Unfortunately, Rathe didn’t see it that way. Though she respected what he’d come from, and what he’d made himself into since those humble beginnings, she hated that he couldn’t see her as an equal. As herself. An investigator.
So investigate, already.
Cursing the thick air, and the gut-deep sense that the room had more secrets to reveal, Nia tried to focus into the dim corner behind the hospital bed. Instead she saw Rathe’s cool gray eyes, alive with emotion as he asked her to take him on his terms or not at all.
It wasn’t that simple. She balled her hands into fists and used them to wipe away the tears she’d been strong enough to hide from him. “Damn it, Rathe.”
With the words came another tear, and the realization that it was time to end this. Time to solve the case and tell Wainwright that she would never again work with Rathe McKay. It hurt too much.
The thought drove her into the bomb shelter, past the dried blood and all the way to the hospital bed. Crime-scene investigators be damned, the answer was in the small, dank room. She could practically taste it, just as she could taste Rathe’s flavor on her tongue and smell him on her skin.
Cursing, she shook off the thoughts and focused on the bed. It was stripped of linens and bore no unusual marks. The stool was much the same, featureless and unprepossessing. She’d leave those untouched in the hopes that they would yield a print for the detectives. A fiber. A hint as to who was doing this and why.
She crouched, peered into the dimness behind the bed. And saw it.
“Gotcha.” She knew she should wait for Peters and his crime-scene technicians, but couldn’t stop herself from scooping up the pill container. She held it by the edges and tilted the label to the yellow light. Cyclophosphamide.
And just like that, it clicked. Pig. Antirejection drugs. Blood sang in her ears and joy raced through her body. She had it! She knew!
She heard footsteps coming down the stairs and called out, “Rathe, Detective Peters, I’ve got it. Marissa didn’t say ‘zero’ she said ‘xeno’!”
“Very clever, Dr. French.”
She whirled at the new voice. Froze when she saw the gun. Betrayal clawed at her throat, panic fled through her veins. “You!”
There was a disappointed “tsk.” “Sloppy of you, letting me sneak up on you like this. Not what I expected of a crack HFH operative.” A shrug. “Well, no matter. This suits me fine. I would have captured you one way or the other. I have a customer for your remaining kidney.” A faint smile. “That’s why you’re here.”
Nia thought of the holes where Short Whiny Guy’s eyes had been and gagged on the thick, redolent air. The eyes hadn’t been souvenirs, they’d been used for corneal transplants. Then the words remaining kidney shut down her brain. “No! You wouldn’t!”
“Watch me.” Thin lips curved in triumph, the gun jerked toward the exit. “Up the stairs. We’re taking a little ride.”
It wasn’t an ordinary gun, Nia saw. It was a dart gun, likely filled with a quick-acting sedative. If she moved fast enough, planned her attack well enough…
“Come on, move!”
She moved. She had to get out of the bomb shelter, which must have been used for the black market transplants until the HFH investigation had gotten too close. Up the stairs, in the basement hallways, she might have the advantage. She knew the mazelike twists and turns. If she could outrun—
“Don’t bother, I’d gun you down before you got three steps.” The barrel poked between her shoulder blades. “Don’t think the guard is going to help you. He won’t be waking up for quite some time. And your partner? My associate will be taking care of him shortly.”
Rathe. They were going to kill Rathe.
Numb with shock, fear and the wild belief that she’d find a way to free herself, Nia didn’t truly panic until they reached the loading dock. The laundry van was parked outside, its back doors open to reveal the bed within. The stainless steel equipment glittered and the monitor lights glowed menacingly amidst the slight foggy chill inside the cargo hold. The bed was empty. Nia feared it wouldn’t be for long.
Her kidney. If they took her kidney, she would have nothing. It would be a long wait for a rare-type transplant at best, a death sentence at worst.
“Get in.” The gun poked hard, just above the empty place where one kidney used to be. She remembered Rathe stroking the scar the night before, tenderly, lovingly. She thought of never seeing him again, never fighting with him again, never having one last chance to compromise—or, hell, give him what he wanted so they could be together.
In the end that was the most important thing.
