by Opal Carew
But they don’t need your help anymore, the voice in his head challenged, urging him that there were other jobs he could do. Jobs that were not as risky and where he could use his skills to help and not hurt.
The way he might have to hurt Caterina Shaw if he couldn’t control her.
Images of the destruction wrought on Edwards’ dead partner came to mind, warning him about what Caterina had supposedly done. But apprehension filled his gut as he stared at the nervous young woman seated across from him, Caterina’s best friend.
“I appreciate you taking the time to speak with me, Ms. Rogers,” he said in an attempt to alleviate the woman’s obvious distress.
“At the door you said you were hired by – “
“Wardwell Biotech,” he said, providing her the name of Edwards’ and Wells’ company much as he had when she had been shutting the door in his face. It had been his warning about her friend being hurt and his big booted foot in the door which had gained him access to the tony Rittenhouse Square townhouse.
She nodded, but continued to wring her hands over and over as she said, “I was so worried when Cat told me about the treatment only . . .”
“She would have died without it.”
After a precise nod of her head, Ms. Rogers finally stilled the motion of her hands, splaying her fingers against her tailored navy blue slacks. “Cat knew she might die even with the treatment, but she had to have her music back.”
Mick recalled the video he had watched earlier that day which had been taken months before Caterina had signed onto Dr. Edwards’ little science experiment. Anyone viewing the performance would be hard pressed to realize that the vibrant young woman creating such wondrous music was terminally ill.
Caterina’s legs had been wrapped around the cello as she fingered the strings and her bow stroked the profoundly rich tones from the instrument. Every movement seduced yet more from the musical piece, imbuing each note with emotion and passion.
The music had clearly been her life.
With a curt nod, Mick reached into the pocket of his leather jacket and removed a small pad and pen. Flipping through his notes, he continued with his questioning.
“I’ve spoken to a number of Caterina’s acquaintances. Everyone says she was pleasant and caring. Dedicated to friends, family, and career. Would you say it was in that order?”
A confused look danced across Elizabeth Rogers’ flawless features. “Meaning?”
“Which was more important to Caterina? Her career or her family or – “
“Cat didn’t have any family. She lost her mother when she was six, although there were some distant cousins in Mexico. She and her father were estranged. He never really approved of her chosen profession. He died when Cat was in college.”
“So her father never knew about her success?”
“No, not that it mattered to Cat. She wasn’t about being a celebrity.”
Caterina had come across as humble, even possibly shy in the interviews Mick had seen. But he wondered how it must feel to be one of the world’s premiere cellists and perform for kings, presidents, and other dignitaries and have no one with whom to share that success.
“What about men?” he said. Caterina had been elegant. Refined. Passionate. Physically beautiful.
Elizabeth shook her head and her blonde ponytail swished back and forth from the force of the movement. “Cat was too involved with her friends and career. In that order,” she clarified. “There was an occasional man every now and then, but nothing significant. Especially not in the last several years thanks to the cancer.”
He nodded, imagining that the illness might have made relationships difficult.
Had that made her resentful? Had the loss of her parents angered her? he wondered as he flipped the pages in his notepad.
It would take a lot of rage to cold-bloodedly rip a man apart and pith him the way one might a mouse before vivisection.
“Did that bother her? Was she upset?”
Elizabeth’s rough laugh stopped him. “Upset? On the contrary. Cat never let it get to her. With each setback, she found a way to continue. When she went blind, she learned to play the pieces by ear.”
He sensed something behind her words. Disapproval? “You were Caterina’s best friend.”
“I am Cat’s best friend,” she immediately clarified.
He leaned back in the delicate wing chair and it creaked with the weight of his body. Considering the other woman as she nervously fingered the thick gold chain at her neck, he said, “You’re angry. Jealous, maybe? She was first chair and yet she relied on you.”
Elizabeth’s voice escalated with each word. “You mean because I helped her prepare her pieces after she went blind? While playing second fiddle, literally.”
He shrugged, prompting her to rise elegantly from the sofa, her hands clasped tightly before her. “Cat and I are best friends. I’d do anything for her and she would do anything for me.”
He rose from the chair as well, understanding that she was done with his questioning, but he pressed on. “Including giving her a place to hide?”
“I don’t believe what they said about Cat on the news,” she answered, reaching for the thick gold chain again with a trembling hand.
“Your friend is the main suspect, Elizabeth. These treatments – “
“Wouldn’t change Cat. This is all a lie,” she said and walked out of the parlor and down the short hall to the door of her townhouse, clearly intending him to follow.
At the door, he paused and handed her his business card. She wouldn’t take it and so he leaned over and left it on a carved mahogany table near the entrance. “In case you have something else to tell me,” he said and walked out.
