Stronger than Sin (Sin Hunters)

by Caridad Piñeiro

  “Thanks.”

  “Do you think you can walk around?” Her eyes narrowed as she considered him, clearly doubtful.

  “I think I can,” he said, and with great care, and one hand on the mattress to steady himself, he slowly stood. As soon as he was on his feet, she slipped beneath his one arm, offering support as he took his first hesitant step and then a second.

  Hips bumping yet again, reminding him of her assistance the other day and his dreams of the night before. Bringing that same unwanted reaction to her nearness, only today it was even worse. He was more aware of the feminine feel of her and her scent, alluring beneath the vanilla-almond smells of hand wash.

  He breathed in that scent deeply, hungry for it after so much time alone.

  “Are you okay?” she asked as she noted his exaggerated inhalations.

  “Fine. I think I can do this by myself now.” He shifted away from her. From her natural perfume and the enticement of her body.

  With any other woman all he would have to do was flash an inviting smile and they’d be in bed, but he suspected Liliana wasn’t like the other women he’d had in his life.

  He faced her and raised his arms over his head, twined his fingers together, and pressed upward, attempting to alleviate the stiffness in his muscles and joints. Part of it was due to his inactivity, but he suspected a larger part of it was a by-product of the Wardwell genes in his body.

  “You’re looking better,” she said as she returned to the bed and opened her medical bag.

  “Feeling better,” he confirmed and walked to her side, where he waited for her instruction.

  “Would you mind sitting down again so I can tend to those abrasions, get some more blood and skin samples?”

  He eased back down onto the edge of the bed and held out his arm. “You wouldn’t be a vampire, would you? Because you sure seem to need a lot of blood.”

  An inviting flush erupted across her cheeks, and her hand trembled against his skin while she wrapped the rubber hose around his bicep. “I’m sorry, Jesse. We’re seeing a big difference between your blood and Caterina’s. We need to figure out why.”

  “Caterina?” He tried to recall the other patients who had been with him. A face popped into memory. Beautiful and haunted.

  “I remember her. She escaped the night Dr. Wells was killed.”

  Liliana paused with the needle right on his skin. “How do you know that?”

  “I was fighting with another patient. A big hulking guy—”

  “Rob Santiago. The police think he killed Dr. Wells,” she said and finally pricked his skin to draw the blood.

  Jesse nodded, remembering the immense man prone to incredible, nearly uncontrollable bouts of rage. The one difference between their fits of anger—Santiago seemed to get off on the violence.

  “Wells came in when Morales had us fighting. Morales liked to do that—pit us against each other as if we were junkyard dogs,” he said, recalling the little scientist’s vicious fun.

  Liliana finished drawing the blood, slipped an alcohol-soaked cotton ball on the wound, and urged his arm upward to apply pressure. Then she began tending to the abrasions on his ankles and wrists. “So you were fighting with Santiago?”

  “At first the sparring was just to satisfy Morales. But when Wells came in that night, I knew something was up. Wells wanted to blow the whistle on the illegal project.”

  Liliana finished bandaging his ankles and sat down beside him once again, her gaze trained on his face, obviously eager to hear more. “What happened then?”

  Jesse shrugged and dropped his arm. The small pinprick was already healed over, another by-product of the Wardwell genes.

  “I guess I shouldn’t have worried about your scrapes,” she said as she noticed and urged him to continue with a delicate flick of her hand.

  “Morales commanded Santiago to kill Wells. I jumped in, trying to stop him. I figured if I could overpower Santiago and Wells got away…”

  Only Wells hadn’t escaped, but Caterina had, he thought.

  “I’m sorry that it took so long for you to be free,” she said and once again laid a hand on his arm. She was definitely the touchy-feely type, but he shrugged off the contact, unable to deal with the needs it roused.

  “I got away. Maybe in time we’ll find the others,” he replied, repeating the lie as Whittaker had instructed. Although he had his doubts about the other man, for now he had to play by Whittaker’s rules to safeguard his sister’s life.

