William’s instincts quivered to life. “What?”
“I said never mind.” She paused and her voice went hollow. “Oh, God. Berryville’s dead.” She said something else, but William was already hanging up the phone and heading for her office at a run.
He found her working three computers at once. On the leftmost screen his snapshots from the Coach House were matched against DMV photos of the three men. On the right she’d pulled up a series of records for Dr. Paul Berryville, including his supposedly classified FDA background check. But it was the center screen that commanded William’s attention with a photograph of smoldering wreckage and the headline Eight top scientists killed in Catskills crash.
Ike didn’t turn to look at him, but her body was tense beneath the black leather biker jacket she wore because they still had the heat turned off. Her voice held dull horror when she said, “A charter jet flying a bunch of scientists to a private retreat lost power and crashed in upstate New York last night. The men we saw yesterday are dead, along with three other prominent scientists and their drivers. Odin wasn’t taking any chances that they’d lead us to him.”
“Christ.” William let out a breath, sickened by the realization that the leader of The Nine had killed his own people to make sure they wouldn’t talk. Worse, given that Grosskill had ignored the evidence after Forsythe’s arrest, there was little chance the FBI would believe that the mythical leader of an imaginary group of scientific bogeymen was responsible for a charter plane crash.
“He killed his own people,” Ike repeated, voice shaking.
“I’d like to believe this means the end of The Nine,” William said after a long moment. “But I’m afraid I’m not that optimistic.”
Ike nodded. “He’ll recruit and rebuild The Nine, maybe even stronger than before.” She clicked on one photograph after the other, erasing the men from her screens. When she was done, all she had left was a blank monitor, which seemed to sum up their investigation. They had suspicions but no official backup, bodies but no suspects.
“You got any ideas?” William asked her, their personal differences seeming less important all of a sudden.
“Maybe. Yes, I think so.” She hit three computer keys in quick succession, bringing up a new screen on the middle monitor. “I found Lukas Kupfer and the press conference they were talking about. Kupfer is a PhD at the Markham Institute near UMass Amherst. His lab is working on a treatment for a disease called Duchenne muscular dystrophy, and they’ve got a big announcement planned for this Friday. Something about a new gene therapy protocol for Duchenne.”
William stared at Kupfer’s file photo, which showed a bespectacled fortysomething man whose face held both laugh lines and sadness. “They said Odin was going to handle it personally. That means we need to get someone inside Kupfer’s lab, pronto.”
Ike tapped a few keys and brought up the Markham Institute’s collaborators list. She indicated a pair of names. “I know these two from Boston General. If I get Zach Cage involved, we could put together a decent cover story, maybe invent a visiting scientist at BoGen who wants to get a look at Kupfer’s research. He’d probably buy it.”
William grimaced and shook his head. “Unfortunately I don’t know enough science to pull off a cover story in an academic lab.”
“Maybe not,” Ike said. She glanced up at him. “But I do.”
Chapter Four
Ike started the mental countdown after making her suggestion. Five…four…three…
“No way in hell!” William snapped. “No way, no how. Not happening.”
“What’s not happening?” Max stuck his head through the doorway. He was still wearing his leather jacket and wool cap, suggesting he’d arrived just in time to hear William’s bellow.
William glared at Ike as he recapped the situation and her solution, finishing with, “Since that’s clearly out of the question, we’ll have to think of an alternative.”
“Like what?” Ike asked, trying not to watch him as he paced the length of the small office, trying not to notice how his muscles bunched and flowed beneath the worn jeans and three-quarter cutoff sweatshirt he’d apparently considered Saturday-at the-office attire.
Unaccountably she imagined herself tugging at the ragged hem of his sweatshirt and touching the warm skin beneath.
Down, woman, she told herself sternly. He likes girlie girls, remember?
Max shook his head. “Sorry, Ike, but I’m going to have to side with William on this one. You’re not trained for undercover work, and these men are ruthless.”
“More importantly, they know you,” William said, continuing to pace. “Odin must’ve figured out you’re back on the case by now, and he’ll be gunning for you, big-time. Face it, the safest place for you is back in Boston, locked in the BoGen secure apartment until we get this guy.”
“I’m not going to the apartment,” Ike said flatly, dull panic flaring at the thought of being trapped in there again.
“He’s right,” Max said, though his eyes were gentle with apology. “We’re not shutting you out of the investigation, but you’ll have to run the data from a distance. You’re in too much danger here.”
Ike saw a flare of triumph in William’s eyes and cursed them both for being right. She looked away and pressed her lips together. “Fine.”
William tossed her a set of keys. “Take the rental. There’s no reason for Odin to associate you with the car. And wear a hat or something on the way out. You’re too recognizable.”
“Not much of a disguise,” she muttered, but she took the keys and started packing up her computers. “I’ll call you when I get to the apartment,” she said, meaning Max, not the big man who took up too much of the air inside the roomy office.
“You do that,” William said. Then his voice went dry. “And we’ll be checking the caller ID, so don’t try anything funny.”
