Covert M.D.
Jessica Andersen
SHE COULD TRUST HIM WITH HER LIFE…BUT NOT WITH HER HEARTSomething sinister was taking place in the shadowy basement of Boston General Hospital–and Dr. Nadia French was determined to stop it. A transplant specialist, Nia French was called in to investigate the puzzling deaths of organ transplant recipients at BGH, and nothing was going to keep her from solving the case–not even her ex-lover-turned-partner.For Dr. Rafe McKay, women were a liability–especially in the field. He'd already lost one female partner, and he couldn't let Nia put herself in danger. But Nia had grown up in the ten years since he'd walked out on her, and she wasn't about to be chased off this case…or away from him!
Rathe stood, uncoiling slowly from the chair as though afraid she might bolt.
But bolting was the last thing on her mind as she identified the heady, racing sensation that had pounded through her during the fight. Excitement. This was the adventure she craved, the thrill she’d been seeking.
The adrenaline poured through her body. She wanted to run. She wanted to dance, to sing, to tip her head back and scream.
She grinned at Rathe.
His eyes narrowing, he advanced on her and leaned down so they were face-to-face. “This is not a joke, Nia. Don’t you get it? You could’ve been killed,” he said, then placed a palm flat against the door, effectively trapping her.
“Well, I wasn’t, thanks to you. That’s why the doctors here work in teams, remember? So we can watch each other’s backs.” She shoved at his chest with both hands, but he was immovable. “Damn it, let me go!”
She saw the change in his eyes. Her body answered the call and he bent close and whispered, “I can’t.”
Then he kissed her, and all that restless energy redirected itself to the places where their bodies merged.
Dear Harlequin Intrigue Reader,
Spring is in the air and we have a month of fabulous books for you to curl up with as the March winds howl outside:
Familiar is back on the prowl, in Caroline Burnes’s Familiar Texas. And Rocky Mountain Maneuvers marks the conclusion of Cassie Miles’s COLORADO CRIME CONSULTANTS trilogy.
Jessica Andersen brings us an exciting medical thriller, Covert M.D.
Don’t miss the next ECLIPSE title, Lisa Childs’s The Substitute Sister.
Definitely check out our April lineup. Debra Webb is starting THE ENFORCERS, an exciting new miniseries you won’t want to miss. Also look for a special 3-in-1 story from Rebecca York, Ann Voss Peterson and Patricia Rosemoor called Desert Sons.
Each month, Harlequin Intrigue brings you a variety of heart-stopping romantic suspense and chilling mystery. Don’t miss a single book!
Sincerely,
Denise O’Sullivan
Senior Editor
Harlequin Intrigue
Covert M.D.
Jessica Andersen
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
To my friends in the New England Chapter
of Romance Writers of America.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Though she’s tried out professions ranging from cleaning sea lion cages to cloning glaucoma genes, from patent law to training horses—Jessica is happiest when she’s combining all these interests with her first love: writing romances. These days she’s delighted to be writing full-time on a farm in rural Connecticut that she shares with a small menagerie and a hero named Brian. She hopes you’ll visit her at www.JessicaAndersen.com for info on upcoming books, contests and to say “hi”!
CAST OF CHARACTERS
Dr. Nia French—Nia and her first lover are partnered in a deadly hospital investigation of failed transplants. Will she learn to forgive him before it’s too late?
Dr. Rathe McKay—The guarded doctor-adventurer has two equally difficult tasks: to protect Nia from a vicious killer and to avoid the chemistry between them.
Cadaver Man—The tall, gray man sees through Nia and Rathe’s covers quickly. Too quickly.
Tony French—Nia’s father drove Rathe off years ago. After his death, will Tony’s memory separate the onetime lovers or bring them closer together as danger escalates?
Dr. Logan Hart—The young transplant specialist wants to assist in the investigation of unexpected patient deaths. Or so he says.
Marissa Doyle—The nurse has overseen many of the dead patients and has hidden secrets.
Dr. Michael Talbot—The head of the transplant department, Talbot is a giant within the field. So why is a killer stalking his patients?
Short Whiny Guy—Cadaver Man’s partner has seen too much.
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter One
The damp subbasement of Boston General Hospital smelled faintly of death and fabric softener. Corridors folded back on each other without apparent reason, which was both a blessing and a curse for Nia French.
A blessing because she was able to stay out of sight. A curse because she had to follow close or risk losing Cadaver Man, Short Whiny Guy and the rattling laundry cart.
“You got the keys?”
Nia froze. The voice was near. Too near.
Heart pounding, she breathed through her mouth and eased closer to the off-green cinder block wall, wishing for some cover. Wishing the fluorescent lights weren’t so relentlessly bright.
Wishing she knew for sure she’d followed the right guys.
“Yeah, I got the keys. Why, you think I lost them already?” The second speaker was Short Whiny Guy, who had complained incessantly during the trip down from the sixth floor. There was a metallic jingle, and the sound of a door being unlocked.
“Just shut up and let’s get this thing loaded,” Cadaver Man ordered. She called him that because of the grayish skin and shadowed eyes she’d glimpsed when the elevators had shut on the men, leaving her wondering why they were changing the linens at two in the morning.
And why none of the beds in the Transplant Department were stripped.
Nia had followed them because this was her first assignment in HFH’s Investigations Division, and she was determined to prove herself.
Her previous assignments for Hospitals for Humanity had sent her to outbreaks and disaster areas worldwide, where her medical degree made her useful and her guts were taken for granted. It was good work, but it wasn’t where her heart lay. More than anything, she wanted to be an investigator—and now, finally, she’d been given the opportunity to work a case.
Hearing a metal door slide open and the men’s voices move away, Nia crouched down and eased around the corner, forcing her hands not to tremble from a mixture of nerves and excitement.
In contrast to the rest of the hospital, the loading bay was dark. The smell here was stronger, both of decay and of fabric softener, though the wide garage door let in a thin breath of Chinatown funk.
The men were gone. The big laundry hamper they had wheeled down from the sixth floor sat on the loading dock.
“Transplants failing for no good reason,” the dossier on this assignment read. “Supplies and pharmaceuticals disappearing from the Transplant Unit.”
Though the assignment didn’t officially begin until the next day, when she’d meet her new partner and they would be briefed on the full scope of the problem, Nia had sneaked into the hospital at midnight. She’d been hoping to discover something useful. Hoping to get a head start on impressing the senior investigator HFH had assigned to train her.
And here was her chance.
Stepping quietly on her soft-soled sneakers, she eased around the corner and crept toward the hamper. She had no concrete reason to suspect there was anything inside but laundry. But her left eyelid had twitched a warning, and the shift schedule indicated the linens in the Transplant Department were changed at seven in the morning, not two. Holding her breath, she stood on her tiptoes and peered inside the tall hamper.
It was full of laundry.
“Damn it,” she muttered under her breath, “why can’t they make these things shorter?” Twenty-eight-year-old Nia had topped out at five-two. Usually she could mask her short stature with determination, but the hamper didn’t care how tough she was, it still came up past her breasts. She had two choices—dive in and hope for the best or hang back and wait.
The sound of an engine and the rhythmic beep of a truck backing into the loading dock told her that “wait” was the better option. Darting behind a half-open door, she pressed her eye to the crack by the hinge and congratulated herself on a fine hiding spot.
She’d be a good investigator. No matter what certain people thought, she was going to make it. It had been her dream for nearly ten years now, ever since she’d first heard the stories about a swashbuckling HFH doctor saving the world.
“Come on, let’s get it loaded and get out of here. This stuff gives me the creeps.” Short Whiny Guy’s voice preceded him onto the loading dock. Cadaver Man, looking grayer in the half-light, unlatched the back of the laundry truck and ran up the door. Nia froze.
That was no laundry truck.
An empty gurney was secured to one side. Equipment sprouted from every flat surface and dangled from the ceiling. A faint white mist wafted out, as though the air-conditioning had been turned from “chill” to “preserve.”
“Ay-uh. We wouldn’t want to keep him waiting for his things, would we?” Cadaver Man, who hadn’t spoken up to this point, gave a ghastly grin that was at odds with his down-home Maine accent.
Nia’s pulse raced. Her first night on the job and she already had a huge break. If she got on that van and figured out where it was headed, what it was doing, then she could solve the case in a single night.
Score one for Nia French.
Short Whiny Guy pushed the laundry hamper across a narrow ramp and into the cleared center of the cargo area. The cart’s dirty canvas and worn wheels looked incongruous amidst so much stainless-steel and high-tech equipment.
