Sins of the Flesh

by Caridad Piñeiro

  “Always thought you were no match for my lil’ sis.”

  At that comment, she poked her head around Mick’s broad back in time to see 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 Brothers 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.

  “Por favor, 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, glancing at Mick, seemed to reconsider. “You think they’ll believe you?” he said, his face contorted into a sneer.

  Mick chuckled, surprising her by the mirth 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 consider seeing a lawyer if I were you.”

  Harrison’s face first paled and then erupted in a flare of angry red. Liliana worried he might stroke out, there was so much tension visible in his body, but instead he merely turned and rushed 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 along? she thought, the terror of the attack finally setting in. She was shaking as she retrieved her purse and bag from the ground.

  “You’re lucky it was just Harrison,” Mick admonished.

  “Yo sé. I won’t let it happen again,” she replied, her hands trembling while she put to right the contents of her purse.

  Mick nodded, seemed about to chastise her again, but then enveloped her in a big bear hug. “You did fine, hermanita.”

  Liliana let herself linger for a moment in his protective embrace before shaking off the nervous energy pumping through her body and walking into the house. She glanced up to the second-floor landing, wondering about Caterina.

  “She was running a high fever. Had to cool her down,” Mick explained, as if reading his sister’s thoughts.

  Liliana 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?”

  Mick 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 of herself, Liliana placed a hand at her side and stretched to work out a kink in the small of her back from the many hours she had been on her feet during her shift.

  “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.

  Liliana tsked. “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 former.

  “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 her 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 couldn’t risk Caterina going out in public.

  “I don’t have much time left to figure this all out, do I?”

  Liliana 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, Miguelito.”

  He had been on many a tough mission in the past, but this one was proving far more difficult than he had anticipated. Still, he forced a smile and said, “I’ll try not to disappoint.”

  Caterina didn’t feel well. A warming heat had remained although the dip in the pool had driven away the worst of the fever. It felt like the start of the flu. She felt assorted aches in her joints and head, but suspected the ache in her head might also be from the lack of any restful sleep.

  Mick had been by her side again all through the night. Vigilant but distant after the incident in the pool.

  He’d seen her toss and turn, but had elected to allow 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.

  She hadn’t killed Wells.

  She hadn’t heard Mick return to the recliner because with that revelation, sleep had finally come. But not enough, she thought as the full 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 Mick as she stirred. He instantly sat up and shifted to the edge of the chair.

  Mick was barefoot and bare-chested, wearing only a pair of well-worn jeans. The top snap was undone, revealing an intriguing vee of skin leading…

  “Done looking?” he chided.

  She snapped her gaze up as heat blossomed across her face. There was one way to avoid answering his question.

  “I remembered.”

  Mick sat up higher at the edge of the chair. “You remember what happened to Wells?”

  Caterina 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 it was required in order to stay sane while he worked on this case.

  “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?”

  Caterina nodded and continued. “One looked familiar. Like I should know who he was, but the other… 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. Had he 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, Caterina 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.”

  “Do you remember seeing anyone else in the lab?”

  Caterina closed her eyes, replaying the scene in her head like she might a movie. The images stark. Dangerous.

  “The guy with the tats… He 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 to recall the images. Piecing them together like a puzzle so she could complete the picture in her mind.

  “I moved away from him. 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 softly, evenly.

  She nodded, her mouth open as she pulled in a rough inhalation. She pressed on with her story.

  “He was staring at me. His head was at a weird angle. I thought his mouth moved….”

  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 Mick had found out about Edwards, the more sure he was that the man was behind whatever had happened. And if he had been Edwards, he wouldn’t have picked Caterina as the one to do the killing. Especially not if he’d had not one but two men, both bigger and stronger than the fragile musician, capable of such violence.

  “You don’t know the names of the men?”

  Caterina 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, Mick thought.

  “Wells, Edwards, and Morales. All of them were aware of what was happening with the patients?”

  Caterina nodded.

  “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?

  “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.

  Alone.

