“Bug gave May the antidote about twenty minutes ago. Assuming it works, we’ve got enough for two others, so we’ll dose Jeff and Wendy, who were the first to get sick. Then we’ll call around to see who else we can put on making the stuff. If the area hospitals will pitch in and help us make the antidote, then we’ll be able to speed up production.”
“The closest hospital is forty minutes or so away,” she said. “But you’re right, every bit will help.” She paused. “Has the chief had any luck finding the missing Violent, or checking on those chemical purchases?”
He shook his head. “There’s been no sign of Doug, and it’s still too early for the companies to be open. Besides, Swanson is thinking he should go the warrant route and make sure it’s all nice and legal before he starts calling. Whoever this guy is, he’s well-funded and smart. No sense in leaving him a legal loophole.”
Now she did pull the sheet up, and shifted to sit, wrapping the bedclothes around her, not because she was feeling self-conscious, but because she realized, all of a sudden, that they were talking about the mop-up work.
Assuming the antidote worked, Luke’s job in Raven’s Cliff was done.
“You’re leaving,” she said, the words coming out more like an accusation than she’d intended.
He sat up so they were eye-to-eye, sitting cross-legged on the dragged-together cots. He took her hands and held them. “We’re leaving, Rox. I meant what I said yesterday—I want you back on my team. I’ve got a base of operations in D.C., which I didn’t have before. We can stay in my condo and you can work the in-lab end of the team business or come out into the field. Totally your call.” Apparently taking her stunned silence for shock, he grinned. “It’s exactly the sort of compromise you wanted before.”
And the worst part was, Rox realized, he actually believed what he was saying. “No,” she said, feeling an awful, yawning gulf open up inside her. “Luke, no.”
She saw a flash of something in his eyes that suggested he wasn’t as oblivious as he seemed, but he said, “You don’t want to move right into the condo, that’s fine. We can rent you a place of your own while we find our balance together again.” He squeezed her hand in his. “What matters is that we’re back together.”
“No,” she said again, and pulled her hand from his. “And that means ‘no’ to all of it, Luke. We’re not back together. I’m not going anywhere. I like it in Raven’s Cliff. I’m making a home here.”
“But this…” He gestured between the two of them, and the bed. “Us. How can you walk away from it?”
“The same way you did,” she said bluntly, though it was tearing her up inside. She wanted to rail at him for being a stubborn, egotistical ass who thought that compromise was the same as convenience, for not offering to give up as much as he was trying to take away from her. “You were right all along. Nothing’s changed.”
She stood, taking the sheet with her, and maneuvered awkwardly to dress beneath it, while he sat on his cot, confusion giving way to anger.
“You’re picking this town and these people over what we could have together?” he finally asked, seeming incredulous, offended.
She nodded and sniffed back a tear, and her voice hitched a little when she said, “The same way you’re picking your career over me yet again.”
“It’s not the same at all,” he said, anger lacing over a faint hint of “you’ve got to be kidding me.” “You’re a town doctor in a messed-up place that doesn’t appreciate you, and I’m—” He broke off, apparently seeing the danger too late. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that the way it came out.”
“Yes, you did.” Clad in her jeans and bra, she wadded up the sheet and tossed it on her cot, trying not to smell their mingled scent in the close confines of the narrow room, trying not to remember the feel of him against her in the night, the perfection that the two of them had found together, in bed but not in real life.
He was silent for a moment, then said, “Why Raven’s Cliff?” He sounded truly baffled.
She sighed, feeling like they were right back where they’d been two years earlier. “Because whether they like me or not right now, they need me. And when I was a kid, back before the lighthouse burned and the town was prosperous and happy, they made me feel welcome. My father was a salesman with a habit of selling more than he could deliver, which meant we moved around a lot. We lasted almost two years here in Raven’s Cliff, I think because the police chief—the man Patrick replaced—kept tabs on my dad and stopped things from getting too out of hand. Eventually they did, of course, but before that, the people here tried to help my mother, and they were kind to me.”