“Come on, guys, give me a break here,” Nia whispered, her burst of optimism draining when Short Whiny Guy climbed into the back with the laundry hamper, as though it was his job to watch over the dirty linens. Cadaver Man shut the door and latched it securely.
Damn. Now what was she going to do? Her car was parked in the main garage on the other side of the hospital, so there was no way she could follow the men. Unless…
Her eyes narrowed on the back bumper of the van, which was fitted with a hydraulic cargo lift. The lift was wide and flat, with plenty of hand holds. She could jump right on.
She touched her back pocket and was reassured by the shape of her miniature tool kit. Given the chance, she might even be able to get the van open.
Cadaver Man reached up and pulled the loading dock’s garage door down, but the vehicle was still visible through a smaller opening nearby.
Nia’s heart pounded as the van’s engine started up. She rubbed her sweaty palms against her dark jeans and slipped out from the hiding spot.
“I can do this,” she said, reaching for the latch of the outer door as Cadaver Man ground the gears, searching for first. “I can do this. I can—”
“Oh, no you don’t!” Rough hands grabbed Nia, spun her and shoved her up against the wall, into the deep shadows. She panicked and screeched in terror.
Her assailant was taller than she, though only by seven or eight inches, and his rangy body jostled against hers as they struggled. She shoved against him. “Let me go!”
Oh, God, had she missed a third man? Panic spurted through her veins, and she shot an elbow at her attacker’s chin in a one-two move that her self-defense instructor had assured her should be followed by a knee to the groin.
Her captor blocked the elbow, but his grip slackened. “Nadia?”
She knew his voice instantly, but it was too late to stop the “two” of her one-two attack. She kneed him right where it hurt. Hard.
Rathe McKay, the most famous of HFH’s investigators—and Nia’s first lover—went pale, sank to the floor and wheezed.
Outside, the van revved and pulled away, its occupants unaware of the scuffle behind them on the loading dock.
Nia stood, stunned, as emotions battled within her. Guilt that she’d hurt him. Confusion as to why he’d sneaked up on her and why he was even in the hospital. And above all else, excitement at seeing him again after all this time.
Although his desertion had nearly destroyed her before, he still had the ability to leave her breathless. Because, damn it, even curled up on the floor, swearing, Rathe McKay looked good to her. Real good.
His close-cropped hair was lighter than she remembered, prematurely silver, though he was only thirty-eight. The seven years since she’d last seen him had added new lines to his angular face, making him look older than his calendar age even as they added to his appeal. His wide shoulders and chest spoke of coiled energy, and his arms and legs still boasted the leashed power she remembered, the grace that could carry him soundlessly through rainforests or dance him elegantly through the classiest ballroom.
And his eyes, when he opened them, still stared through her as though he could see into her soul.
“Rathe, I’m so sorry—” Horrified guilt swamped the shock. She offered a hand, but paused when a terrible possibility occurred. She withdrew her hand. “What are you doing here?”
He scowled, though something else moved in his eyes. Surprise, maybe, or wariness. Then those abstract emotions were gone, blanked out by the familiar stoniness. “I should’ve known something was wrong when Wainwright wouldn’t tell me who I’d be training.”
Rathe was her mentor? No. Impossible. Her stomach roiled, though there could be no other explanation for his presence at Boston General in the wee hours of the morning. But how had their boss, Jack Wainwright, managed it? Everyone knew Rathe McKay only took exotic assignments overseas. And more important, everyone knew he didn’t work with women.
Nia was one of the few who knew why.
Dismay pounded in her temples. She couldn’t work with Rathe. He would ruin everything.
“No,” she whispered. “This can’t be happening.”
“My thoughts exactly.” Rathe cursed in Russian, his voice dark and rich like the language. “Was that kick for—” he sucked in a pained breath and straightened slowly “—self-defense, or for what happened before?”
The question jabbed right beneath her heart. She wasn’t prepared for this. Wasn’t prepared for him.
“Before?” Though guilt stung—she wouldn’t have kicked him if he’d identified himself as friend rather than foe—she wasn’t willing to apologize again. Wasn’t willing to be vulnerable to him again. She crossed her arms and stared at the ceiling to buy a steadying moment. For all the times she’d thought about seeing Rathe again, this scenario didn’t even come close to what she’d imagined. “Let me see. Would that be before when you took my virginity, kicked me out of your hotel room and disappeared without a word…or before when my father, your best friend, begged you to come visit him on his deathbed and you never showed?”
Eyes dark, Rathe advanced on her, walking gingerly. She stood her ground and lifted her chin so she could glare scalpels at him, though her stomach knotted with nerves and a flare of traitorous warmth. They stared at each other for a heartbeat. Two.
Finally he turned away, muttering, “This is why women shouldn’t be allowed in Investigations—they can’t separate their personal lives from their professional ones.”
And there it was. Rathe McKay’s motto: Women Don’t Belong in the Field. Period.
Denial howled in Nia’s head, in her heart, but she held the emotions in check because, damn it, he was right. This wasn’t the time or place to bring up the past. She had a job to do.
And part of that job was proving to her HFH mentor that she was a capable investigator, fully ready to work in the field.
So she found a frosty smile that hopefully showed nothing of her tumultuous emotions. “You’re right. I apologize for being unprofessional. What’s done is done. Jack Wainwright said he was pairing me with an older, more experienced investigator, so I suppose I should be honored he chose you. You’re as old and experienced as they get.”
It was a low blow, aimed at what her father had laughingly called Rathe’s Methuselah complex. Though only ten years her senior, the HFH superoperative had always acted twice that.
He narrowed his eyes and scowled. “There won’t be an investigation. I’m calling Wainwright in the morning and having you reassigned. This is no place for…” He gestured as though the words were unnecessary.
“This is no place for a woman?” Nia clenched her fists at her sides. Though the HFH Head Office didn’t discriminate, there were a few old warhorses who did. Rathe, who’d been in the field more than fifteen years already, considered himself one of them.
“This is no place for Tony’s daughter!” He grabbed her by the arms and shook her as though she was eighteen years old again and he’d caught her prying into his field notes. “For God’s sake, Nadia. You know this isn’t what your father wanted for you. What would he say?”
Righteous anger speared through her. “He’s dead. The last thing he said on this earth was, ‘Where’s Rathe?’” And for that she had hated them both.
Emotion darkened his eyes, though she wasn’t sure that it was remorse. He spread his hands. “Nadia, for what it’s worth, I’m—”
“Don’t,” she interrupted, not willing to hear the apology, not willing to let him think that a betrayal of such magnitude could be scrubbed away with a few words. “Don’t bother. You’re right, this isn’t the time or the place for personal conversations. We have a job to do.”
She turned and stalked toward the freight elevators at the far end of the subbasement.
“Nadia.” His voice seemed to caress the word, bringing back memories best left unremembered.
She stopped and glanced back, steeling herself against the sight of him, strong and virile, an image that could have stepped out of her aching, mindless dreams.
Or her nightmares.
“I prefer to be called Nia now. Nadia is a child’s name, and I’m not a child anymore.” She lifted her chin, daring him to comment. “We have a meeting with the heads of the Transplant Department at 9:00 a.m. sharp—don’t be late.”
This time she didn’t look back, not even when he called her name. They had three hours until the meeting. She’d need every minute of that to prepare herself for the case.
And to armor herself against the disturbing presence of Rathe McKay.
BY NINE THAT MORNING, Rathe was back to walking upright as he stalked through Boston General, but his temper hadn’t mellowed much.
It was temper, he assured himself. Temper that had his blood surging through his veins with a tricky tingling sensation. Temper that had him feeling more alive, more engaged than he had in months or maybe longer.
Temper.
What was Wainwright thinking, partnering him with a woman trainee? He didn’t work with women. And even if he did, Nadia French was the last girl he’d choose.
Rathe shook his head, annoyed. No, that wasn’t right. This was about her being a woman, not about her being Tony’s daughter or about a mistake he’d once made in an airport hotel.
His refusal to work with the opposite gender was based on logic and experience. Period. There was nothing personal about it, and nothing personal between him and Nadia.
Sure, his first glimpse of her had been a kick in the gut, a surge of warmth and energy, but that was only basic man-woman biology. His yang approving of her yin. Nothing personal.
Her thick, dark hair was shorter than he remembered. In fact, she was shorter than he remembered, as though his mind had decided her scrappy personality couldn’t fit inside such a tiny shell. He’d remembered her eyes right, though. Dark brown, swirling with darker promises, they used to look at him with adoration, as though he was the hero he’d once thought himself.
