by Mallory Kane
He caressed her gently. She sucked in a breath between clenched teeth. “It’s too much. I can’t hold back any longer.”
“Good.” His voice grated. “Now you know how I feel.”
His biceps bulged as he raised himself above her, penetrating her slowly as she strained upward to take him, her hands clutching at his forearms to steady herself.
He eased in, agonizingly slowly, as she held his gaze. He grimaced and closed his eyes.
Wrapping a hand around his neck, she pulled his forehead to hers as he sank into her, arched away, then pushed in again, and again, increasing his speed as she caught up and matched him, thrust for thrust.
Her whole being burst to life with intense, knife-sharp pleasure. Moving, she accepted him more deeply.
Eric muttered something as he sank to the hilt and groaned.
Rachel’s entire body was on fire, blazing with a heat like nothing she’d ever experienced. She felt the pulsing contractions build deep, deep inside her.
Then stars exploded, inside her and all around her like an endless fireworks display, and much later, the world went still and dark.
ERIC LAY AWAKE, staring down at the sleeping beauty beside him. He was still reeling from the intensity of his response to her. He breathed deeply, working to quiet his pounding heart.
If she’d taken the time to notice, she’d have been able to see all the way through to his soul. And that scared him. He’d never opened up like that to a woman before, hadn’t intended to this time.
But Rachel, with her wide, trusting eyes, her strength and vulnerability, had slipped beneath the protective shell he kept over his emotions.
She’d exposed his heart, and now it ached.
He wanted to let her sleep for a few more minutes, before they had to return to brutal reality. She’d asked him to take her away from the insanity, but in truth, she was the one who had given him a taste of what normalcy meant, a glimpse of what he’d never hoped to have.
His world had been a lonely one. He’d been isolated by the fear of madness that had lurked inside him, by his grandmother’s obsessive yet detached hold over him, and by his gift—the odd empathy that made him so good at his job.
Rachel turned slightly and the dim recessed light over his bed lit her face. He traced the air near her mouth, her nose, her soft cheeks. She was so beautiful.
And he was lying to her.
A knife blade of pain ripped through his raw heart. She wanted a normal life. He couldn’t blame her. Considering what she’d told him, and what he’d discovered about her during these past few days, he knew how desperately she clung to the structured, conventional world she’d created for herself.
That was what he admired about her. The bravery that had enabled her to turn away from her fragile normalcy and brought her to this place that embodied everything she feared most. She’d come here for the most noble of reasons—to seek a cure for mental illness, to help people—only to have her trust betrayed.
He studied her face, the innocent delicacy of her parted lips, the black lashes that lay like raven’s feathers against her cheeks.
He was as guilty as Metzger, in his own way.
He’d warned her. But damn him, he couldn’t take that last step away from her. He should have been the strong one. But he’d given in. He’d made love to her.
His fingertips skimmed the line of her jaw, a millimeter from actual contact. The fine shape of her face was something he wanted to commit to memory. Something he could remember, when he was alone again.
She opened her eyes.
The startling crystal blue took his breath away. A tiny frown wrinkled her brow and she touched his face. “Are you okay?”
The quiet screech of metal broke the silence. The door!
He yanked up the blanket and threw his arm over her. He bowed his bare back to hide her. His skin prickled as the sliver of light crawled across the bed.
He forced himself to breathe slowly, rhythmically. After a couple of seconds, the door eased shut.
Eric cradled her for another few seconds, until she moved. His body responded, but he pulled away, hoping she hadn’t noticed.
She laughed nervously. “That squeaky door is handy. Was that your doing?”
“Yeah. Thanks to your fingernail file. Now we need to get dressed,” he said gruffly. “We’ve got breaking and entering to do.”
ERIC EXAMINED the wall of the alcove with the high-powered flashlight, acutely aware of Rachel standing at his elbow. The instinct he hardly dared to name told him the door was here.
“I still can’t see anything but solid wall,” Rachel whispered through his com unit. “Even if the door is here, how are you going to open it?”
“There’s a trip somewhere. I know it. Hold this.” He handed her the flashlight. He pressed both palms flat against the recessed wall and closed his eyes.
Come on, bud. How’d you get in?
Rachel couldn’t figure out what Eric was doing. She couldn’t see anything where he said there was a seam. The recessed wall appeared to be solid.
He stood, balanced on the balls of his feet, his arms propped against the wall, his head down. “Too dangerous…”
Rachel started. “What? What did you say?”
He shook his head without raising it. “Nothing,” he muttered, sounding distracted.
He spread his fingers and the long, elegant muscles in his arms knotted with effort under the short sleeves of his white T-shirt.
“Are you trying to push the wall in?”
He ignored her and slid his hands a few inches to the right. He muttered something under his breath.
She thought it sounded like a plea for help, or a prayer. Apprehension flared inside her.
“Eric, you’re scaring me. Maybe we should wait.”
He slid his hands another inch to the right and with a soft swish, the wall slid open a crack.
“Oh, my God,” Rachel breathed. “It is a secret door.”
She started forward, but Eric stayed her with his hand.
