Read Online Out of Control by Shannon McKenna - Free Book Online Page B

combination of ECG, pulse oximetry, temperature, electric resistance, and detection under the epidermis.
    The Biolock Identipad wanted all five fingers, and moist, multilayered skin. It would settle for nothing else. Kudos to Krell. It was one of the most costly biometric systems on the market. Caruso himself had designed it. Marcus felt a twinge of regret that he’d been so quick to have the man killed. Craig had been useful. He’d been the one to recommend making a gummy hand with each mold, to test which image was the clearest. Marcus always followed his instructions to the letter.
    But Craig had begun to play power games. Playing hide and seek with the mold of Priscilla’s hand. Talking about “full partnership.”
    Marcus sprayed the inside of the negative mold with a light lubricant, and painted a thin coat of Caruso’s wizard’s brew of liquid gelatin inside it. He let it set, pressed his hand into the impression, let it bind, and slowly lifted it out. He repeated the process, taking exquisite care to match the print patterns, so as to fool the ultrasonic and electric field sensor features that tested for the print pattern in the underlying dermis. Fortunately, his and Driscoll’s hands were of similar size. The half-glove of gelatin was almost invisible.
    He flexed his fingers, and pressed his hand to the Identipad.
    Two seconds, and the monitor flashed. Match Found. Keith Driscoll, PhD, Laboratory Director, Calix Research Division. A photo of the chubby scientist appeared on the monitor screen, smiling broadly.
    Marcus smiled back. Driscoll had the highest security clearance, surpassed only by Priscilla Worthington herself. This was well worth the trouble he’d gone to. He’d finally lured the older man up to his quarters, after months of flirting. Driscoll was a married father of three, but his preference for young men was well documented in certain circles. Marcus’s innate practicality forbade him from hiring someone else for the job. Why risk having some muscle-headed male prostitute botch this when he, Marcus, was sexually attractive enough to handle the job?
    As it happened, he didn’t even have to go through with it. Not that it would have been a problem if he had. Driscoll’s middle-aged pudge did not repel him. Marcus’s sexuality was atypical. Power excited him. He was indifferent to the secondary details: youth, beauty, male, female.
    Driscoll had drunk a martini spiked with Rophynol, and conveniently passed out. Marcus had taken multiple molds of the man’s hand at his leisure, bundled him into his car, and left him naked and senseless on his own front lawn.
    Word was Driscoll’s wife had since taken the youngest two children back to Boston with her, and that the oldest one, studying at UCSF, would no longer speak to him. Driscoll had not looked Marcus in the eye since that night. He looked pale. Thinner. What had once been cheerful, rosy pudge was now sad, grayish sag.
    Marcus studied Driscoll’s smiling face on the screen, enjoying the warm glow of pleasure that exercising power gave him.
    A loud rap sounded upon the door. Marcus barely had time to toss the plastic cover over his project before the door burst open.
    Priscilla marched in. She was thicker about the waist and ankles than she’d been ten years ago when she’d met Marcus’s father, Titus Worthington, owner and CEO of Calix Pharmaceuticals. Priscilla had been a researcher in one of Calix’s experimental labs. She’d dazzled the old man with her beauty, brains and forceful personality, but her face had hardened over the years. With her dark hair dragged into a bun and her white lab coat, she looked like a Gestapo prison warden.
    She was shadowed by her hulking bodyguard, Maurice. She’d hired Maurice shortly after Titus’s death, and moved into her own residence as well. Priscilla was nobody’s fool.
    Her eyes brushed over his various projects