  Liliana tucked the blood sample into her bag and removed another test tube and scalpel.

  “What’s that for?”

  “A skin sample. I thought I noticed some hard patches on your hands.”

  He placed his hands before him and spread out his fingers, displaying an assortment of scars from playing football, as well as the denser, deadened flesh along his knuckles. “It’s from the body bag,” he explained.

  “The body bag?”

  With another nonchalant shrug, he met her gaze. “Ever since they stuck these genes in me, I get angry and need to vent. I punch the body bag, but…” He ran his fingers along the back of his other hand, the sensation deadened thanks to the thicker skin.

  “May I?” she asked and, at his nod, grasped his big hand in hers. She ran the pads of her fingers along the same spots he had just seconds before.

  Only this time he experienced her touch like a jolt of electricity and yanked his hand away.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to hurt you,” she said, but as their gazes connected she realized the reason behind his skittishness. That becoming blush erupted along her high cheekbones again and she stammered, “I’m sorry. I didn’t—”

  “Hard not to resist the first woman in a long time, Doc.”

  Her gaze narrowed, and she tightened her lips into a thin line. “I’m not a woman. I’m your physician.”

  He laughed at her annoyance. “Sorry, Doc, but you are definitely all woman.”

  She sputtered in indignation but quickly recovered. “Your hand, please, Mr. Bradford. I promise it won’t hurt.”

  He offered her his hand, and she carefully scraped off samples of skin from each of his knuckles into the test tube. Then she sealed it up and placed everything back in her bag.

  Back stiff, she rose from the bed and said, “I’ll be by later to see how you’re doing.”

  He rose, as well, although the gentlemanly gesture cost him as his body protested the movement. He grimaced and looked away from her, caught sight of the bag she had been dragging around earlier.

  “What’s that?” he asked and walked toward it, his long strides eating up ground as Liliana followed him, but she placed her index finger on her lips to signal him to be discreet, since Bruno was within hearing distance just outside the room.

  Jesse bent and opened the top of the bag. Realized what it contained. Reaching in, he retrieved one of the trophies and read the engraving.

  New Jersey All-State Champions 2000.

  “Where did you get this?” he whispered, gently placing the trophy on the floor and then pulling another from the bag.

  “Your mother asked that I give them to you. I told her we hadn’t found you yet, but I suspect she knows there’s more to the story I provided.”

  He nodded, battling back the emotions roiling in him. The dangerous soul-deep hurt, and worse, self-pity. Dragging in a deep breath through the tight constriction in his throat, he continued removing all the items until the floor around him was littered with the debris of his past.

  She stood beside him quietly the entire time until he finally looked up at her.

  This time there was no denying what he saw.

  “I don’t need a pity party,” he said, rising to his feet, his hands clenched at his sides as he battled his own emotions.

  “No, you don’t,” she said, surprising him. Pointing to the awards and trophies lying along the floor she said, “You should be proud of all you accomplished, only it’s time to leave the past behind
.”

  “Is that what you think I do? Live in the past?” he nearly shouted and took a step toward her.

  She flinched, almost as if he had hit her, and stepped back. Coupled with her earlier reaction to Whittaker, he wondered what had happened to her. An abusive relationship, maybe, he thought and because of that, he tempered his actions.

  “What’s in your past, Doc? Why are you afraid of me?”

  She lowered her gaze and shook her head, sending the shoulder-length strands of her hair into motion. Thick, silky locks that hid her face from him.

  When he moved toward her again, he did so cautiously and she didn’t move away. Raising his hand, he cupped her chin and gently urged her face upward.

  She was beautiful, he thought. Strong, as well, but he could see that she had suffered. Her eyes spoke volumes. The urge rose up in him to protect her, although he suspected she wouldn’t like that, either.

  “I won’t hurt you, Liliana” he said, repeating his earlier vow. Savoring the way her name tasted on his lips.

