PhD Protector Read online

Tank set the grocery bags on the table, the cans and bottles inside rattling. At this point, he usually turned and shuffled out, but this afternoon was different. He moved toward Erin, who shrank back.

  “I’m supposed to check your collar,” he said, and took hold of her arm, dragging her toward him.

  She stood rigid, jaw clamped shut, as he ran one thick finger under the edge of the metal collar. The other hand slid down her arm to cup her breast. “Yeah,” he murmured. “Nice.”

  “Get your hands off of me,” she warned.

  “Now, sugar, seeing as how you’re going to be here awhile, we might as well be friendly.” He squeezed, and Erin brought her knee up toward his crotch, but he blocked the move and twisted her arm around her back, hard enough that she let out a cry.

  Mark launched himself at the thug, landing a knuckle-bruising blow that sent blood spurting from Tank’s nose. Howling, the guard released Erin and swung the butt of his rifle against the side of Mark’s head. Mark staggered back, his vision blurring. Erin’s screams mingled with the pounding of his pulse and the animal growl that rose from Tank. Mark fell backward over one of the kitchen chairs and tried to regain his balance as Tank lunged toward him. He scanned the area for a weapon and grabbed for the chair, swinging it up to block a second blow from the rifle. Then the barrel of the weapon zeroed in on him, stalling his heart in his chest as he stared death in the face.

  Chapter Five

  “No!” Erin’s scream tore through the noise of their struggle. “Don’t be an idiot.” She lunged toward the biggest thug, held back by the black guard, who wrapped his arms around her and lifted her off the ground as if she weighed no more than a pet dog. She kicked and flailed anyway, desperate to keep the other man from hurting Mark. “If you kill him before he finishes the bomb, Duane Braeswood will make sure you suffer,” she shouted.

  The big thug hesitated, and Mark staggered to his feet. He swayed, blood trailing down the side of his face, but he managed to glare at the guard, who snarled, but lowered the rifle. Then the thug turned and stalked to the door. The black guard shoved Erin toward Mark and seconds later the front door slammed behind them and the locks slid back into place.

  “You’re bleeding.” She rushed to Mark, her fingers fluttering over the broken bruise on the side of his head, fearful of hurting him more if she touched him. But when he swayed alarmingly, she gripped him by the arm and led him to the bed. “Stay here and I’ll get something to clean you up.”

  He opened his mouth as if to protest, then closed his eyes and said nothing. She hurried to the sink and ran cold water over a clean dishrag, keeping one eye on him in case he toppled over. The guard had hit him so hard she had been afraid at first that he’d been killed.

  But he opened his eyes when she returned to his side, and sucked in his breath when she dabbed at the wound with the wet rag. “Sorry,” she said, “but I need to clean up this blood. You’ve got a nasty bruise, and it broke the skin.”

  “At least I’m not dead,” he said. “If you hadn’t said that about Duane and the bomb, I probably would be.”

  “You shouldn’t have punched him.” Her hand tightened on his shoulder as she continued dabbing at the blood. Now that her initial terror had faded, she felt light-headed and shaky. “You didn’t ask for me to come here and it’s not your responsibility to defend me.”

  “I wasn’t going to stand by and let him maul you.” Mark turned his head to meet her gaze. “I didn’t ask for you to come here, but I’m glad you’re here.”

  The sad, defeated look had left his eyes, replaced with such strength and vitality she might have thought she was with a different man altogether. She lost track of everything in the heat of that gaze and for that split second, he wasn’t hurt, she wasn’t wearing a bomb around her neck, they weren’t trapped and this whole nightmare had never happened. They were a man and a woman making a connection.

  But under the circumstances, that kind of moment couldn’t last. The situation was too dire, their need to get away too urgent. She squeezed his shoulder again, then dropped her hand. Her voice trembled only a little as she changed the subject. “Did you notice?” she asked. “The one who grabbed me after you hit the big guy left the door unguarded. We might be able to use that information.”

  “I don’t think we can risk trying the same moves again.” He touched the wound on the side of his head and winced. “Next time they might kill me. They might kill both of us.”

  “No, we can’t risk it. But that tells us that under the right circumstances, the man on the door will abandon his post.” She stood. “Let’s see what they brought us to eat.”

  The two plastic grocery bags the guard had carried in had tipped over and spilled their contents across the table: canned soup and fruit, sliced cheese and cheap lunch meat, a partially smashed loaf of bread, toaster pastries, instant coffee, crackers, corn chips, canned ravioli and a box of chocolate cupcakes. Mark picked up the cupcakes. “This is new,” he said. “They never bring anything sweet.”

  Erin stared at the cupcakes, heart pounding. It was just a stupid box of cupcakes, but still...

  “What’s wrong?” Mark asked. “You look like you’re going to faint.” He put a steadying hand on her arm.

  She shook her head, trying to clear the fog. “It’s silly.”

  “But you think you know why the cupcakes are here this time?”