She shook her head. “I don’t remember their names or faces—all the towns sort of ran together after a while—but I remembered that the years we spent in Raven’s Cliff were the happiest, and safest-feeling times of my childhood. I want to pay that forward now.”
“It’s a different town now, Rox. The people are different. You don’t owe them anything.”
As the afterglow of a perfect night finished draining to the imperfection of daylight, Rox felt empty and hollow. Her bones ached, her heart hurt. “It’s not the town, Luke. It’s us. The things we want from life are too damned different.”
“Now who’s not compromising?” he snapped. “I’m offering to meet you halfway.”
“No,” she said firmly. “You’re not. You’re offering to give me what’s easy. That’s not the same.”
His expression had gone hard and stubborn. “I don’t understand you when you get like this. I never did.”
“Exactly.” She headed for the door. “Lucky for us we figured that out before we got married, or heaven help us, had kids.” She turned back with her hand on the doorknob, and it pained her soul to see him sitting there, looking lost. “You’ve got a great life, Luke. You’ve got everything you ever said you wanted.”
“Do you?” he asked.
Her heart turned over in her chest a little at the simple question, and the fact that he truly cared about her answer despite it all. She smiled sadly. “I’m working on it.”
Figuring that was as good an exit line as she was likely to get—and knowing she had to escape before she broke down entirely—she pushed through the door and let it swing shut at her back.
The hallway was deserted, though there seemed to be some sort of commotion coming from the front of the monastery, by the main doors. Frowning, she headed in that direction. She hadn’t gotten more than a few steps when a doorway flew open and a red-eyed man lunged at her, hands outstretched.
Rox reeled back, opened her mouth to scream—
And everything went dark.
ONCE THE DOOR had closed at Rox’s back and he’d heard a couple of bangs, like she’d kicked a doorway or two on her way to the kitchen, Luke sat alone in the narrow stone room, trying to figure out how that had gone so wrong, so quickly.
He’d thought he had it all figured out. She wanted a home, so he’d offered his own. She didn’t want to travel, so he’d come up with a way for her to stay behind when the rest of the team went off on assignment. He wasn’t the one refusing to compromise, he thought on a rising burn of anger. She was.
But beneath the anger was a hollow echo of loss, of failure, and it was the failure that cut the deepest.
You can do anything you want to do, be anything you want to be, his mother used to tell him, her voice thready and nasal from the oxygen feed. You’re going to succeed. You’re going to be a winner.
And he was. He was at the top of his field, the go-to guy. He saved lives, not just one or two at a time, but by the dozens. The hundreds. How could Rox possibly think what she was doing now was as important as that? And what did she want from him?
It didn’t seem like she wanted a damn thing, he realized, which rankled. She hadn’t asked him to quit his job and stay in Raven’s Cliff. She accused him of wanting everything his way, but in the end she was the same. It was her way or the highway.
Well, apparently it was
going to be the highway. Again. And this time he’d leave with everything having been said between them. He wasn’t running, he was saying goodbye to an unworkable situation. At this point, it was better to do it sooner than later. He needed to get out into the field lab, get more doses of the antidote processed and the patients on the mend and get the hell out of Raven’s Cliff.
This time, he wouldn’t look back.
Cursing, he shoved to his feet and crossed the room, kicking some of her stuff out of the way. It wasn’t until he reached the door and cracked open the heavy panel that he heard the buzz of angry conversation. Lots of it, in unfamiliar voices.
Adrenaline jolting, Luke yanked open the thick door. He took one look at the crowd of healthy townspeople arguing in the hallway, caught sight of Thom at the back of the crush, looking harried, and bellowed, “What the hell is going on here?”
The noise level dropped for a second as the townspeople turned to look at him, then the clamor redoubled as they recognized him and pressed forward, shouting pleas and threats.
“My Joshua is just a baby,” one woman said, grabbing Luke’s hand in supplication. “Please. You’ve got to save him!”
