“Hello? Who is this?” He sounded harried and not a little annoyed, but at least he’d picked up the phone.
She dropped her voice down to normal. “It’s Ripley Davis from Boston General, and don’t you dare hang up.”
“Oh, Christ, it’s you. What do you want?” He paused, and the irritation in his voice shifted to amusement. “Let me guess, you want to know about the nukes I found in that closet, right? Just like that putz who keeps calling me.”
Putz? Oh, Ripley realized. Cage. A ghost of a smile touched her lips and she didn’t argue the point. “What do you say, George? Want to have a chat, for old times’ sake?”
“It’ll cost you.”
“How much?” Mentally, she went through her bank accounts to see what she could afford.
“Two drinks and three dances. Slow ones.”
She winced, wishing he’d asked for money. “Okay, but your tongue touches any part of my body while we’re dancing and we’re done, George. I mean it.”
Dixon chuckled. “Meet me at the Slippery Pole in half an hour,” he said, naming one of the less savory bars in the Combat Zone just outside of Boston General. “And dress up nice for me, okay?” He hung up with a kissing sound and Ripley shuddered.
“Eewww.” That seemed to cover it. She was never quite sure whether his smarminess was an act or real, but unfortunately, George “The Octopus” Dixon seemed like her best hope. He’d seen the radioactivity in the broom closet, and he knew his former techs. And it wasn’t as if she had many other options. Her father had made his priorities clear, as had Leo.
And Cage…well, she wouldn’t be calling Cage for help. Not ever again.
A fleeting memory of pressure on her lips and a tug deep inside reminded her of waking up in his arms just that morning. Reminded her of the way he’d loved her, slow and sweet in the yellow morning light. Then the memory of his dark, accusing eyes flashed through her mind, along with a twist of guilt and anger.
He hadn’t even given her a chance.
Feeling the first relentless beat of a headache, Ripley peered into a closet full of the collected leftovers of her life for something to wear to the Slippery Pole.
She paired a denim miniskirt she hadn’t worn since before med school with a low-cut tight-fitting shirt that had probably fit a lot looser when she’d been a teenager. She glanced in the mirror, decided that fluffing her hair out would be eighties overkill, and stepped into a pair of flats that would add to her speed if she had to outrun Dixon on the dance floor.
Then she sank to the edge of the bed and put her head in her hands. What was she doing? Someone was trying to kill her and she was going to the Slippery Pole wearing slut clothes.
What had happened to the safe, solitary nights she spent talking to her cat and watching documentaries about honeybees? And why did those nights suddenly seem lonely? Why did the thought of a dark-haired stranger on her couch fill Ripley with a poignant mix of anger and longing?
Why couldn’t she just say, “Well, it was nice,” and move on, as she had so many other times before? Cage was complicated, conflicted. He still loved his dead wife, and he was still trying to avenge her death after all these years.
Ripley didn’t want a crusader. For that matter, she didn’t particularly want a man. So why was she finding it so hard to banish him from her thoughts?
Love is a myth, she reminded herself, a weakness. She’d learned the lesson early and well.
The grandfather clock in the downstairs hall struck the half hour. It was time to leave for her meeting.
Instead, she slid her phone from her bag and hit a speed-dial number she rarely used. The tinny ring at the other end of the line sounded once…twice…three times, until she was about to hang up when the call was answered. “Hello?”
The familiar voice brought a huge lump to Ripley’s throat, and she had to swallow around it to force the words through. “Mother?” Her voice cracked and she tried again. “Mother, it’s Ripley. I need to ask you about something.”
Chapter Ten
Though he’d never met the man, Cage picked Dixon out right away from the various uncomplimentary descriptions he’d been given by hospital staffers. With a receding hairline, no fashion sense and a fondness for frothy pink alcoholic drinks, the man slouched alone at the bar seemed a poor hope for crucial information, but Cage was too desperate to be choosy.
