“Sure,” she replied, her tone sarcastic. “I’ll just stay here, go downstairs, and play solitaire and surf the web.”
“Morgan—”
She thrust out her chin with a look that asked What did you expect? Soft and mushy, his woman wasn’t. “All right. I’ll behave.”
He snorted, as much as for what she said as she didn’t say. Then it hit him. His woman. He liked the sound of that very much.
If she would have him.
“I wish I could go home and grab some clothes.”
“Not your best idea, although I like you better without them,” he quipped to hide the horror of his next thought. “You wouldn’t be thinking of going there, would you?”
“No, of course not,” she exclaimed.
“I mean it, kitten.” A knot began to form in his gut. “I want you to stay out of trouble and off everyone’s radar, you hear me?”
“I get the message.”
Boy, this learning-how-to-trust thing was hard. For both of them. “Do you?”
“Sheesh,” she groused. He watched her pick up a pack of half-eaten Oreos they’d gotten from the hotel vending machine. “I feel like one of these damned cookies. I’ve got BioClin on one side and the FBI on the other.”
Fighting hard not to laugh Jack answered, “Yeah. But think of it this way. You’re the cream, and I get to lick you all I want.”
“God, you are so one-track,” she cried, throwing the cookies back on the table.
“Morgan.” She refused to look at him. “Morgan, listen to me.”
With his heart pounding high in his chest, Jack waited for her to turn. When she did, he snared her gaze with his. “Come here.”
She shook her head. “Please,” he asked.
Reluctantly, she stepped toward him. “What?”
He reached out and drew her close. He wrapped his arms around her and leaned back so he could stare deep into her eyes. “I’ve never said this to anyone before.”
At first he thought she would try to bolt. Instead, she tore her gaze from his and let her eyes shutter. All right, so she wasn’t ready to reciprocate. That was okay with him. For now. All she had to do was listen.
“I know my own heart, kitten.”
“Don’t, Jack. I’m not—”
He smiled down at her, letting all the love inside him burst free. “If anything happened to you, I think I’d put a gun to my head.”
Horror rose in her face followed by anger. “That’s not funny. Be serious.”
“I am.”
Her gaze came back to his, and she read the truth of his words. “Jack, I—”
“I love you, Dr. Morgan Mackenzie.”
He let go of her with one arm and placed a gentle finger against her lips. “I don’t expect an answer. Hell, I don’t expect you to even talk to me once this is over. But that won’t change how I feel. Or that I’ve never said this to another woman.”
He watched tears fill her eyes. “Except your mother.”
He laughed softly. “Yeah, except my mother.”
He swallowed hard and bent his head. He gave her all the love in his heart and tried to make sure she knew it in his kiss. When he broke away, they were both breathing hard.
Jack didn’t want to let go—he never wanted to let go, but he had no choice. His arms dropped to his sides. Without her touch, it felt like a piece of him was missing.
“If I’m not back by five o’clock, you check out of the hotel. You take a taxi into Boston and a train, bus, whatever, to Cape May. You take the ferry and get my car. And while you’re at it, pray the damned thing hasn’t been towed.” He handed her the keys. Her fist closed over them so tight her knuckles showed white. “You’ll find cash, credit cards, and another prepaid cell in the trunk. Don’t keep the car too long. Ian’ll be following you. When you ditch the car, find a limo to take you a few hundred miles. I don’t want to know the direction. Just stay away from your original plan to get to Dr. Lee for now. Get lost. As lost as you can. Make Ian work for the right to use you. I’ll try to convince him to stop looking for you and look for the real culprit instead.”
She didn’t say anything, and that scared him. He didn’t want her to close herself off to him, but she was already putting on her armor, protecting herself in case things went south. “You hear?”
She nodded. “I hear.”
He let go of the breath he didn’t know he was holding. “Tell Ian,” she continued, a Jack-like grin growing on her face. “That he’ll have to deal with me if he starts messing with you.”