A heavyset man in a boat-logo ball cap jostled her out of the way. “Rosie!” he shouted. “You’ve got to give it to Rosie!”
Six other people lunged toward Luke with similar demands, and all he could think was, Oh, hell. This is going to get ugly.
Somehow—from one of the cops, from someone trying to stir up trouble, he didn’t know—the families had found out that the doctors in the monastery had an antidote, but only in limited quantities.
“Quiet!” he shouted, raising his hands over his head and waving them, trying to cut through the din. “Everybody be quiet. Please!”
Thom had managed to work his way through the crush, and bent close to say, “Watch what you promise them. The patients we stabilized with the anti-CP 12.21 are starting to crash again.”
Luke cursed. That was going to put them in a race to produce enough antidote before more people died. It also meant they were going to have to prioritize who got treated first.
And they needed to do it without the family members breathing down their necks.
“Okay, people,” he said, making shushing motions as the crowd quieted. “Let’s settle down here.” Out of the corner of his mouth, he muttered to Thom, “Get Swanson and his men here, stat.”
“They’re on their way.”
“And the antidote?” Luke asked, though what he was really asking about was May.
That brought a lightening of Thom’s expression. “She’s responding. It’s too soon to tell for sure, but it looks good. Bug is with her now.”
“That’s something, anyway.” It was way more than “something,” but the sudden pressure in Luke’s throat wouldn’t let him get much more out. Relief flared at the thought that he hadn’t totally failed May, that she might make it, after all.
When the people nearest him started to shift and mutter, he returned his attention to crowd control. “Here’s the deal, folks,” he said, pitching his voice to carry. “We have uncovered a treatment that appears to be successful in counteracting the effects of Dark Line Disease—what you’ve been calling the Curse. At this moment, we are making the drug as quickly as possible, and we’re contacting local hospitals for help with production.”
Under normal circumstances he might not have laid out the situation quite that frankly, but he had a feeling most—if not all of them—already knew that much.
“Who gets treated first?” a man in the back called, and the question was picked up in several other voices.
“The sickest patients,” Luke answered simply, which got him an equal mix of glowers and nods.
A quick head count showed that there were twenty or thirty people crowded in the hallway, and probably twice that in the entryway. Too many, Luke thought, and hoped to hell Swanson got there soon.
“Where are the four cops who were supposed to be standing guard?” he asked Thom.
The biochemist looked around, and frowned. “Good question. Maybe the crowd took them out when they got through the doors? I don’t know, I came running when I heard the commotion. I called Swanson first thing, then tried to get to your room and warn you.” He glanced past, into the sleeping room. “Where’s Roxanne?”
Luke’s gut iced in an instant. “She’s not with Bug?”
“I haven’t seen her,” Thom said, face blanking to worry. “Do you think—”
The squeal of a bullhorn interrupted him, and Captain Swanson appeared at the back of the mob with close to a dozen officers behind him. “Listen up,” the chief barked, his voice fuzzed and amplified by the bullhorn. “The best way for you to help your friends and family right now is to go the hell home and let the doctors do their jobs.”
At first, Luke didn’t think it was going to work, as the mob shifted and its members glared at him and Thom, and at the cops who started moving among them, speaking in low, stern tones and starting to herd people toward the front door. But gradually the crowd in the hall thinned as people started moving toward the entryway and stalled there, eddying near the closed front doors.
Luke didn’t pay much attention to that, though. Figuring Swanson had the crowd in hand, he started pushing his way through, heading for the kitchen. “Roxie,” he called. “Roxanne!”
“I’ll look in the patients’ rooms,” Thom called, and headed in the opposite direction.
“What’s wrong?” Swanson called, lowering the bullhorn as Luke struggled past.
He didn’t answer, just kept going. She’s in the kitchen brewing tea, he told himself, but deep down inside he knew that didn’t make sense. She would’ve been in the thick of things the moment she heard the commotion. She wasn’t the kind to hide and wait for danger to pass.