After seeing Ripley safe at her father’s house, he’d returned to Boston General. He’d read the personnel files she’d gotten using her father’s name backward and forward and nothing had jumped out at him. He’d combed the broom closet, but the mess he and Ripley had made of the little room during their clinch had obliterated any hints of where the radioactivity might have been found or how the bottles of cleaning solution had been rigged to combine at just the right time. And neither the adrenaline sample nor Janice Cooper’s body had yielded anything except more questions. He’d set the IV bag aside, but with no access to the police, fingerprint evidence would be of little help.
And then, miracle of miracles, Dixon had phoned him back and arranged to meet with him at the Slippery Pole. It wasn’t Cage’s idea of a classy establishment, but at this point he’d walk on broken glass if it meant getting some leverage to solve the mystery and keep Ripley safe.
He shouldered his way between the gyrating bodies and tried to ignore the silicone-augmented flesh jiggling in cages suspended above the bumping, grinding crowd. He blessed the fact that the music was too damn loud for him to make out more than every fifth or sixth word of the lyrics.
The Slippery Pole might not be Cage’s idea of a classy dive, but Dixon seemed right at home perched on a narrow bar stool. He saluted with his glass. “Mr. Cage, I presume.”
“Dixon.” Cage slid onto an empty stool and ordered a beer he didn’t intend to drink. “Nice place.”
“A personal favorite. You bring the cash?”
“I’ve got it.” True to his reputed form, Dixon had feigned amnesia until Cage got the hint and offered him money. Guys like him gave RSOs a bad name, Cage thought as he pulled an envelope out of his pocket and slid it along the bar.
Then again, he was no saint either. He’d neglected his wife, failed to punish her killers, then when he was given a chance to clean up Boston General, what did he do? He unbent enough to sleep with a R-ONC but not enough to trust her innocence when suspicious documents came to light.
If he’d just taken five minutes to think it through, he wouldn’t have jumped all over her like that. He knew she’d never forge radiation records. He knew better, but he hadn’t even given her a chance to explain. He’d jumped straight to the accusations, just as her father seemed to do.
Cage didn’t like being lumped in with Howard Davis, but he couldn’t argue the comparison. He’d be lucky if she ever spoke to him again.
“Ah, and here’s the final member of our little party,” Dixon murmured, and Cage glanced up, startled. His jaw dropped. Blood thundered in his ears.
And he thought he heard his heart crack.
Ripley pushed her way through the heaving dancers. She was wearing a tight top that molded her full breasts up and in, and a denim skirt that skimmed high on her smooth thighs. Heat roared through Cage, followed by a predatory, possessive anger when he saw how the dancers’ eyes followed the slide of her legs beneath that tiny excuse for a skirt.
In an instant, he was across the dance floor. He grabbed her arm and bellowed, “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
She jumped straight in the air. “Cage! What are you—?” Recovering quickly, she fisted her hands and glared from him to Dixon and back. Her chin poked out stubbornly and the aching, exhausted beauty of her face punched him in the gut. “The same thing you are, apparently.”
“Yeah, well. I’m wearing clothes.” Cage yanked his jacket off and wrapped it around her before he caught her hand and dragged her to the bar. “You’re supposed to be at your father’s place. Safe.” And why the hell hadn’t the guard
called to tell him she’d left the compound?
She perched on the bar stool. His jacket hung open as she crossed her legs and let the skirt ride high as if to say, eat your heart out, Cage, and kiss my butt.
Swallowing a growl, he took the stool on Dixon’s opposite side, not sure whether he’d rather shake her or kiss her.
The ex-RSO favored them with a smarmy smile. “Good, good. I see you two know each other. Forgive me for scheduling you at the same time, but I’m a busy man.”
Cage scowled at Ripley, who ignored him, and ordered a beer and another pink thing with two umbrellas for Dixon.
He should have guessed her thoughts would parallel his own, and that she’d have more success reaching the ex-RSO. Dixon was the wild card. He wasn’t under Leo’s thumb anymore, and if anything had been going on in Rad Safety, he’d know about it. He was their last and best source of information.
That is, unless he was the killer. But two deaths in quick succession after his replacement argued against Dixon’s guilt. He was too well known for his presence to have gone unnoticed in Ida Mae or Janice’s rooms once he’d been fired.