“I will,” he choked out, reaching for the door handle.
All of a sudden he turned and hauled her up against him. “We’ll get through this together, kitten. I promise. And when we do, we’ll do the things normal people do. We’ll go dancing. We’ll go shopping.” He gave her one of his own grins back. “I’ll pay you back that suit I owe you as long as you promise we make a stop at Victoria’s Secret.”
She opened her mouth to laugh, and he accepted the invitation. Their tongues mated in a familiar dance. Jack loved everything about Morgan, but this moment most of all—the moment that her body melted into his as they kissed.
A kiss isn’t always a kiss.
He let go and yanked the door open, not trusting himself to say another word. The door clicked shut behind him with a finality that rang through his body and ended in his soul. But he couldn’t stop smiling. Because that truly was the story of and the glory of…
Love.
MORGAN STARTED OUT by trying to wear a hole in the carpeting of the hotel room. Events were spinning out of control at an alarming rate, and she had to do something. But what?
You promised.
She rubbed her face with her hands and let them fall.
Funny, she acknowledged. She did her best thinking while her hands were busy. So Morgan went into the bathroom area and reapplied the makeup she’d just wiped away.
She was just reapplying her lipstick when it hit her. She picked up the cell phone Jack had left her with shaking hands. “Dewy? It’s Dr. Mackenzie.”
“Mac attacks. How the heck are you? Long time no talk to. Where you been?”
Morgan smiled. That was why Dewy was such a treasure. He truly lived in a cocoon, his own world, a world of technology and science. He had an incredibly brilliant mind, but people scared the hell out of him. “I needed a change of scenery.”
Dewy didn’t answer. But that was Dewy. “How’s everyone at work?” she asked, trying to keep things as normal as possible. “How’s Rebecca doing with her diet?”
Dead silence. Morgan frowned. “Dewy?”
“Rebecca’s not here.”
Did she get fired too? Morgan’s heart sank at the thought. And even more anger churned in her guts.
“Is she all right?”
“I don’t know. I guess so. She hasn’t been here for a while. I’m sorry, Mac. You know I don’t pay attention.”
“Yeah, Dewy, I know. You remember I told you about Dr. Lee, right?”
He paused. “Oh yeah, I remember.”
“And you remember when I asked you to help me wipe the files from my project off the server? Because the process didn’t work, and I didn’t want anyone to get hurt?”
“Sure, Mac. I remember. We’re not gonna get into any trouble, are we?”
He must have heard the concern in her tone. “I promised you, you wouldn’t get into any trouble. And I meant it.”
She listened to him sigh with relief. “So what’s up?”
“I found a file folder that I didn’t create. But my copy doesn’t have any signature on it at all. I just need to know if you remember a name attached to it.”
“What date was it created?”
She told him the date. Then she told him where she’d found it. “Give me a sec.”
Morgan waited patiently, listening to the silence as Dewy processed. She’d always wondered if he had a photographic memory. Or close to it. Her hand hurt from gripping the cell too tightl
y as he went through his memory banks.
“Umm. No name that I remember. Just letters. Yeah. Letters. A, D, E, T. I remember it because of the last two. E. T. Kinda fit, ya know?”
No joke. She wrote the letters down on a pad and asked, “That’s all you can remember?”
“Sorry, Mac.”
She nodded. Not much to go on, but something. “Hey, listen, you’ve been a big help. Thanks.”
“No problem. You’re my fave doc.” He paused and asked, “So when you coming back to work here?”
He missed her. Her heart swelled. “As soon as I can, Dewy. As soon as I can. Take care of yourself, okay?”
“Will do. Later.”
Morgan sat down. Her stomach clenched. She tried not to think of why Rebecca might have been fired. It was possible they thought Rebecca helped Morgan steal the data, from BioClin. And that made her angry. More innocent people paying for her mistakes.
Morgan wrote the letters down and tried to create words from them, anything that would help her figure out who created the file folder. Even though everything pointed to Anton, she had no real proof. This was her problem and her mess.
