expression was incredulous.
“I never use poison, Bella. That’s far too obvious. Only an amateur would consider it.” He shook his head. “Stick with the basics and no one so much as bats an eye.” He moved toward her, took her hand, and opened it palm-up. “This is a mild tranquilizer. It’ll get you on the plane.”
Annabelle stared down at the pill in her hand. The world spun around her. Jack Thane was giving her drugs. It was, honestly, the very last thing she would have expected from him. He didn’t even so much as drink. He was a clean string bean.
“Nope.” She shook her head once and made to hand the pill back to him. But he didn’t take it.
“In less than three hours, we’ll be boarding a private jet at a private landing strip,” he told her, his tone dropping into a more serious note. “At that time, our little group will consist of myself, Dylan, whose parents were the target in this cover-up, Cassie, who has useful knowledge in the pharmaceutical arena, and you, Bella, who are at the center of this entire mystery, whether you like it or not.” He took a deep breath and continued. “I need you to be ready and willing and able to help. None of which will you be if you are too busy dreaming up all of the wonderfully imaginative ways in which a plane might crash and its occupants might expire.” There was more than the smallest note of sarcasm lacing his deep, British accent.
Annabelle’s gaze narrowed. She glanced down at the pill and then back up at him. “Who’s going to be flying the plane?”
“An old mate of mine who actually owns the plane.”
“And exactly
“The plane is new,” Jack answered calmly. “And Sam has been flying for the better part of thirty years.”
Bella stared up at him for several long moments. She slowly closed her fingers over the pill in her palm and then sighed. “I’ll think about it. In the meantime, we’d better check on Beatrice – and I want to give Trinity a call to make sure she and that guy you sent her and the twins off with got to the safe house all right.”
Jack followed her out of the bedroom without saying anything more, for the moment. His mind was moving at a thousand RPM’s and showed no signs of slowing any time soon. Fear coursed through his veins in unfamiliar territory. He didn’t like fear. It made people do strange things – unplanned things – and messed up their ability to reason logically. It had been a while since Jack had experienced it. The real stuff, anyway. A few worries and your mandatory concern here and there – but not fear. Real, live dread.
And it wasn’t a plane ride that had him on edge.
He watched as Annabelle moved down the hallway toward the living room and kitchen and the phone that hung on the wall between the two. He didn’t fail to notice when she covertly snuck the pill he’d given her into her jeans’ front pocket. He smiled grimly. The next few days were going to be hell on wheels.
“Mr. Thane,” Alex intercepted them as they entered the living room. He was holding what looked like a walkie-talkie in his right hand and a gun, un-holstered and loaded, in his left. The gun was easy at his side, pointed toward the floor. The radio, he held out toward Jack.
Alex was left-handed. Annabelle always noticed things like that.
Jack took the walkie-talkie that Alex handed him and clicked a button on its side. “Go.” He said, and released the button.
“We have a touch-down. Give him a few to re-fuel and run some checks and you guys can head on over.”
“Fine.” Jack clicked and un-clicked the button one last time and handed the radio back to Alex, who waited patiently for instruction.
“Wake up Cassie and find my daughter. Tell them to gather whatever they think they’ll need from the stores in the basement. We’ll move out within the hour.”
Alex nodded and Annabelle watched him leave the room. Her stomach leapt up into her throat. She thought about the pill in her pocket. Jack’s voice cut through her thoughts.
“Join me for a cup of tea, Bella.”
She turned to watch him move around her and into the kitchen, where he began pulling containers and mugs from the cupboards. He filled a tea kettle with water from the tap and placed it atop the stove. It was a very old- fashioned way of making tea, to her mind. She had practically married her microwave over the last five years. Her stove would be obsolete if she didn’t love spaghetti so much.
“Tea? If you weren’t British, I’d think you were pulling my leg.”
Jack smiled. “Chamomile,” he said as he held up a tea bag for her perusal. “It calms the nerves.”
She shook her head. A professional killer touting the benefits of homeopathic tea remedies? Her smile matched his own. “I’m allergic to ragweed. Isn’t chamomile a relative?” She teased.
Jack’s smile broadened. “Just have the tea, luv. And you can take the time to tell me more about the clue you unearthed in the car.”
Annabelle shrugged. “Well, you heard all there really is to tell.” As she thought about the clue that she and her companions had riddled out in the back of the limo, she also thought of Max. And then came the familiar and unwelcome tightening in her chest.
She tried to ignore it by continuing to talk.
“The letters and spaces were a name and location. The name, Craig Brandt, isn’t one I’m familiar with. I don’t recall Max ever mentioning him, but then he probably wouldn’t. My guess is that it was someone his wife knew. Teresa.”
Jack nodded, listening quietly. The tea kettle began to whistle. Jack turned off the stove and poured the boiling liquid over the tea bags in two mugs. Annabelle went on.
“Columbia Medical was most likely where Teresa went to medical school. I can’t ask Max… obviously…” She paused and cleared her throat. Jack turned to watch her carefully. “But I seem to recall him mentioning at some point that he used to live in or around the Big Apple. Dylan was probably too young, at that time, to remember much of any detail, but he didn’t seem to object to the idea of his mom being associated with Columbia.” She paused and considered something. “There may be records at their house. Which, of course, is now off-limits.” She shrugged. “The school, at least, should have her academic record, at any rate.”
She stopped and cleared her throat again and then reached for the mug she chose as hers before Jack could hand it to her. It had an owl on it. She liked owls.
She took the mug and then also pulled out two of the five tea bags from the pot and dumped them into her own cup. She wanted them to seep an extra long time.
“Do you have soy creamer?” she asked as she opened the refrigerator.
“Yes. In the top shelf of the door.”
Annabelle found the small container of unsweetened creamer and closed the fridge door. She gave the carton a good shake and then screwed off the top, pouring its white, creamy contents right on top of her tea bags. She grabbed the tea bags by their strings and pumped them up and down, mixing the creamer into the tea, before pulling the bags out entirely and tossing them into the trash.
“Pull that in England and the queen will see you drawn and quartered,” Jack said, his tone softly teasing.
“I’m an American, Jack. We’re all savages.”
Jack chuckled and held his mug out to her. “To your health, luv.”
Annabelle clinked his mug with hers and then took a sip of the milky tea. It was warm and soothing and even though chamomile wasn’t her first choice of teas and definitely not the one she’d have chosen for an accompaniment to soy creamer, she had to admit that, from the first sip, it seemed to settle her nerves a little.
She swallowed a few hot gulps and then continued where she’d left off. “I’ve been thinking a lot about it since our brief stop at the airport. My guess is that Teresa stumbled upon something while in New York. Maybe this Brandt guy knows about it too. Maybe they were even partners or something. But whatever it was she discovered or overheard or figured out – got her killed.”
Jack took another sip of his tea and mulled that over. He’d been thinking along the same lines.
“You make enough for all of us, da’?”
