Maura leaned away from the needle, her blood pressure escalating with her panic.
"What do you want?"
Royez grinned. "Until you and that bitch detective came around, I just wanted to get the hell out of this city."
Maura frowned, her logic unable to yield to her fear. "But you called Jane. You told her you had something to show her."
"Yeah well, that was before I found out my cousin had already told the Gang of Heaven about our little operation. It sort of screwed up my plan to frame them, you know?"
"Frame them for what?"
"For Christian's murder and for Scotty's. But more importantly, for the massive amounts of poison that mi primo and I had been selling on the street. We thought we created the next meth. Instead, we made a drug that's way too powerful for the human body. You take it, you die. So I had a change of plans."
Maura adjusted her feet so her high heels weren't digging into the back of her thighs. If she was going to die, she could at least do it comfortably.
"Your change of plans included kidnapping the Chief Medical Examiner of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts?"
Royez shrugged. "Not exactly. But in the ten minutes I had to come up with a backup plan to bailing out of here, I realized you and that cop you were with go everywhere together. And I realized you're a doctor. So you can fix my recipe."
Maura's expression was bewildered. "Excuse me?"
He threw a pen and a notebook of chemical formulas at her feet. "It's only a matter of time before the cops figure out I have access to this building. Meth labs accidently blow up all the time though, right? So here's what I'm thinking. You have until my paranoia starts acting up to fix my new drug so it's addictive but not lethal. You give me the recipe, I set you free, blow up the lab and disappear. You don't give me the recipe and I blow up the lab with you in it and then disappear."
"Mark, I'm not a chemist. I've never worked with these materials in this context before."
He shrugged. "It's up to you whether or not to figure it out. But I should warn you that my whole life people have been telling me I'm a pretty paranoid guy."
He knicked the needle across Maura's collarbone, leaving a thin line of blood.
Maura set her jaw. "And I should warn you that the detective who was with me earlier is my best friend. She will not stop looking for me."
Royez turned back, the door already open. "Then you better get working. Or what she'll find will be a pile of ash in a fancy dress and high heels."
Sixty seconds later, after Maura had been attempting to pick the lock around her ankles with the tip of the pen, Royez stuck his head back in the door.
"You see that mirror, bitch? It's a two way. I can see you. So, like I said. You better get working."