“I said, get in!”
“No!” Nia spun and slapped at the gun, deflecting the first dart high and wide. She kicked and punched, self-defense classes and sheer survival instincts blending into a messy street fighting style of scratching fingernails and pistoning elbows.
“Damn it!” The gun spat again, and the dart whistled harmlessly past her ear. She broke for freedom, thinking if she could just get past the heavy metal door, just get it closed—
Ssst thwap! The next dart buried itself in her arm. Pain pinched, then flowed with cool…blessed…numbness.
The last thing Nia heard was the thunk of her own skull hitting the cement floor and the rattle of the pill bottle falling from her limp, ineffective fingers.
Then there was nothing.
Chapter Thirteen
The elevator doors hissed open, and Rathe stepped out, fuming at the way he’d been forced to leave things with Nia. There had to be a way to make this work. If only she weren’t so stubborn….
A tall, gaunt male nurse kept his head down as he pushed a rolling cart of surgical instruments onto the service elevator. Rathe held up a hand. “Sorry, the autoclave is off-limits today. Didn’t you hear? They’re outsourcing the cleaning until—”
Tall. Gaunt. Surgical cap and mask, though he’d just passed through the lobby where caps and masks were forbidden. Cadaver Man!
“Hold it right there!” Rathe lunged into the elevator, one thought pounding in his brain. If the murderer got down into the basement, he’d find Nia. Hurt her. Growling, “You’ll have to get through me, first,” Rathe swung at the bastard’s head.
Cadaver Man ducked the blow and shoved his rolling cart into Rathe. Scalpels flew in an explosion of sharp steel, and Rathe staggered back. The taller man leaped over the fallen cart, kicked Rathe in the stomach, and bolted for the main entrance.
“Oh, no, you don’t!” He wasn’t getting away this time. Hart was in custody. Cadaver Man was the remaining link. He couldn’t be allowed to escape.
Sucking air past a suddenly kinked windpipe, Rathe scrambled to his feet and took off in pursuit. His boots slipped on the polished granite. Security guards boiled out from their kiosk, but they were too far away. They wouldn’t reach the doors in time. And if Cadaver Man got out into the pedestrian traffic, he’d be gone in an instant. He’d done it before.
“Not this time, jerk!” Rathe snarled. The fleeing man was fast, but Rathe was furious. He caught up to his prey just outside the main doors, leaped in a suicide tackle and snagged the other man’s ankle.
They went down hard on the granite steps. Agony sang through Rathe’s body, reawakening all his freshly healed aches, but it was a good pain. It matched the anger in his soul.
“Going somewhere?” He scrambled to his feet and jammed a boot across Cadaver Man’s windpipe. “I don’t think so.” He pressed down and watched the last bit of color leech from the bastard’s gray face. “I think you’re going to stay right here. First you’re going to answer some questions. Then you’re going to jail. Or maybe…” Rathe stepped down sharply, the fury within him taking over. “Maybe I’ll just kill you.”
“McKay. Stand down.” Peters’s voice intruded, re minding Rathe he was outside Boston General, not deep in a war-torn jungle, where other rules applied.
He hadn’t avenged Maria’s death personally, hadn’t needed to—knowing
that the bastard was imprisoned had been enough. But here, with his boot on the life of the man who’d tried to kill Nia, Rathe felt a primal ferocity, a compulsion to just…press…harder.
“McKay!” A weapon clicked near his ear, brooking no argument. “Stand away. Now! This isn’t the way. We’ve got him, and we’ve got Hart. It’s over.”
Rathe was suddenly aware of Detective Peters aiming a gun at him, of a dozen hospital security guards and half that many cops standing in a loose circle on the steps of Boston General. Of the way the pedestrians gawked and the fitful sunlight glanced off the skyscrapers and filtered down to the sidewalk below.
Of Cadaver Man’s gurgling, rattling breath.
Oh, hell. Rathe eased his boot off the bastard’s neck and forced himself to calm down. “Sorry.”
The apology was directed at Peters. After a moment the detective nodded. “Understandable.” The sun glinted off his wedding band when he gestured to the others. “Get this garbage off the sidewalk and book him. Hart’s already told us everything we need to know.”