“Here’s your drink,” Ripley said, nudging the glass of pink liquid in front of Dixon. “Now tell me everything you remember about finding the nukes in the broom closet.”
“Nice to see you, too, Dr. Rip.” Dixon leered down her shirt. “How’s things in R-ONC? I hear Tansy Whitmore isn’t dating Metcalf anymore. What a shame. I’ll have to call and console her.”
“Dixon.” Cage’s growl was the only warning he’d give the other man. “Tell us about the broom closet.”
The other man grinned unapologetically and shrugged. “Not much to tell. I had an…appointment with Nurse O’Connell that day. I was waiting for her in the closet with the lights out.”
“That broom closet sure sees some action,” Ripley murmured, and Cage snorted, not entirely pleased to have followed in Dixon’s footsteps. Then he wondered how many other people had keys to the R-ONC broom closet.
Wondered who might be missing theirs.
Dixon licked his lips. “She liked it when I used my Geiger counter. I’d turn it on and rub the wand all up and down her—”
“George!” Ripley’s bellow startled the odious man into a grinning silence.
“Yes, Dr. Davis?”
“Spare us those details and move on.”
“Certainly, Dr. Davis.” Dixon removed the umbrellas from his fresh drink, licked them one by one with a pointed tongue, and placed them on the sticky surface of the bar before continuing. “As I said, I was waiting for Nurse O’Connell. I turned my Geiger counter on so it could…warm up before she arrived. Imagine my surprise when it redlined immediately.” Frankly, Cage didn’t want to imagine anything connected to this little worm, but he didn’t interrupt and Dixon continued. “I turned on the lights and swept the area, figuring someone had misplaced a contaminated lab coat and the janitors had hung it up in the closet for safekeeping. Instead, I found a screw top specimen jar behind the waxer. It was full of a clear, brownish liquid that registered counts almost off the meter.”
“Brownish,” Cage repeated as Dixon drained half his pink drink without coming up for air. “What the hell comes tinted brown?”
“Nothing,” Ripley answered. “But some of the nukes are dyed green or red, depending on the strength and isotope. Put the two colors together and you get brown.”
Cage knew that. He was an RSO, for heaven’s sake. But that didn’t mean it made sense. “Put the different kinds of radioactive material together. Like in a waste receptacle?”
Dixon nodded and belched. “That’s what I figured. It looked like someone had drained a couple of the waste intakes.”
“Hell.” That’s why Whistler was having so much trouble identifying which isotopes had contaminated the bodies. It was a waste mix. Why the hell hadn’t he thought of that? Because, Cage realized, he’d been too convinced the nukes must have come from a doctor. Besides, waste nukes were checked and measured at several points on their journey. “So which department was light on waste check-ins that week?”
“Dunno.” Dixon shrugged. “I never thought to look.”
If there was anything worse than a bad doctor in Cage’s book, it was a sloppy RSO. He felt the anger rise and tried to control it. Was Dixon messing with the investigation, or was he truly that bad a technician? Cage wasn’t sure anymore. He snapped, “Why the hell not? Did it escape your attention that a jar of radioactive waste hidden in a broom closet might be a problem?”
Ripley signaled the bartender for another pink nightmare and gave Cage a slight shake of the head as if to caution him against getting in Dixon’s face. “I’m sure George did the best he could,” she said soothingly.
Dixon nodded. “I came flying out of the closet and ran right smack into a bunch of people. I might’ve said something to them, I’m not really sure. I went for hot suits and shields, but by the time I got back, the jar was gone.”
“Did you ever find it?” Ripley asked, pushing the fresh drink toward Dixon.
This time he swallowed it down without removing the umbrellas. “Nope. Two days later, Gabney gave me the option of resigning with a severance package or being fired with nothing. I resigned.”
“You didn’t bother to fight it? You didn’t tell anyone what you found?” Cage asked.
