by Opal Carew
“You know what I think?” she said, alternately confused and accepting of what was happening between them.
“I don’t care what you think,” he replied, still obviously struggling to convince her that he was a bad ass.
That didn’t dissuade her. “I think you’re a White Hat only you’re afraid to admit it because if you do, that somehow makes you less dangerous. It makes you afraid that you won’t be able to control people if they think you might actually have a heart.”
She’d learned about fear and control from her father so she understood it well.
Amazingly he saw past her words to the emotion which drove her. “I’m not your daddy, Cat. But you will do what I tell you.”
On some level, she knew he only meant well. That he wanted to protect her and his sister and anyone else that he felt was his responsibility. But she had struggled to be free for too long. She had lost that precious freedom at Wardwell and she’d be damned if that happened again.
“We’ll see,” she said.
* * *
Dog tired, Liliana plodded up the three steps, stumbling on the last one despite the post lantern lighting up the walk in the dark of early morning. She caught herself before she fell and continued up the walk.
At the door, she fumbled to find the keys in the bottom of her purse.
A big mistake.
Someone covered her mouth with a large masculine hand and wrapped an arm around her midsection, trapping her arms against her sides. Her purse and medical bag fell to the ground with a loud clatter. She prayed would hear the noise.
But no one responded.
With little effort, her assailant picked her up off the ground and moved toward the side of the wraparound porch.
She tried to scream, but she could barely breathe much less muster any kind of noise.
Mick’s words reverberated in her brain about being careful. About the danger they all might be in. She’d let fatigue make her careless, but knew she had to act.
Twisting and turning her body, she managed to free one arm.
Curling her hand into a claw, she reached behind her, raked her assailant’s face, and heard his surprised yell. His grip on her mouth loosened with her attack and she followed up with a sharp backward elbow to his midsection.
He grunted and released her, freeing her to swing around with her other elbow. The blow connected and made a sickening crunch.
Her attacker groaned and fell away from her.
She didn’t wait to see who it was.
She raced to the door just as Mick flung it open and stepped out onto the porch, barefoot and bare-chested, Glock in his hand. If the weapon wasn’t scary enough, the bruises and scars on his body certainly said, “Don’t mess with me.”
He immediately pulled her behind him, using his body as a shield, but then she heard his amused chuckle.
“Always thought you were no match for my lil’ sis.”
At that comment, she poked her head around Mick’s broad back to find her fiancé ... No, make that ex-fiancé, rising from the floor of the porch.
Three angry scratches ran down the left side of his handsome face. Bright red blood streamed from his nose and down onto the expensive Brooks Brother suit and shirt he wore.
“I just came to talk to her,” he said, whipping out a handkerchief from his pocket and gingerly placing it against his abused nose to stem the flow of blood.
“I should press charges,” Harrison added, glaring at her as she finally took a step to stand beside her brother.
Mick tucked his gun into the waistband of his jeans and crossed his arms against his chest.
“Please go ahead and press charges. I’d love to explain to the police how you assaulted me,” Liliana shot back.
Harrison took a menacing step toward them, and then seemed to reconsider. “You think they’ll believe you?” he said, his face contorted into a sneer.
Mick chuckled, surprising her until he pointed to a spot just above and to the right of the door frame where a small camera was trained on the front door and porch.
“It’s all recorded, Harrison. I’d think about seeing a lawyer if I were you.”
Harrison’s face first paled and then erupted in a surge of angry red. She worried he might stroke out there was so much tension visible in his body, but instead he merely rushed past them and down the walk.
After he crossed the street, she noticed his car parked there for the first time.
Had he followed her home or had he been there all long? she thought and the terror of the attack finally set in. She was shaking as she retrieved her purse and bag from the floor.
“You’re lucky it was just Harrison,” her brother said, adding to the thoughts that had already been brewing in her brain.
“I know. I won’t let it happen again,” she replied, her hands trembling while she straightened out the contents of her purse.
He nodded, seemed about to chastise her again, but then enveloped her in a big bear hug.
“You did fine, sis,” he said and she let herself linger for a moment in his protective embrace.
Then she shook off the nervous energy pumping through her body and walked into the house. She glanced toward the second floor landing, wondering about Caterina, and he said, “She was running a high fever. Had to cool her down.”
She tossed her things onto a chair by the front door and faced him, her arms encircling her waist as she willed away the last remnants of fear from the attack.
“Is the fever gone?”
He shook his head. “Still low grade. Her sleep is really erratic. She’s having nightmares.”
“Or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Maybe what she’s seeing is a replay of what happened in the lab that night or whatever else was done to her.”
Feeling more in control, she placed a hand at her side, stretched to work out a kink in the small of her back from the many hours she had been on her feet.
“Let’s hope she can replay that night. I’ve got nothing to say she did it, but nothing to say that she didn’t,” Mick said.