Now they shone with anger. That was personal. And it was unacceptable in a partner.
Already five minutes late for the briefing, Rathe ducked into a windowed alcove and punched his superior’s number into his mid-wave cell phone, a high-tech HFH toy certified safe for use in hospitals. When Jack Wainwright answered, Rathe wasted no time with pleasantries. “I want her off the case. Now.”
There was a rumble of amusement. Jack had trained Rathe himself, back before a stray bullet had landed the older man behind a desk. There was respect between the two but little reverence. “McKay. I didn’t expect to hear from you until at least nine-fifteen. The meeting can’t have even started yet.”
“It hasn’t. I met my partner in the laundry room at 2:00 a.m. this morning. She was getting a jump on the case. She doesn’t seem to get that investigators never, ever go Lone Ranger.” It was HFH policy, and might be enough to convince Jack to pull her off the job.
“You were there, too, so don’t pretend you give a damn about policy.” Jack’s shrug carried down the line. “I know you don’t work with women, McKay, but it’s not like you two are in the middle of a war zone. It’s a bit of petty drug trafficking at a well-funded urban hospital. Enjoy it.”
Rathe gritted his teeth, knowing the cushy assignment was Jack’s way of saying he thought Rathe needed a break from the real action. “She’s a liability.”
“No, she’s not. She’s a transplant specialist, she’s fearless, and she was requested by name.” Jack’s voice hardened into a direct order. “Use her. Teach her. This is what the next generation of HFH investigators looks like, McKay. Get used to it.”
The phone went dead in Rathe’s hand, and he scowled.
Enjoy it. Get used to it. Jack’s words replayed in his mind as he jogged up the stairs to the sixth floor, which housed the Transplant Unit.
Fine. They thought he was burned out? He’d show them. He’d make this the fastest, cleanest investigation they’d ever seen. And he’d do it handicapped with a female partner.
He hit the top of the stairs, and an echo of heat reminded him that it wasn’t that simple.
His partner was Nadia French. Nia. Tony’s daughter.
Rathe had wanted to see his old friend one last time, had ached to apologize, to forgive and be forgiven and to hold Nadia when her father died.
But sometimes a man had to break a promise to keep a promise. And so he had stayed away.
Taking a deep breath, he pushed through the doors into the office of the director of transplant medicine.
“You’re late.” From her chair on the visitor’s side of the lake-size desk, Nia frowned at him. “I’ve already told Dr. Talbot about the men with the suspicious laundry hamper, and the van with the—”
“I’ll take it from here,” he interrupted. “Try to remember that I hold seniority on this case.”
She rolled her eyes. “Yes, sir, Dr. McKay, sir.”
Rathe ignored her and held out a hand to the older of the two men in the room, a distinguished, white-haired gentleman sporting a bow tie and elegant, steel-rimmed glasses. “I’m Rathe McKay.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Dr. McKay. Your reputation as the medical community’s answer to Indiana Jones precedes you.” The older man’s handshake was firm. “Michael Talbot. And this,” the director of transplant gestured to his companion, a handsome, well-groomed man, “is my assistant director, Logan Hart.”
The assistant director nodded but didn’t offer a hand. In his early thirties, Hart exuded breeding and education from the ends of his professionally sculpted hair to the tips of his tasseled black leather shoes. He looked a far cry from Rathe, who’d gone from the foster-care system straight to a combined undergraduate/medical degree on an HFH scholarship.
And where had that thought come from, Rathe wondered. He was the man he’d become, not the boy he’d been.
Frowning, he took the visitor’s chair beside Nia and focused his attention on the men. “My superior has been in direct contact with your administration. I expect you to grant me all of the necessary access and let me run my own investigation. In exchange I’ll provide you a written report of my findings once a week. Is that clear?”
There was dead silence in the office as the balance of power shifted neatly into Rathe’s hands—which had been his intention. He needed to take control of the situation right away.
When he was in charge, nobody made mistakes. Everyone lived.
But he could feel Nia fuming at his casual dismissal of what she’d seen in the loading area. The aggravation poured off her in waves. He could smell it coming from her skin, like the memory of—
Like the memory of a mistake. A betrayal.
A lost opportunity.
“Gentlemen?” Rathe forced his voice to sound level when it would have—what? Cracked? Faltered? Impossible—he was a grown man. Things like that didn’t happen to him. That was for kids such as Nia. “Do we have an agreement?”
Logan Hart, who looked like a kid himself, frowned, but his boss, Talbot, smiled with a glint of respect in his eyes. He held out his hand a second time, this time in affirmation. “We have an agreement, Dr. McKay. We would be fools not to take advantage of your expertise.”
In his peripheral vision, Rathe saw Nia curl her lip. Surprisingly, he had to fight a kink of amusement.
But this was no laughing matter. It was an investigation, and if her little stunt down in the subbasement was any indication, she was going to be a hell of a lot of work to baby-sit while he went about his business.
The director leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers together. “Basically we’re stumped. Transplant patients who would’ve survived a year ago are dying, and there are gaps in our supplies that suggest theft, but nobody’s seen anything.” He spread his hands. “I brought this to the head administrator’s attention, and he called you.”
“What sorts of supplies?” Rathe asked.
At the same time Nia said, “Are there connections among the dead patients?”
Logan Hart grinned at her, and a dimple appeared in his cheek. “Good question. They’re all rare type.”
Rathe shrugged. “If they’re rare tissue type, then they probably waited longest for their transplants and had the worst prognoses. You may just be seeing a blip. Let’s focus on the supplies to start with. What’s been disappearing?”
Nia frowned but didn’t argue.
Talbot pushed a bulging envelope across the desk. “There’s a list in here, along with your ID badges and supporting information. Jack Wainwright picked your cover stories. I hope you’ll find them acceptable.”
Rathe could have sworn Talbot was laughing at him but wasn’t sure why. He opened the envelope, shook out its contents and glanced at Nia’s information before passing it to her. She would be posing as a transplant specialist visiting the hospital to observe Boston General’s procedures, and give a short lecture series. Perfect. She wouldn’t have to dissemble much to maintain her cover, which was good. She didn’t have the experience he did at sliding into new roles. Chameleonlike, he could assume any cover, pass himself off easily as any of a number of people, such as…Rathe glanced at his packet.
“A janitor? You’ve got to be kidding me!”
Nia lifted a hand to stifle a snicker. When Rathe glared at her, she managed to straighten her face before she said, “It’s perfect. You’re working the night shift, so you’ll be able to watch the loading docks and see what comes and goes. So far, that’s our best lead….”
She was right, damn it. But Rathe also knew she was thinking that working the day shift, when he was off, would give her time to do some digging on her own. To prove herself.
He knew, because he’d once been like that himself. He’d learned his lesson the hardest way possible, and he’d be damned if he’d let Tony French’s daughter find herself in the same situation.
So he nodded. “You’re right. Working the night shift will give me plenty of time to help you with your end of things.”
She scowled back. “You’ll need to sleep sometime, McKay.”
“Not necessarily.” He scooped their IDs into the envelope. “I don’t sleep much.” He nodded to the transplant doctors, who were following the exchange with rapt attention. “Gentlemen. I’ll be in touch.”
Rathe didn’t miss the frown Nia directed at him, nor did he miss noticing how Logan Hart held her hand a moment longer than necessary when they shook.
Kids will be kids, Rathe told himself fiercely, and the words echoed in the voice of Nia’s father. Though Rathe had shrugged off his experiences as an on-loan medic in the war-torn country where the two had met over a transfusion, the place had marked Tony. Not long after, Tony had retired from the Army to hunker down in the suburbs with his wife and daughter while he waited for the nightmares to fade.
Rathe hoped they had in the end.
Trying to ignore the tug he felt in his gut when Nia laughed at something Logan Hart said, Rathe spun on his heel and left the office. He never should have come back to the States.
At least when he was abroad, it was easier to forget that he’d slept with his best friend’s daughter.
He stalked down the hall, away from the woman and the memories. But he didn’t go far. He had a feeling she was going to find every possible opportunity to place herself in danger during this assignment.
Hell, it’s what he would do in her situation.
EIGHT HOURS LATER, still annoyed that Rathe hadn’t waited around after their meeting so they could plan their case and divvy up the responsibilities, Nia stalked to the garage where she’d parked her car. She couldn’t wait to get back to the swanky apartment building that had been donated to Boston General for use by visiting scientists and patients’ families.
