Red Alert
Jessica Andersen
PROTECTING HER BECAME HIS JOB…AND HIS OBSESSIONDr. Meg Corning detested the way Erik Falco stormed the halls of Boston General Hospital as if he owned the place. The fallen-cop-turned-ruthless-businessman was throwing his weight around in his bid to gain control of her breakthrough medical technology. But putting this sexy stranger in his place seemed impossible once he swooped to the rescue during a series of mysterious "accidents." Before long, the explosive heat between them set off a chain reaction of pleasure and pain that nearly immobilized her. After Falco made a heart-stopping move to keep her safe, the data-obsessed doc knew it was time to analyze his true motives–and her own traitorous desires. Could they forge a bond of trust in time to outsmart a cold-blooded killer?
They were completely and utterly alone.
Meg was conscious of the quick rise and fall of Erik’s broad chest as their spat of moments ago morphed into something hotter and more dangerous.
“This is stupid,” she said, as much to herself as to him. “I don’t like you. I don’t trust you. I shouldn’t be attracted to you.”
“Same goes,” he said, a flash of desire crossing his face. “Then again, that seems to be my usual M.O. What’s your excuse?”
But even though his words came out fairly mocking, he closed the distance between them until she could feel the warmth of him against the suddenly sensitized skin of her cheeks and lips. “Stupidity, maybe. The circumstances. Hell, even the danger. I don’t know.”
But she did. That last choice resonated a little too well, but the moment was lost when he closed the gap between them. Their lips touched. Their breaths mingled.
And their last shreds of rationality were lost.
Red Alert
Jessica Andersen
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
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
Megan Corning—Her medical research is poised to revolutionize prenatal genetic testing, but the technique has a darker side. When a series of “accidents” threaten Meg’s life, a handsome stranger protects her—but his motives are far from pure.
Erik Falco—Once a cop, now a hugely successful businessman, Erik has vowed to acquire the rights to the cutting-edge research. But how far will he go once he meets the lovely Dr. Corning?
Zachary Cage—The head administrator of Boston General Hospital must weigh the value of the new technology against the needs of the hospital and the safety of his employees.
Raine Montgomery—Erik’s second-in-command has something to hide.
Annette Foulke—She wants the tenured university position that Megan seems sure to win.
Luke Cannon—Is it a coincidence that the head of acquisitions at Pentium Pharmaceuticals is a member of Meg’s climbing gym?
Edward—The youth hides beneath the hood of a dark sweatshirt and listens to the voices that tell him he has only one chance to make things right.
Contents
Prologue
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 Fifteen
Prologue
Edward slipped through the front door of the hospital unnoticed. Bodies thronged the main atrium, a lunchtime press of patients and personnel that made it easy for him to cross the lobby unnoticed in his jeans and dark hooded sweatshirt. From there, he walked to the brushed-steel elevators that led to the Reproductive Technology offices. Then he waited.
And watched.
He sneered at the men and women who passed his vantage point, some alone, some in couples, all united by hope. The desire to create a new life. A new beginning.
Garbage, he thought with a quiet snort. There was no such thing as a new beginning. You only got one life, and if you screwed it up, you were out of luck.
Then again, his mother used to say, You’ve got to make your own luck. Nobody else is going to make it for you.
That was what he was doing. Making his own luck.
“Are you sure about this?” a female voice asked nearby.
Edward turned to see a dark-haired woman clinging to the free arm of an even darker-haired man. Though the guy looked to be in his late thirties, he used a gray metal cane to hitch along on a leg that didn’t bend quite right.
“It’s just a blood test,” the guy said, voice sharp, as though he’d answered the question before. He glanced down and his expression softened a degree. “I wouldn’t endanger you or the baby.”
“Of course,” the woman murmured as the elevator doors whooshed open, inviting them in. She didn’t sound convinced, nor did she release the gimp’s arm as the two of them stepped into the elevator.
The doors hissed shut, leaving Edward staring after the couple. A faint smile touched his lips as he reached up and pulled his sweatshirt hood forward so he could see out but nobody could see in.
Today was going to be his lucky day.
Chapter One
Exhaustion thrummed through Megan Corning’s body, a combination of too many grant applications and too few days off in the past months.
Knowing she didn’t have time to be tired yet, Meg dug her fingers into her red-gold hair and told herself to focus on something else. Something positive, like the new office the Boston General Hospital administrators had given her just the week before.
She glanced around the room and grimaced.
The walls were painted a classy ice-blue and hung with a handful of diplomas and accolades. The front cover of last March’s Science magazine was smack in the center, announcing a “New Noninvasive Method for Prenatal Diagnosis.” If her desk were a bed, it would’ve been a California king, and the rolling chair was real leather.
It all looked very impressive. Hell, what she’d done was impressive. But the wall art, added to the stark white padded chairs opposite her black metal desk, gave the decor a chilly feeling.
The room was so not her.
At least, it wasn’t how she saw herself. She had a sneaking suspicion the austere furniture and harsh lighting were perfectly aligned with how too many of her co-workers saw her. Functional. Dependable. Lacking warmth.
And why is that?
She closed her eyes and rubbed her temples, knowing she’d created the image herself a decade earlier, on her father’s orders that she tone down her reputation when he got her the job at Boston General.
Well, not orders, precisely. Call it a strong suggestion from Dad. Who also happened to be a Nobel Prize–winning scientist.
Tone down the dangerous stuff, Meg, Robert Corning had said in his resonant lecturer’s voice. They already doubt your science, why give them an excuse to criticize your sense?
As much as she’d hated to admit it, he’d had a point. Her insistence on proving that a baby’s cells could be found in the mother’s bloodstream had already raised too many eyebrows. Her grades hadn’t been the best, and her Ph.D. thesis had been long on theory, short on results.
Of necessity, she’d grown out the streaks in her hair, put her skis, parachutes and other toys into storage, and focused on figuring out how to test a baby’s genetic makeup from a sample of the mother’s blood.
They said it couldn’t be done, but she’d managed it. She’d developed a blood test that was poised to revolutionize prenatal genetic analysis. Boston General Hospital and her cosponsor, Thrace University, would reap the rewards and Meg would be assured tenure. She’d be set for life—she’d have a job, a good salary, a whopping pension and a corner office.
“And it won’t be black and white!” she said out loud.
A head popped around the open office door. “You need me, boss?”
“Um, no. I was talking to myself, actually.” Meg grimaced when Jemma Smoltz, her patient coordinator and sometimes lab assistant, stepped into the room.
Short, dark hair framed Jemma’s pixie-perfect face, and she wore flirty capri pants that showed off her slim ankles, one of which was tattooed with a pink rose.
She was twenty-six, tiny and feminine, and she made thirty-four-year-old, five-foot-ten Meg feel like a human water buffalo in comparison.
Less so these days, though, because Meg had been working out. She’d lost fifteen pounds since winter, and had her sights set on another ten.
Jemma grinned. “Daydreaming about that stud rock climbing instructor at your new gym?”
Meg rolled her eyes. “I never should have told you about Otto.” But there was no harm in it, really. She was just window shopping, admiring the kind of active, muscle-bound hunk she’d always found attractive.
“You should ask him out.”
“Not on your life. He’s too young for me. And besides—” Meg waved at the diplomas, the glossy magazine cover and the cool blue walls “—that’s not my lifestyle anymore. I can’t take off on a moment’s notice to free climb God only knows where.” Though there were sure days she wished she could. “I’ve got a lab. Responsibilities.”
Jemma wrinkled her nose. “That doesn’t mean you have to be boring.”
“I’m not boring, I’m focused. There’s a difference.” Although some days, she worried that there wasn’t any difference at all. That she wasn’t pretending to be boring anymore—she’d actually become boring.
Hell, even her recent return to free climbing was on an indoor wall with landing pads on the floor.
Unusually annoyed with her office, with herself, Meg reached across her desk and flipped open the next folder on a stack of twenty, hoping Jemma would get the hint.