The door slammed shut behind him, the sound like a gunshot in the quiet of the night.
A block away lay Rittenhouse Square. It would be nearly empty at this time of night. A good place to think.
Mick shoved his hands in his pockets and walked down 18th Street to Walnut, crossed over and at the corner, strolled down the diagonal path to the center of the square. He stopped to listen to the sounds of the fountain, assembling his thoughts, and then sauntered to a bench located close to a street light.
He sat and contemplated what he had learned about Caterina Shaw. He was worried that he had let all that he had discovered about Caterina’s background influence him, something he rarely did. Usually all that information just amounted to raw data used to track his target. Determine its strengths and weaknesses. Prepare for the capture or kill.
During the course of his brief investigations, it had become difficult to be so clinical about Caterina Shaw.
He could kid himself and say that he didn’t know why, but it would be a lie. He knew why without a doubt.
His search had revealed Caterina’s painful past as well as her tragic present. Neither had kept her from what she had wanted to do.
He admired courage and perseverance. They were traits he had relied on more than once to keep himself safe. To keep safe the men in the Army Ranger unit he had once commanded.
Although he didn’t know Caterina in the real sense of the word, Mick had gotten to know more about her than was good for him to complete his assignment. He forced himself to remember that the most important thing he had to recognize was what she was now – a dangerous murderer.
Or at least that’s what Edwards wanted him to believe.
He was having trouble buying into that, but then the last entry on her medical history played through his brain for what had to be the hundredth time since his meeting with Edwards earlier that morning.
Patient has recently developed uncontrollable seizures leading to episodes of rage combined with full expression of the implanted gene sequence.
Mick’s early life hadn’t allowed for extensive schooling, but he had more than made up for that during his time as an Army Ranger. He had devoured whatever manuals the Army had tossed at him in addition to finally obtaining not only his college degree
, but becoming certified as an EMT.
The medical information in Caterina’s file was therefore clear. Coupled with the information he had gathered on the good doctors Edwards and Wells, he once again tried to imagine the real life results which would occur from the last statement in her medical history.
Patient ... uncontrollable seizures ... episodes of rage ... full expression . . ., he repeated to himself before turning to the notes he had made from her medical history and his own research.
Apparently, Edwards and Wells had been able to identify beneficial gene sequences in nearly half a dozen creatures. Using modern cloning techniques, they had isolated those sequences and replicated them in sufficient quantities to be able to combine them with viral carriers.
Although the idea of intentionally letting a live virus loose in someone’s body made him nervous, apparently it was a common practice. Once those altered viruses were injected into the subject, the natural viral process took over, replicating and insinuating the DNA into the subject’s genes.
As Mick reviewed his scribbling by the light of the street lamp, he realized that Edwards and Wells also appeared to have found a way to not only target where the recombination occurred, but to control the replication process and expression of the implanted gene sequence.
Or at least they thought they had learned to control the replication and expression.
The seizures from which Caterina had supposedly been suffering together with the weird activity caused by the gene clearly meant their control wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.
If that entry in her medical history was even true. The entry could be the start of the groundwork for framing Caterina for Wells’ murder.
He put aside his pad and leaned back against the stone balustrade which surrounded the center of the square and formed a back rest of sorts for the nearby cement bench. He laced his fingers behind his head while he imagined what kinds of behavior the foreign genes might cause as well as how desperate someone might need to be to try such a risky procedure.
Once again it occurred to him that he would have chosen to blow out his brains, but . . .
He surged forward and pulled out Caterina’s photo from his jacket pocket. Ran the pads of his fingers across the glossy surface, intrigued not only by her beauty, but also by her tenacity.
Such strength.
Passion.
Intelligence.
Hard traits to resist, he thought until he remembered the check he had folded and slipped into his wallet.
Quite a lot of money.
Enough to make him set for a couple of years and help out his family. Maybe even enough allow him to leave this nasty life for another one. Possibly even an honorable one with simpler demands and easier decisions to make.
He risked another glimpse at Caterina’s photo. It was a damn shame that the sole decision he would have to make about her was whether to take her in dead or alive.
* * *
With the light of a full moon guiding her, Caterina moved from the safety of the Pine Barrens and slipped through an unlocked door into one of the buildings along the edges of Camden.
Inside she kept close to the outside wall, plastering herself to its rough cinder block. When she heard a sound, she paused and held her breath.
Someone was coming her way. The footsteps were soft, regular as a metronome as the person approached.
A night watchman?
A flashlight beam swung back and forth, back and forth in a determined arc. Swept across the unlocked door and then in her direction. For one heart-pounding moment, the light tracked across her midsection, but then moved on.
Why hadn’t the guard seen me?
The light had been directly on her. She glanced down at her stomach, recalling where the light had hit her body.
