Covert M.D. (10 page)

He was aware of Nia at his side, aware that this was only the second time he’d told this story. The first was to her father. She took his hand, and warmth traveled up his arm. She smelled like stability. Home. All those things he couldn’t care about, living the life he’d chosen.

“Go on.”

He breathed through his nose and pushed himself past the rest of it. The worst of it. “The rebel faction she was traveling with was ambushed by another group. Maria and her friends were executed. She was delivered to HFH as a warning that we should stay out of their country, their business.” She had been bound and gagged. A small bullet hole had marred her smooth cool forehead, an explosive exit wound had gaped at the back. He swallowed. “We pulled out the next day.”

He’d run, leaving her killers unpunished. Though the rebel factions had later been conquered and their vari
ous leaders imprisoned, the knowledge had been little comfort. Rathe would always know he’d run.

Nia pulled her hand away and swung around to face him. In her eyes Rathe saw both sympathy and an unexpected bite of temper. “I’m sorry, Rathe. That must have been awful, and there’s nothing I can say to take away the memories. But you seem to be forgetting that it was her choice to go. Just as it’s my choice to stay. You’re not responsible for either of our decisions.”

The snap in her voice startled Rathe, irritated him. When Maria’s body was dumped off, he’d nearly gone mad, knowing he’d been to blame. He stepped toward Nia and scowled. “What do you know about it? You were just a kid when it happened. Hell, you’re still a kid now!”

Her eyes narrowed on a hint of wetness, though he wasn’t sure whether it was anger or tears. “I’m the same age you were when Maria chose to go off with the rebels.”

He set his teeth. “I should have stopped her.”
She should have listened to me.

Though he didn’t say the words aloud, Nia seemed to read them in his face. Her eyes softened. “Loving someone doesn’t mean doing everything they say, Rathe.”

Love.
It was a word he hadn’t consciously thought in years. Not since his best friend had punched him in the face and loaded him onto a plane with orders never to see Nia again.

Well, he was seeing her. She was right in front of his face, twice as beautiful as she’d been seven years earlier. Twice as stubborn.

“Maria died because I mixed up my personal feelings with my professional responsibilities. No,” he touched a finger to her lips and felt the slow burn of blood through his veins, “let me finish. As an HFH doctor, I should have reported her and had her yanked the moment she took up with him. As a man—” a
young
man, as Nia had pointed out “—I thought I could win her back.”

“Yet you didn’t fight for me when my father sent you away.” She swallowed hard. “You just…went.”

He didn’t bother to deny it. Nor did he bother to deny the rising heat between them, the tension that came from what had happened between them before, what was coming between them now. He nudged up her chin with his fingertip. “I’m here now. But I won’t mix personal and professional aspects ever again. So you choose. Partners or lovers?”

Before she could frame an answer, he bent and kissed her, swallowing her startled gasp and nudging his tongue between her lips.

Remember what we had before,
he meant the kiss to say.
Think of what we could have now.
Then her flavor exploded on his tongue, rich and potent, and his mind went blank, save for one guilty thought.

He had promised. But sometimes, a man had to break a promise to keep a promise. He’d promised to stay away from her, but he’d also promised to keep her safe. What if he could only save her by becoming involved?

So he poured himself into the kiss. The sensations reminded him of the blessed time they’d shared in an airport hotel. His hands traced her body, telling her of the
sleepless, lonely nights that separated them, the sleepless nights they could pass together.

A noise from outside the room was a vague intrusion, quickly lost in the feel of her neat, narrow hands gripping his shirt…and pushing him away.

“Damn it, Rathe.” She lifted a trembling hand to her flushed, swollen lips. Her chest heaved as though she’d run a mile, and her eyes narrowed suspiciously. “That’s not fair.”

Heartbeat pounding in his temples, he closed the distance between them, knowing he’d won, knowing she felt the same way she had seven years earlier. Knowing he could use it.

He brushed a strand of hair away from her cheek. “I’m not trying to play fair. I’m trying to make up for lost time. So tell me…” He imagined her beneath him, surrounding him. Safe. “Partners or lovers?”

She lifted her chin. Her lips drew a flat line across her face. “Partners.”

