Saffron stood on the spongy earth, clutching it to her chest. “You’ll telephone and tell them I’ve done what Alfie asked. You’ll tell them to let Alexander and Nick go, and when I see they’re safe, then you can have the case.”
“You’ll hand it over now.” Colin’s face twisted into a cruel grimace of a smile. “You don’t want me take it from you.”
CHAPTER47
No one moved.
All the eyes in the lab were on Elizabeth, or, more specifically, the dish in her hand.
“Sutcliffe?” The older man at the other end of the room spoke with a wheeze. “Is that something we need to worry about?”
Sutcliffe’s established flush bordered on violet. “Yes,” he spat. “Look here, you daft woman, put that down, before you—”
“I will not,” Elizabeth said, raising the glass dish higher. “You heard me. I want answers.”
“Petrov and Wells were ill,” Burnwell said angrily. He’d gotten to his feet. “Sudden bouts of sickness.”
“Then why is your laboratory being investigated?” Elizabeth asked. “Why am I here, threatening you all with mold?”
“That isn’t mold.” Mary spoke timidly, fingers twisting together. “It’s a fungus, one that will—”
“Sorry, darling, but I don’t give a damn.” She needed to maintain control of the room and keep them distracted. Plus, she would love to be able to tell Nick at the end of all this thatshehad solved the murders after all. “I want to know what happened to Wells and Petrov, and I want to know what happened to the missing specimen.”
“Nothing happened to them,” Quinn said. “We’ve already told you—”
“It wasn’t an accident,” Elizabeth snapped. “Good Lord, I thought you lot were meant to be intelligent! Two of yourcolleagues die within weeks of each other and you all just shrug it off as bad luck?”
The room stilled again, the faces of the scientists showing they were thinking it over, and many of them were drawing the natural conclusion. Several looked alarmed.
“This entire situation is mad,” said the older botanist, removing his spectacles to rub tiredly at his eyes.
The scientists all started to speak at once, their arguments and accusations layering on top of one another. Their voices bubbled up like milk left over the heat, and Elizabeth was likely to be the target when it finally boiled over. She cleared her throat, preparing to make another threat to get them all quiet again, but a small voice cut through the din.
“It was me.”
The entire room turned as one to the person who spoke so miserably, their expressions as stunned as Elizabeth’s own.
Recovering herself, Elizabeth demanded, “What do you mean, it was you?”
Misery in every line of her face, Mary said, “It was me. But I never meant to kill anyone, I swear!”
Saffron inched backward over the uneven dirt of the raised bed. “The people Alfie will sell this information to will do terrible things with it.”
“And Alfie will do terrible things to your beloved Alexander if you don’t give it to me,” he hissed.
There was a flicker of movement beyond the condensation-blurred walls. Saffron resisted following it. It could be any number of people, including Colin’s conspirators, coming to tell them that time was up. She couldn’t afford to hope otherwise.
She reached down to the shovel, struggling to balance, clutching the case’s handle in her hand as she knelt on the uneven ground. “The information contained within this case could destroy entire countries, Colin. Don’t you care?”
Her fingers closed around the shovel’s handle, and she rose, her eyes never leaving Colin’s.
His eyes narrowed on the shovel. “Don’t you dare.”
With wide-eyed innocence, she said, “I have to put it back. The dirt too. Otherwise, someone will notice and start asking questions.”
“People are already asking questions!” he cried. “That’s the whole bloody reason for Nick Hale being here, isn’t it? He caught wind of our scheme and came to put an end to it.” A sneer stretched his face. “But he’s been caught. Like a fat fly in a spider’s web.”
She looked to the wall of foggy glass, then to the door. If she made a run for it—
