“No,” Marge said, tears appearing in the corner of her eyes. “He was a good man. I refuse to believe anything different.”
“You don’t have to,” she said gently. “Even if he did whatever he needed to do to get out of here, we can’t hold that against him. You and I both know how terrible it was in there. And we haven’t been here as long as Paul was.”
Marge nodded slowly. “It was so awful.” And she started to cry softly, her tears painful in the silence.
Jerricho turned to check the rearview and side mirrors.
“Are we being followed?” Diesel asked.
“No,” he said, “nothing that I can see.”
“What a mess,” Eva said.
“Well, I wasn’t expecting the Russians,” Diesel said.
“We need to get the word out,” Jerricho said.
Diesel pulled out his phone and sent Shane a message. We are out plus 2. Gunfire in lab building. Probably Russians cleaning house. Need safe house. He turned to Jerricho. “What do you want to tell him?”
“That the Russian kidnapped scientist died a couple weeks ago.”
Diesel turned to Eva. “Do you know any of the details?”
She shook her head. “No, I don’t.” She looked at Marge, but she still sobbed in the corner.
“I’ve asked for a safe place for the night,” Diesel said, quickly reading the answering text.
“Good,” Jerricho said. “We need a place to rest, and I don’t know if the women need medical attention.”
Diesel looked at the other two. Eva shook her head, but then she nodded toward Marge. “Marge, are you okay physically?”
She looked up with tears washing her cheeks, still experiencing heavy sorrow. “I’m okay. If I can get out of here, I’ll be that much better, and I will recover,” she said a little more robustly. “It’s just so very sad to think that something like this is allowed to happen.”
“And, if you had a place to go home to, would you go back to Australia or home to the US?”
“Honestly right now, back to Australia, but I don’t know if that’s even feasible.”
“We’ll do what we can,” he said. He looked at Eva. “You?”
“The US,” she said, “Boston.” He raised an eyebrow. She shrugged. “That’s family.”
“Got it,” he said. At that, he sent off several more messages and waited for a response. While he waited, he checked the roads around them. “Still so empty.”
“I know. It’s like the calm before the storm.”
“Don’t say that,” Eva said from behind them. “The last thing we want is any more attacks.”
“Doesn’t matter what we want,” Diesel said. “Chances are, it’s in the works.” There was silence behind him. He twisted, looked at Eva, and asked, “You okay?”
Fear was in her gaze, but she nodded slowly. “Does this ever end?”
“Yes,” he said. “Are you working for a private company that’ll sell your research?”
“Maybe,” she said, “but I’m a contractor, and part of my stipulations for working with them was that a certain amount of my work would be allowed to go to the public for free.”
“Well, if you did that in this case,” he said, “nobody would have to kidnap you for your research, would they?”
“I don’t know if the company went through with it.”
“Or your kidnapping didn’t give them a chance,” he said.
“How many people have to die for this to be something that others can work on too? Monetizing these cures,” she said, “that’s where the big money is and where too many focus, instead of saving people.”
“I get that. I still want to understand how these drugs cost what they do because it seems like it’s ripping off the little guy at the end of the day. However, if you keep creating breakthroughs, then this problem may never go away.”
“Great,” she muttered.
“Or you make it part of your next contract where maybe you give your newfound drug cures to the poor for free. But, for sure, the company must be required to supply security.”
“I hear you. I don’t know what that would be like, after having guards at my back for the last ten days in that lab.”
“No, and there’s never an easy answer,” he murmured.
“I get it. I just wish that we had a better system.”
“Well, think about it,” he said. “Come up with an idea that would make you happy over all this and present it to your company. And let’s hope your company isn’t involved in some way.”
She winced at that. “I don’t even like to hear you say that. I don’t know why they would be. They are already in on my research.”
“Right, but this breakthrough gives the company an awful lot of publicity now, doesn’t it?”
“I hope not,” she said, staring at him in shock.
“Why?”
“Something like this isn’t ready for publicity.”
“But didn’t the stocks go up?” he asked in a dry, sarcastic voice.
She sagged back. “I don’t think I like the way your mind works,” she murmured.
“Maybe not,” he said, “but it’s usually the reality of things.”
Chapter 4
Eva still reeled from the thought that Paul had been killed. It hurt to consider he might have turned against them. Did she blame him? No, she didn’t because she hadn’t been there very long, yet her captors had been horrible. To even consider this was a lifetime sentence, she probably would have grabbed at any opportunity to change it. But it hurt seeing Paul murdered like that and knowing how distraught Marge was. It was easy to see just how downhill everything was going right now.
Still Eva was damn grateful to be out of there. She couldn’t imagine the endless anguish Paul must have faced, being stuck there in captivity for over a year.
As she sat here in the growing darkness, she wondered just where she would end up. She leaned forward and asked, “Is there any way to tell my father that I’m out?”
He looked at her in surprise. “Does he know you were kidnapped?”
“Probably not. He went underground after a big upset a while back,” she said quietly. “He lives in a cabin out on one of the Wisconsin lakes.