  CHAPTER 25

  After Harrison’s attack on 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 beachgoer, 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 mami 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, mami.”

  “Sshh, niña. Someone might hear you,” his mami whispered.

  As the door closed, that hushed entreaty was immediately followed by, “Dios mio. You’re the lady from the news.”

  Coño, Mick cursed silently and hurried down the stairs just in time to catch his sister introducing the two.

  “Mami, meet Caterina Shaw. She’s Mick’s… houseguest. 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, mami. 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.”

  “I didn’t spill the frijoles,” Liliana confirmed to him, miming that she was zipping her lips.

  “I’m on a job, mami—”

  “And you involve your sister!” she chided, rising up on tiptoe and wagging a finger in his face.

  He snagged that digit before it took out an eye. As he did so, he noticed Caterina’s amused face. Before he could do anything else, Liliana jumped back into the fray.

  “I asked Mick if I could stay here. I broke off my engagement with Harrison.”

  His mother immediately launched into action. She pressed the bag of food into Caterina’s hands and embraced Liliana.

  “Ay, niña. La virgencita has answered my prayers,” she said. Then she released his sister and wrapped her arms around him, pressing her head against the middle of his chest, which was the only spot her petite stature permitted her to reach.

  “Mi’jito. Why didn’t you say you were helping your sister?” The grip of her arms was tight, but there was a doughy softness to them and her bosom, which reminded him of his youth and the comfort of that embrace.

  He hugged her back hard, bent, and dropped a kiss against the side of her face. “I’m glad you’re here. I was hungry.”

  In answer to the enticing smells from the bag that had wafted into his vicinity, his stomach growled loudly.

  The three women all laughed in unison, although their laughs couldn’t have been more different. His mother’s loud and slightly hoarse. Liliana’s like a short burst of gunfire.

  Cat’s almost melodic, with a freedom he suspected she hadn’t experienced in quite a lo
ng time. The smile on her face confirmed that impression, as did the deep blue of her eyes.

  When he took the bag from her hands, their fingers brushed, kindling the need he had tempered last night. Bringing a spark of awareness in her as well, he realized.

  Caterina quickly withdrew her hands from the bag, ignoring the sensation jumping alive within her at the simple and innocent touch of their fingers.

  Mick rushed away with the bag, leaving her to follow Liliana and Mariel as the two women walked arm in arm toward the kitchen.

  The resemblance between the pair was strong, much like that between Mick and Liliana, only Mariel’s eyes were neither green nor brown, but a light-colored hazel.

  Their mother was petite like Liliana, but with a stout figure which said she clearly enjoyed a lot of her own cooking.

  The sight of them—mother and daughter, clearly friends—roused memories of Caterina’s own childhood. Of strolling beside her mother in the park or sitting beside her on the piano bench as she played, the notes from the piano resonating through the space of their small apartment.

  An apartment similar to this home with its rich colors, artisanal furniture and collectibles that spoke of a love for culture and tradition.

  Interesting for a man who Cat might have guessed spent little time in one place. Someone had definitely used some loving care in building this home, although there were things which also hinted that he neglected it.

  In the kitchen they gathered at the table. Mick was quick to empty the bag of the aluminum pans filled with an assortment of foods while Liliana retrieved beverages for everyone. Anyone looking in on the tableau would say it was just another family gathering.

  Only Caterina wasn’t part of this family, or any other. She swiped at her eye, brushing away a tear. Mariel immediately noted her disappointment.

  Patting Caterina’s hand as it rested on the tabletop, Mariel said, “Do not worry, niña. If Miguelito is helping you, all will turn out well.”

  Caterina met Mick’s gaze from across the width of the table, almost daring him to admit that when it came to her, there would be no happy ending, but he remained silent.

  When Liliana placed a plate laden with a sampling of Mexican foods before her, Caterina thought she had little appetite, upset as she was by the current state of her life. But it was difficult to ignore the enticing and earthy smells of the food which resuscitated happy memories in her brain and had her mouth watering as if she were one of Pavlov’s dogs.