Inferno (CSI Reilly Steel #2) (38 page)

‘Look, I’ve had just about enough of your bullshit,’ Kennedy began, rounding on Reuben. ‘Spouting shite might be the name of the game for you, but Chris Delaney is a good cop and a great man ...’

‘Hmm ... if he’s such a good cop then why didn’t he save the day?’ Reuben countered. He cast a surreptitious glance towards Reilly. ‘Of course, some of us understand better than most the capability for darkness inside us all, don’t we?’ he continued, and she looked away, unnerved.

She turned her attention again to Chris lying unconcious on the bed. ‘You said he just collapsed?’ she asked Kennedy, briskly changing the subject.

‘Hit the ground so fast, I thought he’d been shot at first, but our guys only fired a warning shot to scare off the dogs. Paramedics said it was some sort of blackout.’

‘And the doctors can’t say what caused it?’ Reilly asked, thinking about Chris’s problems from before, and the crippling pain he used to endure. What if this was a recurrence of it? Whatever ‘it’ was.The blood tests she’d run last year on his behalf were inconclusive, and when in the meantime he’d confessed that the symptoms had stopped, and he was feeling great ... Reilly realized now that she needed to mention this to the medical staff, at least let them know that there was a precursor. Granted, by doing so, she ran the risk of breaking Chris’s confidence, but what was she supposed to do when he was lying unconscious in a hospital bed, and everyone was baffled as to what was wrong with him?

Kennedy shook his head. ‘Well, one good thing about today at least is that the investigation is over. The less we have to look at your ugly mug, Knight, the better.’

Reuben smiled. ‘Worry not, Detective Dinosaur, now that our unsub is no longer unidentified, I shall be out of your hair soonest – tomorrow, actually.’

‘Can’t come fast enough for me,’ Kennedy replied, giving the profiler a dark look. ‘I’m going outside for a fag.  Catch you later, Reilly.’

‘Sure. I’m going to stay on for a while, see if I can find anyone who’ll tell me what’s going on with Chris.’

Kennedy nodded, and without another word to Reuben, he turned on his heel and walked out of the room.

‘Another conundrum for the inimitable Ms Steel to solve?’ Reuben teased. ‘I’m impressed. I appreciate your talents are extensive, but even I wasn’t aware they extended to medicine.’

Reilly was startled. Unbeknownst to himself Reuben had just given her an idea...

Her mind flashed to her kitbag, tucked safely under her seat in the GFU van parked outside, and inside, the syringe not dissimilar from the one the nurse had just used.

The nurse had finished her rounds, Kennedy was gone and no doubt Reuben would be leaving soon. All it would take was one tiny blood sample ...

Could she risk trying to figure out this particular puzzle all by herself?  Or more to the point, should she?

She looked again at the prone figure on the bed. With everything she and Chris had been through together, and how much they’d shared ...

For Reilly Steel, it was a question that only had one answer.

C
hris was terrified. Throughout his career he’d faced down syringe-brandishing junkies and gun-wielding scumbags and would happily do so again rather than tackle what was to come.

As he stepped into the elevator at the GFU building and pushed the button for the floor to Reilly’s office, all manner of horrific possibilities were going through his mind.

A week before, after the Darcy takedown, Chris had woken up in St Vincent’s ER to see the concerned face of Kennedy sitting beside him.

‘What the hell happened, mate?’ his partner asked, his face uncommonly solemn. ‘Something’s been going on with you lately, and I think we both know you completely bottled it back there.’ He took a deep breath. ‘The question is – why? I covered for you this time with O’Brien, but if there’s going to be next time...’

‘Pete, I’m sorry; I’m not sure myself what happened. I was feeling faint and...I must have blacked out or something.’  While Chris’s brain still felt fuzzy, he was alert enough to know that back at the farmhouse, he had been rendered completely immobile  not because of any moral dilemma regarding the rescue of Ricky Webb  but because his pain-wracked limbs had quite literally failed him. ‘I’ve been having a few niggles here and there lately, but I’m sure this place will sort me out in no time,’ he reassured Kennedy and much to his relief, he seemed content to leave it at that, but something in the other man’s eyes told Chris he wasn’t quite convinced.

