Hearts of Glass (The Glass Trilogy Book 3) (6 page)

“No.”

“So all that pussy talk was you . . . you—”

“Playing a role. Glad I had you convinced.”

“How did she find you? Put an ad for an audition in Variety, looking for actors or something?”

He laughed. The movie star, pearly white teeth laugh that had me so flummoxed earlier. The actor thing made total sense.

“Okay, truth is I’m not really a real actor. Yet. But I wanna be an actor. They tell me I got the looks for it. I’d really like to stop this line of work, but like I said, it pays the bills.”

I narrowed my eyes, thinking of the last time I got tricked by an actor. “Cal Halpan didn’t have anything to do with this, did he?”

“Cal Halpan? Sounds familiar.”

“We worked together on a movie. He was my leading man. Daniel was the director actually.”

Remy grinned. “You’re an actress? Get outta here!”

“Remy,
can
we get the fuck out of here, please?”

He squinted his eyes as if sizing me up. “You can make up the ten grand I’ll be losing if I let you go?”

“I swear. Like I said, I’m a woman of my word; I’ll pay you double.”

“Twenty grand?”

“Twenty grand.”

“Deal,” he said, and held out his hand. We shook on it. “You’d better come through, I have some major debts to pay off.” He dug into his jeans’ pocket and pulled out a set of keys. “Your ticket to freedom.”

I exhaled a giant sigh of relief, and tears prickled my eyes. Finally, there was a chance to find Daniel before it was too late. “Thank you. Thank you so much.”

I watched him, as he fed the key into the lock and turned it, like I was a dog observing its owner eat steak. Every second felt like an eternity while Daniel’s life was on the line. I knew I had to get him away from Kristin but wasn’t sure how. I still had no plan. It was bad enough that Kristin was such a respected doctor, but if they really had gotten married that would give her legal right to make executive decisions. How the hell would I—a nobody in people’s eyes—convince anyone?

“Are you as strong as you look?” I asked Remy. “Or are those muscles just for show?”

He laughed. “Yeah, I’m pretty strong.”

“Can you fight? Do you have any martial art skills?” I wasn’t sure what the hell I was thinking, but trouble, in one form or another, was surely on its way.

He unlocked the door and it flew open. The animal sounds became instantly louder. I winced.

“I box,” Remy told me. “I’m pretty tough for real, but in a ring, not on the street. I’m sure as hell not looking for trouble, nor do I want to do anything illegal.”

“Oh, so locking me in here wasn’t illegal? You had no—”

“Ssh, what’s that sound?”

“All I can hear are the animals, I—”

“Ssh! Listen,” he whispered.

There was someone there, at the far end of the corridor. My heart jumped into my throat and then plummeted down to my toes. I thought I heard the cock of a revolver. And then, out of nowhere a slim, dark figure emerged from the shadows. “Don’t move,” the voice said.

I recognized the accent. “Elodie?”

“Thank fuck,” she replied, moving towards us. Elodie looked like a cat burglar. Not that I’d ever met one in the flesh. Even though I recognized her voice, I was spooked by her. Dressed all in black, her face covered by a mask.

“Who the hell—” Remy began.

“It’s okay,” I broke in, gripping his arm with my clawed hand. I hadn’t realized how tense I’d been. “She’s a friend.”

“With a fucking gun? I’m outta here!”

But Elodie was right before us now. “You’re not going anywhere, Remy Foxton.” She pointed a pistol at his chest.

“How the fuck d’you know my name?” he gasped, his hands in the air. I wanted to know the exact same thing. How did she even know where we were? With my cell phone battery dead?

She grabbed me by the wrist. “Turn around, Remy. Hurry up, you guys, we need to set these poor, suffering animals free.”

That was all very well and good, but right now Daniel was my number one priority.

As if reading my mind, Elodie said, “Daniel’s fine, by the way. We can deal with him next. And sorry about the fuck up with my bodyguard Paul not getting to you soon—.”

I cut her short. “You know where Daniel is?”

Out of the shadows four figures dressed in black—also in ski masks, and holding powerful flashlights and huge bolt cutters—shot into my vision. I jumped back. One of them muttered something to Elodie in French. Three of them looked like men: chunky, muscular. Another was slight, could have been a woman. More hushed words were spoken in French. I only understood the odd phrase.

