Proof

by Justine Davis

  Later, she told herself. Worry about that later. Deal with the here and now.

  She called Kayla’s cell. She answered just before it went to voice mail.

  “Lieutenant Ryan.”

  “It’s Alex. I need…some of your time.”

  Kayla read the undertone in her voice. “Urgent?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can you give me five, maybe ten minutes to wind something up here?”

  “Good enough. Can you call me back on a secure phone?”

  Bless her, she asked no questions. “I’ll use the scrambler on my end. Where are you?”

  “The bungalow.”

  “Got it.”

  It was a bit less than five minutes when the phone rang. Alex grabbed it in the middle of the first ring.

  “What’s up?” Kayla asked.

  “I had a long talk with the Dark Angel today.”

  She hadn’t meant to start there, but that’s somehow what came pouring out first.

  “What?” Kayla almost yelped.

  “His name is Justin Cohen. He’s the FBI agent who broke into the infirmary, the one I told you about. And I found him at Rainy’s doctor’s office today.”

  Kayla let out a low whistle. “The Dark Angel is FBI? How’d that happen?”

  “I don’t know. We never got to that, there was too much else.”

  “This isn’t good news about the Dark Angel reappearing again after all these years, is it?”

  “No. Very little of this is good news.”

  “I closed my door. Let me lock it and close the blinds, so no one’s tempted to interrupt.”

  Alex heard her set the phone down, heard the tinny sound of metal blinds being flipped closed. Then Kayla was back.

  “Okay. I’m sitting down and ready.”

  “First of all, I’m convinced now there’s no connection to Rainy’s legal work. There’s just too much happening on the other front, and my gut’s telling me that’s where the answer is.”

  “All right,” Kayla said, “we drop that and focus on the rest.”

  Just that easily, she took Alex’s word. Alex took a breath, then plunged ahead. “Kayla, I need you to listen, hard, to a lot of stuff. And not say anything until I’m done.”

  “All right. Let’s go.”

  And in more or less the order she’d learned it in, Alex told Kayla everything. It took a very long time. And Kayla was as good as her word, she said nothing but “Go ahead,” whenever Alex had to pause to organize her thoughts or untangle something that had come out confusingly.

  Alex tried to keep her opinion and suspicions and conjecture out of it, merely telling her friend what had been said and what she’d learned elsewhere, differentiating between fact and supposition.

  At long last, she was done.

  “Damn.” Kayla said nothing more for a very long time. But finally, in her organized fashion, she said, “All right, let’s break it down. If we take what he told you as true, what do we have? Facts, Rainy is dead. Cohen’s sister and her baby are dead.”

  Alex fell quickly into the old method they’d used long ago to work their way through complex problems. “Supposition, Rainy’s eggs were mined. Fact, Kelly Cohen died being a surrogate.”

  “Supposition, Rainy’s eggs were used.”

  “Fact, someone broke into the morgue and tried to steal Rainy’s body.”

  “Supposition, it was to cover something up.”

  “Fact, someone broke into Rainy’s fertility doctor’s office. Supposition, or maybe probability, since it was the C files that were disturbed, is that they were looking for her file.”

  “And throw in the sizable coincidence that said doctor is out of town unexpectedly at the very moment we needed to talk to her,” Kayla said.

  “Yes, there’s that, too. Then, fact, Rainy’s supposed appendectomy was faked.” Alex was pacing again, quickly, as if the speed helped her stay controlled as they batted through the incredible list.

  “Also to cover something else up. Supposition, the egg mining.”

  “Fact, the same doctor that faked the medical records on Rainy was Kelly’s physician.”

  “Supposition, they’re connected somehow. Which means this is very long-term.”

  “Fact,” Alex said, her voice tight, “Betsy Stone was involved in both cases.”

  She waited, and at last Kayla said it. “Supposition…Athena is involved.”

  “And the Dark Angel has been right all along.”

  Alex could think of nothing else to say, and it seemed Kayla was in the same boat, for the silence spun out over the line like an almost palpable thing. It was as if they were both sitting there watching the world they’d known and loved crumble around them.

  “Alex?” Kayla’s voice sounded small, as if she were weary beyond believing. Alex knew that feeling, all too well. “What if…there were more?”

  Alex let out a long, compressed breath she hadn’t really been aware of holding as Kayla voiced the thing she hadn’t yet had the nerve to put words to.

  “They mined a lot of eggs,” she said. “More than they would ever need for just one fertilization.”

  “My God,” Kayla whispered. “Stolen eggs, surrogate mothers…”

  “Indeed.”

  After a moment Kayla asked, “Does he know all this? Cohen?”

  “Not about the egg mining, or Rainy’s connection. I wasn’t about to tell him anything yet. His sister’s baby died, so I didn’t think he needed to know Rainy might have been the biological mother.”

  “All right,” Kayla said briskly, “we need to plan what we do next.”

  “I,” Alex said, “have to get myself back to D.C. or I won’t have a job left. I got a rather fervent voice mail from my boss, and an e-mail to back it up.”

