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?”
The door to her right clicked open. A female uniformed officer set sights on her. Past memories overrode the present and, for a split second, Waylynn felt like the fifteen-year-old girl accused of murdering her father all over again. Scared. Alone. Pressured to confess.
Tossing a manila file folder to the table, the officer brought Waylynn back into the moment. Long, curly brown hair had been pulled back in a tight ponytail, highlighting the sternness in the officer’s expression. “Dr. Hargraves, sorry to keep you waiting. I’m Officer Ramsey. I have a few questions for you about what happened tonight.”
“I know how this works.” Waylynn shifted in the scratchy sweatshirt and sweatpants Officer Ramsey had lent her after crime scene technicians had taken her blood-soaked clothing as evidence. This time would be different. She wasn’t a scared teenager anymore. She’d left that girl behind, studied her way through school, worked multiple jobs to pay for it herself, graduated with a master of science, landed a job with the top genetics laboratories in the country as their lead research associate. The work she’d done over the last three years for Genism Corporation would save lives. But the research community wouldn’t see anything other than a murder charge attached to her name. “I’m not sure how much I can tell you.”
“You do know how this works, don’t you?” Officer Ramsey took a seat, sliding the folder she’d placed on the table across its surface. Waylynn didn’t have to look at the contents to know what they contained. Her sealed records. “You’ve done this before. Are you sure you don’t want your attorney present?”
Done this before. That wasn’t a question. That was an accusation.
Her entire career—everything she’d worked for, everything she’d left behind—crashed down around her. A wave of dizziness closed in, but Waylynn fought against the all-consuming need to sink in the chair. No. This wasn’t happening. She didn’t kill her lab assistant.
“I don’t have an attorney. Listen, my father wasn’t a very nice man. So if you’re looking for some sign of sympathy when it comes to his death, you’re not going to find it, but I didn’t kill Alexis.” She set her palms against the cold surface of the table to gain some composure. “If you read the file, then you know I was acquitted. There wasn’t enough evidence to convict me of my father’s murder.”
She