  She swallowed, trying to keep her composure. “They’re my favorite. When I was a kid, my mom would buy them as a special treat for my lunches. And even as an adult, she would keep them around for me.” Erin swallowed tears at the memory of sitting at the kitchen table after school, peeling back the thick chocolate frosting with the white squiggle through the center to reveal the cream-filled chocolate cake beneath, while her mother sat across from her, sipping coffee and asking about her day. “Mom must have persuaded Duane to include them in the delivery for us. Either that, or it’s his sick way of reminding me that he knows all about me.” She turned away, fighting to regain control of her emotions.

  Mark said nothing for a long moment, either because he didn’t know what to say, or because he wanted to give her time to recover. When she turned to face him again, he had his hands in his pockets, his eyes fixed on her with a look of cautious sympathy. He cleared his throat. “If you’re hungry, I can fix us some supper.”

  “Not yet. How are you feeling?”

  “I’ve got a killer headache, but I’ll live.”

  She leaned forward to look into his eyes, trying to remember the signs of a concussion from the first aid course she had taken prior to her first year of teaching. Something about uneven pupils—Mark’s pupils looked okay. Maybe more than a little okay—dark and clear, set in the center of irises the color of a deep Alpine lake. They dilated a little now, and his breath caught, just as hers became more shallow. Her gaze shifted to his lips—well shaped and smooth, lips that looked as if they would know how to kiss a woman. She leaned toward him, wondering what he would think if she kissed him right now. Would he write it off as her reaction to the tension of the last hour? Could she blame their situation for the attraction she felt for him now?

  He shifted and a bottle of mustard toppled and rolled toward the edge of the table. He deftly caught it and she used the moment to step back and collect herself. “I was checking to see if your pupils were the same size,” she said. “If they’re not, it’s a sign of concussion.”

  “I guess I have a harder head than I thought.”

  The cupcake box pulled her thoughts back toward home. Suddenly, she wanted to talk about what had happened to her, as if talking would help make things more clear. “My mother was there—when I arrived at Duane’s house,” she said. “But she wasn’t sick. If anything, she looked better than she had in years. She had gone along with the whole plan to lie and tell me she was dying. She said she thought it was the
only way she would get to see me again. Duane told her he needed my help with a project and she believed him. She even told me it would be good for me to go with him, so I could see how important his work was.”

  “She probably doesn’t know about the exact nature of the project,” Mark said. “Maybe he even told her he was developing something beneficial.”

  Did he really believe that, or was he only trying to make her feel better? “There’s no way she could not know about the people he’s killed, the destruction he’s caused,” Erin said. “He doesn’t try to keep it a secret. I heard him brag more than once about attacks he had masterminded.”

  “She couldn’t know about that bomb he strapped on you,” Mark said.

  Erin touched the metal collar, her fingers ice-cold. “I hope she doesn’t know.” Her mind refused to accept that her mother would ever condone someone hurting her. “Duane would have hid that. At least, I hope he did.”

  “She obviously sees a different picture of Duane than we do,” Mark said.

  Erin sat and began lining up the canned goods in a row. “In her case, I guess love really is blind.” But how could love—something that was supposed to be good—distort a person’s vision so much?

  Mark sat in the chair at the end of the table adjacent to her. “I think in the best relationships, each partner gives the other something they need. Maybe Duane gives your mom something she needs—security or devotion or something.”

  “What did your wife give you?” Erin asked. The better she got to know Mark, the more curious she was about the woman he mourned. “If it doesn’t bother you too much to talk about her.”

  “When we met, she was a teaching assistant at the University of Colorado, where I was doing research. I spent most of my time in the lab, my head full of hypotheses and proofs, facts and figures. She was much more carefree and creative. Spontaneous and warm and so many things that I wasn’t. Being with her made me feel anchored in the real world, the one outside my lab.”

  “And what do you think you gave her?”

  His smile made Erin think he had been out of practice at forming the expression, as it came out more of a grimace. “I gave her a home and a child and security—all things she wanted but had never had. She lost both of her parents right out of high school and had been on her own ever since. I was a tenured professor with a good salary and a nice home in Boulder. I know that’s what attracted her to me.”

  He made their relationship sound so...mercenary. “Are you saying you married for practical reasons?”

  “Oh, I think Christy grew to truly love me. We didn’t have a great, burning romance, but I never expected that. I was thirty-three when we met and pretty much married to my job. Having a wife and then a family made me happier than I would have thought possible. Christy got pregnant right away after we married and I thought my life was set.”

  Maybe the relationship he described wasn’t so unusual. People came together for all sorts of reasons and formed a team that benefited them both. It was a simpler—and safer—plan than the kind of consuming love that had led her mother and other women like her to destroy their lives following a madman.

  “So you were happy, then Duane came along and ruined everything,” she said. “He specializes in that.”

  “I think he likes deciding the fates of others.”

  “Yes, he does.” She rested her chin in her hands. “I’m always trying to figure out why people behave the way they do.”

  “It’s the mathematician in you,” he said. “Numbers obey logic, whereas people don’t.”

  “I guess. Duane’s parents died when he was very young, did you know that? I wonder sometimes if this is his way of maintaining control—or maybe exacting revenge on everyone who ever hurt him.”

  “Or maybe he’s just nuts. People don’t always act according to scientific principle.”