  “Then you’d better go,” Kayla agreed. “I’ll keep checking the files at Athena, and keep tabs on Rainy’s doctor and go see her as soon as she returns.”

  “Good,” Alex said.

  “I’ll question Betsy Stone, too,” Kayla said. “I’ll ask her about that Dr. Bradford Christine mentioned, see how she reacts. It’ll probably be easier for me, you’ve had more personal contact with her than I, from when you—”

  Kayla broke off suddenly. And with a flash of that old intuition that had always worked so well on two girls closer than sisters, Alex knew what had just hit her friend.

  “Oh, Alex,” Kayla said, her voice full of an emotion that warmed Alex. “I didn’t remember until just now. You had an operation, too, when we were at Athena.”

  “Yes.”

  There was a pause before Kayla asked quietly, “Do you know?”

  “No. Not yet.”

  “God, I’m sorry. How you must be feeling!”

  “There’s no use panicking until I know for sure,” Alex said. Then, wryly, added, “At least, that’s what I keep telling myself.”

  “I wish I’d remembered in time to give you a hug,” Kayla said, for the first time since they’d reestablished communication sounding like her old, impulsive self.

  “So do I,” Alex said softly, acknowledging in tone if not so many words these first tentative steps back to their old friendship. But they had other decisions to make, and she went quickly back to the matter at hand. “What else?”

  Kayla responded quickly. “The other possible surrogates. Let’s call Darcy on that.”

  “I was going to call everyone, but why Darcy in particular?”

  There was a moment’s pause. “You didn’t know? No, I guess you wouldn’t have heard, she told me on the drive, before we all connected at the funeral. Darcy’s running a private investigations business.”

  Alex blinked. “She is?”

  “It’s new, but off to a good start. She can check out the surrogate angle.”

  “Does that have something to do with her disguise at the funeral?”

  Kayla’s pause seemed slightly accusatory. “Darcy left her husband. He was abusive. But he’s a powerful man, and she’s hidi
ng while she figures out how to legally be free of him.”

  Alex drew in a breath. “We’ll help her. There must be something we can do.”

  “She hasn’t accepted help so far.” Kayla’s tone had softened. “But I think starting this agency is part of her taking her life back. She’ll let us know if she needs us.”

  “All right.” Alex hesitated, then said quietly, “Kayla…if there were other surrogates, and things went differently…”

  “I know. That’s what we have to find out.”

  “I know. And we have to find out why.”

  They hung up, and Alex sank down into the chair beside the phone, her knees suddenly not strong enough to hold her. If and if and if…

  Rainy could have a child.

  Chapter 18

  T he flight from Phoenix back to Washington, D.C. had never seemed so long to Alex. And the last thing she wanted to do was go back to work, to hours in the lab wrestling with bits of trace evidence on cases from all over the country.

  What she wanted was to stay on this case, this case that was lodged painfully near her heart. This was the case that counted, that mattered.

  You sound like Justin, she thought. And didn’t have the energy to deny it.

  She had made the promised calls, but had only connected with Darcy. Josie was still on extended temporary duty and Tory was back on a news assignment and unreachable. She’d sent an e-mail to Sam, and would check later for a reply. But right now, it was up to her, Kayla and Darcy.

  By the time she landed in Washington, she was exhausted mentally and felt physically beaten. She even thought about taking a cab home so she wouldn’t have to drive, but the hassle of coming back for her car later made her decide against it.

  On the flight she had considered calling her grandfather when she arrived, but right now it was just too much to even think about telling him what was going on. He would be as devastated as she was over the grim possibilities of treachery and murder at Athena. And she just couldn’t deal with that right now.

  It wasn’t until she had actually made it to bed that she remembered she couldn’t have called him anyway, he was in Tokyo until tomorrow.

  She told herself it was just as well, and laid her head on the pillow. She immediately went to sleep, but had she realized how haunted her dreams were going to be, she might have put it off a little longer.

  Alex studied Emerson across the elegantly appointed formal dining table that her mother insisted on using even though there were only three of them.

  Dinner with her mother was the last thing she wanted to be doing. But since she hadn’t seen her in several weeks, and since she had caught up on her sleep last night, she had no real reason to say no. So she had dutifully agreed.

  Her mother had requested that she invite Emerson, and that was a request Alex was glad to fulfill. She wanted the buffer. Her mother, predictably, adored Emerson, and Emerson made no secret of the fact that he thought Alex would do better—at what she wasn’t quite sure—to emulate her mother more.

  Right now the two of them, Emerson seated at her mother’s right hand, her mother at the head of the table of course, were involved in an animated discussion. It concerned, as near as Alex could tell, the presumptuousness of some people. What particular group they were on now, she didn’t know; she’d tuned out when they’d started in on those who wanted to join the DAR when their ancestor had been on the other side. Next would probably be upstart newcomers who wanted their grubby children in the pony club.

  She supposed she could think of something she cared about less just now, but it would require more energy than she had to spare. And it was only worsened by the fact that she wanted desperately to be back in Arizona, digging deeper into Rainy’s death.

  “—are you, Alexandra? You seem miles away. Don’t be rude, dear.”