“Aw, come on,” the younger woman wheedled. “You owe it to yourself to ask Otto—”
“I owe it to the hospital to collect another fifty beta test subjects before the end of the week,” Meg snapped. “Is the next patient here?”
Her assistant’s answer was a long, slow grin. “You’re thinking about it.”
“Just shut up and send in the patient, will you?”
But once Jemma was gone, Meg looked around the sterile-seeming room, then down at the edges of clothing visible beneath her lab coat. The green pullover, tan suede skirt and tall brown boots had seemed smart and professional that morning.
Now they’re boring, she thought. Maybe Jemma had a point. Maybe it was time to do something different, time to—
“Mr. and Mrs. Phillips,” Jemma announced from the doorway.
Nope. It was time to get to work.
Meg stood and moved around the ginormous desk as the couple entered the room. “I’m Dr. Corning. Please call me Meg.” She focused her attention on Mrs. Phillips first, because it was the woman’s body they’d be discussing. Her child. Her blood sample.
The wife was a knockout. She wore expensive-looking navy wool pants and sensibly flat shoes, topped with an Empire-waisted tunic that flowed down past her hips, obscuring any evidence of the early term pregnancy she’d reported in her initial interview with Jemma. Her glossy brunette hair was swept into a soft French braid, and her brown eyes and full, dusky lips were accented with fashionable hints of purpley brown makeup that made her features pop.
But her eyes held a distinct flicker of nerves when she took Meg’s hand in a brief clasp. “I’m Raine, and this is my husband, Erik.”
The pause before the word husband was almost imperceptible, but Meg tucked it in her mental files before she turned and extended her hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Erik.”
Then she got a good look at him and had her own moment of hesitation.
The guy made a hell of a first impression.
His clothes matched Raine’s, not in color, but in the understated taste and quality of the fall-weight, steel-gray suit, dove-gray oxford shirt and gunmetal tie. The monochromatic scheme might have washed another man out, but it complemented this one, emphasizing both his angular face and the faint silver frost that touched the edges of his blue-black hair. He was tall, topping Meg by a good four inches or so, and his shoulders were broad beneath the tapered suit jacket.
His eyes were a deep, nearly sapphire-blue, and they narrowed when he took her hand and held it a beat too long. “The pleasure is mine.”
Meg dampened an instant shimmer of attraction—he was another woman’s husband, after all. She gestured toward the chairs opposite her desk. “Take a seat and tell me a little bit about yourselves.”
Raine sank into one of the chairs, but Erik remained standing. Then, as though realizing that Meg wouldn’t sit until he did, he grabbed his chair and pulled it a few inches away from his wife. It wasn’t until he braced himself to step forward that Meg realized he carried a gunmetal-gray cane nearly the color of his tie. He leaned on it with the ease of long practice as he lowered himself to the chair, right leg braced stiffly in front of his body.
He stared at her, eyes saying, Don’t you dare pity me, but out loud, he said, “What do you want to know?”
His wife frowned. “I thought we were here for a blood test. We already filled out the questionnaire and your assistant took a preliminary sample.” She pushed up the bell sleeve of her tunic to show a small Band-Aid at the crook of her elbow. “Isn’t this just a formality?”
Meg smiled. “I need to make sure you understand the study structure and your privacy rights.” She paused, losing her place in the oft-repeated speech as Erik shifted uncomfortably in the upholstered chair.
He looked up and caught her staring. His eyes glinted with an expression she couldn’t interpret and wasn’t sure she liked. But he said, “Can you tell us a little bit about the test? My—Raine is a cautious woman.”
Another hesitation? Meg thought. Wonder what sort of marriage these two have.
Telling herself it was really none of her business, she pushed a glossy folder across the desk. “Here’s some information for you to take home and look over later. Most of it is also on our Web site.” She slid a brochure from the folder and tapped a color schematic cutaway of a pregnant woman. “We’re in the final stages of streamlining prenatal blood tests for a number of common genetic disorders. The technique is called Noninvasive Prenatal Testing, NPT for short. We’re enrolling pregnant women in their first or second trimester, and asking that you come in for biweekly blood draws.” Meg smiled at Raine’s indrawn breath. “It’s just one milliliter at a time, so we won’t drain you dry. We’re not vampires.”
“Twice a week is a substantial time commitment for me.” Raine glanced at her husband, whose attention was focused elsewhere. She touched his knee. “Erik, don’t you think twice a week is too much for me to be out of the office?”
He diverted his gaze from the wall art and glanced at her. “I’m sure your boss will give you the time.” His lips twitched. “He’s not all that bad, you know.”
The two traded a look that excluded Meg. The sense of connection sent a slice of harmless envy through her chest.
Maybe Jemma was right. Maybe she had been neglecting her social life for too long. Maybe it was time to meet a man, someone she could hike and bike and climb with, someone who loved all the things she used to love.
As soon as the licensing went through and tenure was announced, she promised herself. Then she’d focus on moving from ice-blue walls to something more interesting.
Maybe teal. Hot pink.
Sapphire blue.
Focus, Meg! She gave herself a mental shake and continued her explanation. “We’re testing whether the different phases of pregnancy affect our results. In addition, we’ll be able to examine your baby for most known genetic diseases. We can—”
“Some people say that’s impossible,” Erik interrupted. His attention wasn’t on the wall art anymore. Now it was focused on Meg. “Plenty of experts in the field say your results are nothing but false positives and hopeful interpretation.”
Normally, Meg would have taken the challenge and explained the strength of her science. But now she paused as her instincts jangled a warning.
Something told her that this guy wasn’t quite what he seemed.
She forced a smile. “I see you’ve done your homework, Mr. Phillips.”
“Call me Erik.” He leaned forward, hitching his weight to the left to ease his bad leg. “And yes, I’ve done some background reading. Three of the top experts in the field of prenatal testing have publicly denounced your discovery.”
“Only because I beat them to it.”
“They say it’s impossible to isolate a baby’s cells from maternal blood.”
“Not impossible,” Meg countered. “Even dinosaurs like Lafitte in Paris and Heinz Kramer in Dusseldorf admit that fetal cells and DNA are carried in the maternal bloodstream for years, sometimes even decades after the pregnancy. They simply don’t believe that it’s possible to isolate the one-in-a-million fetal cell and use it for testing.”
“And you believe it’s possible?”
“I’ve done it,” she said simply, and with a bone-deep sense of pride for the work that would help so many. No more pregnancies would be lost due to a misdirected amniocentesis needle or a nick during chorionic villus sampling, two of the most common—and invasive—procedures used for prenatal genetic testing.
“How does it work?” he asked, eyes revealing nothing.
She tapped the brochure. “The process is summarized here.”
He dismissed the schematic with a wave. “I’ve read what’s posted on the Web site, but how does it really work? How exactly do you isolate the fetal cells? Is it true that the baby’s cells can sometimes heal the mother if she’s injured?”
“That hasn’t been proven to my satisfaction,” Meg said, a chill chasing through her bloodstream, because she had no intention of pursuing the question. Not now. Not ever. Not with the risks involved. “I’m sorry, but I’m not at liberty to discuss the specifics of the process.”
Especially not until next month, when the last of the patents would finally be filed.
A handful of university glitches had delayed the applications, leaving her in a legal gray area. If another researcher—or worse, one of the big drug companies—tried to scoop her work, she was in trouble. Though she had her lab notes, patent battles were notoriously long and messy, and neither Boston General nor Thrace University could stand up to one of the big companies if it came down to lawyers and money.
Be careful, her father had cautioned when he’d been in town the week before. Your work is at its most vulnerable right now. They know you’ve done it, but not how, and they’ll be itching for that one detail, the one trick that lets you do what everyone said couldn’t be done.
With that caution ringing in her ears, Meg narrowed her eyes. “Why do you ask?”
“No reason, really.” Raine touched her husband’s arm, urging him to relax. “Ever since I found out about the pregnancy, Erik’s been fascinated by the technology.”
