Proof

by Justine Davis

  “I don’t reveal my sources. Especially to you!” she snapped.

  “So they’re ‘anonymous’ sources, then?” Tory said putting so much biting emphasis on the word that Alex had to smother a grin.

  Conner opened her mouth as if to retort angrily, and held it that way ungraciously for a long moment without speaking. Alex was about to make a comment about the number of cicadas that seemed to be buzzing around this year when the woman popped it shut again.

  “Cut it,” she snapped at the camera operator, and turned her back on them and started toward the van. The cameraman pushed a couple of buttons, then looked at the group of women he’d been filming with interest. And with, Alex realized in surprise, a glint of approval in his eyes. And he gave them a broad wink before he turned to follow the fuming reporter down the steps.

  “He’s seen a few like her come and go,” Tory said, echoing what Alex was thinking. Then she turned to the others, including Darcy, who had reappeared. “I took a cab from the airport. Can I hitch a ride to the cemetery with one of you?”

  “Christine suggested that we all ride together,” Alex said. “She said she’ll bring my rental car. She thought we might want to catch up on…things.”

  “Good. We can all fit in my SUV,” Kayla said.

  “I’ll just grab my bag. I dropped it off in the church office,” Tory said, and headed back inside.

  Moments later they were all loaded up in the blue SUV, Kayla behind the wheel, Alex in the front passenger seat, and Tory, Darcy and her little boy in the rear. Tory had said she wanted to sit with Charlie, Darcy’s son. But since he had, in that perverse way children had, gone to sleep now that quiet was no longer necessary, Alex wondered about that. She wouldn’t put it past Tory to maneuver things just so Alex would end up in front with Kayla.

  But she said nothing, and let it be as they drove through Tucson to the cemetery. Rainy’s ultimate destination.

  There was something inexpressibly final about the sight of a casket hovering over a freshly dug grave. The sight of Marshall staring at the hole only pounded the fact home. This was the end of Rainy’s journey, Alex thought. But it was just the beginning of theirs. They would, as Tory had said, find out what had really happened to their friend, inspiration and mentor. They were the Cassandras.

  The sound of the cicadas here on the hillside nearly drowned out the minister’s voice as he recited the service. Alex tried to listen, but it all seemed meaningless to her now, when she knew there was so much more to Rainy’s death than they knew.

  Yet.

  She drew in a deep breath of the hot air, the scent of heated sage and mesquite filling her nostrils. Trying to assuage the ache inside the only way she could think of right now, she lifted her head to look across the bright green lawns toward the stark mountains that bordered Tucson. They looked similar to the White Tanks, rising behind Athena Academy. Appropriate.

  Her gaze snapped back, searching for what she’d just glimpsed. She scanned the area across the lane that led into the cemetery, certain she’d seen something. Someone. Someone who looked familiar.

  Someone who looked very much like the mysterious Justin Cohen.

  He was gone. Or at least, she couldn’t see him anywhere near where she thought he’d been standing before. But she was almost certain it had been him. She’d certainly thought about him often enough since that day she’d surprised him in the infirmary.

  Of course, what was not to think about? He was, as she’d told Sheila, definitely a looker.

  But he was also FBI and had run to avoid telling anyone why he’d been on the Athena grounds. As far as she knew so far, not having heard any news from Sheila, he had no legitimate reason to be there. That told Alex she’d best assume he was not on their side.

  It all continued to spin around in her mind. The minister was finished, and as each Cassandra filed by the grave to toss in the rose she held, Alex’s thoughts were still racing. She stopped them with a conscious effort as she tossed in her own flower and with it a promise to the woman being buried that her sisters would never give up the search for what had really happened.

  But as she moved on, her mind revved anew.

  What would the FBI agent be doing here, now, at Rainy’s graveside service? Had he been at the church, too, and she just hadn’t seen him?

  Sheila had said he was assigned to a receiving-and-fencing stolen property case, the FBI connection being the Gila River reservation possibly being the site of a clearing house for the operation. So why was he in Tucson at Rainy’s service?