She’d spent the day going over the notes and familiarizing herself with the setup. Slick and well organized, Boston General’s Transplant Department boasted twenty beds and enough high-tech gadgets to satisfy even Nia—especially since she had designed a few of them herself during her two years in grad school.
“Brilliant,” they had called her, when in reality she had simply been bored. Bored by the classwork, by her fellow students, and by the city itself. She had longed for faraway places that could be reached only by overgrown paths, for adventures like the stories her father had told her. Stories with titles like, “The Time Rathe Was Adopted by Cannibals” or “The Time Rathe Saved the Congo.”
Those stories had stopped the day she announced to her parents that she wanted to join HFH when she grew up. Come to think of it, so had Rathe’s visits, for the most part.
In the damp garage, Nia missed the car door lock and dropped her keys to the pavement beside her silver Jetta. She bent and retrieved them, and was surprised to find her throat tight with the memory.
“I’m sorry, Daddy,” she murmured as she unlocked the car and slipped inside its interior, which smelled of leather and hospital disinfectant. “I know this isn’t what you wanted for me.”
But her father’s plans and hers had diverged a long time ago, even before he got sick.
She backed the Jetta out of her hospital parking slot and drove the vehicle out of the garage, shielding her eyes against the reflected glare of headlights in the rear-view mirror. “Geez,” she muttered over the classic rock on the radio, “I know it gets dark early this time of year, but are the high beams really necessary?”
The headlights followed her out of the garage and down Washington Street, where she merged slowly with the rest of the “rush” hour traffic.
It wasn’t until a mile and three lane shifts later that Nia realized the high beams were still just a few cars behind her.
She was being followed.
“Nonsense,” she told herself as nerves prickled in her stomach. “The whole apartment building is owned by the hospital. They’re simply going the same place you are.”
But that didn’t stop her left eye from twitching, as it had the night before when she’d seen the two white-coated men pushing a laundry hamper out of the Transplant Department. And it didn’t stop her heart from picking up a beat in fear.
She gripped the leather steering wheel tightly as traffic pushed her toward the entrance to the apartment building’s parking garage. Should she drive by and see what Mr. High Beams would do? Or should she park and make a run for it?
What would Rathe do in this situation?
“Argh!” She slapped the steering wheel in frustration and turned into the garage. She had purged that silly, teenage question from her head years ago, along with the crush she’d had on her father’s dashing friend. Or so she’d thought. But there it was, reminding her of the man she’d loved at twenty-one and hated not long after.
Mr. High Beams didn’t follow her into the garage, and Nia felt faintly ashamed for jumping at shadows. A good investigator needed to be tougher than that.
She parked, climbed out of the Jetta, slung her purse and soft-sided briefcase over her shoulder and tried to stop herself from hurrying to the elevators.
A voice spoke out of the shadows. “We need to talk.”
Chapter Two
Nia gasped and jolted, though the quick thunder of her heart identified Rathe before he stepped out into the light. She took an involuntary step back, snagged her foot on a crack and stumbled.
He caught her before she fell, one strong hand grabbing her arm, the other curving around her waist and sending a lightning bolt of sensation through her chest.
“Let me go!” She struggled to get away, not from him, but from the effect he had on her.
He released her quickly, though kept a hand up to make sure she was steady. A shadow moved across his face. “You needn’t be afraid of me, Nadia.”
Nadia.
It was the name her father had given her, the name he’d called her until the day he died. The memory of it brought a phantom ache to the scar beside her navel, and the threat of tears to her eyes. She pressed her fingers to her temples, where the first tendrils of a headache had gathered. It was late, that was all. She wasn’t usually this vulnerable to memories.
“Go away, Rathe.” Her quiet voice held the accumulated stress of the day.
Of all the times she’d imagined their reunion…
“We have things to discuss.” He stood between her and the elevator, though she sensed he wouldn’t stop her from boarding. No, he would just ride up with her, which could not be allowed. He’d had his chance to be a part of her life, a part of her family, and he’d turned it down without even a reply, just a packet of letters marked Return To Sender.
She shook her head, feeling the echoes of old sorrow, newer frustration. This would never work. There was no way she and Rathe could function together as a team. “We could’ve talked anytime today, you didn’t need to follow me home. Right now I’m tired and I have a full day of surgery to observe tomorrow, so I’m going to bed. We’ll talk in the morning.”
She moved to brush past him, but he caught her arm and waited until she looked up at him. “Nadia. Nia. I didn’t follow you. Talbot told me where you were billeted, so I waited here for you.” He paused a beat. “Why? Did someone follow you?” When she didn’t answer right away, he shook her. “Nia! Were you followed?”
She thought of the high beams behind her, the feeling of creeping malevolence they’d given her and the relief she’d felt when she turned into the garage and they moved on by. “No, of course not.”
“You always were a lousy liar. Damn it! This is all because of that crazy stunt you pulled in the laundry area.” Looking suddenly tired, he released her arm, stepped forward and stabbed the elevator call button. “Come on. We need to set some ground rules. If you keep this up you’ll get yourself killed.”
“Why are you being like this?” Nia’s voice rose as her frustration moved to the fore. She was tired and confused, and though his presence complicated everything, she wasn’t going to bow out of her first official investigation simply because he wanted her to. “Why are you set on running me off this case? Is it personal? Is it because we were lovers? If so—” she dredged up the words she’d said so many times in the fantasies where he’d come back and begged for another chance “—you’re the one who walked, McKay, not me.”
Technically he hadn’t walked; he’d sent her back to her father. Somehow that had been worse.
“This has nothing to do with ancient history,” he snapped, though Nia swore that, for a moment, his eyes dropped to where her snazzy leather jacket hung over her breasts. Heat climbed her cheeks as he continued, “Nothing!”
“Then what is it about?”
He paused for a moment, seeming to struggle with the answer. Then he exhaled noisily. “You’re a woman, Nia, and I don’t work with women. You know that.”
It was one of the stories her father hadn’t told her, one she’d overheard her parents discussing late at night. Rathe’s partner, Maria, had been killed while they were on assignment. Not long after the incident, he had come to live with Nadia’s family for a few weeks. Gaunt and sad-eyed, he hadn’t spoken much. He’d spent most of his time sitting down by the beach with an empty sketchpad on his knee.
At eighteen, Nadia had known him only from her father’s stories. Though Tony had told her to leave Rathe alone, she had found excuses to wander down by the water. She’d sat on the steps above him, each day bringing a different book, until he’d finally turned around and asked, “What are you reading?”
She’d blushed and shown him the cover of a travel book about Bateo, wishing it were something more sophisticated. A text from her advanced P-chem class maybe, or a mature story about unrequited love.
“I’ve been there, you know,” he’d said.
And though she knew he’d been to Bateo—from the story entitled “The Time Rathe Stopped an Outbreak of Blood Fever”—she had shaken her head and asked him to tell her about the island. He’d described the way the light slanted down between the leaves high above, and how the bugs were bigger, the animals meaner, and the natives tougher than any she’d see in the States.
As he’d talked, his eyes had glowed a molten silver, his shoulders had squared and his back had straightened until he looked like the man she’d expected to meet, not the sad, hollow figure who’d sat down by the beach and sketched nothing.
The next morning he was gone. Inside her heavy book bag—she’d been in her third year of college by then—she’d found a sheet of paper folded inside the book on Bateo. On it was a pencil drawing of a jungle scene with some of the prettiest leaves, biggest bugs, and meanest-eyed creatures she could imagine.
After that he’d sent her presents once or twice—a colorful feather arrangement and a cowrie shell necklace she’d kept in a carved box beside her bed. Then he’d come back the year she turned twenty-one, and everything had changed.
And changed again.
Now she angled her chin up at him. “Yes, I’m a woman, but I’m also damn good at my job. Just ask Wainwright.” She knew full well Rathe had already called their boss, just as she knew he’d pushed to have her yanked from the case and been turned down. “Even better, open your eyes and see for yourself.”
“It’s not that.” He pinched the bridge of his nose.
“Yes, it is.” She stepped into the empty elevator car, bracing an arm across the opening to keep him out. “And for your information, I’m not quitting. If you can’t work with me, you’ll have to take yourself off the case.”
A large part of her hoped he would do just that. A smaller, more feminine part hoped he wouldn’t.
He scowled. “Damn it, Nia! Let me come up. We need to talk about this.” The air around him vibrated with tension, and his eyes seemed to shoot silver sparks, but she wasn’t afraid of him.
Not physically, at least.
She stepped back and pulled her finger off the open-door button. “No. We’ll talk about it tomorrow. Meet me in the coffee shop at seven.”