When she couldn’t get the word sets to make sense, Morgan left the room and walked down the hallway of the hotel to the vending machines for a soft drink. She put her money into the slot and waited for the machine to read her dollar. Research was more failure than success, so she took a deep breath and told herself to go back and try again. As she did, she read the service label on the vending machine. It read I.T.A. Service. And then it hit her.
Initials.
The signature line on the file folder was made up of initials.
She ran back down the hallway and had to put in her key three times to open the door because her hands were shaking so badly. Throwing open the portal, she looked at the letters again. A. D. Anton Dvorak. Of course. But what about the other one?
She paced, looking at the initials every few moments, then down at the floor. One set of the initials belong to Anton, and one set of the initials had to belong to someone else who was in the meeting. Her mind clicked again. That other set of initials had to belong to the other person of the telephone conversation she’d heard. The person who’d already killed an innocent woman. Morgan shuddered.
Think, deduct, reason!
And then it hit her. E. T.
With horror filling her belly, Morgan realized that when this whole thing blew up, and it would, BioClin was going to go down the tubes for something its board probably didn’t even know about. They were being snowed, lied to, by two of their top managers, the heads of two of their best departments.
And now she knew exactly who they were.
Chapter Twenty
The din of the diner grated on Jack’s nerves. He’d arrived early and waited for the last booth against the wall, not feeling comfortable until his back was against the vinyl of the seat. With a full view of the diner, he waited for Ian to arrive. There was always the possibility that Ian wouldn’t believe him.
But there was something else that might just swing the scale in his favor…they’d eaten sand together…saved each other’s lives more than once.
He couldn’t help smiling as he watched Ian approach. His friend seemed the same as ever. Raven-black hair in a brush cut. Only the top was a little longer now. For a moment, Jack thought he caught a very worried look in Ian’s normally ice-blue gaze. Then he dismissed it and rose from his seat to greet his friend.
“Good to see you, bro,” he said, giving Ian a bear hug and a couple of back slaps.
“Wish I could say the same,” Ian threw back at him as he sat down.
He watched Ian look over his shoulder at the rest of the diner, then back at him to say he got the message and wasn’t happy about having his back exposed. Jack grinned.
Ian signaled for their waitress and asked for a refill on Jack’s coffee, another cup, and a couple of Danish. Once she was gone he said, “You sure do know how to cause trouble.”
“Always have, always will,” Jack replied with an unrepentant grin.
Ian sighed. “Mike is flipping out.”
“He’s not the only one. I need the immunity, Ian.”
“I only have so much pull, Jack. He’s not going to make any kind of deal unless he knows everything that’s going on.”
“This isn’t about me, Ian. It’s about her. I need the immunity.”
“And I can’t give it to you until we know what you know.”
The waitress returned with their order, and Jack played with his coffee as he tried to decide what to do. Morgan meant more than the world to him now.
“Listen, I’m not here because I want to screw you,” Ian continued.
Jack sighed. “I know, man. I know.”
“And trust me, if Mike had wanted to, he’d have made me walk in here with handcuffs not a hello.”
Jack took a sip of his coffee, then put the cup down. It all came down to trust, he realized. He had to trust the sand and himself.
Jack sighed. “You arrest me, she runs. You got that?”
Ian nodded. “Loud and clear.”
Jack relaxed. But only slightly. “All right. Here it is…”
Jack explained why he believed Morgan was innocent, how much he thought Sam was involved, and what they’d discovered from Ralph Bernecky. God knew it sounded more like the plot of a suspense novel than reality. Yet he knew that Ian would be true to his word. Ian would never forget the picture of that emaciated woman.
“I want to catch the sonofabitch who’s done this,” Jack told Ian, struggling to tamp down on his anger. “Bad.”
“Trust me, I do too.”