  How had he known?

  “Come on,” Kayla said. “Let’s go someplace where we can talk.”

  It was obvious that by that Kayla meant they should go somewhere where they could be alone and not overheard. Darcy picked up on it and quickly ran to Christine, apparently to ask her to keep an eye on Charlie. She handed over the boy and was back moments later.

  They headed for a flat, open lawn area that had no gravesites yet. The openness ensured that no one would be listening. They’d see anyone who dared approach.

  They settled down in a circle on the green grass, heedless of the toll on their funeral clothes. Quickly, Alex and Kayla brought the others up to date on what they’d discovered, including the mechanical scars on Rainy’s ovaries and the fact that her emergency appendectomy all those years ago had been a fake. Alex filled them in on what Christine had said about Dr. Bradford and Betsy Stone, as well.

  “There’s more,” Alex said, even though Tory and Darcy were staring at them in shock. “I caught an FBI agent snooping around Athena before I left last Wednesday.”

  Tory lifted a brow at her. “Do you guys ‘snoop’?”

  “I investigate,” Alex said primly. “This guy snoops.”

  The moment of comic relief broke the tension.

  “Do you know who he is?” Darcy asked.

  “I checked on him. He’s legit, out of the Phoenix office. But he’s not on a case that has anything to do with Athena. And,” she added, “I think I saw him today.”

  “Today?” Darcy sat up a little straighter.

  Alex nodded. “Just now. At the graveside. I just caught a glimpse, so I can’t be positive but…”

  “You’re positive,” Tory said quietly.

  Alex hesitated, then nodded. “Yes. Yes, I am. And I plan to do a lot more research on Agent Justin Cohen.”

  “Great. The feds,” Kayla muttered, then blushed as she remembered her muttered epithet included two of her fellow Cassandras. “Sorry. You know what I mean.”

  “Yes,” Alex said easily. “We use the same tone about ‘locals’.”

  “Touché,” Kayla acknowledged with a crooked smile. But her expression quickly changed back to serious as she went on. “Something else. I also discovered that Rainy had been researching egg mining. I found several files she’d downloaded from the Internet on her computer.”

  “Egg mining?” Darcy asked, her eyes widening. “You mean, like harvesting?”

  Kayla nodded.

  “Which would match with the scars I saw,” Alex said, her voice tight and her expression grim. “And it would fit with Ms. Airhead Reporter’s attack at the church.”

  “You think it happened way back when Rainy supposedly had her appendix out? So long ago?” Tory asked.

  “I just know it fits,” Alex said. “With the scars, it makes perfect sense.”

  “So…instead of it being her appendix, they drugged her and stole her eggs?” Tory asked, this seeming a bit far-fetched even for a woman who dealt with outrageous stories as a matter of course.

  “That’s insane,” Darcy whispered, glancing over her shoulder toward the still lingering mourners, where Christine was carrying her son away from the grim scene. “That would have to mean someone at Athena was involved, wouldn’t it?”

  “Yes,” Kayla said, as Darcy reached the same conclusion she had.

  “That’s also insane. But none of this has been sane,” Tory said, sounding for once thoroug
hly disheartened.

  There was a long moment of silence. The cicadas buzzed, the desert heat beat down on them, yet they stayed there, taking it, as if it were some sort of ceremony beyond the one that had already taken place today. Alex could almost feel the bonds growing anew as if forged by the ferocious sun. The Cassandras were together again, and together they were unstoppable.

  “What are the chances,” Tory mused aloud, “that Rainy’s murder—” She stopped as the others went very still. “That is what we’re talking about, isn’t it?”

  “It is,” Darcy said softly, hugging herself as if she wasn’t quite sure what to do with arms that weren’t holding her child.

  “Murder,” Alex said softly, as if saying it aloud made it more real that just thinking it.

  “What are the chances of what?” Kayla asked briskly, prodding them back to Tory’s original statement.

  “That this has nothing to do with Athena,” Tory finished her statement.

  All the Cassandras looked at each other, brows furrowing as they considered the possibility.