And she turned and walked away. The action startled him, disappointed him and brought back an echo of the pain he’d felt when the hotel door closed on her heels the day he’d sent her away for her own good.

In his mind Rathe heard the rev of a badly tuned jeep and a scattering of gunshots. But in the small room he heard Nia curse.

In that instant personal tension shifted to trepidation. “What is it?”

She swallowed, hand on the doorknob. “The door won’t open. We’re trapped.”

Chapter Six

Stupid, stupid, stupid. Nia stuffed down the fear and yanked on the storage room door. She’d been stupid to stop paying attention to the danger, and stupid to think, even for a moment, that Rathe’s kiss had been genuine.

He’d found another angle to work, that was all. Another way to ease her off the case.
Partner or lover.

Worse, she’d been so caught up in the moment, in the memories, that she’d done the unthinkable—let down her guard and allowed Cadaver Man or one of his accomplices to trap them in a tiny room.

Stupid. She let the self-recrimination beat back the flutter of panic. Sweat prickled at her nape. She wasn’t sure which was worse, the thought of being trapped in here with Rathe or the thought of what might await them on the other side of the door.

“Here, let me.” When he nudged her aside, his touch scalded her flesh, but she shook it off and pressed her ear to the door. She swore she could hear a laundry cart rumbling past, down a corridor that was supposedly off-limits.

Rathe cursed and kicked the door, more from frustration than a plan, and turned away. “I don’t suppose HFH training includes lock picking these days?”

“It’s not the lock.” Nia twisted the knob freely and resisted the urge to beat against the thick metal and scream. She took a deep breath, willed her heart to slow. “I think someone wedged the door on the other side.”

“Great.” Rathe scowled. “Then what’s your plan,
partner?
”

Nia felt a prickle of surprise at the temper in his voice, the anger etched into the lines of his face. He was annoyed she’d rather be his partner than his lover. Of all the nerve!

Irritated, she glared at the door and saw that it was hung from the inside. Bingo. “I think I can get us out of here.” She pulled the small tool kit from her back pocket, unable to resist adding, “And for the record, there’s a big difference between Maria and me. I put the job first.”

Rathe muttered something uncomplimentary. For a man who railed about women being unprofessional, he seemed to be having a hard time with the concept himself. Professionals didn’t go around kissing each other.

Offering themselves as lovers.

Ignoring the flare of warmth that buzzed through her body, ignoring the taste of him on her lips and the imprint of his flesh on hers, Nia positioned a small screwdriver, tapped it with her collapsible hammer and neatly popped the door hinges. “Here,” she ordered, “you grab the door and I’ll keep watch.”

It wasn’t the first time her tool kit had come in handy and it likely wouldn’t be the last. She folded the worn leather neatly and passed a hand over her father’s initials.
Thank you, Daddy.

He might not have understood why she wanted to join HFH, but in the end he’d tried to support her as best he could. Because she’d loved him, and because she believed Rathe had loved him, too, she could understand part of Rathe’s decision not to come home.

But not all of it.

“I don’t hear anything.” With one hand on the doorknob and the other on the upper hinge, Rathe eased the heavy metal slab aside. “Be careful.”

But the hallway was empty save for a strand of yellow police tape. No Cadaver Man armed with a scalpel and a penchant for eyes. No laundry cart filled with pilfered supplies. Nothing.

Adrenaline drained away, leaving Nia hollow.

“Well, hell.” Rathe toed the wooden chock that had held the door shut. “Someone wanted us out of the way.”

“Or they wanted us trapped until they were ready to deal with us.” Her voice quavered with the memory of bloody tear tracks, but she forced herself to stand away when Rathe moved up beside her. She squared her shoulders. “Let’s do our job. You’ve got my back, partner.”

“Nia…” His tone was low with warning, but she ignored it and him and set off down the hall, toward the room where they’d found the body.

Nerves sizzled to life on every exposed inch of her skin. Her eye twitched like quick butterfly wings when
she neared the room. If Rathe hadn’t been right behind her, she might have turned and run for the elevator, but she forced herself to forge onward.

Her hand trembled as she reached for the doorknob. The police seal was broken, the door half-ajar. Someone had been inside.

Perhaps they still were.

