A shudder snaked across his body and he closed his eyes as he continued the story. “A guard came out to see what was up. The car behind us opened fire, killing him. Our car was armored, so we were safe for the moment.”
Another more violent tremor traveled through his body.
“It got worse,” she said and gently stroked his face once again, trying to soothe him.
His eyes snapped open, pupils contracted from his distress. “Franklin tried to grab the wheel to get Mad Dog to move forward past the gate, but Mad Dog threw open his door, got out, and returned fire.”
Mick sucked in a breath, and then expelled it roughly. “We had no choice but to defend ourselves. In the fire storm that followed, one of the bullets ricocheted off the door killing the nine-year old.”
“I’m so sorry,” she said and embraced him.
* * *
Mick was stiff in her arms at first, but gradually the tension left his body and he relaxed. He slipped his arms around her and brought her close until every inch of their bodies touched.
She was soft. Warm. Too warm.
“You’ve got a fever again,” he whispered by the shell of her ear.
“It comes and goes,” she replied with a nonchalant shrug.
She was trying to be strong.
No, correct that. She was strong and he admired that strength. Understood she was more woman than he had ever encountered.
Rubbing his face against the curls of her hair, it roused the smells of summer. Hints of pine from the woods they had traipsed through earlier. Chlorine from the pool.
In another time, the odors of home down the shore.
“We’ll make you better, Cat. Trust me.”
She laid her hand flat against his chest. “I do trust you, Mick. Like I said, you’ve got a soft spot.”
He had a soft spot all right. It was a soft spot in his head to maybe think that somehow this would all turn out right.
He couldn’t afford such softness because it might lead to a misstep, but he also couldn’t harden his heart against her. Against the concern she was showing for him and his family. A concern he had never experienced with any of the other women who had spent a minute or two in his life.
Despite that, he forced some command in his voice, trying to create distance between them. “Go to sleep, Cat. There’s a lot to be done tomorrow.”
“Good night, Mick,” she said, but remained close. Her body was pressed to his, the beat of her heart strong. The out-of-sync cadence merging with his until the beat became one.
A dangerous one, he thought for the barest of seconds before he allowed sleep to claim him.
* * *
Forewarned was forearmed, Liliana thought, cautious as she exited her car in the hospital parking lot the next morning. She was early for rounds much as she had been on several other occasions, needing to see Carmen Rojas and have her friend take another look at Caterina’s blood.
She was walking toward the entrance to the hospital when Harrison exited the building. He sported a white bandage across his nose and two black eyes.
She had done this to him and despite the many times he had hurt her, Liliana took no joy in seeing his injuries. If anything, she feared such a visible testament to his failure would only create more problems for her.
He hadn’t seen her and for a moment she considered going back to her car to wait until he had left, but then decided she’d had enough of being afraid of him.
Raising her head and straightening her spine, she walked toward the hospital entrance and Harrison.
He noticed her then and came straight toward her.
“What do you want?” she asked as she stopped a good distance away from him, wanting to be beyond his arm’s reach.
He looked around, clearly wanting to make sure that no one would witness their exchange. Then he took a step toward her and whispered, “You got away last night, but don’t think it’ll be so easy the next time.”
She thought about the bullies in the world and the one thing they all had in common. They were inherently cowards when someone stood up to them.
“There isn’t going to be a next time, because if you even come within one foot of me again, I’m going to take the tape of what happened last night to the police and then the hospital board. Understood?”
His face paled, making the dark bruising beneath his eyes even more stark.
“You wouldn’t do that. What would people think about you?”
A month ago or even a week ago, the shame associated with people discovering how he had hurt her might have actually made her reconsider her threat. Even the fear of how it might hurt her career at the hospital no longer held sway with her.
With a harsh laugh, she said, “They would think that I was smart enough to get away from you.”
She shoved past him, intent on starting her rounds.
Hopeful that Harrison finally got the message that she would no longer serve as his punching bag.
Once she was within the hospital, Liliana headed straight toward the lower levels that housed the labs and other non-patient areas.
Like always, Carmen was at her station in the pathology lab, making Liliana wonder if her friend ever left her spot. As she entered, Carmen shot her a bright smile.
“Good morning, girlfriend. What interesting thing do you have for me today?” Carmen said.
“Are you always so cheery about a blood sample?” she chided as she pulled the tube out of her pocket and handed it over.
“Only when it’s packed with GFPs and all other kinds of interesting anomalies.”
Liliana shook her head and chastised her friend. “You know that there’s a person behind that sample. Someone who’s not doing so hot.”
Carmen remained unremorseful. “It’s why I’m down here. No people skills.”
“You’re underestimating yourself,” she said, but Carmen ignored her by removing a drop of blood from the vacutainer and putting it on a slide. She slid a slip glass over the specimen and placed it beneath the microscope.
