Jamie Brodie 01 - Cited to Death

monitoring all the mail going out of his office. How did he get it to you?"
    "The postmark was Malibu."
    She snorted. "Mailed from Ben's house. Should have known." She started pacing again, muttering to herself.
    I needed to keep her talking, to try to keep her off balance if I could. But I didn't want to make her so mad that she'd just shoot me. "Who is Andy Mitchell to you?"
    She stopped, surprised, then sneered. "Well, aren't you the smart one. Andy is my nephew. My older sister’s son. For a little extra cash he was more than happy to monitor your computer for me."
    "UCLA knows about that. He's going to lose his job."
    She waved the gun, almost airily. "Not my problem."
    So much for family ties. "What did Ben find out?"
    "He found out that I'd been married before. And that my previous married name was Collinsworth. And that there had been an Alana Collinsworth doing a post-doctoral fellowship in fertility medicine in Oxford in 2002."
    Damn . It hadn't occurred to me to investigate her background that closely. "How'd he find that out?"
    "Tristan told him, the old fool."
    "Where is Dr. Oliver? Do you have him tied up somewhere too?"
    She laughed. "Of course not. I need him. He's gone to Seattle for the weekend."
    "Does he know about the plagiarism?"
    "Don't be ridiculous. That old fart wouldn't know a stem cell if it showed up in his oatmeal. I don’t think he even read the article we supposedly co-wrote. He's here for fundraising purposes, nothing else."
    Wray was calming down, but she was also relaxing her guard a bit. I spotted a long test tube lying on the counter near the edge. If I could get her to look away from me, I could snatch it quickly. "Is Ben dead?"
    She looked over at him; I swiftly palmed the test tube and tried to curl my fingers around it without being obvious. "No, he's still breathing. For now."
    She was going to kill us, no doubt. I had to stall her. Kevin would come. "So what's your plan here?"
    That got her mad again. "I had a plan, and your boyfriend here wrecked it! So now I have to get rid of all three of you!" She stopped and took a deep breath. "The plan was that Ben would text you, you would come here and identify him as the plagiarist, you and he would struggle, the gun would go off and kill Ben, and you'd be overcome by his cologne and die. He -" she waved the gun at Pete, "wasn't supposed to be involved at all. Now I have to come up with something else."
    Pete hadn't spoken to this point; now he did. "Why not just shoot us all and flee the country?"
    What the fuck was he thinking? I stared at him. He looked back at me and shook his head slightly again.
    Wray focused on him. I used the opportunity to move a couple of feet closer to a rack full of test tubes on the counter to my right. "Because I have to keep the lab open. I can't let any of this interfere with my research."
    Pete was using his calm, reasonable psychologist voice. "Aren't there easier ways to make money?"
    Wray screamed so loudly it startled me and I almost dropped the large test tube. " It's not about the money! " If there was anyone in this end of the building, they'd hear her. Hell, they might have heard her in the parking lot.
    Pete didn't raise his voice. "So what is it about?"
    Wray advanced on Pete a bit. I took the chance of gently sliding the rack of test tubes closer to the edge of the counter. "It's about the research! The procedure will work! We're close! We just have to keep working at it, which means the lab has to stay open, which means I can't be implicated in any of this!"
    Pete was taking over the conversation so I could move around more. "But..."
    " Shut up! " More screaming. “Fucking men . You have no idea what it's like."
    "What what's like? Tell me."
    “Trying to keep me talking, eh?” She laughed bitterly. "Okay, fine. You have no idea what it's like to want a child. A child of your own . A child with your own genes. A child that isn't supposed to be possible because your ovaries were removed years ago." Her voice caught in a near-sob. "This research is my chance. If I can create ova from my own stem cells, I can have a child. My own child, in every way."
    Whoa . I figured it wouldn't be wise to suggest adoption. Pete asked, "So why plagiarize Hughes and Llewellyn's work? I don't understand why you couldn't have just built on their work rather than stealing it outright."
    “Because I didn’t have time! ” Yelling again. “The grant money was only going to fund us for two years. We