He shot her an unreadable look, but shrugged with a half smile that did little to lighten the intensity of his face. “Sorry. Occupational hazard.”
“You’re an engineer?” Meg asked. She glanced quickly at Raine’s questionnaire.
“No, I’m—” A muted buzz cut him off midsentence. He frowned, reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a seriously high-tech communications device—a little handheld that combined a phone, computer, fax and probably a food processor into one unit. He read the display and frowned. “We’ve got to go.”
He didn’t show his wife the message and she didn’t argue. They rose as one and, despite his bad leg, showed an almost military precision in their actions.
Meg rounded the desk and held the door for them. “Please look over the material and call me if you have any questions. We’ll be in touch once the preliminary blood screening is complete.” Though she already knew what it would show. “If the blood work looks good, you can decide whether you’re willing to make the necessary time commitment in return for free genetic screening for the baby and a small stipend.”
She ushered them out and closed the door behind them, knowing damn well she wouldn’t see either of them again.
Moments later there was a brisk knock on the door. Jemma opened the panel without waiting for an invite, and raised her eyebrows when she saw that Meg was alone. “Where did Mrs. Phillips go?”
“Let me guess. She’s not pregnant.” Meg scowled toward the elevators. “It was a setup. A fishing expedition. Who were they working for? TRL? Genticor?”
Jemma shook her head, eyes worried. “I don’t know about that, but she’s definitely pregnant, and there’s a problem. You’ve got to get her back here, right now.”
“You’ve already got results back on the baby?” Meg asked, confused. Impossible. Her technique was fast, but not that fast.
“No, we haven’t even started separating out the cells. But Max needed an unknown sample for one of his test runs, so I gave him a small subsample of Raine Phillips’s blood.”
Max Vasek was Meg’s second in command. With two degrees and a decade in research, he could easily have his own lab, but preferred the freedom of working for Meg. He kept the lab running smoothly and followed his own investigative directions on the side. These days, he was working on a panel of accelerated genetic tests for expecting mothers. So new he hadn’t yet reported it to the hospital or the university, Max’s technique could identify the presence of twenty-plus genetic abnormalities that could endanger the life of mother or child—all in the space of less than fifteen minutes.
A sick pit opened up in Meg’s stomach. “Max’s technique hasn’t been fully validated, and I’m not ready to go public. If we know something, I can’t tell them how or why we know it.”
He shouldn’t have performed the test on an unenrolled patient’s DNA. Though they had signed consent for Raine’s preliminary sample, the initial forms didn’t include blanket consent for all tests. They’d stumbled over into an ethical gray area.
Damn it, Max.
Jemma handed her the printout. “I don’t care how you do it, but get her back here. She’s heterozygous for both the Factor V Leiden and prothrombin 20210 mutations.”
“Oh, hell.” Meg was out the door in an instant, headed for the elevators. Halfway there, she called, “Phone down to the front desk and see if they can grab her. She needs to be on supportive therapy, pronto!”
The mutations were ticking time bombs. Separately, they increased the risk of blood clot disorders including strokes, heart attacks and pulmonary embolisms during pregnancy.
Together, they virtually guaranteed a problem. Perhaps even a fatal one.
Suspicions tabled for now, Meg hurried out of the elevator the moment the doors whooshed open on the ground floor. When the security guard shook his grizzled head, she jogged across the lobby and pushed through the revolving doors out onto Kneeland Street.
Boston General perched at the intersection between the swanky theater district and the more eclectic environs of Chinatown. The busy street dividing the two teemed with vehicles and pedestrians, making Meg fear that she might have lost the couple.
Worry flowed through her. If they’d been sent by one of the big companies, they’d probably given false names and contact information. She might be unable to find them, unable to warn Raine that—
There! The pedestrian flow ebbed for a moment and Meg saw a man leaning on a cane as he walked a woman to a taxi.
“Erik!” Meg called. A cement truck—part of the endless construction of Boston General’s new wing—revved its engine nearby, drowning out her next shout.
She gritted her teeth and dodged into the sea of bodies on the sidewalk. Some of the pedestrians gave way at the sight of her white coat. Others glared and jostled her as she fought her way to the street.
“Erik, Raine, wait!”
But he didn’t climb into the cab with the pregnant woman. Instead he handed her in, shut the door and awkwardly stepped back onto the edge of the sidewalk near the construction zone. Nearby, construction workers directed a heavy stream of cement into a deeply excavated foundation form.
She lunged across the last few feet separating them and grabbed his sleeve. “Erik!”
He turned and his face blanked with surprise. “Dr. Corning. What are you—”
Someone pushed her from behind and she tumbled against him. She felt hard muscle through the elegant suit, then another blow slammed into her, knocking her aside.
She shrieked and stumbled back, arms windmilling. Her hip banged into a railing and wood splintered. The heel of one of her tall boots snagged on something.
She screamed. Overbalanced.
And plunged into the construction pit.
The fall was short, but when she hit, the impact drove the breath from her lungs. Her landing pad was cold and wet. Too heavy to be water, too gritty to be mud.
She’d fallen into the cement form.
And she was sinking.
Over the growing hubbub of screams and shouts from above, she heard a man’s voice shout, “Meg!”
She looked up and saw Erik leaning over the lip of the cement form. He stretched his arm down and sunlight glinted off his cane. “Grab on!”
Gasping and choking as the wet, heavy weight pressed on every fiber of her being, she reached up. She could just touch the cane with the edge of her fingertips. She stretched farther and heard a rushing roar, and a man’s shout.
Above her, the cement truck sluiceway opened up and dumped heavy, clinging cement on top of her.
“Help me!” she screamed. The cascade of wet cement filled the space quickly, covering her shoulders in seconds, then working its way up her neck.
Why hadn’t they turned off the sluice? Couldn’t the cement truck operator tell there was a problem?
Even as the thought formed in Meg’s brain, it was too late. The liquefied silt poured down around her, covering her neck and ears. She screamed, though she knew it would do no good.
She was being buried alive.
Safety was no more than ten feet away. Rescue had to be on its way. But it would be too late.
She screamed again and arched her back against the sluggish give of the setting cement. She looked up to the edge of the cement form, toward the sidewalk, where the protective railing hung askew. Though she could hear nothing over the splatter of cement that continued to fall from above and her eyes were blurred with clinging clumps of grit, she saw the silhouette of a broad-shouldered man in an expensive suit.
The image of blue eyes stayed with her when she sucked in her last breath.
Chapter Two
“Get that crane down here! And kill the flow, now!” Erik’s ears rang from the equipment noise and the force of his own shouts. “What is wrong with you people? There’s a woman in there!”
He gripped the edge of the cement form so hard his fingers ached. He cursed the construction crew for being incompetent, and cursed himself for being worse than useless. Eight years ago, he could have jumped in and saved her.
If he jumped in now, there would be two of them stuck, drowning.
The flowing cement cut out with a rattle. The last few blobs plopped into the foundation form and were immediately absorbed by the smooth gray surface.
There was no sign of Meg Corning. No sign of movement.
Panic spiked through Erik. “Damn it! Where’s that crane?”
“Here!” a man’s voice shouted, and a weighted ball with a large, dangling hook swung down into the foundation pit.
Erik was aware of the shouting, gesturing pedestrians cramming close to the disaster site, aware of the rising throb of sirens in the near distance. The local cops would be here any moment, but the trapped woman couldn’t wait that long.
The thought brought an image of her, a flash of red-gold curls and intelligent hazel eyes, a stacked body hidden beneath a starched white lab coat.
He’d gone to the meeting in person because he’d needed to put a face to the reams of reports he’d amassed on Meg Corning. He’d told himself it was groundwork, but it had been more than that.
It had been a compulsion. He’d needed to see her.
Now he might be the last person to ever see her.
The crane operator finally swung the line toward Erik, who caught the cable. Cursing, he pulled himself onto the swinging weight, braced his good foot on the hook and let the other leg dangle free. Damn thing wasn’t good for much else.
