Wilde Storm Page 13

  We watched as my father walked to the door, leaving his back exposed to Irene. I sucked in a breath, wanting to scream at him, but Watson shook his head once, sharply.

  When he was about to turn the handle, he angled back to her. “When you are ready to speak again, please contact my assistant and I will see you in my offices. Until then, I will do everything in my power to ensure the serum never sees the light of day again.” He bowed deeply and as he stood, offered a wide, false smile. “I assure you, my power is considerable and my wealth endless. You’ve made an enemy today, Ms. Adler.” My father reached to open the door only to get a dart in the back of his neck for his troubles.

  “Well…shit,” I muttered as I watched him collapse to the floor.

  Irene stood and walked over to my father, a considering look on her face. “And so have you, Mr. Holmes.” She bent down and removed the dart.

  I wasn’t sure how she knew—if someone shifted wrong, if there was a creak where there shouldn’t have been a creak, if maybe the camera moved and she caught it out the corner of her eye—but with a quick hand movement and a press of a button I couldn’t see, the ceiling came out from underneath us and we fell to the earth at Irene Adler’s feet.

  10

  Sometime later, we all came to and found ourselves trussed up in a conference room. Not the same one we fell into. We’d broken the table during our fall and generally had left the room in ruins. Sherlock and Watson were giving each other angry glares and Masters was leaning against the wall with his eyes closed and lips thinned.

  The DARs Masters and I had were gone. Which could have been bad had we not had both Sherlock and Watson with us. They could take us out of here.

  “Let’s go,” I hissed. “Before they get back.”

  Sherlock turned his heated emerald gaze on me. “She knows what we are, Penelope.”

  I stared in disbelief. “Excuse me?”

  “The room. Something has been done to the room to prevent us from leaving. Even the DARs wouldn’t work in here.” Sherlock turned haunted eyes to the camera above us. “She watches us. And waits.”

  “Quit sounding so morose. Gods, man.” Watson struggled against his bonds. “We’ve gotten out of worse than this before.”

  “Have we?” my father mused.

  Watson snorted in disbelief. “What the hell did she tranq you with?”

  “Mmm,” he said. “She was quite beautiful, wasn’t she?”

  Something heated roared within me and I was surprised to realize it was jealousy. My mother was at home waiting for him and while I knew they had major issues, I guess I always thought they’d find their way back to each other. I banished those negative thoughts from my mind. Sherlock had been bested. At least for now. That was the only reason he found her attractive.

  But then my traitorous thoughts drifted back to that fictional story and they stayed there, stuck stubbornly on something that couldn’t possibly be true or happening. This was far from over, I thought. This was merely the beginning.

  Masters shifted beside me and bumped me with his shoulder, jolting me out of my depressing thoughts. What would be, would be, and I would deal with it when I had to. The only thing I needed to do right now was focus on getting the hell out of here. I turned and saw Masters slide a long wicked needle out of his sleeve. For a moment, I wondered if he was going to stab my father and put him out of his misery, but what happened was even worse. With an apology in his eyes, Masters stabbed me.

  Blood roared in my ears. I could smell everything—the cologne Watson splashed on himself before he opened the door to me this morning, the shaving cream my father still used even though my mother kept telling him to buy something current. I blinked slowly and the colors slid and slipped against my vision in a maelstrom of brightness, an artist sliding a rainbow of paint against a canvas.

  I watched as Watson’s eyebrows flew together in concern. I smiled at him, but couldn’t hold my neck straight. Masters held me up by using his shoulder to push me against the wall. It was kind of him, I thought. Especially since he seemed to have poisoned me.

  The roar of my father’s voice was the last thing I heard as I slipped into oblivion.

  I don’t know how long I’d been out, but I was lying alone in a different room from where I’d started. Hair matted with sticky blood coated my face. Whatever Masters had given me had seriously fucked me up. I struggled to sit up, but my entire body felt like it was disconnected. My head felt wobbly, I couldn’t hold it up straight, I couldn’t put my fingers together, and my legs flopped around like jelly.