  “I’m going to try and believe that, Jesse. But there’s something else I need to know.”

  Beneath his fingers, he sensed the tension in her. Knew that despite her words, she feared his response to the question. Because of that, he dropped his hand and took a step back. Opening his arms wide, he invited her query.

  “Ask away, Doc.”

  She nodded and clasped her hands before her. Peering upward to meet his gaze, she said, “All the other patients in the Wardwell program were beyond help. It’s why they qualified for the experiments. But you… How did you get into the tests?”

  Jesse jammed his hands on his hips and considered lying. Not that it would help, since in time, she was bound to find out. So he admitted to his shame. To the sin of pride that had whittled away his common sense and brought more pain and loss than he had ever thought possible.

  “I bribed my way into the program.”

  CHAPTER 7

  Liliana heard his words and yet had to repeat them to be sure. “You bribed your way into experimental tests.”

  He leaned toward her, and he was so large it would have been scary except for the pleading look in his gaze. “Try to understand.”

  “Understand? You could have lived a normal life—”

  “I’ve done normal, Liliana,” he said and blew out an exasperated sigh before dragging a hand through his hair and continuing. “I grew up on the wrong side of town. I watched my mother and father struggle every day to provide for us. I wanted better. For me. For them. For others.”

  Liliana thought back to the home she had visited just hours before. Clean and newly renovated. Surrounded by homes in a similar state in an area that otherwise was a little dated. The Mauraders flags and decals everywhere. She knew then what he had done and why they boasted his colors. It matched the generosity he had shown with the scholarships he had created.

  “You fixed up your parents’ home. Your neighbors’ homes.”

  He shrugged casually, as if it had been nothing. “They were always good to me. It was the least I could do.”

  She imagined the punishment his body took out on the ball field. The pain and effort he had endured for that “least” he had provided for his family and friends. For the students at his old alma mater. He had allowed himself to become a guinea pig, only…

  “Do you think they would have wanted you to make this kind of sacrifice for them?”

  With a sad tilt of his head, he half turned and pointed to the detritus of his life sitting on the floor of his bedroom. “What do you think?”

  Liliana couldn’t deny what was staring her in the face or the disgust his father had exhibited that morning. But his mother had seemed to feel differently. Maybe his sister also.

  “I think you can’t judge everyone by what your dad thinks.”

  “Or what you think. Admit it, Doc. You know the real me, don’t you? The brawler, party animal, and playboy,” he challenged, stalking away from her and back to the trophies and awards littering the floor.

  She had thought she knew the real Jesse Bradford. Now she wasn’t so certain that she did. But she couldn’t let herself get personally involved any further. She already was getting to know more than was maybe good. He was her patient, and he was prone to violence.

  She had to remain objective.

  “I’ve got to go, Jesse. There’s a lot to do,” she said as he bent and started putting the trophies back into the bag.

  “You do that, Doc. It’s important. For the other patients.”

  She wanted to tell him that it was important for him, as well, but couldn’t give him false hope. She had been battling the genes replicating in Caterina’s body for months now, and it was a difficult struggle. One that she hoped she could win, but there were no guarantees.

  “I’ll be back,” she said, although she wasn’t sure he heard her. He seemed engrossed in his task, pausing to examine each of his prizes as he placed them back in the bag.

  As he hopefully let go of the past.

  Carmen had prepped the skin samples, and the specimens provided a clear picture of what was going on along Jesse’s knuckles. It wasn’t good, Liliana thought as she examined the slides.

  The cells from his skin were packed with far more genetic material than was typical. Plus, there was an abnormal amount of the various cells necessary for producing compact bone in the human body, but not in skin, Liliana thought.

  Bone was her specialty, and yet she had never witnessed anything close to what she just had on the slide.

  “What’s up, Doc?” Carmen teased as she walked out of the clean room where the geneticist was still hard at work on the various blood samples Liliana had brought them.

