"Then don't. Go home, get some rest. I'll handle this end of the investigation and let you know the results." Gibson leaned against the steel workbench. "I don't entirely know what this is all about," he said, "as Garrett's keeping the investigation into the bombing quiet, but you're not getting in over your head, are you? With this mysterious employer you've left me for?"
Ava patted his arm warmly. "You worry too much, Doctor. And my employer's offer was better than yours." A means to spread her wings outside this laboratory, and perhaps work a case of her own, one that might save London.
Gibson clamped a hand over his heart. "Aye, lass, you've a wounding tone. What could be better than working here with me?"
Ava's smile died. This room held its own ghosts for her. Once, she'd thought it a safe haven, but lately she'd begun to wonder if it was becoming a cage. "I need something more."
"I know you do," he said, kissing her on the forehead in a grandfatherly fashion. "Just don't get yourself killed while you work out what that something more is."
"It's not as though I lead an exciting life, Doctor," she scoffed, heading for the door and her coat and scarf. "I'm a laboratory assistant, and a crime scene investigator. What on earth could hurt me?"
"Someone clearly didn't want it to be known the vaccine had been tampered with. And we don't know whom. Or why they did it."
She looped her scarf around her throat. "'Yet,' as you always say," she said, "Someone, somewhere has slipped up. I just have to work out how and where and when. Everybody leaves a trace, or a secret, or a witness. Leave no stone unturned, and whatnot."
Gibson couldn't help rolling his eyes. "Get out of here before it's too late. You're even starting to sound like me."
Ava smiled to herself as she exited the room. "Not an entirely bad thing, Doctor. You're efficient, if nothing else."
* * *
Something bothered Ava about the case.
Oh, not about the vaccine. That trail led to a dead end for the moment, but she couldn't help picturing Mr. Thomas's black-veined face.
If she put the facts together she could fill in enough gaps: Mr. Thomas, a staunch humanist, received his vaccine six weeks ago, not knowing the vial was tampered with.
He began to exhibit signs of the craving virus, though they'd likely have been minimal and he might not have even known until it was too late.
And then something killed him.
It wasn't the vaccine. But was it the virus someone had changed the vaccine with? Had he been infected with some sort of mutated craving virus? She'd never heard of any complications, but then... that didn't mean there were none.
Ava frowned, pacing the small laboratory she'd set up in Malloryn's safe house. "No," she whispered to herself, thinking about Zero, the dhampir woman who'd been found dead in her basement cell in Malloryn's hidden safe house, black veins streaking like obsidian lightning through her skin. There'd been an injection site on her body; evidence someone injected something into her, which killed her.
But what?
Poison? Hemlock was the only thing that had been discovered to have an effect on a blue blood, and that wore off in minutes, depending on how high the blue blood's CV levels were.
It couldn't be some rare mutated form of the craving virus, one that killed its host as it tried to transform them. Because it wasn't isolated solely to blue bloods.
True, dhampir were evolved from blue bloods, a step along the evolutionary chain, if one had read The Origin of Species, as she had. They required an elixir vitae to help with their ultimate transformation, but their blood work was just different enough to a blue blood's, and their bodies even more invulnerable to harm.
So she now knew how Mr. Thomas became a blue blood. She just didn't know what had killed him. Or Zero. Or the other four victims.
She felt like she was missing something... like a thought hovering at the edge of her mind, but the more she chased after it, the more it dissolved into nothing.
"Penny for your thoughts," said a deep voice from the doorway.
Ava spun with a gasp, all of her senses heightening when she saw Kincaid resting a shoulder against the doorway. She'd barely seen him since last night, after they parted ways when they returned to Malloryn's safe house-she to the guild, and he... to do whatever it was that kept him busy today.
"Sorry," he said, looking anything but apologetic. "I thought you'd have heard me, or smelled my cologne."
Little more than twenty-four hours ago, he'd pinned her to the wall of the art gallery and driven her to the point of orgasm. And she was clearly not the only one reminiscing, judging by the twinkle in his blue eyes.