“Whoa,” she replied and immediately looked up at her. “We’ve got an excessive number of white blood cells present as well as lysis of an assortment of other cells.”
Liliana thought about the inhibitor drug and what it might do. Was it the after effects which were creating the fever and the need for plasmapheresis after multiple treatments? she wondered.
“Do you think the lysis is a result of the white blood cells or something else?”
“A chemically-induced lysis?” Carmen tossed out for discussion and returned to examine the sample under the microscope once again.
After long moments spent examining the specimen, Carmen popped back up and said, “There’s a lot of cell damage, as if her body had an allergic reaction.”
“And now her system is trying to mop up all the destruction afterward,” Liliana noted.
“There may be too much lysis for her body to handle on its own.”
Liliana nodded, finally understanding the need for the plasmapheresis. Aware that they didn’t have much time to undertake the therapy in order to help Caterina. She motioned to the microscope.
“With that sample, could you prepare the cell separator with what was needed to cleanse the patient’s blood using plasmapheresis?”
“I could. I will. Just let me know when you need it done,” Carmen confirmed, understanding the urgency of the matter.
“ASAP, Carmen. You call me when you’re ready so I can arrange for the treatment,” Liliana said and walked out.
Sins of the Flesh: Chapter Thirty-Two
Caterina’s fever had returned. The heat of it had warned Mick of her fragility when she had taken hold of his hand earlier that morning before dozing off to a fitful sleep.
He grabbed his cell phone and speed-dialed Liliana as he sat in the chair by the bed, hoping she would have some news about the blood sample she had drawn. His sister answered almost immediately, but strain colored her tones.
“You oka
y, sis?” he asked, worried that something was up with her. Something that had nothing to do with the trouble he had involved her in.
“Long day and lots of emergencies. There’s good news, though,” she said and her voice actually brightened at the end, giving him hope that the earlier strain was from just too much work.
“You were able to get something from the blood sample?” He shot a half glance at Caterina as she stirred for a moment, but then drifted right back to sleep.
“We did. The bad news is there’s too much going on. Lots of white blood cells and too much cell damage.”
Mick cursed beneath his breath, but Liliana immediately said, “The good news is we’ve got a plasmapheresis set-up ready and waiting for Caterina. Once we run her blood through the separator, it should relieve a lot of her symptoms.”
He thought about bringing her into the hospital and the risk it presented. Caterina’s picture had been in the papers and on television for the last few days. Reaching over, he brushed the back of his hand against her cheek.
Heat blasted from her. Too much heat.
If he didn’t risk bringing Caterina into the hospital, she might continue to get worse.
She might die.
His gut tightened at the thought of losing her.
“Where should I bring Cat?
* * *
Mad Dog cursed and tossed aside the bits of the pastel pink envelope. He had spent a few hours searching the Internet, but had made little progress in tracking down where Mick might be.
His first guess had been that the address was from a town somewhere along the Eastern Shore. He put his money on the Jersey Shore given its proximity to Mick’s home base in Philadelphia. Probably the South Jersey shore.
That guess had left him trying to decipher the name of the town with those few letters. It had taken less than an hour to discover they most likely stood for Bradley Beach, a small shore town near Asbury Park. At least an hour away from South Jersey and Philly.
Whoever had sent Mick the envelope lived in that town. Possibly a member of Mick’s family which would give him some leverage if he could get his hands on them and use them as a trade for Shaw.
Mad Dog’s cell phone rang. His client based on the number on the caller id.
“What are you doing?” his client asked, his words laced with anger and frustration.
“I’m doing what you paid me to do,” he said nonchalantly, not about to let some piss ass scientist boss him around.
“People are asking questions.”
“People, huh? Which people?” It was easy to take care of people who asked too many questions.
The other man nearly hissed the name. “Edwards.”
Interesting, he thought. “You and your buddy have a falling out?”
“Carrera and Shaw paid him a visit last night. He’s quite dissatisfied. There’s a lot at stake here.”
Fuck. Not only did Mick have Shaw, she seemed to be cognizant and working with him. Not good.
“I understand what’s at stake. I stand to lose as well,” he reminded the man. He had only received half of his fee upfront. Another cool million would only be delivered once he either brought Shaw to them or eliminated her.
“We need her soon. The longer the police continue their investigation, the more likely they are to rule her out as a suspect.”
“I’m on his trail,” Mad Dog lied, frustrated that the clues provided by the envelope had so far yielded no results.
“Hurry it along, Mr. Donnelly. If the police start looking somewhere besides Shaw, everything will be jeopardized.”
In other words, they’d stiff him for the rest of the money they owed him. “I’ll have Shaw for you within forty-eight hours,” he said, determined not to let Mick screw things up.
“Forty-eight hours. If it takes longer, we may need to reconsider our deal.”
“I get it. No cash. For either of us. Like I said, I’ll have Shaw for you in forty-eight hours.”
He hung up as his client continued with his dire warnings about the risk of failure.