The doors tried to slide shut. He blocked them with his shoulder and glared at her. “Fine. But promise me one thing. Promise you won’t snoop around the hospital again tonight. Leave that to me, okay?”
Nia might have taken offense at the request, but she was too darned tired to do more than collapse into bed. And there was something in his frustration, in his suddenly human gaze, that told her the request wasn’t just the primary asking his junior investigator not to interfere.
Her father might have called it “The Time Rathe Asked for a Favor.”
Confused, stirred up and weary beyond words, she simply nodded. “Fine. I won’t go back to the hospital tonight. I’ll see you in the morning.”
A glint that might have been relief, might have been triumph, flashed in his eyes and he let go of the elevator doors. “Tomorrow, then.” He turned and walked away as the panels slid shut.
This time it was Nia who slapped a hand to keep them open. “Rathe!” He stopped and looked back without turning. She felt suddenly foolish, but something compelled her to call, “Be careful.”
Maybe he smiled. Maybe he winced. But after holding her eyes with his for a heartbeat, Rathe simply inclined his head and turned away.
Nia let the doors slide shut and resisted the urge to press her suddenly hot face against the cool metal wall.
THE NEXT MORNING Rathe leaned back in an uncomfortable booth and watched Nia enter the hospital coffee shop. A restless night was etched in the deep circles under her eyes. Her skin was tinted with makeup, but the hollows remained. And, damn it, they didn’t detract one iota from her beauty.
Her dark hair curled around her face, adding mysterious shadows to eyes that already knew him too well. A faint blush stained her high cheeks, and her full, sensuous lips drew into a flat line as she sank down opposite him, both hands wrapped around a cup of coffee. She grinned at him, though the expression didn’t quite reach her eyes. “Okay, Bwana. Teach me how to investigate.”
Rathe frowned but didn’t argue. During the long night, he’d acknowledged he would have to teach her some basic survival skills, since she seemed determined to see this through. He would walk her through a safely edited version of an in-hospital covert job, and try like hell to convince her it wasn’t what she wanted to do with her life. He just couldn’t picture her in the Investigations Division, all five-foot-something of her pitted against the ugliness that lurked beneath the underbelly of the medical community.
Why? He wanted to ask. Why are you so set on investigations? Your father would’ve hated it. You could be hurt. Killed. Why?
But that was personal, not business. So instead he pushed a sheet of paper across the table to her. “Let’s start with the laundry room. Why did you follow those men out to the loading dock?”
“What’s this?” She picked up the paper, scanned its contents and answered her own question, “It’s the pickup timetable for the linens. There was a team scheduled for the one-to-three shift the other morning.” She glanced up at him. “Why wasn’t this information in our background packets?”
Rathe shrugged. “Who knows? I copied it from the schedule in the maintenance office…” among other things that she didn’t need to know about. He would tell her enough to do her part of the job and no more. He’d pass along enough to satisfy her, plus a little disinformation to keep her away from the dangerous parts.
Though the case seemed simple on the surface, Rathe had a feeling it was anything but.
“So how do you explain the bed and all the equipment we saw in that so-called laundry van?”
“I didn’t see it.” When she raised an eyebrow, he shrugged. “I didn’t get there until after the door was shut.”
There was no need to tell her that he’d been nearly panic-stricken to see the tiny, furtive figure of a woman heading for the departing van. In an instant he’d been back in the Tehruvian jungle, seeing Maria wave from a rebel army transport.
And that was before he’d realized the shadow in the laundry room belonged to Nadia French.
“Why were you there, anyway? We weren’t supposed to start work until later that morning.” She pursed her lips and blew across the top of her coffee. Sipped. Swallowed.
Rathe looked away. He had to keep this professional. Mentor and student. Senior and junior. The way it should have been from the very first day he’d noticed his best friend’s daughter watching him from the beachfront stairs.
“I was looking around,” he replied, not mentioning the gut feeling that had drawn him down to the subbasement. He tapped the paper that now lay on the table between them. “Unless you have a compelling reason why you followed those two, I think we should move on.” Rather, she should move on and leave the subbasement to him.
“You’re going to disregard what I saw in the van?” Her fingers tightened enough to dent the cardboard cup.
“No.” Rathe shook his head. “Not disregard. File and continue.” He held up a finger. “Rule one—Don’t fall in love with your own theory. When that happens, you’ll overlook clues that don’t fit.”
He waited for the argument, but she surprised him by nodding. She sipped, then gestured to encompass the hospital. “It’s like making a diagnosis. Don’t pick a disease until you’ve gathered all the facts.”
“Right. Only, think of the entire hospital, or maybe the Transplant Department, as the patient. As a doctor, you’re already used to that sort of investigation. This is simply on a grander scale.” A more dangerous one, though he was determined not to let her experience that firsthand. In the wee hours of the morning, when he’d tried to catnap in the basement break room, he’d decided on that course, with one addition: he was going to do his damnedest to convince her that HFH in general—and investigations in particular—wasn’t for her.
It was what Tony would’ve wanted him to do.
“So our symptoms are as follows,” she began, ticking the points off on her fingers. “First, there’s an increase in transplant deaths. Second, supply shortages are reported to Transplant Director Talbot and Assistant Director Hart.”
Rathe thought she might have lingered on the second man’s name and he scowled. That was another thing about working with women. They couldn’t keep their minds on business.
She blew on her coffee again, and Rathe forced himself to glance around the near-empty café. They weren’t being overheard. And he was a hypocrite, watching her make love to a cardboard cup while he preached to himself about women and their inability to focus on the job.
He gritted his teeth and gestured for her to continue.
“They’re missing antirejection drugs. Suture kits. That sort of thing.” Another finger joined the first two. “And third, I saw two men leave Transplant with a full laundry cart, even though the linens hadn’t been changed out. They loaded the cart into a van rigged with life support and then…” She glared at him. “Thanks to you, I don’t know what happened to the hamper from there.”
Annoyed, Rathe fired back, “Thanks to me, you didn’t break your neck trying some damn fool stunt in an attempt to—” He stopped himself. “Never mind. We’ve already covered that and you promised not to go down there again without me.” He fixed her with a look. “Right?”
“Sure. Whatever.” She glanced at her watch. “I’m scheduled to observe a rare-type kidney transplant in a little less than an hour. If we’re done here, I’m going up to my office to read over the rest of the material Talbot left for me.”
Done? They hadn’t even started yet, but Rathe didn’t argue the point. It was probably a good thing their covers would keep them separated for the most part. At night he could investigate the depths of the hospital, where he was positive the real machinations were occurring. During the day, he could keep watch over her and make sure she didn’t get too close to the danger he could feel fermenting below the surface of this case.
And sleep? He’d never needed much of that. Like Tony had always said, I’ll sleep plenty when I’m dead.
“Dream well, old friend,” Rathe murmured to himself, forgetting for the moment that Tony’s daughter sat opposite him.
“What was that?”
Rathe shook his head. “Nothing.” He stood. “We’ll meet after the transplant, compare notes and divvy up which one of us will follow which line of inquiry. That’ll save us from duplicating efforts.” And allow him to keep her on the outskirts of the heavy lifting.
“Fine.” She tipped her head, considering. “But we shouldn’t meet in public again. It would look strange, don’t you think?”
Irritated that he hadn’t thought of that first, which just went to show that mixed-sex partnerships were needlessly distracting, Rathe scowled. “You’re right. There’s no reason for a visiting lecturer to socialize with a janitor.” He tried not to let their respective roles annoy him, but Jack Wainwright had no doubt laughed long and loud when he’d decided on their cover stories.
Rathe McKay, legend-turned-janitor.
Oh, well. That made it a hell of a cover.
“We could meet in my office this afternoon,” she suggested tongue in cheek. “You could bring your mop and pretend—”
“I got it,” he growled, trying not to see the absurd humor in it. “But your office won’t work every day—it’ll look suspicious. Why don’t we meet at your apartment at change of shift, instead?”
“No. Absolutely not.” She tipped her chin down, eyes suddenly dark.
Rathe shrugged, trying not to care. “Fine. We’ll figure it out later. You go do your thing, Doc. I’ll be around.”
He watched her walk away and saw a hint of the young woman who’d once sat down beside him on the beach and showed him a book about Bateo. Like that teenager, Nia was still unsatisfied with who she was, where she was, always looking for the next thing that was just out of reach.
They were, Rathe acknowledged with a wry grimace, entirely too alike.
