Instead of camo, Duane wore a black suit and turtleneck. His thin body was twisted and hunched, and tubes trailed from his nostrils to an oxygen tank that one of his goons hooked to the back of the wheelchair.
“You didn’t know?” She had been shocked, too, the first time she saw this sick, diminished version of her stepfather. But he was diminished in physical stature only. His spirit had struck her as stronger than ever.
“I haven’t seen him in almost a year,” Mark said.
“Don’t let his appearance fool you. He isn’t weak.” Despite his disability, the man in the wheelchair radiated power, with every man out there focused on him.
The group headed for the cabin, two of the men lifting the wheelchair, with Duane in it, onto the porch. Mark pulled Erin into the middle of the room as locks snicked and the door opened.
She forced herself to look at her stepfather, to meet the blue eyes that burned feverishly in his withered face. “Erin, dear.” The sound of her name on his lips made her flinch. “Your mother sends her greetings.”
She bit back a curse, aware of the guards looming on either side of him. She had found out the hard way what they thought of any slur on the man they viewed almost as a religious figure. “How is my mother?” she asked, because she wanted desperately to know, though she knew Duane would tell her the truth only if it suited him.
“Helen is fine.” He rolled his chair toward the lab. “Renfro!” The strident voice seemed incongruous coming from such a weakened frame. “What progress have you made?”
Mark walked to the workbench, unhurried, his hands in the pockets of his lab coat, the picture of the singularly focused genius who couldn’t be bothered to worry about anything outside of his work. “I’ve almost perfected the refining process,” he said. “And I’m accumulating the quantity of uranium I’ll need for the project.”
“You need to finish within a week,” Duane said.
Mark’s expression didn’t change. If anything, he looked even more bored, eyes hooded, his expression guarded. “I can’t promise that. The process takes as long as it takes. I can’t change physical laws.”
Erin didn’t see any signal from Duane, but he must have given one. Without warning, two men seized her arms, while a third forced her head back.
“Leave her alone!” Mark shouted, all semblance of boredom vanished, but the fourth guard held him back.
Erin tried to struggle, terrified her captors intended to cut her throat. But the two men who held her remained immobile, impervious to her kicks and shouts. A third man wrapped something hard and cold around her throat. She heard a click, and all three men suddenly released her.
“I wouldn’t make any sudden movements if I were you, Erin.” Duane’s voice had its usual smooth cadence. “The mechanism in your new necklace is fairly sensitive.”
The three goons stepped back and Erin grabbed at her throat, grasping the thick metal collar now fastened there. The edges chafed her skin and the weight of it dragged at her. “What have you done to me?” she demanded.
“You’re wearing an explosive device,” Duane said, as calmly as if he had been commenting on the weather. “It has a timer, and is set to go off exactly one week from today.” He turned to Mark. “You deliver the product as promised by then and we will remove the collar.”
“Why such a hurry now?” Mark asked. “You’ve waited all these months, why not a few more to make sure things are done correctly?”
“I’m done with waiting.” Duane’s voice was strident, his face red with strain. “You will have the device for me in a week.”
“And if I don’t?”
“Then the bomb goes off and you both die.”
Mark stared at the man in the wheelchair. The eyes that looked back at him were as cold and untroubled as a mountain lake. Erin had been right—whatever physical ailment had reduced Duane to a husk of his former self, it hadn’t diminished his madness. A man with eyes like that might very well kill his own stepdaughter just to make a point. But delivering what Duane wanted within a week—or even within a year—was impossible. Mark chose his words carefully, wary of upsetting his kidnapper more. “Mr. Braeswood, building a...an apparatus such as you require isn’t like baking a cake. I can’t just throw a bunch of ingredients together and come up with a viable product. I need time and—”
“You’ve had time,” Braeswood snapped. “If I don’t have what I want in one week, you both die.”
And even if I could deliver your bomb, we would still die, Mark thought. Duane wouldn’t leave any witnesses to his plans. “You’re asking for the impossible,” he said.
“You’ll have your bomb. Next week!” Despite the constricting collar Erin turned her head to face Braeswood. “Mark is being a typical scientist—overly cautious. He was telling me earlier that he’s almost ready to assemble it. With both of us working together I know we can meet your deadline.”
“Erin.” Mark sent her a warning look.
Her gaze burned into him, pleading with him to go along with her lie. Her terror swamped him. Maybe he would feel the same if he had a bomb at his throat. “Sure,” he said, dropping his gaze to the floor. “There’s still some work I need to do...with the plutonium-catalyst ratios.” There was no such thing, but Mark had learned that Braeswood appreciated it when he threw around scientific jargon.
“Excellent.” Braeswood’s voice sounded much stronger than he looked. Floorboards creaked as he turned his chair and rolled back to the door. “I’ll see you next week, then.”
“You can’t just leave me like this!” Erin’s voice rose, on the edge of panic.
“So impatient.” Braeswood regarded her coolly. “You were that way as a child, too, never content to wait for a reward, no matter how hard I tried to teach you. I would have hoped that maturity would have curbed that unfortunate character trait, but I see it has not. This should be a good lesson for you.” He nodded to his henchmen and one opened the door while two others hoisted the chair.
The locks snapped into place again after the door closed behind the entourage. Car doors slammed, engines growled and the pop of tires on gravel gradually faded away.
Erin sank into one of the kitchen chairs, as if her legs would no longer support her, her hands clutching the collar. “I can’t believe this is happening,” she moaned.
Mark’s hands knotted into fists and his heart hammered, emotion rocking him back on his heels. He recognized rage—something he hadn’t felt, something he hadn’t allowed himself to feel, in months. The intensity of the feelings caught him off guard. He was furious with Braeswood and his men, but also with himself. Why hadn’t he done something to stop them? Why hadn’t he protected Erin? And what was he going to do to help her now? He may have given up on life, but she deserved to live.
He pulled his hands from his pockets and moved to her side. “Can I take a look at the collar?” he asked.
She dropped her hands to her lap and looked up at him. “Do you know anything about disarming bombs?”
“Not a thing, unfortunately.” He studied the collar, which was gold colored—plated, he imagined, with platinum or aluminum or some other sturdier alloy beneath. About three inches wide, it fastened at the back with a locking mechanism similar to a seat belt, the halves fitting tightly together. The explosive device sat front and center, the size of a pack of playing cards, comprised of wires and button batteries and a glob of yellowish plastic he suspected was the explosive. Who had made this horrible yet ingenious device for Duane? Did he