Page 45 of Devil
Stepping around her, Darius walked into the room. Reaching the middle, he stopped and slowly spun. When he was facing her again, he spoke. “I guess now we know for sure she had some daddy issues.”
Devil made a face, not that he could see it through her mask, but she was pretty sure he got the message.
“Do you think he knew?” Darius asked, walking over to one of the walls.
“Dr. Gerard Pritchard has an enormous ego. I suspect he fueled it,” Devil answered. “I suspect he enjoyed reminding his daughter of all he’d accomplished.”
“And everything she hadn’t,” Darius added.
Devil inclined her head. Remaining in the doorway, her eyes scanned the room for any personal items, like a journal. She didn’t need to see up close the evidence of what was, undoubtedly, a sick sort of relationship between father and daughter.
“I don’t see anything personal here. Nothing that would tell us why she did what she did,” Devil said.
Darius walked along one of the walls, studying the items pinned to it, then paused beside the bed. Gently lifting the map, he peered underneath. “There’s a notebook here,” he said, then looked up, asking her to make a decision.
“Take it,” she said. It might hold evidence of a crime, but they didn’t have the luxury of letting the authorities have access to it first. Yes, it would fuck up the chain of custody, but if it prevented a biological weapons attack, then she didn’t feel too bad. Besides, Franklin could probably smooth things over once the dust settled. Assuming people didn’t die from the Frankenstein’d virus first.
Darius slipped the small book out from under the map and slid it into his back pocket. He flinched with the movement, and her eyes homed in on him. “What’s wrong?” she asked.
He glanced up, surprise written on his face.
“You winced,” she said. “Did you get hurt?”
He didn’t confirm or deny; rather, he moved past her and out the room. “I think we’ve been here long enough. Let’s head out, and we can talk in the car.”
She eyed him, then nodded and followed. They reached her car a few minutes later, but she gestured for him to stop when he started to remove his mask. “Don’t touch anything and don’t remove any of your gear,” she ordered.
He hesitated, then nodded. Her gaze swept the area before landing at a spot beside what looked like a small garden. “Go there,” she said, pointing toward a rolled-up garden hose attached to a spigot. “I’ll be over in a second.”
As Darius made his way to the garden, she quickly opened her trunk, grabbed her duffel, then shut it again. She joined him at the garden, then dropped the bag a few feet from where he stood.
“What’s the plan?” he asked.
“Jennifer Pritchard did not die an easy death, and while the ventilation system in the lab was good and we had our masks on the entire time, I’m not taking any chances.” She knelt beside the bag, unzipped it, and started pulling a few things out.
“Makeshift decontamination?” he asked.
She nodded and handed him a garbage bag. “Leave your gloves on but strip out of all your clothes and put them in the bag. It’s a good thing we’re in the country, or the neighbors would be getting quite a show.”
He’d obviously done something similar before, because his questions stopped. A few minutes later, he was standing in boxers, a mask, and his gloves. Taking the garbage bag from his hands, she held it out and gestured for him to dump his gloves inside.
Setting it to the side, she pulled on a fresh set of gloves over the ones she already wore and rubbed her hands in alcohol towelettes before picking up the hose. “This is going to be cold, but at least you won’t be without company.” And with that, she turned it on and sprayed him down, mask and all.
When she moved to spray him from behind, her eyes tracked the water cascading down his body. She’d been imagining the water washing away anything he might have picked up in the past hour. But her thoughts abruptly stopped when she noticed the water was tinged with pink as it fell in droplets to the ground.
Stepping closer, she put a hand on his shoulder. He stiffened under her touch. Maybe because she’d startled him. Or maybe because he knew what was coming next.
“You’re hurt,” she said, that familiar, though not welcome, blanket of cool descending over her. He’d been hurt and hadn’t bothered to tell her.
“It’s not bad, just got a little knock on the head.”
She tipped his head forward to look at the series of cuts—likely from the bark of a tree branch—at the base of his skull. Along with the decent-sized goose egg. “Did you lose consciousness?”
He hesitated. “For a few minutes. Long enough that the person I was chasing was able to jump into their Honda SUV and take off. I came to in time to see it disappear down the road.”
“I see,” she said, prodding the wound. The scratches weren’t deep, but he must have a hell of a headache. And again, he hadn’t bothered to tell her.
Without another word, she finished rinsing him off, then had him tip his head back and remove the mask while she poured water over his face. “Stay like that for a minute,” she ordered when she’d finished. Setting the hose down, she reached into the bag and pulled out some alcohol wipes. Handing them to him, she ordered him to use them on his face, hands, and anywhere that had been exposed when they’d been in the building.