That knowledge pressed on his chest and weighed on his soul as he scanned the kitchen—empty—and headed back the way he’d come, shouting, “Roxie, answer me!”
She couldn’t have left the monastery, because she would’ve run across the mob and been swept up in the melee on her way out. Which meant she was missing, along with the four cops who should’ve been stationed in the hallway.
And that gave Luke a very bad feeling.
“Captain Swanson!” he called. “We’ve got a problem!”
At that moment, a heavyset man over by the main doors shouted, “They’re locked!” He rattled the knob, then threw his weight against the heavy panel. “Someone’s blocked us in!”
Luke met Swanson’s eyes, and saw his own dawning horror reflected in the police chief’s expression.
The mob had been a setup, a way to entice more inhabitants of Raven’s Cliff out to the monastery. Now they were all going to be trapped in the stone building together, at the mercy of the shadowy figure who wanted the doctors dead and the mystery of his “nutrient” unsolved.
And somehow, somewhere, the bastard had Roxanne.
“Try the back!” Luke shouted, waving toward the kitchen. “There’s another door!”
The crowd surged in that direction, but Luke headed the other way. He stuck his head in May’s room. “I want you to lock all the patients’ rooms,” he told Bug, who was wide-eyed with fear. “Then get back in here and shut yourself in with May. Don’t let anything happen to her.”
Bug nodded. He held out a pair of loaded syringes. “Thom told me to keep these, but I think you should take them. You could need them more than me.”
It was all that was left of the first batch of the antidote.
Luke nodded, and pocketed the syringes. “Thanks.”
Then he went, not to the room he’d shared so briefly with Roxie, but to the room she’d stayed in the first night, the one with the column in the corner.
The moment he was inside, he heard the heavy tread of footsteps, coming not from the hallway, or from the walls, but from the floor beneath him. The footsteps were dragging and uneven, warning that they belonged to the missing Violent,
or others like him.
Rox had been right about the secret tunnels, he realized. She’d just been wrong about where they were located.
Cursing, fearing that he was already too late, he dragged the cot away from the wall and started looking for the trapdoor he knew had to be there.
ROX AWOKE IN a narrow stone space, and for a moment she thought she was in the room that she and Luke had shared. But the air was stale and there was no natural light, only the glow from bare lightbulbs strung at wide intervals along a long, low corridor.
She was in one of the monastery’s secret passageways, she realized with a jolt. But how? Why?
“Good,” a man’s muffled voice said from behind her. “You’re awake.”
She turned to look at him, and realized she was tied, her hands and feet bound together behind her, so her every move strained her shoulders and hips.
Her captor stood over her wearing a lab coat over casual clothes, and a ski mask concealing his face. Behind the mask, his gray eyes gleamed with mad satisfaction.
Panic flared hard and hot, and she opened her mouth to scream.
“Don’t.” He shoved a wad of cotton floss in her mouth and taped it in place with a strip of adhesive while she thrashed and gargled, trying to make a sound, any sound that would bring rescue.
“Luke,” she screamed behind the gag. “Luke!” But all that came out was a weak, terrified whimper.
“You should’ve gotten sick right away,” the man said thoughtfully, as though to himself. “I sprayed the coffee in your clinic with the extract, after all. But, no. You had to make things difficult, and by the time I realized you were going to be a problem, the others were already here.” He tsked as though she were a naughty child who deserved punishment, and pulled a syringe from the pocket of his lab coat. “Now we’ve got a real mess on our hands, and I have to clean it up.”
He uncapped the needle and pushed through a drop of the clear liquid within the syringe, as though it really mattered whether or not he gave her an air embolism.
Seeing the fear in her eyes and hearing her muffled cry of alarm, he smiled. “Yes, poor Jason warned you before he died, didn’t he? My former lab tech is quite correct—the nutrient triggers incredibly fast growth in fish, and equally fast death in humans. Which is why my new investors are so excited about the possibilities of using it as a bioweapon…and why I can’t allow you or your friends to jeopardize our plans.”
With the M.D....at the Altar? Page 15