“Lower me into the pit,” he shouted, waving at the crane operator. “Stop when I give the signal!”
He hung on tight as the crane operator swung him out over the slick gray surface and lowered him toward the cement. Please let it still be liquid, he thought. Please let her be holding her breath.
But that seemed a thin hope. The average person would be struggling. Thrashing. Fighting to get free, only to drive themselves deeper into the muck. The very stillness of the slurry was a problem. Either Meg Corning had professional-level survival skills or she’d lost consciousness.
Having met the pretty lady doctor, he feared the latter. She didn’t seem like the survivalist type.
“Okay, stop!” He waved when the hook was barely skimming the surface of the cement, not wanting to drop the heavy weight on top of her. Then he took two quick breaths, aimed off to the side of the form, away from where she’d fallen—
And jumped.
The impact was like slamming into a solid floor that became liquid the moment he passed through. His bad leg folded, sending agony up his hip. He ignored the pain and fought through the clinging gray grit, which had started to set.
It wouldn’t be fully solidified for hours, maybe days, but the partially thickened soup blocked his efforts. She couldn’t be more than three feet away, but he couldn’t get to her.
Heart pounding, fearing it was already too late, he reached up and grabbed on to the hook, then waved to the operator. “Pull me toward the other side. Slowly!”
Gravel and grit dug into his hands as the hook moved, dragging him through the resisting cement, sparking tortured howls in his bum leg.
Not for the first time, he wished they had just cut the damn thing off.
Then he felt something beneath him. A change in the texture, a hint of cloth and something solid.
“Hold it!” he shouted. “Stop! I’ve got her.”
He looped one arm over the hook and reached down with the other. He felt for a handful of cloth, an arm, something he could use to drag her to the surface.
A strong hand clasped his wrist.
“She’s conscious!” he shouted. “Pull me up, quick! No,” he contradicted himself, “Slowly. Very slowly.”
He didn’t want to lose his grip. More importantly, he didn’t want to hurt her. The hold of the cement was stronger than he’d expected.
He reached down and grabbed her upper arm, near where it joined her body. As though they’d discussed the plan, she wrapped her arms around his legs and hung on tight.
This time he welcomed the burn of pain that shot up his right hip.
“Okay, pull!”
The crane engine revved above him and the weighted hook lifted. Erik’s shoulder joint popped.
The hook rose, but he didn’t. A human anchor weighted him down. She was stuck fast, and the seconds counting down in his head told him she didn’t have much time left.
Indeed, he felt her grip slacken, sliding in the grit and the grime.
Then her hands fell away. Her body went limp against him and the image of her peaches-and-cream complexion went gray in his mind’s eye.
No!
The hook continued to lift. Erik’s shoulder and arm burned, but there was no give from below.
He needed more lift, more strength, more leverage. The man he’d been before would have had the tools and the skills, but the man he was now had nothing but a mangled leg.
With a roar of anger at things he couldn’t change no matter how much he wanted to, he let go of the trapped, unconscious woman and reached up to grab the ascending hook with both hands. He dragged his legs forward and wrapped them around her body. He locked his good ankle around his bad calf and hung on tight.
If the pins and screws that ached in the dark of winter nights had ever served a purpose, now was the time.
“Lift hard!” he shouted to the operator, and tensed every muscle in his body. The moment the engine surged, he scissored his legs forward, curling his body up in an effort to break the cement hold on her body.
Nothing.
As the clock ticked down past “too late” in his head, he tried again, summoning all of the strength he’d retained, and maybe some remembered from back when he was whole. He pulled himself up toward the hook with his arms and dragged the woman with him, legs vised around her torso.
He felt a shift. A give. And then he was moving upward, toward street level, toward safety.
And he brought Meg Corning along with him.
He heard cheers from the crowd, whoops of sirens and the shouts of local cops creating order. The crane operator lifted him above the crowd, then back down, lowering Erik and his limp burden onto a hastily cleared section of pavement near the broken barrier.
Uniformed officers reached up to take the unconscious woman, who was immediately swarmed by emergency personnel. They left Erik to jump down on his own.
He did, then staggered and nearly fell.
“I’ve got you.” An overweight, balding stranger grabbed him by his sodden suit jacket, righted him, and shoved his cane into his hand. “Here. You’ll need this.”
Erik stared at the cane, at the ring of polished wood near the handle that made it stronger and weaker at the same time. “You can say that again. Thanks for hanging on to it for me.”
“No sweat. I owe you one.”
Erik glanced up. “Do I know you?”
“It’s not a big deal if you don’t remember me, Mr. Falco.” The stranger grinned. “You bought out my father’s company a couple of years ago. Celltronics. Gave him enough money to retire to a big-assed boat in the Caribbean, and put all the grandkids through college.”
“Glad it worked out,” Erik said automatically, though he barely remembered the deal, which had been one of too many acquisitions, all aimed at an impossible goal.
Or maybe not so impossible anymore. Not once he got his hands on the NPT technology.
At the thought of the technology and its creator, he turned toward the knot of rescue personnel nearby. To his surprise, he saw that Meg was conscious, sitting up without assistance while chunks of half-set cement dribbled from her lab coat and dark hair.
And she was glaring daggers at him.
DAMN IT, Meg thought. The bastard had lied to her. And then he’d rescued her.
How was she supposed to react to that?
The aftershocks raced through her body, remnants of those long seconds that she’d been submerged in the cement. She’d told herself to be calm, to remember her old training. Count your heartbeats, her skydiving instructor had told her. It’ll keep the panic away.
And it had. Mostly.
Then Erik Phillips had come for her.
Only he wasn’t Erik Phillips. He was Erik Falco, head of FalcoTechno, which was one of the largest technology conglomerates on the eastern seaboard.
And one of the highest bidders trying to buy her upcoming patents.
Piercing blue eyes fixed on her, Falco crossed to where she sat on the bumper of an ambulance, huddled beneath a scratchy wool blanket. “How do you feel?”
“Alive, thanks to you.” She tightened the blanket around her shoulders. “I’m not sure why you made the effort, though. It’d be much easier for you to push the deal through with me out of the picture.”
He nodded, acknowledging his identity, as well as the standoff that had been handled through lawyers and the hospital administration up to that point. But his expression darkened as he said, “You think I’d let you drown to get the deal done?”
She shrugged, feeling the rasp of drying grit against her skin. “In my experience, the human element doesn’t matter much to commercial drug developers.”
“Oh. You’re one of them.” He rolled his eyes. “You’re one of those researchers who think academia is the only pure science. God forbid someone make a profit off research.”
She sniffed. “Let’s just say I’ve had better luck with the university types.”
“Why? Because your mother left you and your father for a man with a bigger house and a better bankroll?” Falco stopped and cursed. “I apologize. Please forget I said that.” He waved to the hovering paramedics. “Let’s get you transported to the ER so the docs can check you out.”
“I’m fine.” She stood stiffly, feeling her suede skirt and pretty green pullover crackle with the motion. “And no, I won’t forget what you said. Don’t think you know me because your people did a few background checks. And don’t think you can order me around because you saved my life, or because you think that little charade with—” She broke off. “Oh, hell. You’ve got to get Raine—if that’s even her name—back here.”
“Why? What’s wrong?”
Cautious of patient privacy, Meg said, “Not here. Have your wife—” She saw the shift in his expression and pressed her lips together. “Another lie. Who is she?”
He didn’t even have the grace to look ashamed. “Raine Montgomery, vice president of my pharmaceuticals division.”
“Lucky for you there was a pregnant woman handy. And lucky for her, too. Have her meet me in the lab in ten minutes.”
He scowled. “You won’t be in the lab in ten minutes. You’ll be in the ER.”
Temper fraying with the need to get somewhere alone, somewhere private where she could shake, scream, fall apart, all the things she couldn’t do across the street from her office and in full view of countless hospital employees, Meg snapped, “Don’t tell me what to do. In fact, leave me the hell alone. I want to see Raine ASAP, but I don’t want to see you. Not ever again.”
