Page 37 of Rekindled (The MacTavish Heirs #5)

In which life and death are seconds apart.

Lucas…

“What have ye fecking done!”

Cat’s scream forces me to lift my head. She’s across the table from me, eyes wide with horror, surging out of her seat.

Earlier…

I knew it was a risk, letting myself get caught, but I was certain Hugo would want to use me against Catriona, to make her work faster. Being inside this hellhole would make it possible to protect her when the firefight begins.

Thanks to my pickpocket, Emir, whose brother supplied detailed blueprints for the entire facility, we found several different ways to infiltrate the cave aside from the heavily guarded front and back exits, including air ventilation shafts, sewage, and water tunnels.

There were multitudes of armed men hovering for their order to open fire.

My team. The MacTavishes. And Marabout Badis supplied a legion of men eager to end Dubois’ hold on the region. He has not been kind to these people.

I’m used to thinking through every possibility, making plans for every variable. And yet, I dinnae anticipate this.

I’d been tied up and knocked about just a bit, more for show than anything when his soldiers brought me in. When Dubois steps into the little room where they’re holding me, his face flushes nearly purple.

“Ah, the bodyguard. I knew there was more between the two of you. So undignified, associating with the help. I will have a stern discussion with Catriona about this.”

His hand goes to his suit jacket, patting the pocket as if looking for cigarettes, then he growls, pulling out a nicotine patch and unbuttoning his shirt cuff enough to slap it on his arm. He huffs a bit, taking out a handkerchief and wiping his sweaty face and neck.

“I’d intended to have a nice dinner with Catriona, my fiancée, we would talk about the antidote, discuss our future together…

” He sighs deeply, “Still, you will be useful. The first live test of C-1161 was not, it seems, enough to push my fiancée to use her full potential to create the antidote. I believe you will have the proper mo tivating effect.”

“Ye know this canna last, Dubois,” I say. “Every government on the planet will rain down hell on ye if ye market something as deadly as C-1161.”

He throws back his head dramatically, chuckling as if it’s the most entertaining thing he’s ever heard.

Leaning closer, like he’s sharing a secret, he says, “Who do you think has been purchasing some of my other creations? The crime world never pays as well as an ambitious government official.”

The syringe is in his hand and plunging into my shoulder in seconds. Dubois sets a timer on his watch and nods happily.

“Bring him into the dining room in exactly ninety seconds.”

Now…

“Ye fecking bastard ye bastard ye-” Cat’s screaming, reaching for me desperately and the guards push her back into her chair.

“We can talk without a fuss, can’t we?” Hugo asks. Holding up a pistol, he nods to the guards. “Leave us.”

The calvary’s gonna come crashing into this place in fifteen minutes, but I won’t be here to see it. Just so long as Cat is .

“You recognize the effects of the slow-stepped dose of the formula, n'est-ce pas?” He prompts Cat, who is still hovering halfway out of her chair, her stiff body angled toward me like an arrow.

I feel the first trickle of blood drip from my nose, coughing wetly, more spills down my chin.

So little fecking time, my Cat. I wanted so much more with ye.

“Of course.” The words sound like they’re being strangled from her throat. “He’s bleeding from his nose and mouth, breath coming in short bursts and I know, I know all the goddamn signs and he’s in stage one of C-1161’s effect on the body.”

My chest feels like it’s caving in, intestines turning liquid. The pain is bad, but the anguish on her face is somehow worse.

Catriona…

Hugo waves the gun, not really pointing it at Lucas or me. “I am disappointed you needed another demonstration.” He makes an odd retching sound, like he’s not sure if he’s gonna cough or vomit. “I know you have been moving at a far too leisurely pace-” I clench my fists, muscles tensing.

His face is nearly purple again and sweat’s coursing down his face, wetting his shirt. Then he hunches over, coughing and hacking up blood, the bright red splattering across the white tablecloth. I’m shaking, bones rattling, when comprehension dawns on Hugo’s wet, bloody face.

I swing the candelabra closest to us at him with all my strength, the heavy silver piece slamming against his chest as I surge across the table, ripping at my hair, scrabbling through it to find the vial and forcing it into Lucas’ mouth.

My momentum knocks the chair back onto the floor and I cover him with my body, sobbing.

“Swallow, swallow please, love.” I rub his neck, feeling his throat muscles move, rubbing some more.

“It’s awright, it is. You’ll be grand. You’re just entering stage two ye got it in time it’s in time you’ll be fine.

” Babbling nonsense, words running together and begging him to swallow.

It takes a bullet hitting the chair and splintering it for me to look up from Lucas’ bloody face.

Hugo is lying half on, half off the table, a pool of vomit and gore mixing with the mess of spilled wax. “You have it.” His voice is slurred, like his throat is melting.

I remember what that feels like.

Lucas lies unmoving under me, struggling to keep his eyes open. His muscles are loose, though. They would be stiffening, spasming now if he was in stage two.

“Aye, I created it.” I yank at the ropes binding Lucas’ wrists, the shattered chair falls apart and I help him sit up, leaning against me. “It worked perfectly Hugo. When the compound binds, it turns a beautiful shade of blue.”

Hugo’s arms are rigid now, his finger still hooked into the trigger guard of the gun.

“You have…” It comes out all slushy-sounding.

“Give it..” He coughs violently, gore spraying from his mouth and his finger twitches on the trigger.