It was a bluff, Rathe knew. The assistant director of the Transplant Department still maintained his innocence.
Cadaver Man spat a curse as the uniforms pulled him to his feet and Mirandized him. “Hart can’t tell you a thing, pigs. And my lawyer will have me out in an hour.”
“That the same lawyer who popped your acne- scarred friend loose just long enough for you to kill him?” Rathe asked, putting himself in the bastard’s sagging face. “I doubt he’s going to have much luck getting you the same deal. We have two bodies, a car and enough fingerprints to fill a database.”
“That’s bull.” But unease flickered in the gray eyes, “You’ve got nothing.”
“We’ve got all we need.” Peters waved to the officers, who hustled their prisoner down the steps towards a double-parked cruiser. “Book him. He and Hart can sweat it out together.”
Rathe watched them shove Cadaver Man into the car, none too gently. “It’s over, then.” So why didn’t it feel over? He turned to Peters. “By the way, we found where Arnold Grimsby was killed. There’s a bomb shelter hidden beneath the laundry.”
And Nia was down there with the blood and the smell, still thinking there was no way for them to be together. No compromise. Rathe felt an odd tug in his chest. He needed to get back to her. They couldn’t leave things like this between them.
Peters didn’t respond to the news of the new crime scene. He stared at the car. “This doesn’t feel right. What are we missing?”
“Detective?” One of the uniforms waved him down to the curb. “I think you’re going to want to hear this.”
Rathe followed, his guts chilling to ice at the sudden sure knowledge that they had indeed missed something.
“I want a deal.” In the back seat of the squad car, Cadaver Man stared straight ahead.
Peters shrugged. “We don’t need to give you a deal. We have what we need.”
“No, you don’t.” Cadaver Man turned his head. He looked past Peters and fixed his echoing eyes on Rathe. “You don’t know anything.”
“The D.A. makes deals, not me.” Peters leaned into the car. “But if you give me something I can work with now…” He trailed off suggestively.
The bastard’s earlier words echoed in Rathe’s skull, Hart can’t tell you a thing.
“It’s not Hart.” The certainty hit Rathe such a crushing blow he didn’t realize at first that he’d said the words aloud, but Cadaver Man’s vicious curse was all the confirmation he needed. “It was never Hart.”
Nia had believed Logan’s innocence, but Rathe hadn’t. He’d been too ready to condemn the handsome young doctor who’d kissed her hand and made her smile. But if it wasn’t Hart—
The mastermind was still at large. And when Rathe had seen him, Cadaver Man had been on his way down to the laundry level.
To meet with his boss?
Rathe spun and bolted back into the hospital. Nia! He had to reach her. Had to warn her. Protect her.
In the atrium, staff and patients alike were gawking at the spilled cart lying half out of the service elevator, and at the police action on the street outside. Rathe charged into the elevator with Peters on his heels. They kicked the cart out into the lobby, and Rathe jammed his finger on the button for the subbasement.
Let her be safe, he prayed, I’ll do anything, just let her be safe.
The doors opened on the darkened hallways of the subbasement. He wanted to charge down the corridor, shouting Nia’s name. An answer, that was all he needed. A couple of words that would tell him she was okay. But his training held him back just as surely as did Peters’s hand on his arm.
They needed to move cautiously, just in case.
Rathe stepped out into the dimness and walked cat’s-paw quiet, wishing he had a weapon. Wishing he had an army.
“Nothing,” he mouthed over his shoulder, and Peters nodded. Weapon drawn, the detective fanned each doorway as they passed it, though the subbasement echoed with desertion. There was no hum of human activity. No sound of movement.
Nothing.
Heedless of caution, of procedure, Rathe ran the last twenty paces, punched the hidden release, and charged down the yellow-lit stairwell with Peters at his heels.
The detective cursed. “Blood.”
Dark smears marred the stair treads, and the tang of fresh iron wafted above the smell of old death. Panic howled through Rathe at the thought of Nia down there, filleted, bleeding out, dying because he’d needed a moment alone and stupidly thought she’d be safe with the officer’s protection.
