by Rebecca York
He and Megan moved stiffly around each other in the kitchen, he forking up the steak and turning it over, she waiting for the kettle to boil. As he watched her from the corner of his eye, he was vividly aware that no woman had had breakfast here.
"You take this nature stuff seriously," she said, eyeing the box of herbal tea.
He shrugged again, backed away from the pungent aroma that rose from her mug as she stirred hot water into the coffee crystals. While she poured milk into the coffee, he started steeping the tea bag.
The steak had a thin layer of brown on both sides, enough for cosmetic purposes, he decided. Transferring it to a plate, he took it to the table, sat down, and began to eat, aware that he was being rude.
"I bought some eggs at the store yesterday. Do you mind if I scramble a couple?"
He chewed and swallowed the piece of steak in his mouth. "There's a pan in the lower cabinet next to the stove."
"Do you want some?"
"The steak is enough for me."
As he ate, he watched her cracking eggs into a small bowl, stirring in a little milk, melting butter in the pan. For an unguarded moment he found himself fantasizing about having her here every morning.
When he realized what he was doing, he slammed the door on the pleasant mental picture and focused on the smell of the sizzling fat.
Clearing his throat, he said, "I wouldn't mind a couple of eggs."
She added two more to the bowl and stirred them in, along with more milk, salt, and pepper. Then she transferred everything to the pan.
As she watched the eggs cook, she said, "I realize you're anxious for me to collect my sample and clear out of your house."
He managed a little shrug.
"I'll get this over with as fast as I can. But when a client calls for a genetic workup, we need to get some background information."
He shifted in his chair. "Like what?"
"You told our secretary that you have a genetic disease in your family."
Was that what he'd said? He didn't remember being that direct.
"Have you had the condition evaluated?" she asked.
"No."
"Then how do you know it's a genetic disorder?" she asked.
"I know what happens to the children born in my family. Not just to my parents. My grandparents. Further back."
"Can you be more specific?" she asked, moving the eggs around in the pan.
He could be specific as hell. All he said in a clipped voice was "The girl babies die shortly after birth. The males hang on until puberty, at which time about half of them join their sisters. I'm one of the lucky survivors."
CHAPTER TEN
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HE SAW SOMETHING flash across her face. Pity? He didn't want pity from her or anybody else.
"Genetic disorders are my specialty. And I've never heard of anything like that," she said as she quickly scooped eggs onto two plates. "Has this disease ever been diagnosed?"
He cut a piece of meat, and chewed and swallowed as though he were enjoying the food, although the ability to taste anything other than his own tension had suddenly deserted him.
"It hasn't been diagnosed, because nobody's talked about it in public. It's been treated like a shameful family secret. But the evidence is there. For as many generations back as we have family records." And further than that, he silently added. Back into the mists of antiquity. Female babies died. Teenage boys died.
She kept her features neutral as she brought the plates of eggs to the table, along with a fork for herself.
"You're sure all girls die? And half the boys die in their teens?"
"Yes."
"For the boys, is it a degenerative process?"
"No."
"What then?"
"I don't know. It's a sudden event. A stroke maybe," he answered in a low voice, remembering the terrible burst of pain in his own head when he'd first changed. It had felt like a thousand daggers piercing his brain tissue, and he'd thought it was going to kill him. But somehow he'd conquered the pain.
He stole a quick glance at her to see if he'd given too much away. Her vision was turned inward, her eggs forgotten, cooling in front of her on the table.
"What you're describing—a sex-linked disease—sounds like it would have to be passed on through a recessive gene. In other words, a child would have to receive a defective copy from both the mother and the father."
"No, this is passed on only through the males. They're the only ones who survive."
"How do you know that for sure?"
"I can document it for four generations. My great-grandmother had twelve children," he recited in a flat voice. "Six girls died at birth. Four boys died before their sixteenth year. Two boys survived into adulthood. My grandmother had fifteen children. Eight girls died at birth. Four boys died in adolescence. Three boys survived—including my father. My own mother had nine children. Four girls died at birth. She was lucky with the boys. Three survived into adulthood. Including me. I think you can see the pattern."
"Yes. But it could still be a recessive gene."
He shook his head. "That's not what's happening."
"How do you know?"
"The men in my family share certain… characteristics that aren't found in the general population."
"What?"
He shifted in his chair. "The reason that I didn't come to the lab in the first place was that I didn't want to discuss it."
He saw her swallow, hesitate. "You seem perfectly healthy—apart from your recent infected wound. Which is healing faster than expected. Do the men have some defect that only shows up later in life? Have you heard of Huntington's disease? Is it something like that?"
"I've read about it. It's not like that."
She pushed a portion of egg around on the plate. "It would be helpful if you could tell me a little more."