A bullet fires, going wide. Lucas lunges across the table, landing heavily, and pulls the gun loose from Hugo’s twitching hand.

“Shoo…” His purple lips are slack. The fourth stage is the most painful. “Mmm…”

“And let ye miss all the fun?” I laugh wildly, like a nutter. Like a woman who just watched her husband nearly die. “Lucas got the antidote. Ye get exactly. What. Ye. Deserve.”

We watch him in his last agonizing moments. It’s unspeakable.

I love every second of it.

When gunfire erupts outside in the hall, Lucas pulls me under the table, he’s still weak and bloody but ready to stand between me and an army if necessary.

The service door opens and édouard glides in. Lucas aims the gun at him, clicking the safety off. “That will not be necessary, Mssr. Stewart. I mean no harm.” He locks the dining room doors. “That will not hold them for long, of course.”

He steps closer and Lucas raises the gun again.

With a sigh of deep melancholy, édouard says, “I am reaching into my pocket to retrieve my phone. I trust you know who to call?”

We call Raul, who doesn’t answer, then my father, it goes to voicemail. My brother is the one who picks up the call.

“Who the feck is this?” Michael shouts.

I can hear gunfire in the background. “It’s me! We’re in the dining room, Lucas, me, and a…” I eye édouard. “A non-hostile. Lucas is gonna need a medic now- he ingested the poison!”

There’s a crackle and a tinny answer, he’s on his headset. “Who’s closest to the dining room? Guard it until we get there. Lucas and Catriona are inside.”

Lucas holds me while édouard stands by Hugo’s chair, gazing down at what’s left of his former employer. “How did you do this to him? He was always so scrupulous about his food and drink, I was his tester. ”

“Ye had to try everything first in case it was poisoned?" I’m horrified, even if this is édouard we’re talking about.

“Oui . It only happened once. I recovered.” For once, his expression is one of genuine grief, not existential suffering, or despondency.

Did he actually care for Hugo?

“He wasn’t always this way, you know.” He carefully covers Hugo’s face with a linen napkin.

“I guess that’s good,” I say. “I canna imagine how much worse he could be.”

“Tell me how you did it, si vous placez?”

“His nicotine patches. I knew this morning… I knew I dinnae have much time left. I injected a dose of C-1161 into each of the sealed patches. I dinnae know which ones he would use. He kept them everywhere.”

édouard nods, turning in a circle as if trying to find something to do.

He settles on the candelabras, circling the endlessly long table to snuff out all the candles.

Seemingly oblivious to the blood and bullets, he straightens a chair, adjusts a flower arrangement, then steps back, hands folded properly.

“Why did ye stand with us?” Lucas asks. “Ye could have brought in the guards.”

“Savoir de quel c?té le pain est beurré,” édouard intones. “I know on which side the bread is buttered.”

In less than a minute, someone pounds on the doors, shouting, “It’s Raul! We’re kicking the doors in, hang on.”

People flood through the broken, splintered wood, some of Lucas’ people, several MacTavishes. Alex, Lucas’s medic, whips out his medkit at the same time as Ian, the MacTavish combat physician does.

“Both of ye! Just get moving!” I shout. I explain the symptoms as they rapidly work on Lucas. “He needs fluids, electrolytes. A blood transfusion, a shower to sterilize him.”

Hugo had proclaimed this subterranean hell as his Grotte aux chauves-souris, his Bat Cave.

I thought he’d have an army to guard it, but the security forces are quickly overwhelmed.

Maybe after their embarrassing rout at the castle by only ten of Lucas’ men, finding fresh troops was difficult for him.

By the time Lucas is seen to and we slowly make our way to the entryway, my cousins Logan and Ethan are using the enormous metal Dubois crest over the doorway for target practice.

“Enough of that,” Lucas snaps. His skin is still tinged gray and he needs a hospital, but his tone of authority is enough.

“We need to discuss the next step,” Da says. “Even for us, this is unprecedented. Do we involve law enforcement? Blow this place to hell?”

Logan lights up, he’s known as the most “extra” of this generation of MacTavishes and his joy is palpable. “I can handle that-”

“That’s not what we need,” I cut him off, looking for my cousin Wallace. He’s sitting on an overturned ATV, cleaning his gun. “Wallace, your special services are required.”

He strolls over, “What do ye need?”

Pulling him into the circle with me, Lucas, Raul and my father, I lower my voice. “I dinnae think the C-1161 is the only thing Hugo was compounding here. There’s more. He made a comment to Lucas about governments paying better than crime families.”

Every one of them turns pale.

“What ye need to understand is that with the chemical compounds stored here, ye canna blow it up. There’s no telling what can go airborne, or what residue could be left even if the facility is destroyed, it could get into the water system, even the soil could be enough.”

I turn to Wallace, who’s scratching his neck, I can just see a hint of red, raised scarring on his shoulder before he straightens his jacket.

“We need fire. Precise, perfectly targeted fire. I will show ye the labs, the storage areas, Hugo’s safe.

Everything needs to be burned down to ash.

We can destroy every record of what happened here, but you…

” I swear I can see his green eyes glow, just for a second. “Need to cleanse it first.”

“Show me what ye need, and then get your man out of here,” he says, squeezing my arm.

As I get into the waiting helicopter with Lucas, I can smell it, the pungent, vicious scent of an accelerant. I dinnae look back.

Wallace knows exactly what he’s doing.