Phd Protector

“Why is Duane doing all this now?” he asked. “Why lure you back to him after years away? Why demand a bomb in a week after I’ve been working on it over a year? He hasn’t shown any sign of impatience with the project before now.”

“Maybe he’s tired of paying for all the man power needed to keep you up here,” she said.

“He hasn’t balked at paying the money before. Has something happened to make him worried about finances?”

She shook her head. “Duane’s grandfather was some kind of robber baron who made a killing in insurance in the twenties. Apparently, even the Depression didn’t touch his fortune. His father parlayed those millions into billions with a string of tech companies. Duane apparently inherited their knack for business and invested in everything from highways to high tech to fund his more nefarious activities—the actual source of the money all neatly hidden in various shell companies and shadow corporations. Add to that the donations he receives from people who support his cause and he’s got an endless supply of bucks. All this—” she swept her hand around the lab “—probably only qualifies as a footnote on a spreadsheet somewhere.”

“If it’s not money, what else is driving him?” Mark asked. “Has something happened on the world scene to make him think now is the best time to strike? I haven’t heard a news report in the last year, so we could be ruled by Martians right now and I wouldn’t know it.” He’d been like a castaway on a deserted island. He had told himself he didn’t miss knowing what was going on in the rest of the world, but now that Erin was with him, he fought the urge to bombard her with questions: Who was president of Russia these days? What was the dollar worth? What was the hottest tech gadget? Who was hosting the next Olympic Games? Who’d won the World Series?

But he had held back, and now, with that horrible collar around her neck, didn’t seem the time to worry about trivialities.

“There’s nothing much new in the world situation that would have set him off,” she said. “Though maybe his accident has him thinking about his mortality, and that’s given him this sense of urgency.”

“What kind of accident?” Mark asked. “I’ll admit I was shocked by his appearance this afternoon—I haven’t seen him in months. I thought maybe he had cancer or something.”

“I’m not sure what is wrong with him, but I don’t think it’s cancer,” she said. “I only heard bits and pieces of the story from my mom or from things people said when they didn’t know I was listening. It’s something to do with the FBI—he was injured when they tried to capture him or something like that. It’s one of the reasons he hates them so much.”

“Did you overhear anything else interesting, about Duane or his plans?”

“There was some rumor about a power struggle between Duane and his second in command, a man named Roland Chambers. He lived with us for a while when I was a teenager and he practically worshipped Duane, so I don’t know how much truth there was to the rumors that he was trying to take over after Duane was injured. But Roland was killed last month, so Duane doesn’t have to worry about him anymore.”

“So no money problems, no political upheaval and no rival.” Mark ticked off the possible reasons for Duane’s sudden change of plans. “Maybe you’re right and it is a mortality thing. I guess it doesn’t matter why he’s putting the pressure on us, only that he is.”

“We’ve got to find a way out of here,” she said.

“If you think of a plan, I’ll try it.”

She surprised him once more by leaning over and gripping his hand. “We’ll think of something,” she said.

Her conviction both stunned and moved him. A wave of emotion—regret, longing, even hope—welled up in him, so strong he had to look away for fear of betraying his weakness. Five hours ago he had been contemplating ways to end his life. Now, thanks to Erin, he was desperate to hang on to all the time he had left—to not only survive, but to live.

* * *

THE COLLAR WASN’T tight enough to choke her, Erin reminded herself, fighting the panic that lurked at the very edge of consciousness. But the thick metal band felt like Duane’s hands around her throat, threatening to squeeze the life from her.

Mark had returned to his workbench, bending over his experiments as if the previous hour hadn’t happened. She supposed his work was his escape, the way some people lost themselves in television shows or books. But she had no escape, only a hyperawareness of the weight around her throat and the fear that a wrong move could set off the bomb that would tear her to pieces. She had lived with fear so long she thought she had grown accustomed to it, but Duane had found a way to ratchet up the terror until it was almost unbearable.

She replayed every conversation she had had with him since she had returned to his sphere of influence—not so much conversations as arguments and debates, often exchanged at top volume while her mother hovered nearby, a diminutive referee prepared to throw herself between the opponents should they come to blows.

Erin’s refusal to follow Duane’s dictates or believe in his worldview had always annoyed and even angered her stepfather. As a teen, his attitude had only egged her on. As an adult, she saw a hatred she hadn’t noticed before, lurking beneath the surface ranting. Maybe this whole charade with the kidnapping and the collar was an elaborate revenge plot. Maybe she was the primary target of Duane’s latest ultimatum, not Mark and his bomb-building assignment. He was collateral damage incurred along the way.

Engrossed in his work, Mark didn’t even seem aware she was in the room. She studied him, determined to distract herself from thinking any more about the collar. He was a fairly tall man—over six feet, his frame lanky beneath the loose-fitting lab coat. His dark hair just touched his collar, the cut uneven, as if he had done it himself with the pair of nail scissors. The thought of him struggling to remain well-groomed despite the direness of his situation touched her.

He had probably shaved this morning, but now dark stubble shadowed his jaw, sharpening his features and making him look less like a scientist and more like an outlaw, or a fugitive on the run.