“Hold it. Let me go in.”
“While I wait out here exposed? No way.”
He turned his head and looked at her, his eyes glittering like gems. “It’s too dangerous. You should leave.”
“You can’t find the records by yourself. You need me. I thought we were in this together.”
He blinked and rubbed his temples, then glanced around. “I’ll go in first.” His voice sounded odd, almost strangled. “Let me have the flashlight.”
She lay it in his outstretched palm as if it were a surgical instrument. He pushed the door a little wider. Beyond them, nothing but darkness. After a moment of utter stillness, he held out his hand to her. His strong, safe, elegant hand. She took it and with a deep, shaky breath, followed him into the abyss.
When he turned on the flashlight and swung it around, Rachel saw that they were standing in a stainless steel room.
“This is where they brought us,” Eric whispered. “Isn’t it?”
His question seemed directed inward.
“I don’t know. Do you remember being here?”
Eric turned around and pushed the sliding door closed.
“Is that a handle on the inside of the door?” she asked, seeing the shape in the small circle of light created by the flashlight.
Eric shone the light on the door. “So we can get out.” His voice was tinged with irony.
Rachel stuck right by his side, keeping her body inside the flashlight’s aura as he searched along the silver walls for the light switches.
“Get ready,” he whispered in her com unit.
Rachel hardly had time to take a breath before the lights flashed on, nearly blinding her.
She squinted against the startling brightness. As her eyes adjusted, she saw a plain, stainless-steel table in the middle of the room, surrounded by carts that held boxes of operating room equipment.
A bank of low-hanging lights hung over the table and in a corner, near the foot
-operated sink, was the only splash of color in the room, a bright red crash cart, in case of cardiac arrest.
She’d been in operating rooms dozens of times, even done her share of sewing up patients. On her brief surgical rotation, she assisted with a couple of gall bladder removals, a repair of a compound fracture of the thigh and several minor surgical procedures. Surgery didn’t bother her.
But this room did. There was an oppressive, claustrophobic sensation in here, as if it were alive, an evil beast’s mouth just waiting to clamp shut and trap them alive.
“I don’t like this room,” she said, hugging herself.
“I know what you mean.” Eric walked over to the operating table and touched it. “I was here. I remember the lights.”
“Eric, all operating rooms have these type of lights.” Her words didn’t sound convincing, even to herself.
Then Eric looked up at her and she went cold with fear.
His eyes burned with the same mad intensity that she’d seen time and time again in her mother’s eyes, the same intensity she’d seen in Caleb.
“Are all operating rooms like this?” He gestured. “Don’t you feel it? There’s evil in here. Why else would this place be hidden in a secret area of the basement?” His voice was hard and cold. “In a room that is accessed only through a secret door? Are all ORs like that? I was brought here, and needles were stuck into my brain. Just like Caleb, and Misty, and who knows how many others.”
Rachel gaped in horror at his face, which had turned a sickly green.
“Eric, I know you’re angry,” she said shakily, “but I’m on your side. Not against you.”
This is Eric, she reminded herself. Safe, competent, sane. She trusted him. Didn’t she?
He fingered the thick Velcro straps attached to the table. Turning, he examined the anesthesia apparatus and a machine that looked like an EKG, with wires and leads sprouting from it like octopus legs.
“What’s that?” With a nauseating dread knotting her stomach, Rachel stepped closer.
“It’s for electroshock therapy,” Eric muttered. “Haven’t you seen one of these before?”
She pressed her palm against her belly. “No.”
“Caleb has.”
Rachel’s eyes swam with tears. She couldn’t bear Eric’s pain any longer. She felt as if she was losing him to the horror the room conjured.
“Eric.” She touched his arm, trying to bring him back to the present. “We have to hurry.”
For another seemingly endless moment, he stood immobile. Then finally he dragged his gaze away from the table and wiped both hands down his face.
“You’re right.”
Rachel let out a relieved breath. He sounded more like the man she knew.
He looked around the room. Rachel’s gaze followed his. They both saw the door at the same time and started toward it.
“Maybe it’s an office,” Rachel said. “Metzger has to keep his real records somewhere.”
“So you’re doubting your famous mentor now?”
She replayed what she’d just said, surprised at how easily the words had come. “I don’t want to doubt him.” Her throat ached as the truth forced its way out. She’d never told anyone her deepest fears and hopes.
Stopping, she turned to look at Eric. “I have to believe there’s a cure. Otherwise everything I’ve worked for is gone. Everything I’ve believed is a lie.” She swallowed the tears that threatened to well up in her eyes. “How can I face my mother, or Caleb, or my other patients, and tell them I can’t help them?”
Eric’s sharp gaze burned away her tears. He stopped one droplet with his thumb, then cupped her cheek. “You underestimate yourself, Dr. Harper. You help people every day.” His stern mouth lifted in a little smile. “And knowing you, you’ll never give up. Just stop fighting so hard.”
She nodded, worrying her lip with her teeth. “I guess we’d better go in.” She turned the knob. “It’s locked.”
“Is the screwdriver still in your backpack?”
She dug it out and handed it to him.
