In For the Kill (McClouds & Friends #11)(134)

She hated the turn the conversation was taking. The speculative way both men were looking at her body made her stomach flop.

“Lift your arms into the air,” Hazlett said, getting up and walking slowly around her. She could smell the sharp citrus perfume of his aftershave, then the cold, hard circle of the gun barrel against the nape of her neck. “And do not think for one instant that I am not capable of putting a bullet into your brainstem if you move.”

“I do not think that,” she said, thinking of the lake of bones.

“Renato, take the gun from her waist holster. And search her for other weapons. I know you’ve been itching to put your hands on her.”

“Certainly.” Renato’s voice was an oily ooze. He stuck his hands into her waistband and took out the gun, but left his hand under her shirt, stroking her belly, sliding up to cup her breast. “So warm and soft. Bellissima.” He ran his hands greedily over her chest, squeezing and probing. Sveti clenched her jaw, swallowed. Stayed motionless.

“Renato, stop fondling her and get that envelope she’s holding,” Hazlett said impatiently. “It holds what remains of Sonia’s photos.”

Renato snatched it out of her hands and shook the pictures into his hand. He shuffled through them, making angry, petulant little noises, then grabbed the silver bucket that the white wine had chilled in. He dumped the ice into the small sink in the bar, placed the bucket on the table, then grabbed one of the tapers out of the candelabra.

He set the sheaf of photographs on fire and held them in front of her as they burned. When the flame threatened his hand, he dropped the charred, blackened scraps into the bucket, darting Sveti a spiteful look. “She looks a bit the worse for wear today, Michael. Her glow has dulled. It happens to them all, my friend. Sad, but true. Beauty fades.”

“She’d shine right up again, if not for those pesky moral principles,” Hazlett complained. “Those are what dull her. Just like both her parents. It must be genetic. Such a pain in the ass.”

“Both parents?” It jolted her like a cattle prod. “You knew my father, too?”

“Of course,” Hazlett said. “That’s where it all began, back in my impatient youth. I was looking for shortcuts to fame, riches, and glory.”

It all crashed together in her mind. “The lab my father blew up, in Nadvirna,” she said. “It was yours. Zhoglo was supplying you with test subjects. The orphans and mental patients.”

He sketched a theatrical bow. “Mea culpa. It started decades ago late one night over a bottle of wine. Renato was researching a compound that blocked a certain molecule from binding to its cell surface receptor. If pretreated, the compound completely protected tissue, skin, muscle, bone marrow, from lethal doses of radiation. The implications were stunning. So that night we came up with a plan.”

She felt as though she could see right through the flesh of his face. She saw his naked skull, with that wild, pale blue light blazing out of his eye sockets. A death’s head, babbling cheerfully on.

“We went with a two-pronged approach. On the one side, Illuxit Transnational would set up random controlled medical trials for cancer patients undergoing radiotherapy, in Brazil, India, the Ukraine. In the Ukraine, I started considering Vadim Zhoglo as a possible partner for the second prong of our plan. He saw the possibilities right away. An intelligent man, Zhoglo. I was sorry when he died.”

“I wasn’t,” Sveti said woodenly.

“Well, of course, you wouldn’t be,” he said vaguely. “Anyway, we went ahead with the legitimate, slow and plodding development of the Milandra line of cancer treatment drugs, and they’re a big cash cow for TorreStark, I’m proud to say. Zhoglo organized our shadow lab, where we conducted our more . . . well, aggressive research, you might say. He provided materials, and we—”

“Materials? That’s what you call the people you murdered?”

“Don’t be self-indulgent,” he scolded. “You know how the world works. He provided test subjects—until your father stopped him.”

“Papa,” she whispered. For the first time, she saw the nature of this monster her father and mother had battled so bravely. She finally saw why they had felt so driven, so compelled to stop him at all costs.

They’d been willing to sacrifice themselves, and ultimately, her too. It didn’t make it less painful, but she understood them now.

“Sergei had us fooled, right up to the end,” Hazlett said. “He cost me years of research. I wouldn’t have been forced to open the lab in Italy at all, if not for his meddling. All those lives could have been spared. But as it was, we built again and developed our secret compound. We piloted the legitimate research right where it needed to go, too. It’s all legal and aboveboard now. One injection of ABR2B-88 before total body radiation completely protects the subject from both gastrointestinal and hematopoietic acute radiation syndrome. The possible applications for the military, for industry—”

“And the black market,” Sveti said.

Hazlett shrugged. “We’ll see. We haven’t launched it yet. Renato, get the cuffs from my briefcase and bind her hands, so I can relax.”

Renato complied, opening the case that lay on a table. He jerked her hands together, and Hazlett pressed the gun under her ear.

“Bitch,” Renato muttered, as he ratcheted it brutally tight.