Hanna walked to the bus stop before the sun was even up the next morning, certain that going to the lab under the cover of darkness was the best way to avoid detection. She clung tightly to Alex's hair sample in her windbreaker pocket, once again thankful that whomever had poisoned Alex hadn't done the same to Marissa. She'd come close to losing Marissa on their mission to bring down Utrax. Sometimes the fear felt more real after the actual threat was over. Erik had called it reacting after the fact.
The same lab tech was waiting for her.
"Ah, Miss Wolff, it's good to see you this morning. I have the mass spectrometer ready to go. May I please have the sample?"
Hanna nodded and handed it over.
The tech was engaged in his work for the next half hour and was less chatty, much to Hanna's relief. It still made her nervous to talk to outsiders while using aliases. This time she'd chosen Lucy Wolff, combining a name she'd used to break into the Passway pharmaceutical trials in Belgium with her official Utrax alias. It only had to work here at the lab. After this morning's results, she'd never have to go back there again.
"This is unusual but definitely lethal," the tech broke into Hanna's thoughts. "Off the record, only the higher ups, and I mean way higher ups, at the CIA use this poison. It's tasteless and odorless and very versatile. It can be put in food or drinks or even packed inside ammunition in order to penetrate the bloodstream after one is shot. Whoever uses this means business. That Chairman guy, the one whose death was in the news a couple of days ago, he used to order it by the gross, according to rumor. Vienna is a city of spies, so things get around."
Hanna nearly froze. "Do you mean Gordon Evans?" If this meant what she thought it did, the plot surrounding Alex was thickening.
"Yes, he's the one. Anyway, what the hair sample shows is advanced poisoning. Your subject probably has about a week to live. Tops."
Hanna shuddered again. If Alex knew she was running out of time, what might her true intentions be toward Marissa? Or Hanna herself?
"You okay, Miss Wolff?" The tech looked concerned.
"I'm fine. Just surprised." She paid the tech, who retrieved the sample and printout. "Thank you very much," she called over her shoulder as she exited the lab.
The street vendors were out in full force when Hanna was on her way back to the hotel, their tempting aromas wafting everywhere, but Hanna knew she must not stop. Marissa had to know everything about the results and probable source of the poison right away.
Alex groaned as the first rays of sunlight began to peek around the curtain edges. She resented the morning for coming anyway when she had received news that stopped her world the night before. Only mere hours after John had made her promise to not mourn him and live like a free person once she received news of his death, the call she'd been dreading had come. Her lover was dead. Couldn't the world have the decency to stay dark and hide her away until it was her time to join him? By her calculations, her days were extremely numbered because she'd drank the dosed coffee from her father only a day or two after John was shot. She still remembered how her father had laughed.
I knew too much, Alex thought. After all these years, I'd discovered the real reason that Utrax was invented and how I figured into it. How the woman who raised me was used as much as everyone else in Gordon's wake. Then to learn that she was my real mother… Alex shuddered as she thought about it. Two people had loved her in her lifetime, the woman who turned out to be her mother and John. Now they were both gone. She would be gone soon, too, and the favored people like Hanna and Marissa would be free to live whatever lives they chose. It wasn't fair, and not very long before, Alex would have sought revenge on them for it. But John had made her promise to not harm Marissa, and Hanna was a huge complication of her own. After falling more deeply for John in the past few months, Alex's reflex of killing people had been blunted by his caring for her. She wanted to be the woman with whom John fell in love.
Thoughts of him sent a fresh torrent of tears streaming from her eyes. Only the thought that she didn't have to be here alone for very long kept her from utter despair.
"I'll make you proud, John. I can be decent."
Marissa pounded on Alex's door.
"Alex! We know you're in there. Open up. Hanna and I need to talk to you." She rolled her eyes and checked her watch again.
"She went in there last night," Hanna said. "It seemed like something was wrong, though."
"Before I get ahead of myself," Marissa said, "thank you for doing all of this work. If it weren't for you, we'd be at the beginning with no answers."
Hanna smiled at her.
They both nearly jumped when Alex answered the door. Her eyes were red and puffy as she'd obviously been crying for quite some time.
"Not that it would really matter to the two of you, but John Carmichael is dead. Yes, he was my lover. Yes, he was poisoned. Just like I have been. Yes, I'm going to die soon and be out of your way forever." She cleared her throat. "Does that get a few of the questions you wanted to ask out of the way?"
Hanna and Marissa stared at each other, dumbfounded.
"Are you just going to stand there or are you going to come in?" Alex hung into the doorframe and gazed expectantly at the duo.