“Make it fast. I want you here by ten o’clock tomorrow morning or I’ll waste your boyfriend. Then you can see how it feels to lose somebody you love. Maybe then you’ll understand,” Sean rambled.
“It’s the weekend. The money may not be accessible,” she stalled.
“They’re Colters.” Sean spit out the name like it was vile. “Those bastards can get anything they want. I want a million dollars in unmarked bills, and the laptop from Zane’s home lab.”
“Is anybody else there in the lab with you?” Ellie saw Tate nodding at her out of the corner of her eye.
“Nope. Everybody took the weekend off. It’s just me and the asshole who distracted my woman, turned her head with money.”
Ellie’s hands were shaking, so Tate took the phone from her, keeping it in the same position. She wanted to argue with Sean, tell him Elena had never been worth all of this, that Zane had never had the slightest interest in her, but she didn’t. Zane had never encouraged the woman. Ellie had seen that firsthand. But it was impossible to reason with a man who had gone off the deep end. Unfortunately, she’d learned that the hard way.
While she was grateful that Sean couldn’t hurt anybody else in the lab, she was terrified for Zane. “I want to talk to him. Put Zane on the phone so I know he’s still alive.”
She heard a scuffle and then Zane’s desperate voice. “Ellie, don’t come here. Call the police and let them handle it. He’s not going to let either one of us go. He’ll just kill us both.”
Sean must have gagged Zane again, because it was quiet as he came back on the phone. “He’s wrong. If you follow my instructions, I’ll let him go. I’ll have the means to become a very rich man with the money and his research. If you bring in the police or I see one police car sitting in front of this building, it’s over. Bring the stuff by morning and come alone. If you don’t, your boyfriend is dead.”
Ellie panicked as she heard the distinctive sound of a dead line. “Sean! Wait! Please!”
Tate clicked out of the call and put her phone down on one of the tables in the family room.
“Disgruntled employee, I take it?” Tate asked.
Ellie quickly explained everything she knew about Sean and Elena to Zane’s family, which was really very little. Then, she shared everything that had happened on the phone call.
“So it’s some fortune-seeking bitch who isn’t even worth it,” Marcus commented disgustedly.
“I don’t know what to do,” Ellie admitted. “I don’t even know how to access Zane’s lab here. He always meant to take me down there, but we never got a chance before we left for Denver.”
“You know the project he’s working on?” Blake questioned.
“Yes. Not in depth, but he said he’s been working on some vaccines for some worldwide diseases. Since it was going to take years, he started the project on the side. I don’t know how close he is to being finished, but I know that putting that research into the wrong hands could be disastrous if making money is the only objective to wanting the studies. Zane didn’t want pharmaceuticals. He wanted prevention. That’s why he kept it a secret. He wanted to take the research all the way to vaccines, and he’s meticulous about thorough research and replication before he acts on a discovery. He probably felt he could share the project information with Sean. He’s the director at the Denver office. Zane’s information should have been safe with Sean.”
“Where’s his lab?” Tate asked urgently.
“Underground. But it has security.”
Tate grinned. “Not a problem. Just lead me there.” More seriously, he asked, “Marcus, can you round up the money?”
The eldest Colter was already texting. “I’m working on it.”
Ellie led Tate to the entrance of the underground lab and slid the front panel aside. Tate gently pushed his way in, looking at the security device on the door.
“It’s a fingerprint scanner,” he observed, playing with a few of the mechanisms on the heavy door.
“So we can’t get in without Zane’s print?”
“Generally, no. Not unless he reset the door to accept your prints, too.”
“He didn’t,” Ellie said sadly, wishing she had pushed more to see what Zane was doing in the lab. “I don’t think he wanted me down there alone. He said there were too many harmful substances there.”
“Don’t worry, Ellie. I can breach the system. I just need to get some tools, and it might take me a while. But no security system is unbreakable if you know enough about them.”
Ellie knew that Tate was probably one of the best people to have around if she needed somebody to break and enter. “Okay. What else can I do? Should I report this to the police?”
“Hell, no,” Blake commented as he came to check out what Tate was doing. “They’d have police swarming the building. The minute this asshole sees a cop car, Zane’s chances of getting out alive aren’t good.”
“He’s right,” Marcus remarked, having followed Blake into the hallway. “The cops are going to do what they’re trained to do. That means SWAT teams, hostage negotiators, and all of the other things that will get Zane killed. Once Tate breaks into the lab, we’ll handle this.”
“I’m going with you,” Ellie said stubbornly. “He told me to bring it, and if he sees you guys, it could turn out badly. Besides, I know the building. I know how to get in without being detected. I have the codes for the alarms, and I know where the lab area and offices are located.”