  “I thought about that,” Alex said. “I mean, I considered the possibility that I was hooking things together that didn’t necessarily go together. It’s a natural reaction, when something like this happens to someone like Rainy. You get to thinking everything that happens is somehow connected.”

  “Exactly. But she was an attorney, after all,” Tory continued, “and since she’s returned to Arizona she’s dealt with some cases that cost some people.”

  “But not criminal,” Darcy pointed out. It was true, Rainy had dealt mostly in corporate law.

  “Sometimes the supposed noncriminals are the worst. She handled the Desert Technologies industrial espionage case last year,” Alex said, remembering her grandfather mentioning it. “That cost the company incredible amounts in fines. Essentially put them out of business.”

  “And I’m sure there have been more,” Tory added.

  “I’ll look into that aspect,” Kayla said. “I’ve got some contacts in Tucson. I just need someplace to start.”

  “Maybe Sam can do a little hacking on the side, come up with some names for you,” Alex suggested, knowing there wasn’t a system in the world that CIA operative Samantha St. John couldn’t eventually crack. “If we can get a message to her.”

  No one said anything else for a few moments, but Alex could almost feel this wondrous set of brains working, and felt a brief flash of pride amidst the pain, to belong to such a group of women. She would tell them all how thankful she was that they’d seen through her protective reserve to the real Alex inside, and made her one of them. As soon as this was over, she was going to suggest they all get together and renew the Cassandra promise to each other.

  “There’s another thing,” Kayla said finally.

  “What?” Tory asked. Alex could almost see her reporter’s mind working; investigating had always been Tory’s favorite part of her work. She’d made her name famous by digging up the sometimes startling truths behind stories others took at face value.

  “When I went to start searching some files at Athena after Alex left, looking for any clue to what’s going on,” Kayla said, “I…blacked out.”

  Alex’s head snapped up. The others went suddenly tense, as well.

  “You what?” she asked, her voice deceptively gentle.

  “I passed right out. One minute I was fine, then everything sort of faded away. I woke up on a cot in the infirmary.” She glanced around, as if to be sure no one was within earshot. “I wasn’t going to even mention it, except that it was so weird, the way it happened.”

  “We need everything,” Tory said briskly. “Especially if it’s weird.”

  “Yes,” Alex agreed. Then, after a second’s hesitation, asked, “Are you all right now?”

  The faintest of smiles touched the corners of her mouth before Kayla nodded, as if she were glad Alex had been the one to ask.

  “I’m fine. And I felt fine right up until I apparently went down. I didn’t even get dizzy, nothing. It’s never happened to me before, and hasn’t happened since.” She grimaced. “Betsy couldn’t find anything wrong, and believe me, she poked and prodded everywhere. Of course, if she’s involved, maybe she wouldn’t have told me if she had found anything. But Christine was there, too, when I woke up.”

  “So,” Tory said after a moment, “Rainy falling asleep at the wheel is definitely bull.”

  “Even if it were true, she should be alive,” Kayla said. “I went to the crash scene, talked to the rescue guys and checked out her car.” She glanced at the others before continuing. “Her seat belt failed.”

  “What?” Tory and Darcy exclaimed. Alex had already heard this bit of news.

  “The mechanism apparently failed. If it had been working properly, the medics said she likely would have survived the crash.”

  There was silence again. Alex guessed each of them was feeling much the same thing. Anger. Loss. Suspicion. And at last it was Alex who put words to what they were all thinking.

  “And what are the chances,” Alex said softly, “that Kayla simply passed out, that Rainy fell asleep, and her seat belt failed?”

  “Nil to none,” Tory said.

  “My sentiments exactly,” Kayla said.

  “Once is happenstance,” Darcy said quietly.

  “Twice is coincidence,” Tory said.

  Alex repeated the third line of the old axiom in tandem. “Third time is enemy action.”

  “But who is the enemy?” Kayla asked.

  “I don’t know,” Alex said.

  “But we’ll find out,” Tory said, in the voice of someone making a solemn vow.

  “Yes,” Darcy said with a spark of her old vigor, “we will.”

