should thank you. But instead, I’m going to kill you and pin this whole compound in the woods on you. Maybe your FBI friends will find the special account you used to purchase a massive amount of chemicals. I can’t help it if you’re obsessed with me and want to ruin my life by making me look like the bad guy. But they’ll be too busy looking for your body to come after me.”
The man was seriously unhinged. Did he really think he could sidestep a conviction by making her take the fall for it? But based on the dark look in his eyes, he would kill her.
The senator kept one eye on his Rolex watch. “It’s about time to leave.”
A noise scuffed from upstairs. It sounded like footsteps. A man came into Dani’s view, behind the senator.
“Finally. What took you so long?” The senator glared at the newcomer, a short man with dark hair. The guy clutched two silver suitcases and passed one to the senator, keeping a tight grip on the other.
Dani’s mind spun to put the pieces together. The canisters. Could they be the bioweapons Cortez had talked about?
The senator nodded to the man. “We’ll split up. You take Cortez.” Then Deville nodded at Dani. “I’m taking her.”
The man cut the zip ties around Cortez’s hands and feet and pulled him up by the arm. Cortez wobbled. The new guy gripped Cortez’s upper arm and half pulled, half dragged him to the open door that led to a stairway.
Deville cut the rope to free Dani from the chair and yanked her up by the arm. Pain radiated from her shoulder to her fingers, but she refused to cry out.
She wouldn’t show this man an ounce of fear.
He didn’t cut the zip ties around her hands but shoved her forward. She worked hard not to trip.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“Always the reporter. Asking way too many questions.” With her hands behind her back, maintaining her balance was a challenge. Not to mention the lingering effects of chloroform.
Deville dragged her up some dimly lit stairs, through an opulent house, and into a kitchen. Her entire apartment in DC would fit in this kitchen.
He shoved her into a dining-room chair at a table built for serving fifteen people. “Sit and don’t say anything.”