He swept her empty coffee cup off the table and crumpled it in one hand as he hesitated at the café door. He could return to the warren of corridors and small rooms in the basement that were the realm of the maintenance workers, the laundry crews and the other tradespeople who came and went through the large hospital. Rife with gossip and the occasional scoundrel, that was where he’d find the information he sought. He was sure of it.
He glanced over at the big bank of brushed-steel elevator doors that would carry him up into the ivory towers, to the wide, straight corridors and large airy rooms of the treatment and research floors where Nia belonged.
He muttered a curse and turned his back on the temptation. She would have to keep herself out of trouble for an hour. She could do it. She was a big girl now.
Or so she kept insisting.
OVER THE NEXT HOUR, Nia couldn’t cobble the information into a decent theory no matter how hard she tried. The failure grated on her as she shut and locked her office and headed down to the café. She barely had time to grab a quick snack before she observed Dr. Talbot transplant a healthy donor kidney into a young woman who had been born with small, subfunctional organs.
Nia rubbed at the faint scar above her hipbone while she waited for the elevator, her mind still on the mystery she was supposed to be unraveling. She had plenty of questions, but her theories were anemic at best.
The missing supplies made some sense—almost any medical item could be sold on the black market. And it was possible, if not likely, that the laundry hamper was being used to transport the pharmaceuticals down to the loading dock and out of the hospital. That would assume at least one thief had access to the locked supplies. Short Whiny Guy and Cadaver Man were her first guesses. Surely she and Rathe could find the pair.
Rathe. No, she refused to think about him. They had agreed to leave the past where it belonged. He hadn’t wanted the family that had loved him as a son, and he hadn’t wanted the woman who had loved him as a man. In the seven years since she’d last seen him, she had outgrown both her love and her desire to follow in his footsteps across the globe and back.
She’d decided to blaze her own trail instead.
“Focus,” she told herself sternly, glad she was alone in the descending elevator. “This isn’t about you or Rathe. It’s about the patients and the hospital.”
But none of this added up. How did the missing supplies account for the increase in transplant deaths? Were the two even related?
The doors slid open, and Nia stepped out into the big, open atrium at the center of the hospital, where all the wings intersected. A flash of navy blue caught her eye and she glanced over, half expecting to see Rathe waiting for her, ready to tell her where she could go, who she could see and what she could do.
But it was someone else, a stoop-shouldered old man in a janitor’s dark-blue uniform, listlessly swabbing at a puddle of something she didn’t care to know about.
Ignoring the single twitch of that restless muscle at the corner of her eye, Nia hurried to the café and bought a muffin to make up for the breakfast she’d been too keyed up to eat. She reversed direction and headed back to the elevators, biting into the muffin as her stomach growled.
A heavy blow from behind drove her to her knees.
“Gonna getcha, bitch!” The high-pitched, almost giggling voice near her ear lodged quick panic in her throat.
She hit the floor, the muffin bounced away, and her left eye nearly locked itself shut. Her attacker followed her down and lay crosswise atop her.
Nia squirmed desperately and tried to scream, but the huge, smothering weight drove the breath from her lungs. Faintly she heard cries of alarm. Running feet.
Her heart hammered in her ears, and terror sweated from her palms. Every self-defense move she’d learned was useless. She had no leverage. She pushed against the floor, but to no avail.
“Where’s your money? Where is it?” Rough hands groped at her pockets, at her body. She fought back, jabbing with her feet and elbows whenever her attacker’s weight shifted enough to allow it. But her blows sank into heavy, hot blubber and she still couldn’t breathe.
“Where is it?” The man flipped her over, looming large in her oxygen-starved vision. His face was pocked with scars, some from acne, some from injuries. His hair was greasy and limp, his face covered with rank sweat. “Where is your money?”
She didn’t need to see the needle tracks on his upraised arm to know he was beyond reason. He raised his arm higher, and a switchblade glittered in a ray of sunlight.
Running feet thundered. A woman screamed.
And the knife descended in a killing arc.
Chapter Three
Time seemed to slow, picking out Nia’s last few moments in exquisite detail. She saw the distended, bulging veins in her attacker’s forearm, saw an onlooker’s mouth form a perfect O of horror. She smelled sour, unwashed man and the sharp taint of her own fear. She felt the weight of him, like that of a lover, pressing her into the hard floor, shifting atop her as the blade descended.
And she wished, with a burning intensity that was close to pain, that she had been a better daughter.
Then the knife completed its arc and the world sped up again. Navy blue flashed before Nia’s eyes. Her attacker jolted and fell to the side. The switchblade hit the polished marble, chimed like a bell and skipped harmlessly away.
Free! She was free!
Not stopping to question it, she scrambled to a crouch, ready to escape if possible, fight if necessary. But she didn’t need to do either. Her attacker’s attention had shifted to the old, stoop-shouldered maintenance man who’d come to her rescue.
Only it wasn’t an old janitor.
Navy ball cap missing, and a broken-off mop handle in his hands, Rathe faced the bear-size junkie, who swayed on his feet and shook his head as though to clear it. But the rheumy eyes were disconcertingly sharp as they focused with deadly intent.
“You got money? I need a fix, man. Just gimme a fix and I’ll go away. I don’t want to hurt you, man.” The drug-crazed giant belied this by taking a swipe at Rathe, who darted out of reach.
“McKay, look out!” Nia cried, then belatedly remembered their cover. She wasn’t supposed to know him.
His eyes flicked to her, and the junkie charged with a roar, nearly catching the “janitor” by surprise.
Rathe stepped back and spun the mop handle in a neat one-two-three tattoo that caught the man on the ribs, throat and just behind the ear. Seemingly undeterred, the attacker lurched forward, hamlike arms reaching. But his drug-induced invincibility propelled him straight into a whistling arc of wood as Rathe teed off on his attacker’s temple. And this time, he put some muscle into it. The mop handle met flesh with a thud and a crack as the beleaguered wood broke under pressure. The enormous man dropped like a rock.
And stayed down.
Nobody moved for a beat, then scattered applause broke out in the atrium. Voices murmured. Gentle, helping hands tugged at Nia, pulling her to her feet and checking her for injury. But the voices seemed muted, the touches faraway. Her whole attention was centered on the man who stood above his fallen enemy, making the navy janitor’s garb look like a warrior’s armor.
“Rathe,” she whispered, and though he was twenty feet away, his head snapped up. His eyes found hers, and the energy surged between them as it had once before, hot and wanting, sharp and ready. Then, like a suddenly stilled heart, the connection was broken as he looked away. His shoulders sagged. He seemed to shrink. His eyes dulled to those of a bored laborer whose mind was on other things. He bent and retrieved his ball cap, looking more washed out than he’d been seven years earlier, near dead with fever.
He’d been holed up in an airport hotel, having landed near collapse and been unable to make it further. Twenty-one-year-old Nadia, halfway through her accelerated M.D., had gotten the message before her father. This was it, she’d thought. This was her way of proving to her father that she was cut out for HFH. Her way of proving to Rathe that she was worthy of—
“Ma’am? Excuse me, ma’am? The officers are here. Ma’am? Are you okay?” The gentle hands shook her out of the past and back to a present that included a mess of hospital security guards, an unconscious junkie and a switchblade lying, seemingly harmless, on the floor.
Eyes fixed on the knife, Nia began to shake.
Over the roaring in her ears, she heard someone say, “Hey, grab her, she’s going to faint!” just as another voice, farther away, asked, “Where’d that janitor go? He was here a minute ago.”
Rathe. The name steadied her, reminded her she was alive, thanks to him. Reminded her that she had a job to do. The reputation of her sex to uphold. She could imagine him scoffing at her. This is why women shouldn’t be in dangerous field situations. They fall apart.
Well, damn it. Not her. Not today.
“I’m fine.” She batted away the helping hands and turned toward the knot of security guards, who gave way to a pair of men in street clothes.
The younger of the two, handsome in a neat brown suit and crisp white shirt, held out his hand. “Detective Peters, ma’am.” He indicated his partner with his other hand, and a wedding band glinted gold in the light. For some reason Nia found the symbol comforting. “And my partner, Detective Sturgeon. We were in the neighborhood.”
The older detective, long-jowled and smelling faintly of peppermints, nodded gravely. “Ma’am. What can you tell us about the incident?”
“He said he wanted my money,” she answered, scrambling to put the kaleidoscopic memories of the last few minutes into some sort of order. “He had needle marks on his arms and his eyes…” She trailed off, realizing something for the first time.
His eyes had been normal. Calculating. And murderous.