Grey mottled with specks of black had blossomed across not only her midsection, but all of her torso, making her nearly invisible against the cinder block wall.
Wrong.
I am so so wrong, she thought again.
She raised her hand and stared at it. She couldn’t understand the color of her skin any more now than she could the earlier forest hues which had covered her flesh.
She focused on her hand until slowly, the mottled color faded away leaving behind the tones of normal human skin. But almost immediately after that, the odd vibrant colors from the night before reappeared, painting everything around her with a bold impressionistic brush.
She didn’t understand the colors.
On her skin.
In her vision.
They weren’t right. I’m not right, she remembered.
She was sick. Only a sick person would hurt . . .
The memories pounded at her brain again, creating a crater of pain in the center of her skull.
So much blood on the floor and walls.
All over her and the pieces of Dr. Wells.
Soft wet pieces beneath her fingers.
Control, she urged and leaned back against the wall to stabilize herself. Her fingertips sank into the cinder block, grounding her as she tried to focus.
Focus. Focus. Focus.
She repeated the word like a mantra until the reminders of blood and death receded, replaced by scattered recollections of people and pictures and music.
Music, she thought, imagining the black and white of notes on the page. The rough bite of metal strings beneath her fingers. Smooth wood and cold varnish.
I love music, she recalled and with that came the picture of a building in her mind’s eye.
A building filled with welcome.
She had to get to that structure.
The music would be there. Music and happiness.
Retracting her fingers from the cinder block, she carefully kept to the outside wall, following it around the edge of the building until she came to some lockers. Slightly rusty and battered, they nevertheless might hold what she needed.
She quickly found a grey t-shirt in one open compartment and slipped it on. It hung on her, overly large on her slender body. A musty smell clung to the thin cotton.
All the other lockers had locks dangling from their handles, protecting their contents.
With a sharp twist of one lock, however, it sprang free and inside she found a pair of men’s jeans and shoes. Both were immense. She effortlessly opened the other combination locks, the metal bending like putty beneath her fingers.
Within a short time she scrounged together more clothes and a pair of sneakers she could wear. Dressed, she hurried toward the open back door, ever vigilant for the presence of others. She listened for a hint of any approach, the sounds of the night exceptionally loud.
Only no one came.
At the exit, she paused, hesitant. She felt surprisingly strong and energized, but still unfocused. Her vision drifted from the surreal colors which came unbidden to those familiar hues of reality.
A reality which she had struggled to maintain since escaping the lab. A reality which seemed to elude her more often than she wanted.
As she escaped into the night, she knew she still had some distance to go until she reached anything familiar. Until she got to the building with the music, certain that once she got there, things would make more sense. Maybe even go back to normal, but more importantly . . .
Instinctively she knew that once she got there she would be safe.
Chapter 4
Mick stared at the bright yellow police tape and evidence seal on the door of Caterina’s town home which was located a block off trendy South Street. No matter how much Edwards wanted to avoid police involvement, they were clearly already on the job. He would have to hurry and locate her in order to curtail any further investigation. He wouldn’t try to guess why Edwards didn’t want the police poking around. His job wasn’t to question; only to acquire his target.
Or so Mick told himself, hating that the scruples he still possessed insisted that he had to find out why Edwards wanted Caterina so badly before turning her over.
; As he examined the evidence seal, he realized that someone had carefully slit it open. The razor-fine cut wouldn’t be visible to a casual observer, but upon a more thorough examination someone would discover the break-in.
With a quick look down the street to make sure no one was watching, he easily turned the knob, slipped beneath the caution tape, and entered the town house.
He stopped short at the mess within.
Someone had knocked over bookshelves, tables and chairs, and knifed open the sofa and cushions. In the upstairs bedrooms, drawers and closets had been rifled, the contents strewn carelessly on the polished wood floors. The linens tossed and the mattresses slashed.
The deception with the evidence seal and the devastation in the home were not the kind of action he expected from an everyday burglar. Damage of this nature was intended to deliver a personal message. A message that warned about either evening a score or scaring someone off.
I’d put my money on the latter, he thought as he glanced out through the front windows to check the street outside before exiting into the night.
At a brisk pace, shoulders hunched and head tucked down to conceal his face, he walked toward South Street where it would be more populated and he could get lost in the crowd just in case anyone was tracking him.
As he considered the wreckage of Caterina’s home, it was clear that someone didn’t want her to stay there, not that she would anyway if she had a lick of sense remaining in what was left of her tumor-laden gene-invaded brain.
A common criminal would avoid any places they regularly visited, knowing that the police would look for them there first. But someone like Caterina might head to familiar things where she likely felt safe and would know where to hide. Maybe even to people she could trust, like her best friend Elizabeth Rogers.