  “Don’t call me ‘Doc,’ ” she snapped. It reminded her too much of Jesse.

  “That good, huh?” Carmen asked and came right up to her, shot her a gentle hip check to get her to move away from the microscope.

  “Whoa. Amazing bone formation,” her friend said, then straightened, a puzzled look on her face. “Wait, this was his skin sample, right?”

  Liliana nodded. “Right. He says this started after Wardwell implanted the genes.”

  Carmen plopped down onto a lab stool beside Liliana. She held a number of papers in her hand that she tapped against her leg repeatedly while she considered what Liliana had just said and then inched over to take another peek into the microscope. “If this is happening all over his body—”

  “Not all over. At least, not that I can tell from what I’ve seen,” Liliana explained.

  Carmen fought back a grin. “So you’ve seen a good amount of his body?”

  Liliana shook her head in exasperation. “No, Carmen. I haven’t, but I guess it makes sense to do a full physical exam.”

  “Definitely, but if you don’t want to, I’d be happy to volunteer,” Carmen teased.

  Liliana bit back a rebuke about staying professional, as well as an unexpected pang of jealousy. Hiding that emotion, she teased, “I may have to mention to Ramon that you have this recurring desire to see Jesse Bradford naked.”

  Carmen laughed and nudged Liliana with her knee. “You do that and I’ll never forgive you, amiga. And I won’t let you see these,” she said and brandished the papers she had in her hand.

  Liliana snagged them midwave and then laid them out beside the microscope along the surface of Carmen’s workstation. She organized them into piles. DNA tests. Blood tests.

  As with Caterina, the DNA analysis pointed to the presence of nonhuman genes in Jesse’s body.

  Liliana motioned to the results on the various exams. “Do we have any idea what kinds of genes produced this?”

  “Not yet. We’re not getting the kind of replication that we had with Caterina, so we’re dealing with a limited amount of DNA to analyze.”

  Liliana rounded up the tests and asked, “Why do you think that is?”

  Carmen shrugged. “Maybe the samples are bad? They sure aren’t glowing in the same way
as Caterina’s blood specimens.”

  “Or maybe they used different fluorescent proteins to track the genes?” Liliana suggested.

  “Possibly. Or maybe we need a different sample,” Carmen said and reached for the DNA tests. She flipped through them, so rapidly that Liliana wondered what she could possibly see, but then Carmen said, “Bone marrow.”

  Bone marrow was responsible for the production of the cells that eventually led to bone formation. “Taking a bone marrow specimen is painful. Maybe even risky, since we don’t know what’s really happening in his body.”

  Carmen raised her hands as if in surrender. “Just putting it out there, Lil.”

  “Noted,” Liliana said and then reviewed the blood tests. As Carmen had observed, there was a decided lack of fluorescent proteins. Admittedly Caterina’s disease—brain cancer—and the genes to regenerate what the cancer had destroyed had been different. But there was one similarity with Jesse: his white blood cells were reacting to the foreign genes and causing cell destruction. In time Jesse might need an injection of the inhibitor complex to slow down the gene replication, as well as a plasmapheresis treatment to remove the poisons that could threaten his health.

  The tests had also shown elevated protein levels. “Can we tell what kinds of proteins these are?”

  Carmen nodded. “Already working on it. My guess based on everything I’ve seen so far is that they’re—”

  “Bone morphogenetic proteins,” she said, thinking the same thing. Given the unusual bone on Jesse’s knuckles, elevated proteins might explain that bizarre behavior.

  Jesse’s words replayed in her head. “Bradford says that the hardness on his knuckles started happening when he punched the body bag. Inflammation occurs at the site of injury, and that leads to bone formation.”

  “So any injury—”

  Let’s hope that it’s not any injury, Liliana thought. That would mean that little by little, more and more of Jesse’s body might become ossified until…

  “Please do the analysis. I’m going to go back and see about doing a full physical exam. And talk to Jesse about getting a bone marrow specimen.”