Dixon put his drink aside unfinished. “I have a kid. Jeremy. He lives with his mother, but he’s still mine. What happens to him if I can’t get another RSO job? It’s not worth it. It just isn’t. Crusades are for people with nothing to lose.” The ex-RSO stood and slung his coat over his shoulders, barely weaving on his feet.
“You’re leaving?” Ripley asked with surprise, and he nodded.
“Yeah. I’ll take a rain check on those dances, Dr. Davis. Or you could boogie with Cage here. I’ve had enough excitement for tonight, and frankly, I don’t think being seen with you two is very good for my career goals.”
Like hospital administrators hung out at the Slippery Pole, Cage thought snidely. Then he wondered. If someone had followed him, he’d led them right to Ripley. Hell.
He squelched the thought and held up a hand. “One last thing, Dixon. Who was in the hall that day?”
“A few of the rad techs that’d been scanning R-ONC. A couple of nurses. Maybe a civilian or two.”
“Which nurses?” Cage asked, leaning forward. Someone had removed the nukes from the broom closet between the time Dixon left and the moment he returned with Leo. That didn’t leave much of a window of opportunity.
Dixon twitched a shoulder. “I’m not sure. Older ones. Not hot, so I didn’t bother to learn their names. One was black and the other one was short. I don’t think I’d recognize them again if I fell over them.”
Cage thought briefly about sketching the situation for Dixon and seeing if the other man had any ideas, but he was clearly in a hurry to be gone, and gossip was something they could ill-afford. So he pulled out a business card and handed it to the ex-RSO. “Call me on my cell if you remember something, like the nurses’ names or anyone else that might be important to my investigating the hots you found in the closet. Okay?”
“Whatever.” Dixon winked at Ripley. “See you around, Dr. Davis. Don’t be too upset that we didn’t get to dance.” And he was gone, slithering eel-like through the sea of heaving bodies, leaving Ripley and Cage alone together. The tension rose quickly, a potent blend of hurt, regret and simmering passion.
“Damn,” she said, tugging at the skirt riding high on her shapely thigh. “I wanted to ask him about Whistler.”
Cage slid onto the stool next to her and glared around until the male sharks that had gravitated toward her bare legs melted back into the human sea. He might have lost his claim on her through his own stupidity, but he’d be damned if he was going to step aside. “He was in quite a hurry to leave. I wonder why? Do you think he knows something more about your patients?”
She shook her head and slid off the stoo
l, tugging her shirt up. “Doubt it.” She shrugged out of Cage’s jacket and handed it to him. “Well, that didn’t tell us much.”
She was avoiding his eyes. What did that mean? Was she still angry with him for distrusting her? Was she worried? Scared? Her expression told him nothing.
Instead of taking the jacket, Cage touched a finger to her chin and lifted her face. “Ripley. Look at me.”
There was pain in her eyes, and fatigue. The sight drew him in until he felt as though he were drowning. He wanted to promise her something, anything. He wanted to swear he’d keep her safe, that he wouldn’t hurt her.
But it would be a lie.
She turned away, breaking the connection as surely as if she’d told him to go to hell. “I’ve got to go, Cage.”
“Ripley. I’m sorry about what I did this morning.” He hoped she knew he didn’t say the words often, or lightly.
She paused, but didn’t turn back. The music changed again to something poignant and wistful, with a slow melody of strings at odds with the tawdry surroundings.
“I should have brought the logs to you and asked you to help me figure out what happened to the nukes. I should have worked with you rather than jumping right down your throat. I’m sorry. My only excuse is that I’ve been on my own for a long time now. I’m not used to having someone on my side.”
Now she turned back, but he still couldn’t read the answer in her eyes. They were cloudy and dark with something akin to regret. “I’m sorry, too, Cage. I know you’re just trying to do your job. And I want to figure this out as much as you do. Those are my patients that are dying.”
“And it’s your reputation on the line,” he said without thinking, and saw her eyes darken further, this time with anger.
“No, Cage. My patients. I don’t care about anything else right now. I just want to stop this monster from killing patients. Period. I’m sorry you still don’t see the difference between a good doctor and a bad one, but frankly, I’m tired of having this argument with you. Good night.”
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