Nichole Severn - Rules In Defiance

And at the dead woman in the bathtub.

“Oh, I didn’t realize this was a party.” A hollow sensation carved itself into the pit of his stomach as he dropped the gun to his side. Terror etched deep lines around her mouth. Pressure built behind his sternum. Elliot set the gun on the counter and crouched in front of her, hands raised. Mildly aware he wore nothing but a pair of sweatpants, he ignored the urge to reach out for her. He’d take it slow. The woman in front of him wasn’t the one he’d moved in next door to a year ago. This wasn’t the woman who’d caught his attention with a single smile and a six-pack of beer in her hand when she’d made the effort to introduce herself to her new neighbor. This woman was scared, vulnerable. Dangerous.

“Who’s your friend?” he asked.

Her gaze wandered to the body, far too distant, far too empty. Color drained from her face. “Alexis.”

“Okay, then. First piece of the mystery solved.” Elliot framed her chin between his thumb and index finger and softened his voice. He didn’t have a whole lot of training when it came to trauma victims, but he couldn’t keep himself from touching her. “Second question. Are you the one bleeding?”

“I’m…” She turned that ice-blue gaze back to him, her voice dropping into hollow territory. “I’m not the one bleeding.”

“Now we’re getting somewhere.” He lowered his hand, careful of where he stepped, careful not to leave prints. He’d barged into the middle of an active crime scene. A crime scene where the most trusting woman he’d known stood in the center. There’d been a struggle, that much was clear. Things had obviously gotten out of hand, but he needed to hear the rest from her. He’d learned to trust his instincts a long time ago and something about the scene, about Waylynn’s scream a few minutes ago, didn’t sit right. He pointed to the bathtub. “Last question. Why is there a dead woman in your tub?”

“I don’t remember. It’s all a blur. I woke up facedown on the bathroom floor. Water and—” she shuddered, wrapping her arms tighter around her middle “—blood were spilling over the edge of the bathtub. I got up and then I saw her. I screamed.” Tears streamed down her cheeks and she wiped at them with the back of her long, thin fingers. She worked to swallow, her knees pressed against her chest, hands shaking. She blinked against the brightness of the lighting. “It’s Alexis. Alexis Jacobs. She’s my assistant at the lab.”

Genism Corporation’s lab. The largest, most profitable biotech company in Alaska. Also one of the military’s biggest prospects for genetic testing, from what he’d learned, because Dr. Waylynn Hargraves herself had put them on the map. Advancing their research by decades according to recent publicity, she’d proved the existence of some kind of highly contested gene.

Elliot scanned the scene again.

He dragged his thumb along her cheekbone, focused entirely on the size of her pupils and not the fact every hair on the back of his neck had risen at the feel of her. Only a thin line of blue remained in her irises, which meant one of two things in a room this well lit. Either Waylynn had suffered a head injury during an altercation or she’d been drugged. Or both. He scanned down the long column of her throat. And found exactly what he was looking for. A tiny pinprick on the left side of her neck. The right size for a hypodermic needle. He exhaled hard. Damn it. She’d been drugged, made to look like she’d murdered her assistant. Framed. “What’s the last thing you remember?”

Anything to give them an idea of who’d done this. Because it sure as hell hadn’t been Waylynn.

She blinked against the bathroom lights as though the brightness hurt. “I… I was supposed to meet Alexis here, at my apartment. She said she’d found something alarming in the recent study I oversee at work, but she didn’t want to discuss it over the phone or at the lab. She insisted on somewhere private where we couldn’t be overheard.”

If Waylynn headed that study, anything alarming her assistant uncovered would’ve fallen back on her, threatened the project. But not if Alexis disappeared first. Whoever’d killed the assistant had known she and Waylynn were meeting and planned the perfect setup. Pinning his next-door neighbor as a murderer.

“Okay. You had a meeting scheduled here,” he said. “You obviously got in your car and left the lab. Then what?”

“I…don’t remember.” She wrapped long fingers around his arms. “Elliot, why can’t I remember?”

“Sorry to be the one to tell you this, Doc, but I think you were drugged.” He pointed at the faint, angry puckering of the skin at the base of her throat to distract himself from the grip she had around his arms. “Hypodermic needle mark on the left side of your neck.”

“There’re only a handful of sedatives that affect memory. Benzodiazepines mostly. We store them at the lab.” Hand automatically gravitating to the mark, she ran her fingertips over the abrasion. Her bottom lip parted from the top, homing his attention to her mouth. That wide gaze wandered back to the tub and absolutely destroyed her expression. Waylynn worked over sixty hours a week at the lab. Stood to reason her assistant did, too. They’d probably spent a lot of time together, gotten close. Shock smoothed the lines around her eyes. Her hands shook as she covered her mouth. “But drugging me doesn’t explain how Alexis… This can’t be happening. Not again.”

Again? Alarm bells echoed in his head and his fight instinct clawed through him. “You know, that makes me think you killed somebody in a past life I don’t know about.”

Movement registered from somewhere inside the apartment and Elliot reached for the gun on the counter. The metal warmed in his hand as he barricaded the door with his back.

Voices thundered through the apartment. Then footsteps outside the bathroom door. “Anchorage PD! We received a disturbance call from one of your neighbors. Is anyone here?” a distinct feminine voice asked.

“I don’t know about you, but I haven’t had this much excitement since getting shot at a few months ago.” This night was getting better by the minute, yet Waylynn hadn’t moved. “I don’t mean to alarm you, Doc, but I think the police are here. And they’re probably going to arrest you.”

“Elliot, I think I killed her.” Waylynn’s fingernails dug into his arms harder. “I think I killed Alexis.”

THIS COULDN’T BE HAPPENING. Not again. She couldn’t go through this again.

Waylynn Hargraves pressed her elbow into the hard metal table, threading her fingers through her hair. Focus. She hadn’t been charged with anything. Yet. They’d taken her blood to run a tox screen, but if Anchorage PD believed she’d killed Alexis, wouldn’t they have put her in cuffs? She couldn’t have killed her lab tech. She’d never hurt Alexis. They were friends. Even if… No. She’d been drugged. She’d been forced. Framed. All she had to do was remember.

Pain lightninged across her vision and she blinked against the onslaught of the fluorescent lighting above. A dull ache settled at the base of her skull. Whatever drug she’d been injected with still clung to the edges of her mind, kept her from accessing those memories. She couldn’t think. Couldn’t remember how she’d gotten to her own apartment, if she’d talked with Alexis, how she’d—

Waylynn swallowed around the tightness in her throat and lifted her attention to the mirror taking up most of one wall in front of her. They’d left her alone in this room, but she doubted the room on the other side of that glass was unoccupied. The weight of being watched pressed her back against the chair. “Elliot?”