He hadn’t failed on any mission he’d undertaken. Well, none except the one with Franklin and Mick. If they hadn’t been such pussies, they could have salvaged that one as well. They had been too worried about collateral damage to handle the problem. He had no such qualms.
He returned to his laptop and his search on the Internet. Plugging in Bradley Beach and Carrera yielded lots of results, from fan sites for Porsches to an assortment of news articles from area papers.
Methodically Mad Dog began to go through the materials, skipping those that seemed less relevant. He found several articles about an Antonio Carrera and his football exploits.
Unfortunately, many of the articles had been archived or were dead links. The use of the Wayback Machine site yielded the text of the articles, but not the pictures.
Damn, he thought. A picture might have helped him make a stronger connection to Mick if the football player looked anything like his ex-colleague.
What he did realize from the articles was that Antonio appeared to be at least eight or so years younger than Mick.
Additional hunts on the net yielded another Carrera – a Liliana Carrera who had been valedictorian of her high school class, but still no picture. This woman was just a few years younger than Mick. Mad Dog had little doubt that all of them were somehow related.
Tracking down the names of the local high schools, he tried to see if they had old yearbooks up on their websites.
They didn’t.
He had the same result at the local library. Although they had the yearbooks listed in their collection of reference books, they were not available online.
Powering down his laptop, Mad Dog decided he needed to do some hands on investigating.
In the morning, he would take his hunt to the streets. If he could confirm that the Internet hits for the two Carreras were for Mick’s relatives and verify that they still lived in the area, he could track down any properties they might own and scope them out.
As he considered everything, he was certain of one thing.
Forty-eight hours from now he’d be a million dollars richer.
* * *
The smell of the cheap spray-in hair color was strong, but it was all Mick could manage in the short time from the call to Liliana and her announcement that she had arranged for Caterina’s much needed therapy.
He pulled the Jeep up to the back door to the hospital. Liliana was waiting there with a gurney. Caterina didn’t really need it, but with the change of hair color and a blanket strategically obscuring part of Caterina’s face, he hoped she wouldn’t be noticed as they wheeled her through the hospital corridors.
He only hoped his sister and whoever was helping her wouldn’t be punished for their assistance with the therapy.
Arm-arm, he walked with Caterina to the door and got her settled on the gurney.
“We’ll be on the third floor. Room 303,” Liliana said. The faster they got the procedure going, the more they lessened the risk of discovery.
Mick leaned down and tucked the blanket up around Caterina’s neck, covering part of her face. He dropped a swift kiss on her cheek. “I’m going to park the car. I’ll just be a few minutes. Hang in there.”
Caterina nodded weakly and said, “I’m fine.”
He nodded and raced out the door.
* * *
Caterina met Liliana’s concerned gaze.
“So how are you really feeling?” Liliana asked.
“Hot. My joints ache and I have pain here,” she said and covered her midsection in the spot right between where her ribs ended.
Liliana eased her hand beneath Caterina’s. Pressed slightly, causing Caterina to moan from the pressure.
“It could be your spleen. It probably can’t handle all the stress your system is in.”
Liliana walked to the foot of the gurney, bent, and pushed with all her might. The gurney slid against the polished hospital floor and rolled with h
er guiding it from behind. The ding as they approached the elevator bank was welcome and they were soon on their way up.
Caterina closed her eyes and tried to ignore the assorted aches and pains in her body and the intense heat. When the gurney slowed to a stop, she opened her eyes.
Liliana was at her side with another young Latina in a light blue scrub suit. “This is Dr. Rojas. She’s a fellow doctor and a friend. She can be trusted.”
“Thank you,” Caterina said and the young woman nodded.
Dr. Rojas approached Caterina and held up a syringe connected to a long section of tubing. There was something familiar about it and in the back of her brain, Caterina realized she had seen something similar before while in Wardwell’s care.
“We need to put one needle in each arm. We’ll also be giving you an IV with citrate to avoid coagulation while we’re processing your blood. That may interfere with your clotting for the next twenty-four hours so try to avoid any strenuous activities and watch for excessive bruising.”
Caterina nodded and winced as the woman pierced a vein in her arm with the needle. The young doctor walked around and did the same in the other arm and as she did so she said, “I see you’ve had this done before, and often, so you know this may take about two hours. Close your eyes and get some rest.”
Dr. Rojas patted her arm, the action slightly mechanical and stilted. She slipped some kind of device over Caterina’s finger and a machine a couple of feet away kicked to life.
“Thank you,” Caterina said and did as instructed, knowing rest was essential to rebuilding her strength.
* * *
Liliana approached her friend and clapped her on the back as she turned on the plasmapheresis unit. “That wasn’t so bad now, was it?”
“Dead people are easier to handle,” Carmen teased while keeping her eye on the equipment to make sure it was working properly and checking her patient’s heart rate and oxygen saturation.
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