However, it turned out the medics at the hospital were stumped as to the root cause of Chris’s blackout, and he was subjected to a battery of scans and tests, until eventually the worst of the pain subsided, and he was sent home, none the wiser.The enforced medical leave meant he’d done little else this past week but fret about his condition and how it might impact not only his job, but his life. The problem was he wasn’t sure how next to tackle the issue, not while he remained in the dark about what was happening to him. And if the hospital couldn’t figure out what was wrong with him, then who the hell could?

Chris was beginning to descend into despair when first thing this morning out of the blue, Reilly had called him from the GFU lab and asked him to come in and see her.

‘I’m pretty sure I’ve figured what’s wrong with you,’ was all she said, refusing to reveal anything further until he agreed to visit the lab in person.

Now, as he knocked lightly at the door to her office, he wondered what on earth he was about to face.

‘Hey there, come on in,’ Reilly said, her typically calm demeanour once again betraying nothing.

‘You said you think you know what’s wrong?’ Chris urged, a little curter than he’d intended before adding lightly. ‘Go on then, put me out of my misery.’

‘Well...’ She stood up and came around the front of her desk. ‘I was thinking about the last time you suffered badly with this thing – remember throughout the whole Jess... episode?’ While her tone was even, Chris could still hear it waver slightly when she mentioned her sister’s name.

He nodded.

‘Well, it always seemed strange to me, and not entirely coincidental that the whole thing seemed to stop right after you got shot. Remember all that blood you lost?’

‘Yeah, but what’s this got to do with anything?’ he asked unable to restrain his impatience.

‘Those tests we took before...I looked through the results, specifically the transferrin saturation test Julius did, and compared them with a more recent sample.’

She met his questioning gaze head on. ‘Don’t ask, just trust me OK?’

He exhaled heavily, not sure what the hell was coming. 

Reilly continued. ‘Last year your transferrin was almost just above sixty percent. Now it’s eighty-five.’

He blinked, thoroughly confused. ‘Reilly, as Kennedy might say, just give me the meat and spuds version...’

‘OK, high transferrin is often indicative of a blood condition that can only be identified via a genetic scan. It’s possibly why the hospital didn’t pick up on it. You’d need to be aware of the condition to identify the anomaly, and many medical staff aren’t.’

Chris felt a knot form in his stomach. Genetic scan...blood condition...what in God’s name....? His heart thumped heavily in his chest.

‘Have you ever heard of haemochromatosis?’ she asked then.

‘Haemo ...what?’

‘Haemochromatosis. Like I said, it’s a genetic condition, which basically means that your body is absorbing too much iron, and prone to storing it in the blood. It might be hard to pinpoint, but is actually a pretty common condition – especially amongst people of Celtic origin.’

‘Too
much
iron?’ If anything, he was thinking he had to be deficient.

‘Yes, the opposite of anaemia.’

Chris frowned, unsure what to think. ‘I take it that’s not good?’

‘It depends. If it goes untreated for too long then the iron can build up in your organs – and that’s very bad. It’s why you were in so much pain last year, and over the last few weeks. The excess builds up over time, and affects your muscles and limbs.’

‘So how do you treat the damn thing?’ he asked, not at all certain he wanted to hear the response. ‘
Is
there any treatment?’

She moved back around the desk to her computer. ‘I saved this for you earlier.’ She turned the screen so Chris could see for himself.

‘Treatments,’ he read, scanning the page quickly as he heart rate gradually began evening out. He struggled with the next term. ‘Therapeutic phlebotomy... what the heck is that?’

Reilly looked at him. ‘Vampirism – of sorts.’

‘What?’

‘You’ll need to have blood exaguined on a regular basis,’ she explained. ‘It offloads some of the iron in your system so as to stabilize the condition. It’s why you were fine for so long after the shooting.’

Of course, he’d lost so much blood... Suddenly things started to fall into place.

‘Chris, this might be treatable but isn’t something you can just ignore  people have died from it. And,’ she added meaningfully, ‘you need to let O’Brien know. Kennedy too.’