  Chapter 12

  “I n Rainy’s files,” Alex asked Kayla, “did you come across the name of Rainy’s personal doctor?” They had just dropped Tory, Darcy and her son off at the airport for their respective trips home after an emotional gathering at the house where Marshall Carrington now lived alone. Christine was still there, waiting for a ride back to Athena Academy.

  “Yes,” Kayla said. “Dr. Halburg. Deborah, I think. I’ve got the address and number written down if you want it.”

  “Good. Thanks. Yes, I think I’ll go and have a talk with her before I leave Tucson.”

  It was after four, but she might catch the doctor.

  Kayla nodded. “I can take Christine home.” She glanced over at Alex as they waited for the signal to change so they could exit the airport terminal area. “Do you think there’s anything to what Shannon asked? That bit about medical experiments?”

  Alex suppressed a shudder; that memory had crossed her mind more than once since the confrontation, and given her misgivings about her own appendectomy, had struck home in a very personal way.

  “I don’t know. It’s a frightening thought. But that was a very specific question, and I have to wonder where she got the idea from in the first place. And the idea that we suspect the crash might not have been an accident.”

  “Especially since we’re the only ones who knew,” Kayla said.

  “I know. And you and I have been careful not to talk on a cell connection that could be picked up.”

  Kayla nodded as she tapped a finger restlessly on the steering wheel. “I even called Tory at home the night she got back, rather than trying to call her cell while she was in Britain.”

  “And you know none of us has said anything to anyone outside Athena.”

  “But still she comes up with those particular questions. It’s another suspicious thing to add to a stack that’s already too big.”

  “It’s getting messier and messier all the time,” Alex agreed. “But we’ve got to get to the bottom of it.”

  “Are you going to be able to stay away from work much longer?” Kayla asked.

  “I’ve still got a bit more personal leave time coming,” she said. “My boss has been a bit of a pain about it, but since I’ve never taken any
personal leave until now, he’s stayed fairly calm. He’s not happy about me taking it all at once, but there’s not a whole lot he can do.”

  “Stick you on graveyard and make you file?” Kayla suggested wryly.

  “He hasn’t tried that yet,” Alex said. “Is that the voice of experience speaking?”

  “Yep.”

  “Who’d you tick off?”

  “Which time?” Kayla asked.

  Alex’s mouth curved slightly. “That often, huh? How did you do that? Besides being female, Navajo and smart, I mean.”

  “That isn’t enough?”

  They both smiled then, relaxed and easy, and it was almost like old times between them. And it felt good, Alex admitted. Darned good.

  The signal finally changed to green and Kayla moved the SUV smoothly into traffic. Once she was settled in a lane, she spoke again.

  “What does your fiancé think about you taking off across the country like this?”

  “He’s not happy, but he understands. Or if he doesn’t, he doesn’t say so.”

  “Wise man.”

  “It’s more that nothing rattles him much.”

  “I imagine to be a heart surgeon like he is, you have to be steady.”

  Someone had clearly been keeping Kayla up-to-date if she not only knew Alex was engaged, but that he was a doctor. And a heart surgeon specifically. She wondered if the information had been offered, or if Kayla had asked about her.

  “He’s that, all right. Unshakable. Although sometimes stick-in-the-mud fits better.”

  She hadn’t meant to say that, but that kind of thing had been popping out lately. All of her small dissatisfactions seemed to be bubbling to the surface, manifesting in stray thoughts and slips of the tongue like this one. She’d chalk it up to tension about Rainy, but if she was brutally honest she had to admit it had been happening even before.

  Kayla changed lanes to dodge a truck that was spitting out rocks from its uncovered load. “Doesn’t sound like you’re very happy with him right now.”

  “He’s a brilliant surgeon, and saves a lot of lives,” Alex said, aware she was sounding a bit defensive. But what she was saying was true. “And he’s generous, calm and very patient. He doesn’t like my choice of work, particularly, but he understands how important it is to me. Just as I understand how important his is. It’s a…comfortable relationship.”