His expression shifted to neutral. “That could be difficult.”
She sneered at him. “The way I’ve heard it, you thrive on a challenge, Mr. Falco. Consider this one.”
She turned and pushed through the crowd to the hospital, ignoring the TV reporters’ microphones and shouted questions. She left the cops enough information to find her later, after she’d cleaned up. After she’d broken down.
It wasn’t until she was halfway across Kneeland Street that she realized her feet were burning. She looked down and stared stupidly at her gray-smeared toes, which were barely covered by torn panty hose.
She’d lost her tall brown boots. They’d been sucked off by the cement, left behind when Erik Falco had risked his own life to drag her out of the muck.
That small detail brought home the danger before she was ready for it. Her stomach knotted on a surge of nausea and her throat closed down until only a trickle of oxygen seeped through.
She was suffocating.
The gray waves closed in on her, surrounding her, compressing her. Killing her.
Not here, Meg told herself. Not now. Not yet. Not where she would cause a scene on hospital property. Her father was right. Her science was controversial enough without her personal exploits adding fuel to the flame. The thought of her dependable, rock-steady sire helped hold off the shakes and she forced her trembling legs to carry her the rest of the way across the street, barefoot.
She thought she heard her name called in deep, masculine tones, but she didn’t turn back. If it was one of the officers, he could phone the lab. If it was Falco, he could go to hell.
She had no intention of prostituting her work to some megacompany that cared only for profit.
And if he tried to force the issue with her bosses, she’d fight him tooth and nail.
“DAMN STUBBORN WOMAN.” Erik cursed under his breath as she disappeared through the main hospital doors. Then again, why did that surprise him? She’d already managed to block his representatives at every turn, fighting to keep her discovery in the public arena by administering it through the university rather than a private company.
He respected the effort. Too bad it was doomed, because he had no intention of failing. Her fetal cell isolation process would be his, with or without her cooperation. His whole pharma staff was on it.
At the thought of his staff, he grabbed for his cell phone and speed dialed the office. “Get me Raine.” When she answered the transfer, he said, “Sorry for the quick turnaround, but I need you back at the hospital right now.”
“Another stint as Mrs. Phillips?” Raine asked, her voice carrying an unfamiliar lilt that put him on edge.
Six years earlier, her résumé had overridden his reluctance to work with a pretty, single woman his age, and he’d hired her into the then-startup FalcoTechno. They had grown together, Raine and the company, and she’d proven herself to be an exception to his rules. She was a beautiful woman who kept her mind strictly on business. One he could trust to get his back.
They’d stayed out of each other’s personal lives. Hell, he hadn’t even realized she’d been married until six weeks earlier, when he’d found her in the men’s bathroom, crying, disoriented and puking.
She’d confessed to being pregnant with her husband’s baby…a year after the divorce was final.
The experience had forged an uncomfortable intimacy between Erik and Raine, one he’d tried like hell to ignore until he got word that Dr. Meg Corning had once again blocked his offer to buy the rights to her Noninvasive Prenatal Testing technology.
When his request for a meeting had been denied—not just once, but three different times—he’d gone with Plan B and asked Raine to pose as a prospective test subject to get inside information. It had been her idea that they pretend to be a married couple so he could get a firsthand look. He’d agreed, but couldn’t help worrying that she’d gotten the wrong idea.
Or that she was playing him.
God knew, he’d fallen for it before.
Now, his fingers tightened on the phone. “No more Mr. and Mrs. Phillips. She pegged me as a ringer.” Which was almost a relief.
“Then why do you need me?” Raine asked.
Not wanting to worry her unnecessarily, he said, “Just meet me in the Boston General lobby as soon as you can, okay? And bring the garment bag from my office closet. I need a change of clothes.”
He cut the connection before she could ask why. He started to head back to the hospital, but a hail brought him up short.
“Mr. Falco? Lieutenant?”
Erik turned at the once-familiar title. “Falco, please. Or Erik. I haven’t been a cop for nearly eight years.”
The two plainclothes detectives wore badges clipped to their belts and standard-issue shoulder holsters beneath their jackets. The younger of the two—who looked close to Erik’s age of thirty-eight—wore a brown suit that complemented his brown hair and clean-cut good looks, while his partner, who was closer to sixty, with a droopy, almost fishlike face, wore washed-out blue.
Both suits were decent quality but off-the-rack, just as Erik’s had been back when he was on the job, back before a woman and his own stupidity had killed a good man and cost Erik the use of his leg and the life he’d known.
The brown-haired cop said, “I’m Detective Reid Peters.” He gestured to his older partner. “This is Sturgeon. We’d like to ask you a few questions.”
Erik blocked a spear of resentful nostalgia for the cop-speak and leaned on his cane. “Fire away.”
Peters pulled out a PDA. It was a few generations older and much lower quality than Erik’s top-of-the-line pocket computer, but it was still a far cry from the spiral-bound notebooks of years past. The younger detective used a stylus to tap open a new file, then set the record function before he asked, “How well do you know the victim?”
“She’s not a victim—it was an accident.” Erik narrowed his eyes. “Wasn’t it?”
The detectives didn’t answer, letting their original question hang.
Erik’s temper spiked a notch. “Don’t give me the silent routine. I was on the job—you know that or you wouldn’t have called me ‘lieutenant.’ So I’ll make a deal…you tell me what you know and I tell you what I know. Otherwise, you can talk to my lawyers. I have an entire department full, and they’ll enjoy running you around for weeks if I tell them to.”
Peters shared a look with Sturgeon, the sort of nonverbal communication partners developed over many years of teamwork.
The sort of look that reminded Erik of his old partner, James Hadley. Jimmy.
After a moment the older detective shrugged. “It might not have been an accident. There’s supposed to be a metal railing separating the construction site from the sidewalk. The contractor swears it was put in last week, but it’s gone.”
“Contractors lie,” Erik said, having been stung on a few projects over the years. “Subcontractors cut corners. That doesn’t say ‘intentional’ to me.”
But his instincts jangled. The sluiceway had opened at precisely the wrong moment. When he’d looked at the cement truck cab moments later, the driver had been gone, the door hanging open.
Peters stared at him for a long moment as though assessing him. Finally he nodded. “Have a look at this.” He led them back through the police line, to the place where Meg had fallen through.
Erik took one look at the wooden railing and cursed bitterly. The panel had been neatly sawn through.
“So let me ask you.” Peters tucked the PDA into his pocket, giving an illusion of off-the-record, though he hadn’t turned off the recording feature. “Who was the target here? Boston General, Meg Corning…or you?”
Chapter Three
Raine knocked on the door to Meg’s office almost an hour later, still looking polished and professional. Beautiful.
In comparison, Meg felt like a train wreck. Jemma had managed to find her a T-shirt to wear under a set of green scrubs, along with a pair of gym shoes, but that had been the extent of scroungeable spare clothes.
Meg was itchy and uncomfortable, and beginning to wish she’d taken that trip to the ER and from there gone home.
But she’d wanted to speak with Raine personally. The dark-haired beauty might work for FalcoTechno, she might have come to the lab under false pretenses, but she’d inadvertently made herself one of Meg’s patients. Besides, whatever she’d done, she was a human being.
A woman. An expectant mother.
Meg waved her in. “Have a seat, Ms. Montgomery. I need to talk to you about something.”
“If it’s about what Erik and I did this morning, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”
“It’s not about that,” Meg interrupted. “It’s about the blood sample you gave us. There’s a problem.”
The bloom in the other woman’s cheeks drained to pasty white, then took on a hot flush. “With the pregnancy?”
She didn’t call it the baby. She called it the pregnancy. That, in Meg’s clinical experience, was a telling detail. But this wasn’t a counseling session, so she focused on the information that could save Raine’s life. “It’s not just the pregnancy. Our genetic screen revealed that you carry two gene mutations that put you at a high risk for developing blood clots in your arms and legs, or having a stroke or heart attack.”
