Sizzle and Burn

difficulty controlling their parasenses. Their normal senses were affected, as well.”
    “The old instability problem,” Zack said.
    “My father immediately stopped all research on the enhancing formula and went to work on an antidote. He believed he was making progress. During the last year of his life he worked day and night in the lab. He was desperate to save himself and Aunt Vella.”
    Andrew looked at her. “He found something?”
    “Yes,” she said. “He began giving the antidote to Aunt Vella and himself, even though it was still highly experimental. It was a course of injections designed to be taken over a period of several weeks so that the results and side effects could be closely monitored. But Dad was killed in the car accident before either of them completed the series. They were each supposed to take one more dose.”
    Zack went very still. “That’s why the two of you went to his lab the night of the funeral.”
    She nodded. “Aunt Vella writes in the journal that she was desperate to take the last injection of the antidote. By then she had realized that she had been sleeping with the enemy. She knew that when Wilder found the lab, he would destroy everything in it.”
    “Did she get the final dose?” Gordon asked, riveted.
    “Yes.” Raine took another sip of wine and lowered the glass. “I remember her driving us to the lab that night. She knew the code that unlocked the door. Once we were inside, she sat me down in a chair and gave me one of my favorite books to read. It was about horses. I loved that book, but that night I couldn’t concentrate.”
    “No mystery there,” Andrew said. “You were traumatized because you had been to your father’s funeral that day.”
    “At the lab she went into the small room where my father had installed a special refrigerator.” Raine watched the flames dance in the hearth. “Wilder Jones and his men stormed through the door a short time later and started taking the place apart. Aunt Vella rushed out of the refrigerator room and scooped me up in her arms. She was crying and screaming at Wilder. The next thing I knew we were sitting in the back of the car, being driven home by one of Wilder’s men.”
    “She took the last dose of the antidote that night,” Zack said, looking very thoughtful. He switched his attention to Andrew and Gordon. “How long was it before you started seeing signs that she was in trouble?”
    Andrew and Gordon exchanged looks.
    “Three, maybe four months later,” Gordon said. “The first episode only lasted a few days. She seemed to return to normal after that, at least for a while.”
    “We thought the worst had passed,” Andrew explained. “But the episodes came and went with increasing frequency over the years. Each was more severe and lasted longer, leaving her a little more fragile.”
    “But she lived until last month.” Zack leaned back in his chair, stretched out his legs and put his fingertips together. “She’d still be alive if she wasn’t murdered.”
    “She had to be institutionalized at the end,” Gordon reminded him.
    “Yes, but you described her as being relatively calm and reasonably lucid during the last year of her life, thanks to Ogilvey’s meds and therapy. And we know for a fact that she was able to think clearly enough on the night of her death to leave a message for Raine.”
    “Where are you going with this?” Raine asked.
    Zack tapped his fingers together once. “I’m thinking that, although your father’s version of the antidote was obviously flawed, he must have leaped a few major technical hurdles.”
    She frowned, baffled. “What do you mean?”
    “As far as I know,” Zack said, “your aunt lived longer than anyone else who was given several doses of the drug and then deprived of it. In every other instance that I am aware of, the individuals all died within days, usually by suicide. But Vella Tallentyre, for all her odd behavior, did not go insane and she did not take her own life. According to the historical records, that makes her unique.”
    They all absorbed that for a few minutes.
    After a while, Raine stirred in her chair. “In that case, you might be interested to know that taking the last dose of the drug wasn’t the only thing that Vella did that night when we went to the lab.”
    Zack watched her steadily. “What else did she do?”
    “My father kept three sets of lab notes—one on a computer, another on a hard-copy printout and a third in his