  But despite all the physical discomfort I’d been feeling, mentally, I felt amazing. Like all the barriers in my mind I never knew I had shattered to pieces. I struggled to sit up for a few minutes, but when I was able to and could look around, a wide grin split over my face. Masters was the least likely person to betray me. We held his daughter’s life in his hands and I felt like we’d come to an understanding. Plus, the big lug was growing on me. Whatever he’d injected me with had been strong enough to convince Irene I was dead. Despite my thoughts about the disturbing effects of that drug, I had a clear chance at getting the hell out of here and bringing everyone home.

  I cursed as I realized I didn’t have my DAR. If there were ever a time to learn that handy dandy trick my father and Watson could pull off, it would be now. Right now. I closed my eyes, clicked my heels, and…nothing.

  I pushed myself up with the help of the wall and looked for anything I could carry as a weapon. There were no windows in this room. Probably wise, just in case someone happened to walk by and see a bloody dead body on the floor. That would be enough to ruin someone’s day. I was either going to have to try to get out via the ceiling vents again or brave the hallways. Raising a hand, I pulled my hair away from my face. When my fingers came back red and sticky, I grimaced. I felt around for any tender spots, but couldn’t find any.

  Weird.

  Ceiling duct it was. I struggled to climb on to the table and wondered how in the hell I was going to be able to lift myself up if I couldn’t even get four feet off the ground with leverage.

  “Crap,” I muttered, resting my head in my hands. I didn’t think I could do it without making a whole hell of a lot of noise. I sat there for a few minutes, taking deep breaths and giving myself mental pep talks. I concentrated on my mother’s face, my bedroom, Cass, the weird ass meatloaf the cafeteria served, and told myself over and over I had the strength to do this. I was also going to talk to Masters about maybe a little advanced notice before he tried to kill me again, even as a ruse. My mind’s eye focused on all the things back at the compound and tears leaked out as I thought about what everyone else might be going through.

  “Penelope? Oh my God. Penelope!”

  I jerked my head up at the sound of my mother’s voice. Her likeness swam in front of me, a weird juxtaposition of the office wall and her concerned dark eyes.

  “Mom?”

  Seeing the blood on my face, her lips pressed together until they were white. She shoved her hair out of her face. “Concentrate, Penelope. Concentrate on me. I’ll make you a cup of tea. Just get here. Don’t think about where you are. Think about where you need to be.”

  “Mom.” My voice trembled and I shook. Nausea rolled in my stomach as I tried, but I couldn’t get a solid picture of her.

  “Close your eyes. Close them and think of me. Think of the life you have here now. Concentrate, Penelope. Come back to me so I can help you.”

  I let go and my body shattered into a million pieces.

  I rolled over and choked out what felt like a gallon of water. Had I been swimming?

  I felt a gentle hand rubbing my back. “Honey, just get it out.”

  “Mom? Am I drowning?” I wheezed out.

  She choked down a laugh. “You took a slight…detour.”

  More water poured out of me and I coughed like I had pneumonia.

  Her hands continued to stroke my hair and rub my back. Once I remembered what h
appened, I tried to sit up abruptly, only to be not so gently pushed back down by my tiny, fierce mother. “Stay here for a few. Whatever you have can keep for a moment more.”

  “Dad and Watson and Masters are gone,” I wheezed out.

  “I know.” Her tone sounded like she wasn’t so happy about it either.

  I lay there for a little while, waiting for the burning in my lungs to subside. I’d done it. Wonder washed over me. I wasn’t sure how I’d done it, but it happened nonetheless, and I wasn’t stuck in some alternate dimension. I was curious about all the water I’d coughed up, but that story could wait for another time. My mother gently pulled on my arm.

  “Do you think you can stand?”