HALF AN HOUR LATER, Nia fumbled to unlock her office door with shaking hands. She’d answered the detectives’ questions and arranged for them to meet with Talbot and Hart. She’d watched the pockmarked man wake up cursing, and had seen him stagger off between a pair of uniformed officers, still cursing. She’d assured the onlookers she was fine, and professed ignorance at what had become of the janitor.
All in all, she thought she’d held it together well. But now she was in her office, alone. It was okay to fall apart.
She closed the door behind her and didn’t turn on the lights as she slumped against the wall and felt the switch poke into her spine. She pressed the back of her hand to her lips and willed the tears to come.
But there were no tears. In their place was a nagging sense of guilt that she’d realized something important in those last few moments, and it had been just as quickly forgotten. Overlapping that was an edgy energy that seemed to curl red and blue behind her closed eyelids.
After a few moments the shakes subsided, and Nia realized that whatever stubborn streak had forced her to defy her father’s wishes and go off into the unknown…that part of her wouldn’t let the tears come now.
“Damn it.” She pushed away from the door, slapped on the light and froze when she saw the man sitting in the chair behind her borrowed desk.
“My sentiments exactly,” Rathe concurred. His eyes gleamed with an indefinable emotion that sent skitters of heat racing through her body. His cap lay on the desk. The dark blue coveralls were open several buttons at the throat and rolled up at the sleeve to expose the corded muscles beneath the tanned skin of his forearms. His shoulders were square and powerful, and with a start, Nia realized he could turn the uniform from a disguise to a fashion statement with a simple change in posture and expression.
He stood, uncoiling slowly from the chair as though afraid she might bolt. But bolting was the last thing on her mind as she identified the heady, racing sensation that had pounded through her during the fight and set her hands to shaking afterward. Excitement. This was it. This was the adventure she craved, the thrill she’d been seeking.
This was it.
She wasn’t sure why it had been lacking in her previous assignments, or why she’d found it in an urban hospital rather than in the midst of a deep, dark forest, but there it was. The adrenaline poured through her body, throbbed at her nerve endings and clamored in her head. She wanted to run. She wanted to dance, to sing, to tip her head back and scream.
Wanting to include him in her joy, she grinned at Rathe.
His eyes narrowing, he advanced on her and leaned down so they were face-to-face. “This is not a joke, Nia. I expected better of you!” Stunned, she drew back, but he followed, crowding her against the closed door with his body and his anger. “Don’t you get it? You could’ve been killed out there.” He stabbed a finger towards the atrium, then placed his palm flat against the door beside her head, effectively trapping her.
“Well, I wasn’t, thanks to you,” she fired back. “That’s why HFH doctors work in teams, remember? So we can watch each other’s backs.” She shoved at his chest with both hands, but he was like sun-warmed granite, hard and immovable. “Damn it, let me go!”
She saw the change in his eyes, a flash of resignation and a wash of heat. Her body answered the call before she was even aware of receiving it, and he bent close and whispered, “I can’t.”
Then he kissed her, and all that restless, edgy energy redirected itself to her lips, and to the places where their bodies merged. Her palms burned where they rested on his coveralls. Almost without volition, her fingers curved into the material and held fast.
The gap of seven years was bridged in that first instant of contact. Her lips parted on a sigh as they were covered with his, the touch surprisingly gentle for such a hard, elemental man.
She dug her fingers in deeper, feeling the wall of his chest beneath the coarse coverall material. Unsatisfied, she slid one hand up, into the vee of his unbuttoned uniform, and found warm, resilient flesh covered with a smattering of hair.
Warm flesh, not hot. He’d been hot before, burning with fever and smelling faintly of exotic spices and sickness. The memory seared her with excitement and a dull undercurrent of shame.
“Nia.” He broke the kiss for a moment to search her eyes. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that, but that scene in the atrium scared the hell out of me.” He pressed his lips to her temple, like he’d done the morning he’d sent her back to her father. “Please. If you’ve ever forgiven what I did to you, to your father, please give me this. Please pull out of Investigations and find something safer to do.”
His tone, and the casual caress, stabbed straight into her heart, which she’d long ago tried to armor against the memory of Rathe McKay. But his words brought a wash of pure, clean anger to chase away the thrill of his touch. “Something safer?” She cursed in Arabic and had the satisfaction of seeing him wince. “What is your definition of safe? Should I spend the rest of my days barefoot, pregnant and waiting for my man to come home?”
He let her go and stalked away, stopping on the opposite side of the desk. “No, of course not.” He stared at a generic poster of a cheerful-looking palm tree shading an empty beach. “But this isn’t what your father wanted for you. He didn’t want you working dangerous assignments for HFH, and he didn’t want you involved with—” He broke off and cursed. “He didn’t want you involved with any of this.”
The pain pulsed in her heart and low in her back. “Don’t you dare speak of my father. You have no right.”
He grimaced. “Think what you will, but Tony was the best friend I ever had. Yours was the closest thing I ever had to a family.”
“Yet you abandoned us,” Nia said quietly, hating that her voice broke when she said, “You abandoned me. My father.”
“I did what I thought was best.”
“You did what came naturally.” She turned away, betrayal and need tangling together in a messy ball in her chest. “You ignored the people who loved you. Just like in Tehru.”
There was a beat of silence. Another. The room chilled.
Nia couldn’t believe she’d said that. Couldn’t believe she’d even thought it. Her anger fled from a wash of shame, and she stretched out a hand. “Rathe, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”
He stepped away, eyes blank. “Sure you did. And you’re right, at least about what happened with Maria. Which proves my point. Women don’t belong in war zones. They don’t belong in dangerous situations. And they sure as hell shouldn’t traipse around the world looking for trouble.” He scowled and looked away. “Quit HFH while you can, Nadia. Start a medical practice somewhere safe. Pediatrics in a small town, maybe, or a GP near your mother. You’re not cut out for this life.”
She hissed through her teeth. “Because I’m a woman?”
He nodded shortly. “This isn’t going to work. I can’t mentor you if I have to keep saving you from jumping on the back of a moving laundry van or being knifed in the damn lobby.” He reached for the doorknob, opened the door he’d pressed her against minutes earlier while they kissed. “I’ll call Jack and ask him to reassign you. After what just happened, I’m sure he’ll agree it’s for the best. You’re simply not tough enough for Investigations.”
She lifted her chin. “You have no idea how tough I am, McKay. Don’t think you know me because you knew my father.”
“I know enough,” he said flatly, still not meeting her eyes.
“Fine,” she snapped. “But don’t bother calling Wainwright. I’ll do it.” She turned her back, lifted the phone and waited pointedly for him to leave. When she heard the door close behind him, she lowered the handset and pressed both hands flat to the desk as the fight drained out of her.
This assignment wasn’t anything like she’d imagined it would be.
She’d had it all planned out, how she’d impress the senior investigator with her quick wits and—if necessary—her guts. How they would solve the case in record time and shock Wainwright.
And if news of her success reached Rathe McKay in some far-off land, she’d imagined he might be happy for her. A little proud. And maybe, just maybe, he would think of her and regret dismissing her twice—once when he’d pushed her from his bed and again later when he’d brusquely refused to see Tony that last time.
But nothing about this job had turned out right. Nothing.
Nia sighed and picked up the phone. She stabbed Wainwright’s number and waited while his secretary put her through.
He sounded concerned. She’d never called him during an assignment before. “Nia? What’s wrong? Do you have a problem?”
She tightened her fingers on the receiver and wished there was another way. “No, Jack. You have a problem.”
IN A SERVICE ELEVATOR headed down to the depths of Boston General, Rathe rubbed his chest where the skin felt tight and tender. An odd sensation flooded through him. It was shame, perhaps, and disappointment that Nia had agreed to be reassigned. It surprised him that she’d given in so easily.
Don’t think you know me, she’d said, but he knew enough. He knew that she had grown into a beautiful woman—a beautiful younger woman, though the ten years between them didn’t seem as important now as they had before. And he knew that the kiss they’d shared upstairs would haunt him once she was gone, just as the memory of her touch had stayed with him long after he’d hopped on an airplane to wherever, with the imprint of Tony’s fist tattooed on his jaw.
The elevator doors opened and Rathe stepped out, remembering that day and the pain. The subbasement echoed with a noisy quiet, filled with hisses of steam and the hum of machinery nearly below the level of his hearing. Above the background he heard a whisper of sound. A cough or perhaps a footstep.
He tensed. The skin on the back of his neck tightened, though there was no logical reason for it. Any number of hospital personnel could be in the subbasement for legitimate reasons.
But his instincts told him otherwise.