He manipulated the lock. It took a while, but the door finally opened.
Eric swung it wide. “You go in. I need to—” He gestured vaguely back toward the OR table. His gesture was halfhearted, his thoughts were obviously elsewhere. “I’ll be over there…” Eric’s voice faded as he walked away.
The office room was small, one wall lined with file cabinets. There were boxes on the floor, some sealed, others partially filled with records. Shipping labels were stacked on top of them.
Rachel picked up a label. It had Dr. Metzger’s name on it. “‘Germany,’” she read in the address block on the label. So this was Metzger’s office. And it looked as though he was about to ship all his files to Germany.
She crouched and quickly skimmed through the papers in the unsealed box. Most of them were handwritten notes, in Dr. Metzger’s sprawling script. It would take hours to decipher them.
She moved to the next box. In it were bound notebooks. Rachel picked up one. When she opened it, her heart leaped with excitement.
The notebook was a day-by-day journal of Metzger’s experiments. The last date recorded was three months ago. Rachel paged through, noting the names. There were six, including Caleb’s. Flipping to the back of the notebook, she took out her cell phone and stored the names and their ID numbers in a text message. Then she studied the information.
Each patient’s name appeared over and over. Just as they’d already discovered, each patient received a daily injection of something that was not recorded correctly in their charts. And once a week, they were sedated and taken to what Metzger termed “The Laboratory,” where fluid was drawn from their brains.
Eric had mentioned the needle and the stinging in his head, just as Caleb had.
What was Metzger doing with brain fluid, unless… Rachel shuddered as the answer hit her. Eric and Caleb were right.
Dr. Metzger’s theory centered around an autoimmune reaction. The patient trying to reject his own brain chemicals. Metzger must be taking the chemicals from his patients and purifying them, then reinjecting them. The numbers beside each injection log probably indicated batch numbers.
How was he doing this without arousing suspicion? She’d have to ask Eric, but Rachel bet that one day a week, the individual psychotherapy sessions were actually conducted down here, and consisted of extracting chemicals. The sedative he gave the patients to prepare them for the procedure was probably recorded in the chart as a facilitator for regression therapy or some other psychoanalytic procedure.
Rachel needed to find out what was in the daily injections, the ones that were listed on the patient’s chart as the antipsychotic drug, fenpiprazole. Then maybe she could figure out the reason for Caleb’s reaction after only two missed doses.
Metzger’s formulas and testing logs had to be down here somewhere. It was the only place in the hospital that Metzger could be sure was safe.
Well, not anymore. Rachel turned back to the boxes.
Eric stared at the polished metal walls of the operating room. He clenched his fists and shook his head, trying to rid his brain of the terrifying images the cold, stark room evoked. He knew this was where he’d been brought on Friday, after the nurse had sedated him.
His recollection was hazy and distorted, but he remembered the cold table, the round, bright lights, the unbearable pain and stinging at the base of his skull.
But his own memories weren’t all he was seeing now. He was also seeing through Caleb’s eyes.
Metzger’s face, other faces, needles and tubes and lights and colors, all swirled around him like a living kaleidoscope.
So many times. So much pain.
“My God, bud. How did you stand it?”
He knew the answer to that before he’d even formed the words. His brother was strong-willed and brave. He’d managed all these years against impossible odds, and he would prevail.
Eric’s eyes stung and his throat tightened. Now he
and Rachel had found Metzger’s lab. Soon they’d have the proof they needed to stop Metzger’s heinous experiments.
He closed his eyes and dragged his thoughts away from his brother. He had to check on Rachel. She’d been in the office a long time.
He started toward the office and then the shock hit him—like slamming into an invisible wall. He lifted his head. He couldn’t see. He touched his eyes, then his temples. His skin, his hair, felt the same, but inside, everything had changed.
“Caleb!” he whispered, his lips numb with fear.
Stark horror crawled up his spine. He reached out with his mind, with his hands, but there was nothing there.
He was alone.
For the first time in his life, he was totally alone. His mind was a dead, cold place.
Caleb was gone.
Chapter Eleven
Rachel heard Eric say something through her com unit just as she put her hands on the document she’d been seeking. It had been stuck in the back of one of the logbooks.
“This is it! Eric, I think I’ve found the formula.”
Forgetting everything else, she quickly scanned the handwritten notes, then frowned and read them more closely. Dr. Metzger’s swirled handwriting plus the fountain pen he favored made the notes near illegible.
It appeared that he used fluid extracted from the brains of healthy and schizophrenic patients, and sterilized and filtered it to remove contaminants, then added a local anesthetic. As she deciphered the formula, she keyed it into a second text file on her cell phone, so she could send it to Mitch.
Rachel’s stomach knotted in growing horror as she slowly made sense of Metzger’s handwriting. Somehow, naively, she’d had the idea that his theory of schizophrenia as an autoimmune disease was just that—a theory.
She’d had a mental picture of him cooking up chemicals in a laboratory and testing the results on mice.
But now, reading his description of the process he used to obtain and refine the chemicals, dread certainty settled in the pit of her stomach, making her feel nauseated.