“Dépêchez-vous.” ‘Hurry up,’ the thin figure said. I was right, the voice told me she was a woman.

Elodie pushed Remy in front of her, the pistol wedged in the small of his back. I couldn’t believe she was doing this. The niece of the respected Alexandre Chevalier behaving this way? Was she covert? Was she working for the FBI or something? I doubted it. Vivisection wasn’t illegal. Setting lab animals free was.

“Move,” she instructed Remy. “And don’t try anything crazy.”

“It’s okay,” I said, coming to his defense, “he’s cool.”

“Nobody who works for that bitch is cool,” she snapped. “There’s an alarm, which we need to disable. Just . . . let’s keep in a tight group while the team work their magic.”

“Who are these guys?” I said, under my breath. I was terrified of the real Vegas police busting in on us. Any second now. I wouldn’t be much use to Daniel if I was arrested and locked up in jail.

“French Foreign Legion. Friends of my uncle’s. Don’t worry, we’ll be out of here soon.”

I had visions of wild primates roaming the streets of Las Vegas. Setting lab animals free, willy-nilly, when many of them had never known freedom, was not the brightest idea. They’d get run over by cars and could be a danger to the general public. Chimpanzees could be extremely aggressive and dangerous when frightened.

“Take your gun out of my back,” Remy said between gritted teeth. “I’m on your fucking side! I’m working for Janie now. Tell her, Janie. Tell her that you’re my new, temporary boss.”

“It’s true, Elodie. I’m giving him twenty thousand dollars because he let me go.”

“Well that was a waste,” she said with a snicker. “I was seconds away from picking that lock to free you, myself.”

“Don’t worry,” I assured Remy, “I’ll still pay you what we agreed. I’m good for the money.”

We waited while the team in black set to work on disabling the alarm system and slipped an electronic card into the lock of a huge metal door. The animals were now hysterical. I was afraid the whole world could hear.

“Ere, take zeez,” one of the men said to me above the deafening noise. He hurled a pair of thick leather gloves at me, and a couple of black, nylon masks. “And you, too” he instructed Remy, throwing another pair his way. “You need to protect your ’ands. Zey’ll bite and scratch, zeez chimps are fucking strong.”

“A shipment of them came in a few days ago,” Elodie said. “There should be twenty-six in all.”

“Came in from where?” Remy asked, putting on his mask, and then gloves, which reached half way up to his elbows.

“From the animal sanctuary, the one Natasha Jürgen’s foundation was funding. Dr. Jürgen’s been using them for experiments and breeding. Trying to find a cure for Alzheimer’s and other brain diseases. Can you believe she actually gets a government grant for this shit?”

I could feel the pulse pounding in my temples.

“Every year in the U.S., and in France, and fucking everywhere,” Elodie continued, looking at Remy, “millions of animals are used in biomedical experimentation and product testing. Experimental drugs are pumped into the poor creature’s stomachs—even though the U.S. Food and Drug Administration reports that animal tests have a 92 percent failure rate in predicting the safety and effectiveness of pharmaceuticals. It’s sick! Especially nowadays when you’ve got stem cell research and there’s so much advanced technology. Toxicity tests using human cell cultures are two to three times more accurate than tests on animals.”

“I hear ya, you’re preaching to the converted,” Remy agreed.

Elodie lowered her gun. “So you
are
on our side?”

“Paul McCartney is my grandmother’s hero.”

Elodie gave him a high five. She turned to me. “Get your mask on Janie, and your gloves. You’ll need them.”

I was horrified at what was before my eyes: several chimpanzees had shaven heads, with metal electrodes attached to them like helmets. It looked like they’d had holes drilled into their skulls, with these metal restraint devices screwed in, and electrodes actually inserted into their brains.

I couldn’t bear to look so I closed my eyes, but the image was imprinted in my brain. It was the most horrendous thing I’d ever seen.

“Don’t worry, the electricity’s been cut—reason why we got flashlights. We can snip the wires connected to their heads without harming them,” the woman said in a thick French accent, amidst the noise. “The vets will take this shit off them later, after they’ve been sedated. The papers will call what we’re doing ‘an act of terrorism,’—but
this
is fucking terrorism.”