Meg had long ago learned that the blunt delivery was usually best in these cases. Just get it out there and deal with it.
“The pregnancy increases all of these risks exponentially. In addition, you have an increased risk of miscarriage—it’s your body’s way of trying to protect you from the other problems. There’s good news, though—we can put you on supportive therapy starting now. If you’re on interferon gamma and a strict monitoring program for the duration of the pregnancy, your chances are very good.”
Raine moaned, a low exhalation of air that carried shock and fear. Her face reflected a shifting gamut of emotions, but she didn’t say anything. Just clasped her hands in her lap and breathed deeply.
Tears glistened in her eyes.
“Is there someone you’d like to call?” Meg asked. “A family member, perhaps? I’ll be happy to give you some privacy, if that would help.”
But Raine shook her head. “No. No family.”
“Your boss, then?” Meg realized she’d been petty to order Erik away from the lab. He and Raine might not be married, but she’d definitely sensed a connection between the two.
And why did the thought bring a twinge?
“No.” Raine shook her head, took a deep breath, and lifted her chin. “I can handle this on my own.”
But there was a faint quiver in her voice, and she looked as though a finger tap could knock her over.
“I’ll have one of my people take you down to Admissions and start the paperwork. We’ll need you to stay here for a day or so. After that, we can do the treatments on an outpatient basis.”
Raine nodded slowly. “Fine. Of course.”
Though the other woman had lied to her, and worked for the enemy, Meg’s heart ached in sympathy.
God, she hated this part of the job.
She rose, detoured around the desk and leaned down to touch Raine’s arm. “We’ll take good care of you. I promise.”
Swallowing what sounded like a sob, Raine nodded. “Thank you.”
Meg led her out to the lab reception area. Jemma was away from her desk, but she saw Max’s silhouette just inside the lab. She touched Raine’s arm. “Wait here.”
She pushed through the lab doors. “Max, I need you to do me a favor.”
The big, dark-haired man set his lab notebook aside. “Sure, boss. What’s up?”
“Remember those clotting factor and Factor V Leiden mutations you found the other day?” She jerked her head in the direction of the door. “She’s out in the lobby, and pretty freaked out—with good reason. She didn’t want me to call anyone, so can you take her down to Admissions and help expedite wherever you can? I think she could use somebody on her side right now.”
Max nodded. “Of course.” He rose, shucked off his lab coat to reveal jeans and a heavy flannel shirt, and headed for the lobby.
When he was gone, Jemma’s voice spoke from behind Meg. “Bad idea, boss.”
Meg turned, startled. “What?”
“Sending Max off with her. You’re going to trigger his DIDS.”
“His what?”
“Damsel In Distress Syndrome. That’s what we call it behind his back, anyway.” Jemma shrugged, but her eyes were clouded with faint worry. “Max is big and tough and mean-looking, but he’s a sucker for a pretty woman with a sad story. Classic knight-on-a-white-horse mentality. If she doesn’t watch out, he’ll try to rescue her.”
“I didn’t know.” Meg stared out into the now empty lobby. “Should I call him back?”
“Too late now. And besides, who knows? Maybe it’ll work out for him this time. She looks like she could use someone to lean on right now.”
“True enough.” Figuring what was done was done, and the important thing was getting Raine started on the life-saving therapy, Meg headed back to her office. But as she packed to leave for the day and tasted cement dust at the back of her throat, she was plagued by a faint sense of resentment that nobody ever volunteered to rescue her.
Or rather, someone had, but he was no white knight.
More like a sapphire-eyed devil intent on taking over her life’s work.
MEG SLEPT POORLY that night, haunted by dreams of suffocation. Near 2:00 a.m., she gave up, snapped on her bedside lamp and read until dawn.
She was at the lab early, wearing the high-cut burnt-orange suit she only hauled out when she needed to remind herself that she was smart enough and tough enough to deal with whatever was going wrong.
Jemma met her at the door. “Cage wants you in his office, ASAP.”
Meg cursed. She wasn’t ready to meet with the head administrator before she’d even had her second hit of coffee. But with her work in a state of legal flux, she couldn’t afford to ignore the summons. She took the elevator up from the fifth floor to the tenth and pushed through the door to Cage’s office without knocking. “Sorry I’m late. I was discussing some extremely promising results with—”
She broke off and her stomach dipped to her toes.
She’d expected to see Zach Cage, the darkly handsome ex-major league pitcher who had taken over the reins of a troubled Boston General some three years earlier. She hadn’t expected to see Erik Falco, wearing another dark gray suit and lighter gray shirt, this time with a vivid blue tie that picked up the cobalt in his eyes.
Worse, before the door had shut behind Meg, it opened again to admit a thin-hipped woman in her early forties with short, dark hair and piercing eyes. Annette Foulke, the nontenured Assistant Director of the Biochemistry Department at Thrace University, was Meg’s equal in the hospital’s hierarchy and had been anything but subtle in her efforts to block Meg from being voted tenure.
As far as Annette was concerned, the position should be hers.
Gritting her teeth as Annette sat primly beside Falco, Meg turned to Zach Cage, who sat behind his large, efficiently cluttered desk. “I didn’t expect the Spanish Inquisition.”
“Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition,” Falco said. His lips twitched briefly, and she had to give him points for knowing his Monty Python.
But all humor fled when Cage gestured her to the remaining empty chair. “Sit. We need to talk about what happened yesterday, and what we’re going to do about it. Annette is here because she’s the head of the hospital ethics committee. Mr. Falco is here to represent his interests.”
Meg winced. Oh, hell. Somehow they’d figured out that Max had used Raine’s DNA for an unauthorized test. She sat, but stayed forward in her chair as she said, “If we hadn’t done that genetic screen, the patient wouldn’t have been identified as having—”
Cage held up a hand. “I’m not talking about your patients, Dr. Corning. I’m talking about what happened yesterday at the construction site.”
Meg frowned and played it cool, as though she hadn’t dreamed of the fact that she’d almost died. “It was an accident. I’m fine.”
“It wasn’t an accident,” Cage said quietly. He tapped a file folder on his desk. “The permanent railing was removed and somebody sawed through the temporary wood railing. The police have ruled it sabotage. They want to talk to you as soon as we’re done here.”
“But I—” Meg’s breath whooshed out as his words caught up with her brain. “Sabotage? Impossible!”
But she flashed back on the jostling crowd. She’d pushed through the pedestrians near the construction site, called Erik’s name, reached for him—
And she’d been bumped from behind. Hard.
“We think the hospital may have been targeted by someone who doesn’t approve of the new wing. This is the latest in a string of problems with the new construction,” Cage said. “When I took over, it seemed reasonable to continue building the Gabney Wing, though of course, under a new name.”
Meg nodded, brain spinning with too much information, too many questions. “Of course.” She knew that the previous head administrator, Leo Gabney, had put the project into motion before being fired. Though the construction was a major undertaking, so much of the preliminary work had already been done—and paid for—that it had made fiscal sense for the hospital to break ground.
That had been eighteen months ago, and broken ground was almost all they had to show for it now. Broken ground and some cement forms.
Cage shifted in his chair, face creasing with regret. “This added delay—on top of cost overruns—puts me in a tough position. Gabney left us with debts, and the plans weren’t nearly as complete as they appeared at first. We probably shouldn’t have gone ahead with the project, but now that we’ve started building—and made promises to the clinicians and researchers who are lined up to use the space—we can’t turn back.”
Meg’s heart picked up a beat as she realized where this was going. “We’ve already nixed the idea of selling off the NPT technology to cover the construction costs. We agreed that the long-term licensing income outweighed the short term gain from a sale.”
“That was before someone tried to kill you,” Erik said bluntly.
“That’s ridiculous!” She shot to her feet. “You heard what Cage said—the construction project was the target. I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“Detectives Peters and Sturgeon aren’t so sure,” Falco countered. “Are you willing to bet your life that they’re wrong?”