  She finished lining up the cans. “We’d better save most of this to take with us when we get out of here,” she said. “We don’t know how many days it will take us to reach help.” She slid the cans of fruit, ravioli and soup over to one side. “I can stow them in a pillowcase.”

  “Better take a can opener and some utensils,” he said. “There’s matches on the shelf next to the sink.”

  “We’ll need all our extra clothes and blankets,” she said. “Do you have a coat?”

  “I have an old ski jacket I was wearing when they snatched me. I’m more concerned about you. That denim jacket of yours isn’t nearly warm enough for the kind of nighttime cold we’re liable to experience in these mountains. It can get close to zero at these elevations this time of year.”

  “I can wear layers underneath it, and cut a hole in a blanket and wear it like a poncho,” she said.

  He nodded. “Moving around and keeping blood flowing to the hands and feet are most critical. We can’t weigh ourselves down too heavily.” He moved aside half the cans. “Our best bet will be to cover as much ground as possible, as quickly as possible. Stay off the roads, but parallel them when we can. Navigate using landmarks so we don’t travel in circles. Try to avoid cliffs, box canyons and other choke points where we would have to backtrack.”

  She stared at him. “How does a man who spent most of his time in a lab know so much about backcountry travel?”

  “I never said I spent all my time in the lab. I hiked a lot, too. Solo trips into the backcountry, mostly. I was on a trip like that when Duane’s men kidnapped me and brought me here.”

  “They ambushed you in the middle of nowhere?”

  “They were waiting at the trailhead when my brother dropped me off. After he left, they followed me up the trail and attacked me. They knocked me out and when I awoke I was tied up in a cave somewhere in the mountains.”

  “No offense, but why go to so much trouble to get you?” she asked. “There must be a lot of scientists who do what you do, including some who would buy in to Duane’s crazy plan to reform the government by destroying it.”

  Mark rubbed his hand over his eyes. “I’ve thought about that a lot. I think it’s because I wrote an article on the future of nuclear technology for a popular magazine. It got a lot of buzz on the internet. In the article I noted that nuclear weapons had shrunk in size over the years and that some people thought a so-called suitcase nuke was within reach. I was much more interested in the technical possibilities for nuclear power generation, but Duane and people of his ilk latched on to the few comments I made about weapons. Duane decided I must know more than I’d let on in my paper. Apparently, once he gets an idea in his head, he refuses to let it go.”

  “Yes, he is obsessive,” she said. “I heard rumors about other people he kidnapped because he decided they—or their loved ones—could be useful to him.”

  “How are you useful to him?” Mark asked.

  “I’m not. I don’t know why he brought me here, except that he hates the way I’ve always defied him and this is his way of punishing me.” She put a hand to the collar.

  “I think you’re here to influence me,” Mark said.

  “How can I influence you? We’re strangers.”

  “You’re a beautiful young woman. If I don’t give Duane what he wants by the deadline he set, you die. No decent human being could be unaffected by that kind of threat.”

  “I’m not convinced everyone would be so motivated by the threat of a stranger’s death.”

  “Except you’re not a stranger to me now. We’ve made a connection. You’re the person who made me feel alive—feel human again—after so many months of isolation.”

  She looked away. What could she say to that? Except that she felt a connection to him, as well. In some ways, they were very much alike. While he’d been forced to live alone in this remote mountain hideaway, she had kept herself apart from the people around her, afraid her connection with Duane Braeswood might lead
to them being harmed.

  But she didn’t have to protect Mark from that part of her life. In a little over twenty-four hours, he had forced her to lower a barrier she hadn’t even realized she had built around herself.

  “The only thing that kept me going before now was the thought of keeping my daughter safe,” he said. “Maybe they sensed that motivation was weakening the longer I went with no word from her. I don’t even know for sure if she’s all right.”

  Erin took his hand, needing the contact as much for herself as to comfort him. “When we get out of here you can find her again. Your brother and the FBI will bring down Duane and you won’t have to worry anymore.”

  He squeezed her hand, holding on tightly. “That’s the new goal. We just have to figure out how to make it happen.”

  “The next time they bring food,” she said, “we’ll be ready with the acid.”

  “It may be a while. In the past when they were angry with me about something, they let me go hungry for a few days as punishment.”

  “There’s a special place in hell for people like them.” She reluctantly released his hand and stood. “We might as well eat what they brought.”

  They settled on a dinner of canned ravioli and applesauce, and ate in silence. As Mark cleared the table she said, her voice low, “When we were talking earlier, I forgot all about the possibility that the guards might be listening to us. Do you really think they have this place bugged?”

  He piled their dishes in the sink and ran water over them. “I don’t know. I was probably being a little paranoid—a side effect of what has essentially been solitary confinement for over a year. After all, since I’ve been here by myself, what would they hear? I don’t think we really have anything to worry about.”

  She stood and stretched. “What is it about doing nothing all day that’s so exhausting?” she asked, and stifled a yawn.

  “The tension gets to you. That, and the fact that there’s nothing else to do after dark but sleep. Most days I spend an hour or two working out. It fills the time and I tell myself it’s good to keep in shape.”