With a flash of gratitude that Nia was safe upstairs and soon to be assigned to another HFH division, he eased closer to the puke-green cinder block wall and crept toward the corner up ahead, where a second corridor branched off the main hallway. The noise came again, and this time there was no mistaking it. Running footsteps.
“Damn!” Discarding stealth for speed, Rathe sprinted around the corner. Ahead, a tall, navy-clad figure disappeared around the next bend.
Flight doesn’t always equal guilt, the HFH manuals warned. Maybe that was true elsewhere in the world, but not at Boston General. He’d bet his medical degree that this guy was running for a reason.
Well, he wouldn’t get far. Rathe ducked his head and accelerated, glad that he’d traded the janitor’s standard sneakers for his own custom-made boots, which were tough enough to protect him from desert sands and soft enough to render him nearly silent. Doors sped past, and he skidded a little when he turned the corner and stopped dead.
The loading dock. Damn. The door swung shut on a slice of the outdoors, leaving the dimly lit area empty. “Bloody hell,” he said aloud and reached for the door.
The attack hit him from behind. A man grabbed him and shoved him into the wall. Hard.
Rathe reacted instantly, jabbing an elbow back and twining his foot around the other man’s ankle, but his assailant was taller and light on his feet. The bigger man spun away. His elbow cracked against Rathe’s jaw. Rathe’s head whipped to the side, and he swung out blindly, felt a spurt of satisfaction when he connected and heard a grunt of pain.
He yanked off his ball cap for better visibility and sent his fist into the gaunt, gray face of his attacker. Dimly he recognized Cadaver Man from Nia’s description, and the realization that the bastard could have hurt her lent fury to his blows.
He wound up for the knockout when the cell phone hidden inside his coveralls rang. The noise distracted him for only an instant, but it was long enough for the gray, corpselike man to slip inside his guard and punch him in the gut. Rathe doubled over, then dropped to the floor, rolling away in case there was a follow-up kick. But there wasn’t. The tall man stared down at him for a heartbeat, a disconcerting lack of expression on his face.
After five rings, the cell phone fell silent.
“Go away, Dr. McKay,” Cadaver Man said in an unexpectedly soft voice laced with the cadences of northern Maine, “and call off Nia French. Or else.”
And he shouldered his way through the door and out into the bustling streets of Chinatown.
Rathe lurched to his feet, thinking to give chase even though he knew it was no use. Then the cell phone rang again, and a name leaped to lightning-sharp focus in his mind. Nia!
The bastard knew their names and their purpose. What if he’d already gotten to her?
He slapped the phone open. “Nia? Are you okay?”
“McKay. What the hell are you doing?” The booming voice on the other end of the line was familiar, though it certainly wasn’t Nia.
“Jack,” Rathe held the phone to his ear and jogged back the way he’d come. “I’m glad it’s you. We have a problem.”
The elevator was slow in coming and he waited impatiently, telling himself she was fine. She was in her office. Safe. This was Boston, not Tehru, damn it.
Wainwright’s voice was sharp. “You’re damn right we have a problem. Nia French says you told her to quit.”
Rathe stepped into the elevator and stabbed a button. Forced himself to breathe evenly. She was fine. He was overreacting. He wasn’t going to let this happen again. “Yes, I did. There’s something going on in this hospital. Something bad. I want her out of here before she gets herself hurt.”
“You’re ditching the assignment?”
Rathe scowled into the phone. “Of course not. You know better than that, Jack. I’m staying, but I want Nia out of danger.” The service elevator let him off in the lobby, and he transferred to one of the brushed-steel lifts that would carry him up to the Transplant Department.
Wainwright’s grumble vibrated on the airwaves. “It’s her job to be in danger, McKay. Remember?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Rathe retorted. “She quit.”
“No. She didn’t quit. She phoned me and threatened to sue both our asses for sexual discrimination.”
“She did what?” Rathe ignored the curious stares of the two white-coated researchers sharing the car with him. He supposed the image was incongruous—a rumpled janitor shouting into a phone boasting technology that hadn’t yet transitioned from the military to the public.
“You heard me.” Wainwright’s voice dropped to a threatening hiss. “Fix this, McKay. I don’t care how you do it, but fix this. She’s one of the best young M.D.s I’ve got. I will not lose her, do you understand?”
The doors slid open and Rathe stepped out of the car. He glanced around to make sure he was alone, then lowered his voice and grated, “She’ll be lost for good if you don’t pull her off this case, get it? I just tangled with one of our suspects and he called me by name. Worse, he knew her name, too.”
There was a beat of silence. Then Jack sighed. “Proceed with caution, McKay. That’s all we can ever do in these situations.” He paused. “You’re in contact with the local police?”
Rathe gripped the phone so tightly his knuckles cracked. “Damn it! Haven’t you heard a word I’ve said? Nia is in danger, and I want her off the case. Now.”
“This isn’t your call, McKay. I don’t want a harassment suit on my hands, and more important, I want Nia French in Investigations. She’s a brilliant doctor and she has no fear. I want you to train her, Rathe, not protect her.” There was a heavy silence. “If you can’t handle it, then I’ll pull you off the case and give her to someone who can. Jacobsen is free right now, or maybe Roscoe.”
Rathe cursed in Russian, his favorite language for profanity. “Jacobsen is practically a rookie himself, and Roscoe is—” too jaded, too handsome, too slick with the ladies and just a little bit careless “—not right for this case.” He lowered his voice further as a group of med students filed by in the wake of Director Talbot, who frowned as though wondering why his undercover operative was skulking near the elevator. “Please, Jack. Take her off this case. I’ll train her on another job, I swear it. Just not this one. I’ve got a bad feeling.”
Wainwright’s voice gentled, as though he knew something about the things Rathe preferred to keep hidden. “She’ll be fine. She’s smart and she’s tough. Just watch her back. That’s all partners can ever ask of each other.” And the line went dead.
“Damn it!” Rathe jammed the phone back inside his coveralls and strode to Nia’s borrowed office. “You’d better be at your desk, Nia French,” he muttered. “You’d better be okay, because if you’re not…”
Just watch her back, Jack had said. Well, Rathe hadn’t been watching just now. Not well enough.
He slammed through her door, which hung slightly ajar, and froze. Tension boiled like bile in his stomach.
She wasn’t there. And the office was a wreck.
Chapter Four
Emergency!
The call crackled over the intercom, and the hallway was suddenly filled with the noise of running feet as nurses and doctors rushed to answer the call.
In a supply closet nearby, Nia heard the commotion and felt her eyelid twitch. She shoved a box of syringes back onto its shelf, jammed the inventory list into her pocket and slipped into the corridor, hoping her tic was wrong.
She wanted a break in the case, yes, but not at the expense of a patient.
“Marissa! I told you to call me if she deteriorated!” Logan Hart shouldered Nia aside without apology and pushed his way through a knot of scrub-clad nurses into the patient’s room.
“I’m sorry, Dr. Hart. It happened so quickly, I didn’t—” The dark-haired nurse trailed off when she realized the handsome young doctor wasn’t listening. She made a face and turned away, then frowned when she saw Nia had witnessed the break in protocol. Her eyes flickered to Nia’s badge and she winced. “I’m sorry, Dr. French. That was unprofessional of me.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Nia answered automatically, though her attention was on the crowded doorway.
Inside the room Hart’s voice barked a string of commands and the chaos gained a sense of order. From the hallway she could just see one of the patient’s hands peeking out from beneath the sheet.
Marissa grimaced. “We’re all tense these days, especially when we’re monitoring one of the high-risk transplants. Like Julia here.” Her voice softened on the name, saddened.
High-risk. It connected in Nia’s head with an almost audible click. She turned to the nurse, who stared at the still figure on the bed with shadows crowding her broad face. “I’m sorry.” Nia touched the other woman’s arm when the tension inside Julia’s room swung from hectic to frantic. “I’m sure you did your best. Rare-tissue-type patients don’t have the best of prognoses to start with.”
It was a fishing expedition cloaked in sympathy, and it made Nia feel faintly slimy. But this, like danger, was part of the job.
The nurse shook her head. “Julia was one of the lucky ones—or she should have been. She was rare type, but they found a match quickly. A really good match.” In the room frantic turned to desperate, and Hart barked one order atop the next, sending nurses and junior doctors scrambling. But the bloodless fingers didn’t move.
A vise tightened around Nia’s lungs and heart. “She’s rejecting?”
“She’s dying,” the nurse said flatly, turning away. “If you’ll excuse me, I have other patients to tend.” She hurried away and didn’t bother to glance back as she slipped into a nearby ladies’ room.
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