She glared at him. “You set this up, didn’t you? Cage turned down your repeated offers to buy my patents, so you came up with this…this farce to sway him. Well, do you know what? It won’t fly. I wouldn’t sell my work to FalcoTechno if it were—”
“Sit down, Dr. Corning.” Cage’s voice cracked whip-sharp. When she’d taken her seat, his tone softened with regret. “I know you oppose the sale and I know why. I even agree with you to an extent. But I can’t let that dictate hospital policy. With all the cost overruns, we need the money. FalcoTechno has made a more than generous offer, far exceeding what the other companies have—”
Annette broke in. “Excuse me for interrupting, but I’m confused as to why you asked me here. I thought you wanted my opinion on a matter of ethics.”
“Not quite.” Cage nodded to Falco, who leaned down and lifted a briefcase off the floor. He popped the top and withdrew a fat stack of papers as the head administrator said, “I need a committee head to witness any deal over fifty million dollars. Your schedule was open.”
Annette stood. “Next time, ask before you decide my schedule is open. I was in the middle of an important experiment. Get someone else to do your paperwork.”
She stalked out, tension humming in her wake.
Meg expected the head administrator to call her back with a reprimand. Instead he rubbed the back of his neck. “God, she’s a pain. And she wonders why she keeps getting passed over for promotion.”
Seeing a slim opening, Meg stood and placed herself square in front of the administrator’s desk. “If you can’t do the paperwork right now, give me a chance. I’ll license out the NPT technology to a smaller company, but make sure that Boston General keeps managing interest. Surely you can see the value in that?” She had to protect her work, protect the patients who would benefit from the noninvasive prenatal testing. She lowered her voice so only Cage could hear. “We’ve talked about this. I have to make sure the technology is used correctly.”
There was too much potential for disaster.
Cage looked at her for a long, considering moment before he said, “The sabotage could have been aimed at you, not the hospital. We’re talking about a ton of money here. If someone’s trying to kill the deal by eliminating the driving force behind the technology, then putting the sale through sooner than later will keep you safe.”
“Nobody asked you to protect me,” she said. “I’m tougher than you think. Don’t let Falco talk you into believing something that suits his purposes. I’m not the target. If anything, someone’s finally decided to sabotage Leo Gabney’s white elephant of a construction project. Shut it down and be done with it, but don’t shut me down. I can make the licensing work for both of us. I swear it.”
The head administrator stared at her for so long, his expression so closed, that she expected him to say no. When he nodded reluctantly, she nearly wept with relief. “Okay,” he said. “You’ve got a month to pull together a profitable licensing proposal that’s ready for my signature, with a company that’s willing to pay for the technology but let us retain veto rights on development.”
“My offer will be revoked once I walk out that door,” Falco said smoothly. “And you know damn well it’s better than you’re going to get anywhere else.”
Meg turned on him. “You want the NPT technology? Then license it.”
He shook his head. “No thanks, I don’t share control. I’ll buy your work, but now, not a month from now.”
Cage snorted. “Don’t try to outnegotiate a negotiator, Falco. If you want the deal badly enough, you’ll wait. Give us one week.”
“One week,” Erik said, his expression suggesting that was what he’d wanted all along. “I can wait that long to own my new technology.”
Meg’s smile held an edge. “You’ll be waiting longer than that.” She headed for the door. “Excuse me, I have calls to make.”
As she strode down the hall toward the elevator, she was already running through the options in her head. A week was better than nothing, but she was going to have trouble licensing out a technology that hadn’t even passed full beta testing yet.
No, that wasn’t true, she acknowledged inwardly. There were a half dozen companies—Falco’s included—slavering to get their hands on the NPT technology. But it would be more difficult to find one willing to sign the agreement she had in mind, which would restrict the scope of the license to prenatal testing alone.
She and Cage had planned to patent the other aspects of the work and sit on them.
The world wasn’t ready for every facet of the NPT process. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
A door opened and closed behind her, and Falco’s voice called, “Dr. Corning. Meg, wait!”
She stabbed the elevator call button, hoping to escape before he reached her. But his hitching stride ate up the distance between them, and the glowing elevator light stalled on the eighth floor.
He stopped beside her, loomed over her. “Not so fast. You and I are going to be spending some quality time together.”
She glared. “I don’t think so. You heard Cage. I have seven days.”
The elevator doors finally whooshed open, too late to do her any good. She set her teeth as they stepped into the empty car together. Falco hit the button for the ground-floor lobby before he said, “Yeah, and I’m going to stick very close to you for those seven days. Let’s just say I’ve learned my lesson when it comes to trusting women.”
Fuming, Meg turned on him. “How dare you insinuate that I would ever—”
The elevator jolted, throwing her against him. She gasped in alarm and reached up to push away from him, winding up with both palms flat against his hard, masculine chest. She felt his heartbeat, quick like hers.
Something changed in his expression. “Look, I—”
A grating, popping noise drowned out his next words. A metallic pinging reverberated through the elevator car. The lights died.
And the floor dropped out from underneath them.
Chapter Four
Erik shouted and grabbed Meg. He tried to shield her with his body, but it was impossible. The danger was all around them.
The elevator floor barely pressed against his feet as they fell, giving a sense of weightlessness even as nausea jammed at the back of his throat.
He twisted, still holding Meg against his chest, and slapped the red Emergency Stop button beneath the main panel.
Nothing happened.
He punched the red button harder. “Engage, damn it!”
The brakes locked. Metal screamed and sparks leaped up through the carpeted floor, which jolted and slowed its descent.
Unbalanced by the sudden change in inertia, Erik crashed to the floor. Meg landed atop him, driving the breath from his lungs.
“We’re still moving!” she shouted in his ear, panic cranking her voice to a shriek.
“Hang on!” Erik tightened his arms around her and tucked her face beside his as the grating squeal of metal-on-metal intensified. The howling sound reverberated in his skull until—
Crash!
The impact slammed him flat. His head bounced off the carpeted floor and rebounded into Meg’s shoulder. He cut his lip between his teeth and her collarbone, and tasted blood. Her body dug into his and then sprawled away as a final crashing noise ripped through the small space.
Then the cacophony died, leaving a strange, heavy silence broken only by the strident ring of alarms. A small, battery-powered emergency light provided wan illumination.
They’d hit bottom. They’d survived.
Erik let the knowledge work its way through him, partway expecting relief. He found anger instead. Red, bloody anger.
That was no accident.
It wasn’t until he heard the words echo in the noisy silence that he realized he’d said it out loud.
Beside him, sprawled half over him, Meg moaned and stirred. Her elbow jabbed him in the ribs, and when she rolled off him, she shoved her knee against his bad leg, sending shooting sparks of pain to join the dizzy ache of impact.
Erik buried the wince and turned to look at her. “You okay?”
She levered herself to a seated position, then slumped back against the wall. Her orangey suit and tall black boots still looked as professional as they had when she’d first stepped into Cage’s office. But her red-gold hair had fallen from its slick knot, making her look less unapproachable. More vulnerable.
She shifted experimentally before she said, “Everything works, if that’s what you’re asking. But no, I’m not okay. We were just…we just…” Her full lower lip trembled until she bit it and mastered the half-formed tears. “Sorry. I’m fine. How about you?”
The sirens cut out then, leaving a chilly silence that was soon broken by thumps overhead.
Far overhead.
“No broken bones, and I’ll settle for that under the circumstances.” Erik grabbed his cane and used it to push himself up off the floor, which was tilted beneath them. He put a steadying hand on the wall and reached up to bang on the ceiling of the elevator car, where a body-size panel hung slightly askew. “Looks like this’ll be our way out. You want me to boost you up, or would you rather wait for an official rescue?”
The thumping noises increased overhead as Meg’s eyes met his. “What if that’s not the official rescue?” she asked quietly.
Then we’re sitting ducks, he thought. With the elevator lying at the bottom of the shaft, there was no way they were getting the main doors open. It was out the top or nothing.