Below the level of the table, he clenched his hands. He'd wanted to avoid this, although he hadn't really understood how painful it would be. "It's not an illness, but there are physical changes in the men who survive. Under certain circumstances I have heightened sensory perceptions. And you've already seen that my body has unusual recuperative powers." He sighed. "And there are some… social consequences. When the men in my family reach maturity, they find it impossible to live in any kind of proximity to one another. I have a brother who's a forest ranger in Texas. I haven't seen him since he left home ten years ago. I wouldn't try to stay in the same room with my father for more than half an hour. We'd end up slugging it out."
He watched her staring at him, waiting for more information. He had never spoken of these things with anyone, not even his mother, and it was agony to continue. But he forced the words out of his mouth.
"This is something that's been in my family forever. In the past, it was accepted as a curse or a blessing—depending on whether you were one of the ones who beat the odds. But with modern gene technology, I think there's a chance to change the outcome."
"You're looking for a cure?"
"I didn't ask for genetic testing because I thought it would solve any problems I have." He stopped, then forced himself to continue, speaking to her more directly than she probably realized. "I don't intend to put an innocent woman through the hell that was my mother's life. Bearing child after child. Knowing the girls will die at birth. Waiting to find out if the boys will survive beyond the age of fifteen or sixteen—then having them move away because they couldn't stay in the same room with their father. I've read about gene therapy. I've heard about using transfusions of fetal blood to cure sickle-cell anemia. I'm hoping there's a therapy that will do the same thing for my children. If not, then I won't be responsible for passing this genetic curse on to another generation." He sat there, amazed that he had said so much—and to this particular woman sitting across the breakfast table.
She looked shocked, and yet there was a kind of excitement glowing in her eyes. "All right. Yes. The first thing I want to do is a karyotype—a profile of your chrom
osomes. If I do an analysis of your DNA, I'd want to test your parents, too—and some of the other men in your family."
He gave a grim laugh. "My father would run you off with a shotgun if you came near him to try to get a blood sample." Metaphorically speaking. More likely with his fangs. The way I tried to do last night. Only he won't hold anything back.
"Do you ever go home?"
"Only when the Big—" He stopped abruptly, rephrased the answer. "Only when the old man isn't around."
"I don't need blood. I could use hair from his comb."
"I suppose I could get my mother to get some for me."
"You said two brothers lived into adulthood."
So she'd been paying attention to the details. "Yeah, well, getting into dangerous situations is one of our characteristics, I'm afraid. One of my brothers died as the result of a, uh, barroom brawl."
"I'm sorry."
He gave a small shrug.
"And you've channeled your aggressions into detective work?"
"Yeah. It's an excellent outlet."
When he didn't elaborate, she nodded. "Because of the family sensory talents you spoke of?"
"Yes."
Her expression had grown thoughtful. "There's something I was curious about. You work out of the office down the hall?"
He nodded, wondering where the conversation was going now.
"I left a message on your answering machine. Then when I saw all the No Trespassing signs along your driveway, I called you again. I assume you didn't get the message."
"No. I was too sick to call in for my messages."
"When I needed to get a prescription for more Keflex, I couldn't find your telephone."
"I don't have a hardwired phone. I use a cell phone. Part of the package is the answering service." As he listened to his own words, his mind streaked back to four nights ago when he'd grabbed his pants in his teeth and run like hell from Arnott.
As the scene leaped into his mind, a sudden feeling of panic crawled through his gut. "I'll be right back," he told her, pushing his chair away from the table and lurching to his feet.
Limping down the hall as fast as he could move, he surged into the bedroom and picked up the pants from where he'd kicked them into the corner. With icy fingers, he reached into the right front pocket. His keys were there, but no telephone. His wallet was in the back left pocket where he'd left it. There were a couple of pieces of loose change on the right.
Carefully he went through all of the pockets again. No telephone. Jesus!
He felt the hair on the back of his neck stir as he bent to search under the bed, under the dresser. Looking up, he saw Megan watching him.
"You're trying to find the phone?"
"Yes."
"Can I help?"
"It isn't in here!"
"In some other room? The office?"
"No. I came straight to the bedroom, took off my clothes, and fell into bed. When I felt like I could get up, I went into the bathroom, climbed into the tub, and cut out the bullet."
She winced, then came back with another suggestion. "Maybe the phone is in your SUV."
"Yeah." Hoping against hope, he reached for the running shoes under the bed and jammed his feet into them. Then he brushed past his guest and sprinted for the car, ignoring the throbbing in his leg.
A pool of dried blood had soaked into the driver's seat and dripped onto the floor mat. He ignored the mess and checked under the front seat, then wedged his fingers into the cracks where the seat cushions and backs met. Megan pulled open the rear door on the other side of the SUV and methodically went over the back, even feeling around under the front seat.
He followed suit on his side, pulling up the floor mat, sweeping his hand under the seat. The only things he found were a quarter and the ice scraper he hadn't used since February.
"It's not here," she said, her voice strained, her face reflecting the tension he felt.
He nodded tightly, knowing there was only one place where he could have dropped the damn thing. In the woods outside a serial killer's chain-link fence. Too bad he'd been too busy running for his life to check his pants pockets.