Liliana thought about the condition Caterina had been in when Mick had first brought her home. Barely aware of who or what she was. Lacking control and understanding.
With a tsk, she said, “Even if she did kill Wells, she probably lacked the mental capacity to understand what she was doing. You know how she was when you found her.”
* * *
Mick knew. He also knew how she was now.
The latter was more dangerous to him than the first.
“What do we do if the fever continues?” he asked.
Liliana shrugged. “Her file mentioned the plasmapheresis was undertaken after a couple of doses of the inhibitor. Maybe the treatment isn’t to deal with the gene replication. Maybe it’s to clear her blood of whatever is left after the inhibitor drug takes effect.”
Mick shot a quick glance up the stairs and dragged a hand through his hair. “Do you think it’s possible that what’s left behind is what’s causing the fever?”
Something strong enough to stop or maybe undo the wild gene replication could possibly leave behind remnants that could contaminate the blood and cause a reaction, Mick thought.
“The fever could be from her body fighting off some byproduct of the inhibitor drug. With each treatment, more byproduct remains behind until the patient’s blood needs to be cleansed.”
Mick recalled the size of the cell separator necessary for the plasmapheresis not to mention Liliana’s earlier comments about the need to know just what to pull out of Caterina’s blood. Neither could be done here, but he also couldn’t risk Caterina going into public which only confirmed one thing to him.
“I don’t have much time left to figure this all out, do I?”
Liliana nodded, walked over, and gently placed her hand on his shoulder. With a reassuring squeeze, she said, “No, you don’t. But I have total faith in you.”
He had been on many a tough mission in the past, but this was one w
as proving far more difficult than he had anticipated. Still, he forced a smile to his face and said, “I’ll try not to disappoint.”
* * *
Caterina felt like shit. A warming heat remained even after the dip in the pool that had driven away the worst of the fever. It was like the start of the flu. That feeling of not being right. Assorted aches in her joints and head, only she suspected the ache in her head might also be from the lack of any restful sleep.
He had been by her side again last night in that damned recliner. Vigilant and distant after the incident in the pool.
He’d seen her toss and turn, but had allowed her the privacy of her demons rather than comforting her as he had before. Maybe a good thing since after he had left the room for a moment, she had finally remembered more about that night.
And she had realized that she hadn’t killed Wells.
She hadn’t heard him return to the recliner because with that revelation, sleep had finally come. But not enough, she thought as the daylight streaming through the back window warned it was time to rise.
Stretching, her muscles and joints protesting the movement, her head pounding from either the lack of rest or fever, she alerted him as she stirred. He instantly sat up and shifted to the edge of the chair.
Mick was barefoot and bare-chested. His body covered only by a pair of well-worn jeans. The top snap was undone, creating an intriguing Vee of skin leading . . .
She snapped her head back to his face. His bruised and battered face. The blows from the fight the night before last had blossomed into a few purpling spots on his jaw and cheeks beneath the scrapes and cuts.
There were more bruises on his body and the one that bothered her more than any – the mark of her hand high up on his shoulder. Darker and more distinct than any of the others.
“Done looking?” he chided.
Heat blossomed across her face and she sat back against the pillows and pulled up the sheets, feeling decidedly exposed to him even though she still wore the lightweight robe he had provided after last night’s impromptu dip in the pool.
There was one way to avoid answering his question.
“I remembered.”
He popped up even higher on the edge of the chair. “You remember what happened to Wells?”
She nodded, but then gave an uneasy shrug. “Bits and pieces of it,” she confessed.
“More than just the bits and pieces of Wells, I hope.”
Macabre humor, but she supposed that in his line of work it was required in order to stay sane.
“There were two other patients in the medical facility that sometimes became violent. I remember them being restrained and taken away. Sometimes it took three or four men to hold them down.”
Mick held up two fingers to confirm. “Two patients?”
She nodded and continued. “One looked familiar. Like I should know who he was, but the other was rough looking, with all kinds of dark blue tattoos on his body. Not pretty ones.”
“Prison tats, maybe.”
Screwing up her eyes, she forced a picture of the large man into her memory. He had looked tough enough to have served time.
“Maybe,” she said with a sigh.
“Is that all you remember?” he pressed, clearly wishing she would move on with her story.
Typical man, she thought, but revealed what else she had finally recalled during her restless night.
“I remember lots of loud yelling. Then a number of crashes and glass breaking. I was in my room and went to the door, but it suddenly flew open. One of the patients – the familiar one – flew past me and landed on the floor of the room. He was covered in blood.”
“Was he dead?” Mick asked.
She struggled for more detail from the fragments of memory, but couldn’t recover them. “I don’t remember.”
“What happened next?”
“I went out into the lab. Things were tossed around. There was broken glass everywhere and one of the windows had been smashed in.”