  I nodded weakly and allowed her to help me. My legs still felt like jelly and my lungs felt like they were trying to burn themselves out of my chest. She led me into her private quarters and helped me sit in a seat by the kitchen window. The familiar sounds of her clinking cups and pots around took my thoughts of the last few hours away and I contented myself with the familiar act of her making tea to help me feel better.

  Then I frowned, remembering the last cup of tea she’d made me. “Mom, don’t put any weird shit in it, please.”

  “Penelope! Language.” She gave me a dirty look, but put one of the bags of herbs she’d pulled from the cabinet back inside without opening it.

  She’d put sleeping herbs in the last cup and I passed out way before I wanted to. It was the night of my birthday—the night before immortality had changed my life in ways I’d never imagined. A few minutes later, she poured water over two cups of steaming herbs and took them to the table. She pushed one cup in front of me, set hers down, and went back over to pull the milk from the fridge and grab the sugar.

  “Well,” she said once she’d settled herself back at the table, “it’s been entirely too long since we’ve done this.”

  Nodding, I pulled the strainer out of my cup and set it down gently on the extra saucer she’d provided. “I’m sorry I haven’t been around much.” And I meant it. I’d been caught up in a lot of things that had nothing to do with my mother and everything to do with me feeling sorry for myself.

  She reached over and patted my hand. “I understand.” My mother took a sip of her hot tea and sighed. “So, tell me what kind of mess your father has pulled you in to this time.”

  I winced. She was not going to be happy when I briefed her on everything that had happened. I wondered how much I should tell her about Irene, if anything. So, I started, hesitant, but at my mother’s raised eyebrow, ended up telling her everything. She could always tell when I wasn’t being honest.

  At the mention of Irene’s name, her gaze narrowed.

  “Mom? Does he know her?”

  Her mouth tightened in annoyance. “No.”

  I eyed her from over the top of my cup. “But you do.”

  One short nod from her told me a world of information. She did know her. And not only did she know her, she knew her very well.

  “Would you like to elaborate?”

  She set her cup down with a clatter. “Irene is not the kind of woman to screw around with, Penelope. We need to get your father out. Immediately.”

  “That wasn’t much of an elaboration. How do you know her?”

  My mother blew out a shaky breath and bowed her head. “We had one business dealing.”

  “Okay,” I said, confused about why she seemed so upset. “That doesn’t seem so bad.”

  “Oh, but it is. I knew this day was going to come.”

  The hell? “Mom, you’re starting to scare me.”

  “When I decided to leave your father, I had no funds and no real means to escape.”

  I had a bad feeling about the rest of this story. “How did you get away?” I took another sip of the tea, the scent of rose and lavender drifting up to fill my nose.

  “I sold Irene Adler some of your father’s immortality serum.”

  My fingers loosened their grip and the cup fell, shattering into hundreds of pieces on the table. Déjà vu. All over again.

  “You didn’t,” I whispered.

  Her eyes were red-rimmed and watery. “It was the only thing that would give me enough funds to get away from him.”

  I stood from the table, my legs burning from the tea. But the pain wasn’t at the forefront of my mind. Her betrayal of my father was.

  “Mom.” I couldn’t think of what else to say or what to do.

  “Does Irene know who Sherlock is?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t think so. Your father has kept a low profile, for the most part. He has agents who do his work all over the world. But…if he barged into Waterstone, Irene will be suspicious about him.”

  “And if they take any blood or any scans…”

  My mother nodded. “She will know.”

  “So, Irene is immortal.” And here I was naïve enough to believe Lila was the only one outside of my father’s knowledge.

  “If she weren’t, she would be an old woman.” My mother smiled sadly. “From the look on your face, Irene is far from old.”

  “She’s quite beautiful.”

  My mother stood and handed me one of the kitchen towels so I could clean myself up. I wiped myself down the best I could and began picking up glass. “How could you do that to him, Mom?”’

  “Penelope, until you have a child, you’ll never realize how far you’ll go.”

