Thinking about her project made him consider all the other research currently under way at Merrick/Singer. He’d done this many times since landing in the cell. There was nothing, absolutely nothing, they were working on that would warrant what was happening if this was a case of industrial espionage. They weren’t close to patenting anything new or revolutionary. In fact, they hadn’t had a really profitable patent since he and Dan Singer first marketed their sulfur scrubbers. The company was basically a vanity project for him now, a way to keep his hands in the world of research chemistry and to get invitations to speak at symposiums.

The screaming stopped. It wasn’t a slow wind down, but a sudden cessation of sound that was more horrifying in its implications.

Geoff Merrick shot to his feet, wedging his face into the iron bars so he could see a sliver of the cell block door. A few minutes later the bolts shot back and the heavy slab of metal creaked open.

They had to drag her in with her arms draped over two of the guards’ necks while the third held a set of large keys. As they drew near, Merrick saw blood caked in Susan Donleavy’s hair. Her jumpsuit had been torn at the neck and the skin of her upper chest and shoulder was livid purple. She managed to look up as they dragged her past his cage. Merrick gasped. Her face was a pulped ruin. One eye was swollen closed while she could barely lever open the other against the weight of bruising. Blood and saliva ran in ropes from her split and slack lips.

There was just the slightest flicker of life in her eye when she glanced at him.

“Dear God, Susan. I am so sorry.” He didn’t try to fight his tears. She had become so pitiable a figure that he would have cried even if she were a total stranger. That she was an employee and that he was somehow responsible for what they had done to her tore at his soul.

She spat a red glob onto the stone floor and croaked, “They didn’t even ask me any questions.”

“You bastards!” he raged at the guards. “I will pay you anything. You didn’t need to do this to her. She’s innocent.”

They might as well have been deaf because they gave no reaction to his outburst. They just dragged her from his view. He heard her cell door open and her dumped roughly inside. The iron door was slammed shut and the lock reengaged.

Merrick decided that when they came for him he was going to fight them with everything he had. If he was going to be beaten he wanted to inflict some punishment first. He waited in his cell for them, his fists balled, his shoulders tense and ready.