She wanted to be on the run, but the wire mesh on the windows and the guards at the doors blocked their escape. She studied the ceiling. If they could find a way to climb up onto the roof, could they jump off and flee before the guards noticed? But the cabin didn’t appear to have an attic, and she doubted they had tools capable of sawing through the metal roofing. The concrete beneath the floor meant tunneling wasn’t an option.

She sighed and closed her eyes, determined not to give in to the tears that threatened.

“It’s getting dark.”

Mark’s voice startled her. She opened her eyes, surprised to note the landscape around the cabin was no longer visible through the windows.

“Darkness comes early at this elevation, this time of year,” Mark said. “Are you hungry? You should try to eat.” He moved from the workbench to the refrigerator and began pulling out cold cuts. “I’ll make sandwiches.”

“I couldn’t eat,” she said, but he kept assembling bread and ham and cheese.

He set a sandwich and a bottle of water in front of her and took the chair across from her. She stared at the food and shook her head. “I couldn’t.”

He looked down at his own plate, then pushed it away. “Yeah. I don’t have much of an appetite, either. Maybe we should just call it a night. The batteries drain pretty fast once the sun goes down, so I’ve gotten in the habit of retiring early. Maybe in the morning we’ll think with clearer heads.”

She looked at the double bed with its tangle of sheets and blankets. “I don’t think I could sleep,” she said.

“Take the bed,” he said. “I’ll stretch out on the floor.”

“That’s ridiculous. I won’t take your bed.”

His expression grew stubborn. “Call me old-fashioned, but I’m not going to rest in comfort while you try to make do on the floor.”

“Then we’ll share the bed.” She looked him in the eye, striving for a calm she didn’t feel. “We’re adults. We can do that. Under the circumstances, it’s ridiculous to be prudish about something like this. There’s only one bed and two of us, so we should make the best of it.”

“All right. Suit yourself.” He stood and returned their leftovers to the refrigerator, then removed the lab coat and draped it over the stool at his workbench.

Erin blinked. The baggy coat had hid the outline of his body. Beneath it he wore a blue flannel shirt that stretched across lean but muscular shoulders, and canvas hiking pants that hugged a narrow waist and decidedly attractive backside.

He turned and caught her staring at him. “Is something wrong?” he asked.

She shook her head, fighting to hold back a blush. “I was just...lost in thought.” The thought that there was more to the depressed scientist than she had first surmised.

They moved to the bed. The metal frame was shoved into the corner. “I’ll take the outside,” she said, not wanting to be trapped between him and the wall.

“All right.” He removed his shoes, then, still wearing his pants and shirt, slid under the covers and rolled over to face the wall, his back to her.

She sat on the side of the bed and slipped out of her own shoes, then switched off the lamp and lay back on top of the blankets. The metal collar rubbed against the underside of her chin and she tried not to think of the possibility that she might roll over in sleep and put pressure on the wrong wire or something...

She closed her eyes and tried to focus on her breathing—eight slow counts in, eight slow counts out. A friend who taught yoga had assured her that this was a surefire technique for releasing tension and falling asleep.

On the first count of eight Mark shifted, the movement rocking the bed and banishing all thoughts of achieving calm. The heat of him caressed her skin and she sensed the shape of him only inches from her, the jut of his shoulders, the long line of his spine, the length of his legs. The memory of him brushing his fingertips along her throat made her heart speed up and her breath catch. Not because she could ever be attracted to a man like Mark Renfro—a man still in mourning for his dead wife and lost child, a man whose eyes held a despair that tore at her. She was reacting this way only because it had been a long time since she had slept with a man. A long time since she had lived in the same house with anyone else. She had avoided close relationships, fearful of exposing anyone else to Duane’s manipulations and hate. Duane controlled people by threatening those they loved, as he had done with Mark. Avoiding love protected other people, but it was also a way of protecting herself.

But that kind of life was lonely, and clearly, Erin was paying for that now. She told herself simple human contact, not sexual attraction, had set her heart pounding and her skin heating over Mark’s proximity.

She took a cue from him and rolled over to put her back to him, clinging to the side of the bed and trying to ignore the weight of the bomb collar against her throat. She closed her eyes and allowed the tears to wet her lashes and slide down her cheeks as she prayed for sleep to take her.

* * *

MARK LAY AWAKE deep into the night, stretched out rigid on the mattress, the events of the day playing and replaying behind his closed eyelids. The sudden appearance of Erin, followed by Duane’s visit and his homicidal ultimatum, unsettled him more than he would have thought possible, like a trumpet blast disrupting the white noise of the lab, or a slash of vivid crimson across a black-and-white photo.

When sleep finally pulled him under, he dreamed restless, confusing vignettes: he was at a birthday party for four-year-old Mandy, Christy leaning forward, cheeks puffed out, helping her daughter blow out the candles on the cake. He saw Christy in the kitchen, long blond hair partially covered by a pink bandanna, a smudge of flour on one cheek, brows drawn together in fierce concentration as she studied the directions in a cookbook.