He shook his head, suddenly terrified. ‘No way, I can’t do that. What if ’

‘What if you freeze again at another crucial moment?’ she argued. ‘We can’t have that happening, not when there are lives at stake.’ She gave him a defiant look. ‘I’m sorry, but if you don’t tell them then I will.’

‘OK, OK, I know what you’re saying, but I just found about this. At least give me a little time to see a doctor, find out how bad it is.’

‘Fine.’ Reilly’s tone was brisk. ‘But do it soon. It’s gone untreated for so long now there may well be some form of organ damage or something even more serious. Either way, things won’t be all plain sailing.’

OK, Chris thought exhaling. Maybe he did have a problem, but at least it seemed treatable.

Ttake this stuff home with you, and read up on it for the moment. You’ll need to keep a close eye on your diet.’ Reilly keyed in a command, and her printer came to life, spewing out several sheets. She eyed him knowingly. ‘And lay off on the drinking too.’

Chris looked away, ashamed. So she had noticed. He should have known better than to think the reason for his absence on the day of Melanie’s wedding would have gone unnoticed, especially to Reilly.

He couldn’t help it; that day the tremors were particularly bad, and anyway, all he’d wanted to do was get shit-faced, to help shut out the physical pain, drive away the memories and, in all honesty, the raw hurt that someone else and not him, had finally managed to rescue Melanie from her demons.

Chris wasn’t proud of it, but at the time the drink had been a balm to him in more ways than one.

He scanned briefly through the material she had given him. While he was relieved that the question mark hanging over his condition had finally been answered, there seemed to be an awful lot of reading for something supposedly so straightforward....

Maybe it was a much bigger deal that he’d thought?

As to whether it would hold him back in the job remained to be seen, but Chris figured he’d be fine.

After all, a little joint pain never killed anyone, did it?

‘Well, thank you for getting to the bottom of it,’ he told Reilly. ‘I don’t know what to say ...’

She looked up and flashed him a smile that made his stomach do a somersault.

‘Hey, you know me,’ she winked. ‘Always looking for a puzzle to solve.’

E
njoyed this book? Read on for a sample of HIDDEN, the third novel in the Reilly Steel series by Casey Hill.

Or find out how it all began with TABOO, the first in the series.

C
hapter 1

How can this tainted world contain us, how can it contain our dreams? At night in the freedom of my mind, the shackles of this mortal realm fall away as I soar above the fields and the farms, over forests and hills. I have always dreamed of flying – dreams like this are where the spirit comes alive, where we create our own rules, our own reality.

Why should we let other people tell us how to live, or what is right and what is wrong? Flex your wings and soar with me, my little ones. Do you see our land below us? Is it not beautiful? The lake and the fields, the river and the trees, the horses running free beneath the sun.

This is our world, our home, our sanctuary, and within it we are safe. Is that a dream? No, it is our reality. And so I know that when I awake, when the rooster calls me to another day, that my eyes will open onto our own paradise.

––––––––

C
olin O’Dea was trying to figure out the easiest way to murder his wife. Dark hedgerows rushed past the windows as he sped along the narrow country road.

‘Will you please slow the hell down?’ Fiona grunted. ‘Your work buddies may be impressed by your new car, but I’m not.’

He responded by speeding up, unable to resist the urge to do the opposite of what she asked.

Just a few minutes until they were home. Then she could go off and have one of her herbal baths, or whatever it was she called them, and he could watch the Chelsea game he had recorded earlier. What sort of people had dinner parties on shaggin’ Thursday nights? At least he’d escaped reasonably early.

‘Colin!’

His wife’s sharp scream pulled him out of his reverie just in time for him to spot something lying in the road – a white bundle. Rubbish from a truck, or a dead sheep maybe? Without thinking he swerved around it, feeling the BMW’s anti-lock brakes push back against his foot with a faint shudder.

He tried to fight the slide – dammit, that’s what traction control was supposed to do – but it wasn’t enough. The car was going too fast, the road was damp from the rain shower earlier, and Colin wasn't as good a driver as he liked to think.

They spun 360 degrees, fields and fences, trees and ditches racing past in a blur as the headlights threw everything into sharp relief for a split second, then back into blackness. Then as suddenly as it had started, the car was still once more. The only movement was the smoke and steam pouring past the headlights’ beams.