Excitement thrummed through her body, thundered in her ears. Fear was an echo of nerves, held at bay by the man at her heels. Her partner.

She pushed the door open.

The room was empty. Only a dark, dried smear, a smudge of chalk and a dusting of powder marked where the body had been. But the tension grew worse.

She eased back and let the door swing closed. “Earlier, when we were…” Arguing. Talking about Maria. Kissing like seven years hadn’t passed. “…Occupied, I thought I heard something in the hall.”

“I heard a thump.” Rathe’s eyes were dark with a potent combination of anger and the same things she was remembering.

“No. After that.” Nia cast back over her scattered impressions, tried to blunt the memory of his kiss, of the way he had made her feel, as though she was all he’d ever wanted. All he would ever need.

She knew better than that. He would always pick the job over her, so she’d beaten him to it.

And it was on that thought that she heard the sound again. Rathe gripped her shoulder tightly and jerked his chin in the direction of the noise. “Do you hear it?”

She nodded and dropped her voice to the level of his, near a whisper. “A laundry cart.” She glanced at him. “Do you believe me now?”

“Come on. This time you can watch my back—partner.” And he was off, walking cat’s-paw quiet on his rubber-soled boots.

Heart beating an excited tattoo, Nia followed on tiptoes, careful not to let her low heels tap the echoing floor. The noise grew louder, then faded again, as though the cart had turned a corner. But there was no corner to turn. The short hallway dead-ended.

“Damn it.” Rathe thumped the wall in frustration, the noise echoing strangely in the closed-in space. “We’re missing something.”

She checked the doors on either side of the dead end. Empty storerooms. “Let’s work our way around to the next corridor over. Maybe the sounds are traveling from there.”

“Fine.” He scrubbed both hands through his silvery-blond hair, leaving the short strands sticking up on end. It made him look younger. The sight tightened a fist around her heart at the thought of what might have been.

“Focus,” she muttered to herself as she ducked beneath the police tape. “Do your damn job.”

“What was that?”

She glanced over her shoulder at Rathe. “Nothing.” But she could see in his eyes that he understood, perhaps too well. Something had changed between them the moment he’d told her about Maria. But if the confession had eased his soul, it had done the opposite for hers, because now she knew for sure.

He still loved Maria. Probably always would. It was in his eyes when he spoke of her—the anguish and the betrayal. The love.

It was how Nia had once imagined him looking at her.

Back in the main laundry area, the human noise was louder, the pace more frantic. She picked her way through a sea of canvas-sided carts, peering into each just in case. But instinct drew her onward, past the washing machines and giant steamers, past the rows and racks of pristine white lab coats and folded towels. Through a sea of workers, who carefully ignored the investigators, then whispered when they were past.

Rathe followed her, ghostlike, as she doubled back to the section of corridor she imagined was immediately opposite the dead end. It was guarded by a heavy metal door and a spray of caution signs.

She paused. “The incinerator?” Instantly her mind conjured images of fiery pits and screams.
Focus.
This wasn’t a B-grade action movie, it was Boston General Hospital.

Still, her shoulders were tense with anticipation when she eased open the door. Her left eyelid pulsed.

The walls were thick, and nearby doors opened to daylight. The incinerator was built into the outer wall of the hospital, separate, yet not, lest the fire run amok. Nia shivered at the thought of a hospital in flames.

“See anything?” Rathe crowded in behind her, making her feel simultaneously safe and unsafe.

She stepped farther into the narrow room and heat bloomed across her body. Her eyes locked on a canvas
cart. “There’s a laundry cart. Think someone’s been burning clothes?”

The small space was empty, but for the cart in the corner. Nia’s eyes were drawn to a scrap of paper caught in the door of the idling incinerator. Rathe headed for the laundry cart while she bent to read the tiny letters.

Luer Lock Syr—

“Hey! I think I’ve got something.” When Rathe turned in inquiry, Nia spun the wheel on the incinerator door. It opened on a wash of hot fumes. The beast might be quiet at the moment, but its insides pulsed with radiant heat, and the air steamed when warmth rushed outward. A red light blinked on the console, warning Nia that the machine hadn’t yet cooled down to safe levels.