  My mind wandered at the repercussions of what my mother had told me. The serum had not been mass produced yet, because if it had been, it would have made it all over the news. Perhaps Irene had been searching for the formulation all this time and it had dropped right into her lap when my father showed up.

  “Did you give her the formulation?”

  My mother looked affronted. “I would never!”

  I didn’t say anything about that. If she’d sold some of it, who was to say she wouldn’t have sold the formulation if she’d had it?

  “How much did you sell her?”

  “Just one vial.”

  I didn’t know enough about the immortality serum to know how much it took to work in a human body, but my mother read my mind.

  “It would be enough for maybe three people to use.”

  I sighed in relief. “Okay. That’s not terrible.”

  I finished picking up all the glass. My mother swept up the rest of the mess and when it was completed, we ended up staring at each other. I broke the silence. “How do you propose getting Dad back?”

  “Irene is the kind of woman who likes to deal. She abhors violence and prefers to come to a peaceful solution.”

  From the way she’d shot my father in the back and sent us tumbling ass over teakettle from the ceiling, I wanted to argue that point, but I stayed silent. She’d kept us alive when she didn’t have to, so maybe there was some truth to what my mother said.

  “So, we just go in and ask to talk?”

  Mom shook her head. “No. We show up with something she wants and then ask her to talk.”

  “But she already has Sherlock and Watson, who both know the formulation, right?”

  “This is also why we are serving as a distraction. Aaron will go in and get them back.”

  “That’s a terrible idea,” I said flatly.

  “And your plan is?” she fired back.

  “My plan is anything but that!”

  She put on her patient, dealing-with-an-annoying-Penelope face. “He has made many mistakes, but the reason behind them is something he believed in. It wasn’t for his personal gain, it was to save someone he loved. Can’t we give him the benefit of the doubt this time? For the last time?”

  We didn’t have any other choice. One person wouldn’t be able to do it by themselves. “I’ll go with him.” A thought came to me. “And Cass.”

  “Ah,” she said lightly, “so you’ll trust Cass over Aaron even though she’s just as guilty.”

  “She’s not just as guilty. Aaron strapped me to a gurney and left knowing
I was likely to die.”

  “And Cass left you unconscious in the driveway.”

  “It’s not the same,” I grumbled. But she was right. Perhaps it was about time I got new friends. Or forgave them. Which one was easier, I didn’t know.

  I thanked my mother for the tea and left her quarters to find Aaron and Cass. I spoke to no one, which was easier said than done since I was the weirdo pariah around here. Maybe I should at least try to be more social. Something to worry about later. I opened my father’s private quarters and was hit with a blast of sadness. I could smell his spicy scent all over the place, yet he wasn’t here. I sat at his desk and rang for his assistant. I knew how to call her, yet had no idea where she sat during the day.

  Moments later, the young woman came in and started, expecting to see my father. She eyed me warily. “Please tell me where my father has taken Aaron and Gwynne.”

  “I was instructed to tell no one, miss.”

  I’d expected as much. “How loyal are you to my father?”

  The woman’s eyes widened and immediately narrowed in anger. “Quite,” she said in a short, clipped tone.

  “Good. My father is currently being held against his will. Telling me the location of Aaron and his sister will assist in their rescue. If you don’t tell me, I will go in alone and try to rescue my father. This could either result in success or both of our deaths. Telling me where Aaron is will give me a better shot of getting all of us out alive.” I paused and watched a myriad of emotions flicker over her face. Disbelief, anger, shock, dismay, and finally resignation as she realized I had a valid point. “It’s your call.”

  She spun and stalked out of the room. I thought I’d lost her when she barked, “Follow me!”

  I knew better than to question my good luck. I hurried after her.

  11

  I knew quite a few of my father’s secrets, but once his assistant led me through the underground maze of the compound, I realized the things he’d told me only scratched the very surface of his subterfuge. I studied the woman he entrusted with his secrets and wondered why he’d chosen her. What had they gone through together to make my father open up to her in ways he’d never opened up to me?