Ike nodded, stifling a quick spurt of rebellion. “I’ll behave.” But as Max helped her carry her stuff to the rental car, she couldn’t stop thinking how easy it would be to reroute a phone call so it would look as if she was in Boston when she was really someplace else.
BY MONDAY MORNING William felt as though he’d already worked a full sixty-hour week. He was pulling out all the stops, trying to figure out how they could gain access to Lukas Kupfer’s lab without actually involving a certain someone with lab credentials and research bona fides.
Unfortunately he hadn’t been able to come up with a better idea. Granted, the Kupfer link wasn’t a slam dunk — they were going on an overheard snippet of conversation and betting that Odin’s interest in the lab hadn’t changed. As far as William was concerned, that was a hell of a stretch. But as Ike had pointed out the day before by telelink from Boston, the slim lead was a hell of a lot better than nothing, and the deadline to Kupfer’s press conference was down to four days. If Odin was planning something, it’d happen soon.
William had been forced to agree with her, though it had grated him. The more time he spent interacting with Ike Rombout, the more infuriating he found her, from the tips of her too-short hair to the soles of her Matrix-wannabe boots.
And to top off his irritation, a ten-o’clock appointment had somehow snuck onto his schedule when he wasn’t looking.
“Damn it, Max.” William glared at the red highlighted Outlook reminder on his computer screen. “Don’t I have enough to do right now without you booking me for a consult?”
Problem was, he didn’t have enough to do. Not of the paying client variety, anyway. Odin had seen to that.
At the thought, he checked his e-mail. As promised, Ike had sent him a boatload of information on Dr. Lukas Kupfer and Duchenne muscular dystrophy.
“Now that’s more like it,” he said, almost willing to admit that she was a solid addition to the team as long as she was several hundred miles away. In person, she was entirely too much. Too tall, too thin, too angular, too in-your-face. Almost as though she was doing it on purpose.
“Okay,” he mut
tered, trying to tamp down a stir of interest. “She’s not bad-looking and she’s got guts. I can respect that. Doesn’t mean I want to be around her.”
But if that were the case, why did the office seem so empty, even with Max just down the hall?
He growled under his breath and opened one of the computer files at random, then winced when the technical terms blurred together in his brain. Couldn’t she have sent him something that didn’t need a translator?
Telling himself it wasn’t an excuse, he grabbed the phone and dialed the number she’d called from earlier. There was a funny sounding click after the third ring. Then she picked up. “Ike here.”
“Summarize this technobabble for me, will you?”
There was a pause before she said, “And you are…?”
He gritted his teeth. “William Caine.”
“I know. I was just messing with you.” Her voice shifted from teasing to serious. “You want the short version on Duchenne? The word unfortunate pretty much sums it up. It’s a sex-linked genetic disease seen in about two out of every ten thousand live male births. Affected kids suffer from a progressive wasting of muscle starting around the age of three. They’re usually wheelchair-bound by ten and dead by twenty.” A thread of pain in her voice added humanity to the clinical rundown.
William paused a moment before he said, “And Kupfer?”
“Dr. Lukas Kupfer, age forty-two, divorced from Lucille Kupfer eight years ago. They had one son — Matthew — who died nine years ago of DMD, at the age of ten, which is early for the disease. Kupfer led the initial efforts to cure DMD at the genetic level, faded from the scene for a few years after his son’s death and then reappeared five years ago at the Markham Institute, where he’s been working on using adenovirus-based gene therapy to cure DMD.”
“Any idea why Odin would go after him versus another DMD researcher?”
“No, damn it,” she answered, frustration sharpening her voice. “As far as I can tell, none of the dead men were connected to Kupfer, his competitors or the drug companies supplying the current DMD therapies. And, to be honest, the DMD drugs probably don’t command enough of a market share to interest The Nine.”
“So it’s either personal for Odin or we’re missing something,” William mused. He glanced at the clock and realized he had to wrap it up. “Keep digging and e-mail me whatever you find. I have a ten-o’clock appointment.”
“Will do. Try not to scare off the paying customers.”
Figuring he’d let her have the last word this time, William hung up and sat for a few minutes, turning over the new information in his mind. If she was right about the DMD drugs, then what was Odin’s angle? More importantly, how could they get to the bastard if they couldn’t find a way into the lab?
They’d already discussed and discarded the idea of warning Kupfer of the possible danger — it was just too damn risky. The man at the Coach House meeting had said Odin was going to take care of Lukas Kupfer personally before the press conference. What if “taking care of” Kupfer meant paying him off? What if the DMD researcher was already on board with The Nine?
No, until they figured out Odin’s identity and the identities of the men he planned to recruit to rebuild his organization, they had to assume anyone they met could be a possible suspect.
Out in the hallway, Max’s voice said, “This way, please. Can I get you a cup of coffee? Soda?” It was his week to play secretary. Until Vasek & Caine plowed out from underneath the mountain of debt they’d accumulated during start-up, there wasn’t enough money for an official receptionist. And, to be honest, there hadn’t been sufficient business to warrant one yet.
At least not of the paying variety.
“I’m fine, but thank you for offering,” a woman said, her voice soft and a little hesitant.
