Trouble in Mudbug (Ghost-in-Law, #1)(64)
“What about Helena?” Luc asked, watching the fiasco in the rearview mirror.
“We’ll wait for her at the gas station down the road. There’s no way I’m taking a chance on getting caught here. After all, no one can see her.”
Maryse turned around and slid down into the passenger seat. “We can stop at the Texaco at the end of the street. I need a cold beer anyway.”
Luc frowned. “You shouldn’t drink while you’re taking pain medication.”
Maryse waved a hand in the air in dismissal. “I’m not taking those pills, and besides, there’s not a painkiller strong enough to cover what I’ve been through tonight.”
Luc looked in the rearview mirror once more. “That bad, huh?”
Maryse slumped in her seat, her entire body aching from all the running. “I don’t think a beer is going to cover it, either.”
Luc smiled. “Jack Daniels with a shot of cyanide?”
“Only if you make it a double.”
Maryse had downed one beer and was seriously contemplating a second when Helena rounded the corner at the gas station. She was still wearing the gloves and apparently hadn’t had any success in the shoes department, either. The only switch was her top, which had reverted back to the polyester suit jacket, but it was layered on top of the neon green muscle shirt. Put together with the purple shorts, it was a nightmare of monumental proportions.
Luc took one look at her and spit his soda on the ground, his face contorted in agony, and Maryse knew he’d taken as much soda up the nose as he’d put onto the pavement.
“What the heck happened?” Luc finally managed.
“Apparently, Helena is having a bit of a wardrobe malfunction,” Maryse replied. “Don’t even ask how she got that way. She can’t tell you.” Maryse turned to Helena and glared. “And why did you have to pick running out of the hospital as the time to figure out how to touch things? Are you trying to get us caught?”
“Do you think I was trying to turn that damned cart over? If I wanted for it to happen, it never would have. Then that nurse with an ass as wide as a barn had to get in front of me on my way out the door and it happened again. But can I get these things off?” She shook the gloves again. “No, that would be far too convenient.”
The throbbing in Maryse’s head began to amplify. “Let’s just get back to the hotel,” she told Luc. “I have some research to do on Mildred’s computer.”
Safely back at the hotel, Luc tried to insist that Maryse go straight to bed. Maryse had worked to hide the fact that her head was killing her, but she figured it showed on her face plain as day. Luc finally convinced her to take half of a pain pill, and after fifteen minutes or so, she started to feel a bit more human.
Normally, she would have thought that anyone taking Vicodin after drinking beer probably wasn’t in the best condition to research the chemical makeup of prescriptions drugs, but Maryse didn’t feel the least bit out of it. Maybe all the stress had worn off any chance of a buzz. It figured. The only good side effect was that the issues with her head had completely distracted her from her carnal thoughts of Luc.
She glanced over at his perfectly formed butt, tightly clad in faded jeans.
Well, almost completely.
She tore her gaze away from the Adonis of asses and plopped down into Mildred’s office chair. Then she pointed at the door. “I can’t work with you two underfoot.”
Luc frowned but didn’t say a word. After checking every window in the office and securing the latches—again—he perched outside the door and sent Helena outside to patrol the perimeter of the hotel. She didn’t look particularly pleased with her assignment, especially as she was still wearing the pumps, but couldn’t exactly argue since Luc strolling around the hotel at two A.M. would have looked a bit suspicious.
When her self-imposed bodyguards left the room, Maryse logged onto the Internet and began her research. She started with the chemical makeup of the medications Helena was taking and did a quick map of the areas of the body affected by them. Then she did a search of agents that would cause a respiratory collapse in spite of the medications taken, but without causing so much of an attack that it brought on suspicion. Last was the really fun part—figuring out how someone could have gotten their hands on one of those agents. It took a little over two hours to complete her work, and she had narrowed it down to a liquid contained in nuclear reactors and two different plants, one of which grew across almost every square inch of the preserve.
Which narrowed her suspects down to everyone in Mudbug. Again.
Chapter Fourteen
Morning came far too soon for Maryse, and she groaned as she pressed the buzzer on the alarm. She forced herself to a sitting position and looked at Jasper, who was curled up at the foot of the bed, giving her a hard stare. She reached over to rub his head. “I know you don’t like being cooped up here, Jasper, but I swear it’s only temporary and it’s for your own good.” She sighed and rose from the bed, hoping a shower would help her clear her mind and focus on the day ahead.
The shower refreshed her far more than she’d thought possible, and Maryse decided that staying alive for another day probably had a great effect on her mood. She dumped one of her Wal-Mart bags out on the bed and pulled a pair of gray yoga pants and a pink T-shirt out of the pile. The pink and white sports bra would do nicely, so she pulled that on first. She was just putting her first leg in the yoga pants when she saw the pink panties peeking out of the pocket of her sweats.