  Really about two thousand miles, she thought. “I’m sorry,” she said, belatedly spearing a bite of the asparagus with hollandaise that Margaret, the cook, was so very good at. “I was thinking about Rainy.”

  “I see,” her mother said. “Well, that’s understandable, I suppose. But really, it does no good to continue to dwell on the negative.”

  “Absolutely,” Emerson said with a nod of agreement. “These things happen, but you have to move on.”

  If her mouth hadn’t been full of asparagus, Alex was certain she would have gaped at them both. She wasn’t really surprised at her mother, but Emerson’s callousness had caught her off guard. It was probably just as well she had to swallow before she could speak; it gave her a moment to calm down. So when she spoke, looking at Emerson, her voice was carefully level.

  “Is that what you tell the families of your patients that don’t make it?”

  Emerson had the grace to look abashed. “Of course not!”

  “So you feel you don’t have to be as kind to me as you are to them?”

  “Alexandra, whatever are you saying?” her mother broke in, sounding more upset than she had when Alex had told her of Rainy’s death in the first place. “Emerson said no such thing, he was merely pointing out that one can only grieve for so long. As I should know.”

  The reminder that she was a widow didn’t come as often as it once had. Alex didn’t recall her being particularly grief stricken when her husband, Alex’s father, had died, but she had always tried to give her mother the benefit of the doubt by assuming she had been too young to really realize how the adults around her were reacting. Now, however, she was feeling less charitable, and more given to thinking she’d been right in the first place.

  “No, Veronica,” Emerson said, very gently. “Alexandra is right. I was unforgivably dismissive about the death of someone dear to her, something I would never do to a patient’s family. I apologize, my dear.”

  And just like that, Alex remembered why she was engaged to this man, who could in a moment shed the air of quiet superiority and become one of the sweetest men she’d ever met.

  “Accepted,” she said, and he reached across the table to take her hand in his, those hands that had been one of the first things she’d noticed about him, even before his golden blond good looks. Hands you would expect on a world-class surgeon, long-fingered, lithe, supple.

  They could be exquisite lover’s hands, as well, and once she had looked forward to finding out if they were. Now she wasn’t so sure. Now she was questioning the entire relationship, all because she was having a highly inappropriate reaction to a certain FBI agent.

  She had expected his heart and mind to match those hands, and had only belatedly realized that he was so good because when he was in the O.R., the patient was no longer a person to him but a case history. She supposed that was the way it had to be, for him to continue to function on that kind of level.

  Now she wondered if she’d just been rationalizing, going too far in her effort to see Emerson as the man she wanted him to be.

  “Now that we’ve gotten over that,” Veronica said, “are we ready for dessert?”

  How very like her, Alex thought, to slide in that little dig at me, making my protest to Emerson sound like a childish whine.

  “Your mother—” Emerson said as they finally left, or escaped, in Alex’s view “—is the most charming woman. My mother already thinks a great deal of her. I think they’re going to get along famously.”

  Alex winced inwardly at the idea of a mother-in-law as bad as her mother. Birds of a feather. But she managed to say evenly enough, “I imagine they will become very good friends.” Perhaps his mother will help keep my mother busy, give her less time to interfere in my life.

  With an effort she set aside her irritation with her mother, something she’d learned to do very well in her life. Something else Athena had given her—the self-control to choose her battles.

  They drove back to her Alexandria home in Emerson’s large Mercedes sedan. Alex relaxed into the rich leather front seat, letting the stress she always incurred visiting her mother seep away. Emerson drove competently, conservatively,
and she knew they’d arrive safely.

  When they arrived, he parked in her driveway near the steps and sidewalk to the front door. She no longer suggested he pull around back where he could park practically next to the back door. A Howland apparently never used the back door at any house he didn’t own.

  “Would you like to come in for a drink?” she asked.

  “Thank you, no, dear. I have an early surgery in the morning.”

  “You could leave from here,” she suggested. “It’s closer to the hospital.”

  He frowned. “We’ve talked about this before, Alexandra. You know how I feel.”

  All the irritation she’d fought down seemed to bubble up anew. “Don’t you have the least curiosity as to whether we’ll suit sexually?” she asked bluntly, tired of dancing around the subject with him.

  She thought she saw his jaw tighten, but his voice was perfectly calm when he said evenly, “I’m sure that won’t be a problem.”

  She thought about trying to explain to him that she’d not been asking him for sex, but only asked him to stay because she was feeling very alone just now, that she felt as if life were careening out of control and she simply wanted someone there to talk to.

  But with Emerson it smacked of begging, and she wouldn’t stoop that low. She hid her tangled emotions behind a mask of mockery.

  “A less confident woman rejected like that might question her own appeal.”

  “It has nothing to do with your appeal, Alexandra. You’re a lovely woman, as I’m sure you know. But I’m hardly a boy who can’t control his sexual appetite.”

  As if to prove his own words, he leaned forward and kissed her. It was a cool, gentle kiss, pleasant and affectionate but hardly full of passion. Alex kissed him back, rather fiercely, determined to see if she could wrest some sign out of him that this wasn’t as easy as it seemed to be for him.