Jamie Brodie 01 - Cited to Death

needed results by that time or the funding would disappear. We were nowhere near producing results on our own. So I had to fake them, and it was easier to do it with Hughes’s article. It was in Welsh. No one would ever have known.” She waved the gun around some more. "Those fucking bastards wouldn't add me as an author on their pathetic article. I worked in that lab right along with them, and they gave me no credit for it whatsoever. They didn't want to tarnish my name with failure, they said. Bullshit! They had no imagination at all. I offered Llewellyn a job, here, and he wouldn't take it. I gave him two chances, and he said no to both of them. So it was his fault .”
    Accepting blame was not this woman’s strong suit. I suddenly realized something. “You killed Llewellyn, didn’t you?”
    “The car accident killed him. I just ran him off the road. Hughes had the good graces to have a heart attack on his own before I published my article. Saved me the trouble of going back to Oxford to deal with him." She glared at me. "You're one of them, aren't you? Uptight Oxford misogynist bastards?"
    "I went to Oxford. None of that other stuff." She was focusing back on me now. I moved to the other side of the aisle, away from Pete, and she circled around the end of the lab bench after me.
    "Thought so. I think I’ll just kill you now." She reached into the pocket of her lab coat.
    Shit . I thought of one more tactic. “You learned a lot about me from my work computer, but you didn’t learn everything. Do you know that my brother is an LAPD homicide detective?”
    Her head jerked up, and she stared at me, then laughed. “I don’t believe you.”
    “Oh, it’s true. You’re not so damn smart, as it turns out. My big brother is Detective Kevin Brodie, West LA division. And my boyfriend is his former partner. So you’re about to murder an ex-cop and the brother of a cop. LAPD is going to be on you like fleas on a dog. You won’t get away with killing us, so why do it?”
    “Oh, I think I’ll get away with it.” She pulled her hand out of her pocket and showed me a bottle of Drakkar Noir cologne.
    I blanched, and she saw it. "Oh, yeah. The doctor that treated you in the emergency room was very thorough. This is exactly the same cologne that caused your attack last week." She seemed more relaxed now, and I didn’t think that was a good thing. "I’ve worked out what’s going to happen here. A ménage a trois. So sad. Ben, as it turns out, was our plagiarist. Dan found out about it and was investigating, so Ben killed him. But Dan had told you, and you uncovered the articles. Although you suspected Tristan, Ben was nervous. He decided he needed to get rid of you as well, so he lured you here. But Ferguson intercepted the text and thought you were meeting Ben for a tryst. He came to confront Ben, but Ben had a gun, forced boyfriend to handcuff himself to the post, then shot him. You arrived, found your boyfriend dead, went crazy, attacked Ben, and were overcome by his cologne.” She walked over to Ben and sprayed a considerable amount of the cologne on his upper body. The scent started wafting toward me, and I felt my airways start to react. “Ben, poor soul, faced with the carnage, knew he’d never get away with it, so he shot himself in the head.” She turned back to me and advanced, spraying as she came.
    I heard sounds out in the hallway. Someone was yelling, and there were feet running. Pete started yelling for help. I picked up the rack of test tubes and threw it at her. She ducked, but got nicked by some broken glass. She screeched and ran at me, emptying the bottle as she came. I buried my nose in my bent elbow and turned to run. I didn't realize that there was a step stool in my path, and I tripped over it. I righted myself, but that gave her just enough time to catch up to me. She yanked my arm away from my face and hit me full force with the spray, emptying the bottle. She dropped it and ran for the back door of the lab.
    I couldn't hold my breath any longer, and I had to breathe in some of the perfume. She'd soaked my shirt with it pretty thoroughly. I felt my airways start to react and started to wheeze. And in my haste, I’d forgotten to bring an inhaler with me. With the condition I was already in, it didn't take long for me to tip over into a full blown attack. I was really starting to have trouble breathing now. I bent over at the waist, but it didn't help. I was losing ground fast. I