Sizzle and Burn (The Arcane Society #3)(66)
Author: Jayne Ann Krentz

“…Hurt her—hurt her—make her suffer…”

A bell chimed somewhere in the distance. She dimly recognized it. Pandora returning with the pizza. Thank God.

Then she heard more voices, not the ghostly cries inside her head.

“They should all be unconscious by now,” Cassidy Cutler said.

“We’ve got to be careful.” Niki Plumer sounded worried, as usual. “That smoke is very strong. If it gets to us, we’ll be in trouble.”

“We’ll give it a couple of minutes to clear. Lock the front door and turn over the closed sign. We’ll take her out the back.”

Fifty

“She set you up,” Zack said.

“This doesn’t make any sense.” Bradley reached the end of the living room, turned and paced back in the reverse direction. “She’s Cassidy Cutler. She’s written four books.” He stopped in front of a bookcase, yanked out a copy of Cruel Visions and showed Zack the back cover. “Her picture is on every damn one of them.”

“I’m not saying she stole Cutler’s identity, although it’s a possibility. I think it’s more likely that she really is Cassidy Cutler.”

Bradley shoved the book back into the case. “Why in hell would she want to hurt Raine?”

Zack chose his words carefully, sticking to the truth as much as possible.

“My agency believes that she’s involved with a crowd that manufactures and distributes exotic designer drugs,” he said.

Bradley dropped down onto one of the chairs, eyes narrowing. He knew drug dealing and the crimes associated with the business. “Okay, let’s say for the sake of argument, you’re right. What does she want with Raine?”

“Raine’s father was a brilliant chemist.”

“Yeah, I know. She told me.”

“When Raine was a little girl, Judson Tallentyre worked for my firm’s client, a company that invented and patented a unique psychotropic drug.” Zack slipped easily into the familiar cover story, blending truth and fiction into a seamless whole. “The company abandoned research and shelved the drug after initial trials revealed that it was extremely dangerous. But Tallentyre suspected that the formula would be worth a fortune on the black market. It needed some tweaking, however. There were some extremely serious side effects. He left the company and took the formula with him. He continued to experiment on his own.”

“Raine said he died when she was little. Traffic accident.”

“That’s right. The company he worked for investigated and concluded that the secret of the formula died with him. That was the end of the matter until a few weeks ago, when another researcher named Lawrence Quinn suddenly disappeared. The client called in my agency again. We discovered that Quinn had been doing unauthorized research on the same proprietary formula that Judson Tallentyre had stolen. We traced Quinn here to Oriana.”

“Yeah? Where the hell is he, then?”

“Disappeared. Based on what I’ve been able to piece together, I strongly suspect that he’s dead. I think he came here to interview Raine’s aunt, Vella Tallentyre. After he got the information he wanted from her, he vanished.”

Bradley was starting to look interested. “You think he was murdered by someone who wanted whatever it was he got from Vella Tallentyre?”

“Yes.”

Bradley held up a hand, palm out. “Let’s go back to Vella Tallentyre. Got any proof that she was murdered?”

“She left a note for Raine. We found it last night among her things. It was written on the night of her death. In it she said she’d had a visitor that day who gave her an injection. She knew she was dying and wanted to warn Raine. The description of the visitor that we got from the hospital fits Lawrence Quinn.”

“What did Quinn want from her?”

“We don’t know but we suspect it had something to do with the formula for the drug that Judson Tallentyre stole all those years ago.”

Bradley looked thoughtful. “You think Quinn intended to re-create the formula and set himself up in the illegal drug business?”

“Yes. But it looks like he didn’t get what he wanted from Vella Tallentyre. In her note to Raine, Vella said she didn’t trust him and lied to him. Presumably she gave him some kind of false data about the drug.”

“But Quinn figured he had the answer he wanted so he got rid of her. Then he tried to make a deal with some bad guys. It did not go well. That’s it?”

“That’s it. Except that I’m sure Cassidy Cutler is one of the bad guys. Niki Plumer, too.”

“Any others?”

“I think she had some muscle with her when she first came to town,” Zack said. “The guy tried to take me out in the alley behind a local jazz club, but he managed to get hit in an intersection. Never made it to the hospital.”

“Heard about the hit-and-run when I got back from Shelbyville. Meant to talk to you about it. They’re still trying to ID the victim. You’re telling me you think Cassidy killed him, too?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Probably because he failed to get rid of me.”

Bradley eyed the little bottle of clear fluid sitting in the ice bucket on the table. “You really believe she left that stuff here to implicate me, don’t you?”

“She knows I’m in town. She needs to point me in another direction. You were convenient. She was already using you to get close to Raine. Guess she figured you for a dual-purpose tool.”

Bradley’s mouth curved in a sour grimace. “Why use me? Why not approach Raine directly?”

“Think about it,” Zack said. “Raine’s a very private person. Her inner circle of friends is small and tightly knit. It’s not easy breaking into it.”

Bradley hesitated, then nodded once. “I see what you mean. But Raine’s no research chemist. Neither was her aunt. Besides, according to you, Cassidy and her crowd already have this drug you’re talking about. What the hell did they expect to get from Vella Tallentyre? What do they want from Raine?”

“I’m still working on that angle. What I know is that there are some serious problems with the current version of the drug. Someone may have been convinced that Vella Tallentyre knew something important about her brother’s version that would be useful. Now that she’s dead, those same people may think that Raine has the information.”

Bradley shot back to his feet and resumed pacing. “You’re making me look stupid here, Jones.”