But the question remained… What if whoever had engineered the fall was up there waiting?
He saw understanding in her eyes, a grim sort of fatalism that clashed with his impression of the woman. It made him wonder if there was more to her than the academic exterior she projected. His investigators had mentioned she’d been a bit of a hellion in her younger years, and concluded she’d outgrown the risk-taking behavior. Her quiet calm made him wonder whether she’d retained more of her skydiving, bungee-jumping past than she let on.
Or, his suspicious side prompted, maybe she’s like Celia. Maybe this is all part of a plan.
“Boost me up,” she ordered.
He stared for a moment, as her image merged in his mind with that of another woman, lighter in coloring except for the red slash of her painted lips.
Then he shook his head to banish the image. Celia was gone for twenty-to-life and had no place in his head. Meg Corning was nothing like her.
Nothing at all.
“I’ll go first,” he said finally. He motioned her to the corner as the banging continued overhead. “Watch yourself.”
“You want a boost?”
He bit back the automatic retort. “I’ve got it.” He poked the cane up with more force than necessary, sending the panel clattering out of the way. Then he wedged the rubber-tipped end on the metal handrail that looped around the elevator car, used the cane as leverage, jumped as high as he could manage, and grabbed the edge of the escape hatch with his free hand. Cursing with the effort, he dragged his upper body through the opening one-handed, then pulled the cane up after him.
It wasn’t much of a weapon, but it was all he had left.
Exertion sang through his bloodstream, sending his pulse into his ears. A quick glance showed him a lighted rectangle some twenty feet above, stark contrast to the darkness of the elevator shaft, which was lined with metal, cement and thick cables.
A human figure stood silhouetted in the doorway. Another clung to the side of the shaft, maybe fifteen feet away.
Erik stayed silent, though there was little hope of avoiding detection. With one muscle-popping surge of effort, he scrambled to his feet until he was standing atop the ruined elevator car with his cane in his fist, a weak defense against the dark shadow that dropped down the final feet separating them, landed heavily atop the elevator car, and clasped his shoulder.
“You’re okay. Thank God.”
Relief laced through Erik. It was Zach Cage. Rescue, not attack.
“What happened?” the hospital administrator asked, then cursed. “Never mind. Dumb question. Is Meg hurt?”
“She’s rattled,” Erik said as a coil of rope snaked down from above and the crackle of radio traffic announced the arrival of official personnel. “And frankly, so am I. You know what this means, don’t you?”
Cage nodded grimly. “The hospital isn’t the target. These so-called accidents are focused on one of you guys. Question is, which one?”
“I don’t know,” Erik admitted, “but I’m damn well going to find out.”
THE NEXT HALF HOUR passed in a blur of firefighters and paramedics that seemed all too familiar to Meg.
Two near-death experiences in two days. How was she supposed to deal with that?
She didn’t know, but as she sat alone at a conference table in a bare, faintly cool room deep within the Chinatown police station, she gave herself a stern talking-to. “You’ve bungee jumped off a bridge. You’ve skydived. You’ve pedaled bikes off the sides of cliffs. Hell, you even base-jumped off a skyscraper once. You used to get a rush out of stuff like this.”
So why were her hands shaking? Why was her stomach knotted and why were her knees doing a fair impression of Jell-O?
Because those rushes were years in the past. And because she’d chosen the dangers. Over the past forty-eight hours, danger had come looking for her, and all she wanted to do was to run home and hide. She hadn’t signed up for this. She was a researcher, damn it, not a contestant on some freaky reality show where people volunteered to be buried in cement or dropped down elevator shafts in an effort to win a million dollars.
Even as she gritted her teeth on the thought, the door opened, admitting Erik Falco and the two detectives who’d earlier introduced themselves as Peters and Sturgeon. They were easy to tell apart— Peters was the handsome, athletic one. Sturgeon had that Mr. Limpet thing going on. And Falco…
Hell, she didn’t know what to think about him. Most of the time, he leaned on that two-toned cane as though he was utterly dependent on its support, scowling to let the world know he hated every minute of it. He didn’t want sympathy, but he also didn’t seem comfortable in his own skin, regardless of the expensive clothes and tasteful haircut. But once or twice she’d seen flashes of something else, like when he’d rescued her from the cement or shielded her body with his during the crash. Then, he’d seemed to grow bigger. Taller. Meaner.
In those moments, he’d made her feel safe.
But now…now he stumped into the room and dropped heavily into a chair opposite her at the round conference table. His handsome face hardened into a glare, as though everything was somehow her fault.
Meg found herself bristling. “Don’t give me that look. If you hadn’t insisted on pursuing a deal I have no intention of making, none of this would have happened.”
Detective Peters paused in the act of setting up his PDA to record the conversation and glanced at them. “What deal?”
“Falco here wants to buy my patents, and can’t get it through his thick skull that NPT isn’t for sale,” Meg said. “Not to him, anyway.”
Maybe she shouldn’t snipe at a man who’d let her use his body as a landing pad when their elevator crashed. But business was business.
Falco smiled at her with an expression that showed lots of teeth and very little warmth. “Like I said before, call me Erik. We’re going to be working closely together this week, so there’s no need to stand on formality.” He glanced at the detectives. “Unfortunately for Meg, she doesn’t hold veto power over the hospital’s decision. Unless she’s able to come up with a licensor willing to accept her terms—highly unlikely—the deal will go through one week from today.”
His use of her first name struck a chord she wasn’t entirely comfortable with, and had her hissing out a breath. A week. He was going to be dogging her tracks for the next seven days, probably ambushing her attempts to gather investors.
She didn’t know much about Erik Falco, but she had a pretty good idea he wouldn’t give up easily. Hell, he’d been working to get the deal done for months, and it hadn’t been until the last few days that Cage had begun yielding to the hospital’s growing financial pressures.
Come to think of it… “None of this started until Cage agreed in principle to FalcoTechno’s offer,” Meg said slowly. “What if someone’s trying to sabotage the deal?”
“If that’s the case, I expect you’ll track them down and offer to help.” Erik’s grimace suggested he was being sarcastic, but he continued. “It is possible, though. Several other companies are in the running for the NPT technology.”
“Nobody’s in the running,” Meg snapped. Her eyes itched, her brain felt as if it were stuffed with cotton batting and she was perilously close to tears. She bit her lip until the urge receded. “But I think it’s a valid hypothesis. If—and this is only hypothetical—if we agree that Erik and I were the target of these attacks, then our attacker could be someone trying to tank the deal.”
Detective Sturgeon flattened an index card on the table in front of him, apparently eschewing his partner’s technology. “Names?”
Erik flicked his fingers to dismiss the question. “I’ll work that end of things.”
Meg expected the detectives to rip a layer off him for the I’ve-got-money-I’m-above-your-rules attitude.
Instead Peters said, “We’d appreciate it—on an unofficial basis, of course. But I’ll still need a list of everyone who might have reason to want you or Dr. Corning dead.”
The last word sent a chilly spear through her midsection and she fought a shiver.
“I’ve got a few names,” Erik said, not sounding particularly upset by the fact. “How about you, Doc?”
“There’s nobody,” she said, pressing her fingers to her temples, where stress and nerves pounded in an increasing rhythm. “I can’t imagine anyone wanting to hurt me.”
“When the NPT technology is released, there’s going to be a big shift in the open market,” Erik pointed out. “Jobs’ll be lost. Cash equity is going to move around. Money is a powerful motive.”
Meg scowled, hearing the sentiment echo in her father’s voice. For some people, money is the best motive.
Even as a young girl, she’d known he meant her mother. Though many years and a few awkward meetings with the woman who had birthed her had given Meg some perspective, the fact remained. Her mother had cared less for her family than she had for things that couldn’t be bought on an academic’s salary.
The door opened and a dark-haired cop stuck his head into the room, interrupting. “Detectives? I think you’ll want to see this.”
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