“Do you remember seeing anyone else in the lab?”
She closed her eyes, replaying the scene in her head like she might a movie. The images stark. Dangerous.
“The guy with the tats had pieces of a chair in his hands and he was standing there, beating his chest like a gorilla in a zoo and howling. This weird unnatural howl.”
She sucked in a rough breath, continuing with the images. Piecing them together like a puzzle so she could complete the picture in her mind.
“I walked away from him. I was scared. Then I fell over something and landed on the wet floor.”
* * *
Mick had no doubt about what she had tripped on as her eyes filled with tears and spilled down her pale stricken face.
“It was Dr. Wells,” he said.
She nodded, her mouth open as she pulled in a rough inhalation, but she pressed on with her story.
“He was staring at me. His head was at a weird angle. I thought his mouth moved for a second.”
A shudder shimmied across her body and she grabbed hold of her biceps with her hands. “I picked him up, but he was all warm and wet. His body was in pieces and there was something sticking out of the back of his skull.”
“A piece of a chair leg. Someone drove it into him,” Mick advised.
“I didn’t do it,” she reasserted.
“I know.” No sense denying that he believed her. The more and more Mick found out about Edwards, the more sure he was that he was behind whatever had happened. And if he was Edwards, he wouldn’t have picked Caterina as the one to do the killing. Especially not if he had not one, but two men, capable of the violence.
“You don’t know the names of the men?”
She shook her head emphatically, sending the loose curls of her hair shifting with the movement. “The patients used to spend time together at first. But then people started not coming back from their treatments. Dr. Wells said that it would be better if we didn’t get too attached to each other.”
Or it would be better that the patients didn’t figure out that some of them were being disposed of when they had ceased to be useful to Wardwell, he thought.
“Wells, Edwards, and Morales. All of them were aware of what was happening with the patients?”
At her nod, he said, “Anyone else? Nurses? Other staff or family?”
“A limited number of people had access to us. Even visits from friends and family were restricted. Dr. Wells told me it was because we were immunologically compromised.”
A harsh laugh escaped her and she wagged her head in chastisement. “I was such a fool.”
Mick didn’t want to feel sympathy, but he did.
“You made a difficult choice. Don’t second guess it.”
She snared his gaze with hers. “Would you have made that choice?”
He recalled the decision he would have made – to put a gun in his mouth and blow out what was left of his brains.
She exhaled sharply once more and said, “I didn’t think so.”
Raking her fingers into her curls, she pulled her hair off her face, and then let it tumble down again. “What do we do now?”
We? he thought.
“We don’t do anything. I am going to up security around here and try and get more information on the two men you thought were patients. Find out what the dead patients’ families were told.”
He rose from the recliner, but she surprised him by laying a hand against his waist. A tender touch. One that stirred emotions best left buried.
“You don’t have to always go it alone.”
“Wrong. Alone is all I know. Don’t forget that,” he said and hurried from the room. As he had indicated, he had things to do.
Things he had to do alone.
Chapter 25
After the early morning incident with Liliana, Mick activated the perimeter warning systems running all along the edges of the property. He didn’t normally keep them live since they were too easily tripped by a stray dog, cat, or errant b
eachgoer, but it worried him that it could just have easily been Mad Dog grabbing Liliana instead of her ex.
That he had made a good choice was reaffirmed when just before lunch the system was tripped, alerting him to a security breach.
A major one, he thought as he watched his mother stride up the walk, a minor hitch in her gait thanks to the knee she refused to get replaced. In one hand she held a large bag emblazoned with the restaurant’s logo while in the other she carried what looked like a delivery receipt.
As she paused by the steps to the front door, perusing the slip as if to confirm the address, it occurred to him that his mother had become quite an actress in her old age.
When someone opened the door, Liliana he hoped, his mother played it up, although anyone who knew them would be confused as to why she would be lost at her own son’s home.
Anyone else, however, might think it a routine take-out delivery and discontinue their surveillance.
He pushed away from the desk and walked into the hall where he heard his sister say, “Come in, mom.”
“Sshh, niña. Someone might hear you,” his mother whispered.
As the door closed, that hushed entreaty was immediately followed by, “Dios mio. You’re the lady from the news.”
Fuck, he cursed and hurried down the stairs just in time to catch his sister introducing the two.
“Mom meet Caterina Shaw. She’s Mick’s ... house guest. Caterina, this is our mother, Mariel.”
So much for keeping things secret, he thought.
As he arrived where the three women stood staring at one another with some trepidation, he enveloped his mother in a bear hug and said, “It’s good to see you, Mom. I missed you.”
With a sharp elbow to his abused ribs that shoved him away and forced him to contain a groan, his mother said, “You missed me so much that I had to guess from Liliana’s take-out orders that you were home.”