He watched Ian’s features tighten and knew his friend was struggling as well. “When all of this began and I asked you to trace Dr. Mackenzie, I also started a quiet investigation of domestic and international drug channels,” Ian continued.
Jack closed his eyes, willing himself to focus on Morgan, knowing it was up to him to keep her safe. “So far we haven’t come up with much, so don’t get your hopes up.”
“It’s still worth a shot,” Jack said. He shifted in his chair, needing a three-hour workout in a gym to get rid of his angst. “This whole thing is a mess. Bernecky doesn’t even work for BioClin anymore. Said he got a ‘bonus,’ then split to work for another company. He got paid off to keep his mouth shut.”
Wow, that came out bitter, even to his own ears.
“Can’t charge him for being a prick, you know,” Ian asked. Then he must’ve realized who he was talking to.
Jack gave him a pointed stare. “Thanks.”
Ian shut his mouth, obviously figuring he’d better not answer.
Jack pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket. “She’s made a list of anyone she could think of who might have been privy to any information, starting with her immediate supervisor and the guy they gave the project to.”
Jack watched Ian take the paper and put it in his pocket. “Second,” Jack continued, “she keeps mentioning a company in Europe called Gateway. A distributor that BioClin worked with. You might want to do some digging on them.”
“Thanks, I will.”
Jack frowned. “You know, I have a feeling that if you dig into this company Bernecky is working for now, that might lead you to the guy Morgan believes killed that poor woman. And maybe the others.”
“Who’s that?”
“Used to be her direct competitor within the company, she said. Anton Dvorak.”
“Do you think she’s right?” Ian asked him.
Jack nodded. “Someone inside that company’s been orchestrating things. I’m sure of it. Now, that person might tie into the other deaths, and then again, he might not. I don’t have any way to tell yet.”
“Guess we’d better keep digging then.”
Ian hesitated, and Jack wondered why. “Ian, listen. You know I’m right. She’s a hero, not a murderer,” he continued. “She was trying to do the right thing and keep everyone safe.”
>
She was a hero. Except for that small glitch called the law, of course. Which might get them both thrown in jail if Ian couldn’t work some magic.
“All right, here’s the deal,” Ian finally said, nodding in agreement. “You hand over all the evidence. I’ll ‘persuade’ BioClin not to press charges. When they find out what’s been going on, I believe they’ll be more than happy to cooperate.”
Jack took a deep breath and let the air out slowly. A huge weight lifted from his shoulders. “What if they’re all dirty?” he wondered out loud.
“You let me worry about that.”
“Not good enough. She’s really upset that someone used her process to kill. She wants to help set up the murderer. Become the bait.”
Ian frowned. “You want me to just set up a meeting and hand her over to the lions in the lion’s den?”
“Yup.”
“Why?”
“Because of the people who’ve died. Because whoever is doing this is crazy. I don’t care if these murders occurred in the name of greed or science. There’s no doubt a crazy is on the loose.”
Now it was Ian’s turn to decide what to do. He hesitated again, making Jack wonder. “That might be out of the question now.”
“What do you mean?” Jack stared at him, confusion and hurt racing through his guts.
“There’ve been…developments.”
Jack’s insides clenched as the temperature in the diner dropped. “Developments?”
“Yeah. While she’s been running you on a wild-goose chase, another murder has been committed. This time very close to home.”
“What? Who? How? Where?”
Ian didn’t seem sure which question to answer first. “It seems someone has been able to speed up the process. A young woman who worked for BioClin, Rebecca Daniels, disappeared right after Morgan Mackenzie.”
“Oh my God, her admin!” Jack exclaimed.
“Interesting that Dr. Mackenzie would have told you about the young woman, don’t you think?”
Jack didn’t answer. He couldn’t. Ian had things backward.
“She’s dead, Jack,” Ian told him.
His stomach soured. “The same as the others?”
Ian didn’t reply. He didn’t need to. He simply nodded. “And you think Morgan killed her.”
Damned If You Don't Page 17