My gaze roamed the room; there was what looked like a monkey fetus in a jar labeled “liquid nitrogen.” I glanced at a set of study notes pinned to a corkboard. My eyes scanned quickly:

Cerebral Concussion and Traumatic Unconsciousness Correlation of Experimental and Clinical Observations on Blunt Head Injuries:

Single unit activity in the frontal eye field was investigated in unanesthetized chimps during eye and head movement. Two types of cells (I and II) were found.

I could feel bile creeping up my throat, and I swallowed it back down. My knees felt like water.
What kind of monsters test on
unanesthetized
animals
? Monsters like Kristin Jürgen, all in the name of science. Sadly, she wasn’t the only one who thought this ethical, obviously. These notes, all typed up officially, were proof that others found this perfectly acceptable.

The next half hour was a fever of activity, flashing past me in a surreal dream. Or better said, “nightmare.” At the same time as all this horror, I prayed that Daniel was okay. If this woman was capable of this, she’d be capable of anything.

I followed orders as we made a human chain from the lab to an open back door, where a truck was waiting. The team freed the cages from their positions in the lab, the screaming chimps inside, rattling on the bars, thumping their chests, terrified. Or maybe they were excited and knew we were here to help them. It broke my heart to see the condition they were in. It was pandemonium. The sound was unimaginable, screeching ringing in our ears. As well as the chimps, there were five Beagles. I wondered why I hadn’t heard them barking. And three cats, also with electrodes screwed into their heads.

“They’ve had their voice boxes removed,” Elodie explained, “so nobody can hear them howl and scream in pain.”

Looking out the back door, I saw that the lab building was isolated, far from the city. It was pitch dark, no lights, and I couldn’t see any other buildings nearby. No wonder they chose a place far away—people would be horrified if they knew what was going on here.

“Where are they all being taken?” I asked.

“To a private sanctuary in Utah. My mom’s, actually,” Elodie said, nodding at the other woman. “Well, she set it up.”

“Your mom?”

“That’s her,” she told me, pointing to the slim figure, who was shouting orders at everyone in French.

I’d heard about Sophie Dumas. Alexandre Chevalier’s sister, co-CEO of Hooked Up, the multi-billion dollar social media company, bigger than Twitter and Facebook combined. I couldn’t believe she was involved in this. She was risking her career, risking her reputation. Any moment now a SWAT team could come crashing in on us with high precision rifles. My heart was pounding so hard I thought I’d end up suffering a coronary attack. All I wanted was for this to be over with so we could get to Daniel. The idea of us all being arrested before we had a chance to find him was terrifying, consuming my every thought.

But in no time all the animals were loaded, cages and all, and the truck was on its way with the team inside, minus Elodie, Remy, Sophie, and me.

“Let’s get the fuck out of this hell hole,” Sophie hissed. “Follow me.”

We bundled into a waiting SUV. I was glad to see, even in the dark, it had tinted windows. I heaved a sigh of relief as we screeched away, leaving the lab behind, hopefully never to return.

“How did you find me?” I asked Elodie, when we were at a safe distance from the lab. I looked at my hands, still in their gloves. I was trembling like crazy. The screaming chimps’ faces were engraved on my mind.

“My hacker.”

Sophie chuckled. She was in the front seat, next to the driver. She took off her mask, shook out her mane of thick dark hair. She was a very beautiful woman. Fine featured, with feline-shaped eyes. “Why don’t you just come clean, Elodie, chérie? You should be proud of your skills.” She turned to me, “Takes after my brother (‘bruzzer’ her French accent said)—very smart with computers.” (Smart wiz computers.)

Elodie shrugged her shoulders. “Okay, I admit, I hack too. I have a small team—we work together. We don’t do bad stuff, you know, we only use it for the general good.”

Sophie laughed again. “Especially when the general good is to our advantage.”

“But my cell phone battery died,” I said, confused. “How did you know where I was?”

Elodie pulled off her mask and ruffled out her long brown hair. She didn’t look like her mother at all, but she was equally lovely. Her oval shaped face delicate. She didn’t appear like a typical “bad” girl, but quite the sweet ingénue. Butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. The last person in the world you’d imagine a hacker to be.

“I picked up the place where your cell’s last signal was sent out and located you. Luckily, there are CCT cameras all over Vegas. Found the car on camera and tracked you down. Meanwhile, discovered all sorts of shit out about Kristin Jürgen and her evil practices. Good thing I picked up Pearl’s phone the other day, eh? Thanks to you, Janie, we freed these animals.”