Straightening, he slammed the car door, feeling his facial muscles tighten.
"What?" she asked, closing the opposite door and coming around to his side of the vehicle.
"You have to get out of here," he said.
She raised her eyes to his. "You said that a number of times when you were sick."
"Yeah, and now I know the reason why. The guy I was investigating knows I was on his property. If he finds that phone, he can figure out who I am. And if he does, it's dangerous for you to be here."
Megan didn't move. "If it's dangerous for me, it's dangerous for you, too."
"I can handle him."
She cocked her head to one side, gave him a long look before speaking again. "I hate to contradict. But didn't he shoot you in the leg?"
His gaze drilled into her. He was accustomed to making men back off by giving them that look. But she stood her ground. And when he took a step forward, she stayed where she was, her hands clenched in front of her. He couldn't repress a flash of admiration, but standing her ground wasn't going to change anything.
"If he comes looking for me, he'll be on my turf. And I'm not going to discuss my plans with you. What you're going to do is clear out so I don't have to worry about defending you as well as myself," he said, punching out the words for emphasis.
She gave him a small nod, then reminded him they still had unfinished business. "Before or after I take the blood sample I came to collect?"
CHAPTER ELEVEN
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MEGAN WATCHED ROSS flap his hand in exasperation. "Take the damn sample. Then get out of here before we're both sorry."
"Okay. My kit's inside."
In the kitchen, she cleared the table and washed the white Formica surface with a soapy dishcloth because she was too obsessive a technician to work with half-eaten plates of food sitting in front of her. But there was another reason, too. She needed to give her hands enough time to stop shaking before she tried sticking a needle into Ross Marshall's vein.
He'd told her he'd dropped the phone at the house of the killer he was investigating and that the man might come after him. And he was ordering her to leave so she wouldn't get caught in the cross fire. If there was going to be any cross fire.
Calmly she dried the table with a paper towel, watching the smooth motion of her hand sweeping across the flat surface.
God—he was asking her to just walk away when he might be in danger. She didn't like what he'd told her about the phone. She hated the idea of leaving him alone, yet she was pretty sure she didn't have a choice. She'd known from the beginning that he would have kicked her out if he'd had the strength. Now that he was capable of doing it, she wasn't going to make him waste his strength on her.
"You need to sit down," she said around the clogged feeling in her throat.
He sat, and she washed her hands at the sink. Then, turning back to the table, she opened her kit and took out a hypodermic, a Venoject tube with lithium heparin, and a piece of rubber tubing to wrap around his arm.
"Turn your arm over."
He obeyed, and she tapped the veins, finding one that looked promising.
After cutting off his circulation with the tubing, she swabbed his flesh with alcohol, watching his nose wrinkle.
"I guess you hate the smell of this stuff."
"Yeah."
"Then why did I find a bottle in your medicine cabinet?"
"Because when it stings, I know it's working."
"You like to punish yourself."
"No. I like to know the wound's being disinfected."
"You hurt yourself often?" she asked, aware that her shaky nerves were making her chatter.
"Yeah."
He was back in his laconic mode, so she cut her losses and concentrated on the procedure.
Some patients looked away before she pierced their fl
esh. He kept his gaze fixed on what she was doing.
She'd touched him far more intimately when she'd changed the dressing on his thigh. But he'd been half out of it then. Now she sensed that he was fully aware of her fingers sliding against his skin, of her hand releasing the rubber tubing.
She knew he was concentrating on staying very still as she took about eight milliliters of blood, withdrew the needle, and pressed a sterile piece of gauze to his arm.
Methodically she pushed the green stopper into the tube's mouth and then wrote his name on the label.
He watched her work. And when she lifted her eyes, their gazes collided.
For a charged moment, neither of them spoke. Then she cleared her throat, thinking she had nothing to lose by telling him what was on her mind. "If you were anybody else, I'd order you to bed. But I guess I've figured out that I can't order you to do anything."
"That's right. But you don't have to worry."
She knew he was saying the last part with as much reassurance as he could project, but she wasn't going to let him off that easily. "Tell me what you're going to do about the phone."
Sighing, he answered. "When it gets dark, I'll go back and look for it. If I find it, the problem's solved."
"And if you don't find it?"
"I'll cross that bridge when I have to."
She heard herself asking, "Will you call me—tell me what happened?"
She half expected him to refuse. Instead he nodded.
"Thank you." Reaching into her purse, she brought out a business card, then wrote on the back. "This is my home number. Call me as soon as you know anything."
He stood up. "In the middle of the night?"
She turned to him, raising her face to his. "I don't think I'll be able to sleep until I know you're okay."
When he didn't answer, she added softly, "You hate that, don't you? Someone staying up late at night, worrying about you."
She'd been here for two days, feeling like an intruder, feeling his resistance to any meaningful ex-change of emotions between them. The barriers were still in place. His barriers. And she understood the reason—at least part of it.
But now that she was leaving, she was damned if she was going to let it end without some measure of honesty—on her part if not his.