William stood as Max appeared in the doorway. “This is Maxine Waterson,” he said, keeping his voice low, as though he were afraid of scaring off the prospective client.
And with good reason, William thought as Max ushered her into the office, where she stood glancing from the men to the door and back.
Her rounded shoulders were hunched inward beneath a shapeless green sweatshirt that had cats embroidered across the chest, and her sturdy looking hips and legs were encased in megamart blue jeans. She wore a shiny brown purse slung bandolier-style across her body with country-girl goes-into-the-big-city nerves and had her arms crossed protectively just below the embroidered cats. A simple gold wedding band seemed to be her only jewelry, and her long midbrown hair hung straight down like a curtain, covering her ears and shielding her face. As she peered through her too long bangs with pale, wary eyes, she looked about a half second away from bolting.
The sight kicked William’s protective instincts into high gear. He didn’t share Max’s predilection for damsels in distress, but though he’d grown up in a rougher section of Chicago, his mother, and later his sensei, had ingrained as many manners as they could.
William gestured to the chair opposite his desk. “Please come on in and tell me how we can help you.”
Max departed, but the woman remained hovering in the doorway until William finally sat down behind his desk, figuring his size might be making her uncomfortable.
She edged inside the office, leaving the door open for a quick getaway, and eased into the chair, sitting at the very edge of the cushion. She leaned forward and practically whispered, “My lawyer said I should come see you. He said you could help.”
William stifled the wince. Damn it. Peterman.
A few months back, just before Max and Raine had crossed paths with The Nine, William had done a quickie job for Morrie R. Peterman, Esquire, a lawyer with offices down the street. More accurately, he was an ambulance chaser with offices down the street, though William hadn’t realized that until later. The quickie job had landed Peterman a big settlement, and now the land shark considered himself one of Vasek & Caine’s biggest supporters. He’d hired William for small jobs ranging from medical background checks to photographs of doctors taking “working” lunches in high-dollar hotel rooms. It was steady work, but it wasn’t exactly Vasek & Caine’s target clientele.
Then again, William thought, eyeing Maxine Waterson, even land sharks like Peterson tripped over the moral high ground now and then.
“I’ll do my best to help,” he said, consciously gentling his tone. “Can you tell me a bit about your case?”
She was slow to answer, scanning his face with quick, nervous glances as though trying to decide how much to say. Then her shoulders straightened and her head came up.
She smiled widely and said in Ike’s voice, “Gotcha.”
William bolted up out of his chair, banging his hip against the desk and overturning the cup full of pens, which pelted to the floor like shrapnel. “Goddamn it, Ike! What kind of a game are you playing?”
She tossed her hair, which was obviously a wig once he knew to look. “I’m playing your game, William. And I did okay. Admit it — you had no idea who I was.”
He bared his teeth. “That’s not the point.”
Not even a hint of Maxine’s shy slouch or soft countenance came through when Ike stared him down through eyes that had seemed colorless moments earlier but now gleamed an intense, no-nonsense brown. “That’s exactly the point, and we both know it.”
Footsteps rang in the hallway. Ike slouched back to her Maxine persona as Max skidded into the room, glared at William and barked, “What the hell’s going on in here? Why are you yelling at your client?”
“Just look at her, will you?” William pointed, hoping to hell Max would see through the disguise.
He didn’t. His eyes slid past Ike’s face, which was once again hidden behind strands of brown hair, and skimmed her body, which was disguised in a too-large kitschy sweatshirt and what had to be six layers of long johns under her jeans.
Max looked back at William, eyes hard. “Your point?”
William exhaled sharply. “It’s Ike.”
> She tucked her fake hair behind her ears, revealing a triple piercing on one side with the top hole empty. She grinned. “Hiya, Max. Fooled you, too.”
Max looked stunned. Then ticked. But within a few seconds annoyance morphed to speculation. He gave her a thorough once-over. “Huh.”
William snapped, “Don’t even think it. She’s not going in.”
Max frowned and said, “Ike, can you give us a minute?”
Reluctance was obvious in the set of her shoulders and jaw, but she headed for the door. She turned back at the threshold. “Look, just so you both know…I can do this. I need to do this. Zed deserved better.”
For some reason that ticked William off worse. He snarled, “Just because he died doesn’t mean you have to.”
He expected her to snap at him. Instead she lifted her chin, shot him a glare he couldn’t even begin to interpret and stalked from the room, slamming the door at her back.
IKE WAS SHAKING BY the time she got to the small waiting area that separated the elevator lobby from the hallway leading to Max and William’s offices. She wasn’t trembling because she was scared of what they might decide — hell, she was going to do this with or without Max’s blessing. No, what had her shaking was the rush of adrenaline. The thrill of being someone else. The absolute high of seeing William’s face go blank when he figured out who she was.
She could do this. More importantly she wanted to do this. It was almost as though everything she’d done in her adult life had led up to this moment. She had the research background to play the role of a visiting scientist. She had contacts at Boston General who would give glowing references for Maxine Waterson. She had the tech savvy to hack into any computer system and pull out the most carefully hidden files. What could go wrong?
The memory of Zed’s casket flashed in her mind’s eye, showing her exactly what could go wrong.
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