The officer who should have met them at the elevators.
“The guard!” Rathe charged down the last few steps, needing to know, dreading to see. “Where is he?”
They skidded into the small room, and had their answer.
“Damn.” Peters barked a string of orders into his radio while Rathe checked the cop.
Uniform askew, the officer lay in the corner, a limp jumble of arms and legs. Blood oozed from his scalp and dripped from a large gash on his forearm. A small dart protruded from his right shoulder.
“He’s alive.” Rathe’s body automatically checked the patient while his mind yelled for Nia.
But she wasn’t there. The room was empty but for the officer, the hospital bed, the rolling stool and a trail of fresh blood leading to the door.
Peters dropped the radio to his side. “It wasn’t Hart. He’s still in custody.”
Rathe shook his head numbly, eyes fixed on the blood, the answer coming to him as his brain added up the hints, too late. “No. It was Director Talbot all along. And now he’s got Nia.”
SHE NEEDED TO WAKE UP, but it was difficult. She was warm and comfortable, soothed by the gentle sway of motion and the baseline hum of the vehicle. And she was tired. So tired.
Wake up, Nia. It was her father’s voice, or maybe Rathe’s. Rathe. She smiled at the thought of him, at the warm memory of their night together, the spikier heat of coming together in the laundry storage room. At the thought that he cared.
The sensation burned its way to her stomach and made her fingers tingle.
Wake up. This time it was a woman’s voice. Her own. Wake up, you’re in danger. He’s going to hurt you, going to take your—
Kidney!
Nia gasped and jerked awake, her brain fighting past the clinging layers of drugged stupor. She struggled to sit up and realized she was tied prone. Panic surged and memory returned with a force akin to pain. Talbot. The director of transplant medicine had drugged her. Abducted her. She was in the laundry van.
They were moving. How long had they been driving? How far had they gone? And Rathe. Had Cadaver Man killed him? Was he alive? Dead?
The thought that he might be gone nearly stopped her heart. God. What if they’d come this far only to be separated now?
She forced her eyes open, and immediately blinked against the harsh glare. The interior of the cargo space was bright with artificial li
ght and closed off from the driver’s compartment. Who was driving? Talbot? Cadaver Man? Someone else?
She didn’t bother wondering what would happen when they reached their destination. She knew. Talbot, who’d transplanted her left kidney into her father five years earlier, would take her right kidney for someone else, just as he’d taken body parts designated for Boston General patients, sold them to the highest bidder, and substituted pig organs in their place.
Xenotransplantation. Animal organs into human bodies. It was sound in theory, but in actual practice the eventual rejection rate was nearly a hundred percent, even when patients were given megadoses of drugs such as the ones on Marissa’s list.
It made perfect, horrible sense. The matching donor organs transplanted into the Boston General patients had been switched with human-looking pig organs. Their bodies had rejected the organs after a few days and the patients had died.
Just as Nia would, once both her kidneys were gone—if Talbot even bothered to keep her alive for the operation. Maybe he’d simply take the organ and let her bleed out on the table.
A tear leaked from the corner of her eye as terror mingled with despair.
The humming note changed. The vehicle slowed and then bumped as though leaving the main road. Gravel pinged on the undercarriage. Heart pounding with sudden, fully-awake panic, Nia jerked against the nylon straps that secured her to the bed.
Rathe. She had to contact Rathe. She wasn’t in the hospital anymore, he wouldn’t know where to look for her. And if she’d ever needed a rescuer, she needed one now.
Fear and adrenaline cleared the final drug cobwebs, leaving the answer in plain sight. Or at least in her pocket. She squirmed and strained, nearly dislocating her shoulder in an attempt to wedge her fingertips into her side pocket. When she touched the edge of her phone, she nearly wept in relief.
Talbot wasn’t as smart as he thought he was.
The truck jolted over an uneven dirt road for what seemed like miles, and Nia prayed it would keep jolting as she worked the phone out of her pocket two-fingered. She was sweating. Her arm and hand cramped with effort and fear. If she could just get the phone open and hit speed dial, she could—
Covert M.D. Page 17
