Page 83 of Her Captivated Hero

“Riya, how well can you hear me?” Wyatt asked.

“I can now. What is it?”

“The Jordanian royal family has just been rushed to the hospital. They were the ones targeted. It makes sense that the Saudis would want them dead. Their two borders butt up to one another, and without the King or his heir, the Saudis could take over.”

That had been the worst case scenario in Riya’s mind. Not only did she personally like the King because he’d married a kick-ass woman with a degree in business, but Jordan had also helped America’s military forces. She knew they were a target because they were currently being politically bullied by Saudi Arabia. She would do anything to help this ally of America stay alive.

“So it was the four royals?” she asked, “or were there more people in their entourage affected?”

“How did you know?” Wyatt asked.

“Because a lot of the time they have distant relatives act as assistants and bodyguards. My guess is that they might not have been as sick, unless they were a close relative.”

“One lady was convulsing. A couple of others, not too bad.”

Riya nodded. “Get me that canister, I’m sure I can counteract it. If I can do this fast enough, we can get this to the hospital and save them,” she said urgently. She let loose the hose so she could take a deep breath.

She thought she heard a banging, then Wyatt went and opened up the door to the suite. It was Hunter and he had his modified oxygen tank. She crimped her hose again so she could hear.

“Do you want me to put it in there?” he asked pointing to thick plastic curtains covering the bathroom entrance.

“No. What is it?” He was going too fast and she was having trouble hearing him.

“It’s the tank from up on the roof. Do you want me to go put it in your clean room?” Hunter asked again.

“Does this hold the deployed canister that was used on the King and his family?” she asked as she took the modified oxygen tank out of Hunter’s hands. Then she looked at his hands. She wilted. All they had were protective gloves. Just leather to keep them safe. She hated that.

The suite door opened again. It was Gray with Dex was right behind him.

Gray was saying something, but she couldn’t hear him. He practically yelled, so she could finally hear him in the receiver over the hiss of the air. “What are you doing?” he asked.

“Since this has the canister with the toxin used on the King, I’m going to analyze it. It should be extremely close to what I examined last month. This will just have a genetic tweak or two that I need to comprehend in order to develop the counter-sequence. Once I have that, the antitoxin will take minutes to create, but it will then need to be administered as quickly as possible. It’s the analyzing process that takes the longest.”

“That’s not the canister that was used on the Jordanians. This is the one from the roof,” Gray clarified.

“Where’s the one used on the King?” she asked.

“Aiden’s trying to track it down.”

Riya’s stomach clenched. They didn’t have time to waste. The amount of time it took to process things through the centrifuge, thermal cycler and fluorescence reader would take hours. Minutes mattered.

“When does Aiden think he’ll be able to retrieve it?” she asked.

“They closed off the entire room. Nobody’s allowed in, otherwise I’d send the whole team down to help search.” Gray was obviously frustrated. “As it is, Aiden’s going to have a hell of a time finding and then taking the canister out of there.”

“I’m down here looking too, Gray,” Dalton said in his ear.

Thank God for small miracles.

Riya took her time thinking it through. The Jordanians were the target. They would have used the same toxin in the room, and had a back-up going through the HVAC units. The triplets had all died in under sixteen hours. She needed to make a command decision.

“There’s almost a hundred percent probability that this contains the same toxin as the one in the ballroom. I need to get to work now,” she decided.

Gray stepped in front of her, careful to keep space between them so he didn’t touch her suit, he didn’t want to risk damaging it. “Riya, are you sure?”

“Gray, be logical. What are the chances this doesn’t contain the same thing?”

“Riya, it’s my job to expect the unexpected. So far, things have gone wrong, so it seems to me this could, too.”