Poisoned Blood

Chapter 2: A Body in the Elevator

Margaret Bellows checked her watch, startled to see it was already almost 11:00 a.m. She jumped up from her desk and grabbed her purse as she hurried toward the elevators. Her boss, the CEO of SanguinX Pharmaceuticals, a family business passed down to him by his father, would be looking for his latte.

He took his coffee break every morning at eleven, and, as a stickler for routine, he wouldn't appreciate her being late. She hadn't lasted as his assistant for more than one hundred and fifty years without learning a thing or two about Greer Argento.

On the outside, Greer looked like a handsome billionaire who had the world by the tail. But Margaret knew the darker, tragic side of him, the man with a tortured conscience who rarely slept and kept bags of blood in a refrigerated drawer in his desk. Margaret had felt the wrath of his disappointment only once in her tenure at the company and was determined never to see it again.

Her expensive leather pumps clicked with determination as she reached the elevator and impatiently stabbed the down button. All around her, furniture and boxes were being carried into the office by burly-armed men in jumpsuits as she typed out Greer's order on her phone and pushed send.

Margaret hated moving day. It was always so disruptive. Twenty years passed quickly, and then it was another city and another office. There was no use complaining. It was a necessary evil. When most of the employees failed to show any signs of age after twenty years had passed, people were bound to notice.

Still, it was a shame. Margaret had liked Rome, and Orbetello, the little Tuscan village outside Rome where they'd built their laboratories. New York City would be an adjustment with its relentless traffic and crowded spaces. Though, with its large population, hunting would be easier.

When the elevator door slid open, Margaret absent-mindedly stepped inside, almost stumbling over a woman's crumpled body lying on the floor. “Crap," she muttered, nudging the woman with her foot. Then, seeing the raw puncture wounds in her neck, she quickly used a key on the lanyard around her neck to close and lock the elevator door.

She turned and hurried back into the office. Despite her composure, her heels tapped out the urgency of her mission, like morse code. She found Greer standing at the floor-to-ceiling windows of his office, his dark eyes brooding over the city.

His carefully tailored suit and Italian leather shoes fit in with the polished silver and grey suede furniture that looked like they belonged on the cover of an architectural magazine. After all these years, Margaret could still be impressed by her boss.

He turned at the sound of her footsteps. "Ah, my latte," he said expectantly.

"I'm afraid not," Margaret said, closing the door. "We have a bigger problem."

Greer sighed, his full lips pursed in disappointment. "Already?"

Margaret shrugged and opened the door again. "This way," she said, waiting for Greer to fall into step beside her.

"Do I need to ask who the culprit was?" Greer asked, nodding to his employees as he strolled by the desks.

"Not yet, but I think we can both take an educated guess."

"Gavin," Greer said, his expression hard. "I told him to be careful, that his nonsense wouldn't go unnoticed here. How bad is it?"

Margaret paused in the front of the elevator. "In there," she said.

"Really?" Greer said, angrily pulling out his cell phone. "In a public elevator?" He lowered his voice, firing instructions into the phone, before hanging up. "If the Dark Board gets hold of this, they won't be happy. They were already leery about my choice of location. Technology, especially in big cities, has made it a lot harder to sneak these things under the radar."

As Margaret put the key in the elevator, one of the lawyers from the firm next door called for them to hold it. Greer quickly closed his eyes. Suddenly, everyone on the floor, including the lawyer, the movers and streams of women clutching designer bags, froze in place.

When the elevator door opened, Margaret and Greer squeezed inside, careful not to step in the blood oozing out of the woman's neck. Margaret pushed the button impatiently, and as the door slid shut, Greer closed his eyes again. When he opened them, it was just in time to see the annoyed face of the lawyer sliding to a stop on the other side.

Greer bent down to examine the smartly-dressed young woman, whose eyes were closed, her face a gruesome shade of gray. Greer's eyes moved to the ceiling. "At least he was smart enough to disable the camera," he said, looking at the smashed lens. "Do you recognize her?"

"No," Margaret said, shaking her head.

Greer checked her pulse. "She's hanging on, but it won't be long," he said. "There's nothing we can do."

"She probably worked in one of the other offices in the building. Gavin's nothing if not lazy."

"After thirty years, he still can't control his impulses," Greer complained. "When will he learn that none of us exist without the clan? We all need to work together to preserve it. I don't remember ever being that capricious."

"It was two hundred years ago," Margaret said. "That's a big difference."

"Don't make excuses for him," Greer warned. "He has to understand that his actions have consequences. If someone else had found her, this place would be swarming with cops on our first day here."

"It always takes time for everyone to settle," Margaret noted. "After all, they've left everything behind again."

"That's no excuse. All of them knew what they were getting into when they signed on. That's the whole purpose of our program, to make our lifestyle a choice, not an imposition. Unfortunately, it's a luxury I wasn't afforded."

A bell chimed as the elevator came to a stop on the roof near a shiny new helicopter waiting on the company helipad. As the door slid open, Greer used his foot to flip the woman out onto the helipad as the rotors picked up speed. Margaret and Greer watched as two men in dark clothing jumped out of the helicopter and swiftly gathered the woman into a body bag.

"You'll see to it, then?" Greer asked as the men tossed the bag into the cargo hold of the helicopter.

"As always," Margaret said, carefully climbing into the back of the helicopter. "It's a half-hour flight. I'll get back as fast as I can."

“This is record time," Greer said, looking worried. "We haven't even finished moving in yet. This will be the maiden flight of our helicopter. Are we sure the incinerator is up and running?"

"They just finished it," Margaret said. "It should be a routine drop."

"Perfect," Greer said, closing his eyes again as he slammed the helicopter door. "You know how I despise surprises."