Covert M.D. (17 page)

Or maybe it was just her and Rathe.

Sighing, she straightened and pushed away from the window. Heartsore or not, she had a job to do.

It took her a half hour to track down Marissa, mostly because everyone she passed in the Transplant Department wanted to stop her and defend Logan Hart—sometimes quite vehemently—as though she’d been solely responsible for his arrest. It bothered Nia to have so many venomous looks directed her way.

And it made her further question Logan’s guilt. Thirty character witnesses couldn’t all be wrong, could they?

Sure. Especially when not one of them could suggest an alternative suspect. The nurses, doctors and technicians melted away when she asked, more comfortable with confrontation than suspecting one of their own.

She finally cornered the dark-haired nurse in a patient’s room. “You wanted to speak with me?”

Marissa nearly dropped the IV bag she’d been changing. Her eyes shot to the door and the hallway beyond, then back to Nia. “Not here.”

Excitement thrummed through Nia’s veins. This was important. She could feel it. “Where, then?”

The other woman lowered her voice to a near whis
per, as though the walls were listening. “Outside. I’ll meet you in the doorway of the photo shop across the street in twenty minutes.”

“I’ll have Dr. McKay with me.” When the nurse hesitated, Nia pressed her. “Nine patients have died, Marissa. Two men have been murdered and both Rathe and I have been attacked. I’m not going anywhere without him.”

Though she didn’t trust him with her heart, she trusted him with her life. He’d proven himself more than capable of protecting her. And if that was all she could depend on him for, then so be it.

Marissa nodded. “Fine. Twenty minutes. Now go, before someone sees you in here!”

But as Nia left the patient’s room, the prickling at the nape of her neck told her it was already too late.

“YOU’RE SURE SHE SAID twenty minutes?” Rathe glanced at his watch again, though there was no need. His internal clock said they’d been waiting for more than a half hour.

“Something’s wrong.” At his side, Nia shifted uncomfortably. They were pressed together in the small inset doorway of the photo shop, huddled out of the rain, as neither had thought to bring a jacket.

When she turned to face him, their bodies bumped intimately. Her scent, moist and exotic, rose from her damp skin, causing Rathe to tense as his mind whirled from their earlier confrontation.

He was no coward, emotional or otherwise. He’d owned his mistakes. Apologized for them. Been forgiven.

So why did he feel even worse than before? His chest ached hollowly, a deeper pain than the surface bangs and bruises, and at odd moments he found himself wishing for…what?

He wasn’t even sure anymore.

For so long he’d been sure of his choices, his opinions. Maria’s death had shaped so many of his decisions, from choosing partners to taking assignments. He’d told himself it was solely to protect other HFH operatives from meeting the same horrible end she had. But what if that had been, as Nia said, an excuse? What if he’d been using her death as a way to avoid changing, to keep from moving forward?

No. Impossible. He shook his head and shoved the thought aside.

But it lingered, leaving him wondering
What if?

“Good, you waited.” Marissa joined them, pressing close into the small space even though she carried an umbrella. Her eyes flickered to the passing crowd, to the windows of Boston General towering high above the street. “I’m sorry, I had to—” she paused “—I was delayed.”

Instinct flared in Rathe’s gut, mercifully blunting the emotions as he wondered what had delayed the woman. An emergency at the hospital? Or something more sinister?

“You wanted to talk to us?” Nia’s gentle voice soothed the nervous woman. “We can help you. We can keep you safe, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

Something sparked in the nurse’s dark brown eyes, then was gone just as quickly. “No. Don’t worry about
me, I’ll be fine.” She pulled a folded piece of paper from her pocket. “Here, take this. I found it in Dr. Hart’s trash the day Julia died.” She pressed it into Rathe’s hand and looked directly at him for the first time. “I hope it helps.”

She handed him the umbrella, flipped up the collar of her sensible tan raincoat and darted out onto the sidewalk, where she merged with the flowing lunch crowd. Without the umbrella, she was instantly anonymous. Perhaps that had been her goal, Rathe thought.

“Well, that was strange.” Nia tugged the paper from his hand. “What do you think made her so late?”

“I think someone got to her.” He folded the umbrella and leaned it up against the wall, instincts humming. “I think she’s in this up to her neck.”

“Her and Hart both.” Nia handed him the paper. “Or so someone wants us to think.”

He skimmed the printout, which was a list of Transplant Department supplies with check marks next to a number of them—many of which had gone missing. It told them nothing new and seemed more than a little suspect. He paused when he reached the end of the page. “What’s with the drugs written in at the bottom?”

The pen was red, the handwriting distinctly feminine, with a downward slant that suggested the writer was left-handed. Like Marissa.

“Recognize them?” Nia said.

Rathe reviewed the short list in his head. FK506. Cyclophosphamide. Prostaglandin. “They’re antirejection drugs, aren’t they?”

“Exactly.” Though her agreement didn’t sound one hundred percent sure. “So why did Marissa write them in at the bottom of the page?”

Was it information she’d been told to plant, or was this an addition, something she wasn’t supposed to tell them? Rathe suspected the latter, but wasn’t sure what to do with the data. His frustration kicked up a notch at how muddy the seemingly simple investigation had become, how complicated his partnership with his trainee was destined to remain.

He scowled and focused on the paper. “They’re antibiotics and immune-suppressors designed to fool the body into accepting an organ transplant.” He shrugged. “But it beats me why she wrote them in.”

“Me, too.” Nia frowned. “Shoot. And I thought we’d caught a break.” She jerked her chin back toward Boston General. “Come on, let’s have the detectives bring her in for questioning.”

Rathe nodded. It seemed the next best step.

Farther up the street, almost directly opposite the main hospital entrance, there was a scream. A thud. A squeal of tires and a chorus of horns blaring in discordant harmony.

Rathe’s heart kicked with adrenaline.

“Damn it!” He bolted toward the sound, registering the motionless tan lump in the middle of the road, the dark blue sedan speeding away.

Nia reached the woman first and dropped to her knees on the pavement, heedless of the traffic snarled around them and the shouts and beeps of the drivers. “Marissa!”

Rathe slapped for his cell phone, remembered it was gone and grabbed Nia’s out of her pocket to call for help. Moments later a pair of E.R. orderlies and the on-call surgeon flew through the side doors pushing a gurney.

Technically they were supposed to wait for an ambulance and paramedics to transport the patient the three hundred yards to the E.R. But Rathe didn’t give a damn. He’d called straight to the front desk.

“Sorry.” Marissa was barely conscious, her limbs twisted at awkward angles. A thin trickle of blood ran from her mouth, suggesting anything from a bitten tongue to internal injuries.

“It’s okay, Marissa.” Nia stroked dark hair from the woman’s forehead. “We’re here. We’ll keep you safe.”

Rathe’s second call went to the detectives. “Peters, get over here right now. And bring an officer. We’ll need a guard.”

They lifted Marissa to the gurney. The trickle of blood became a river. Before they could wheel her away, she reached out and grabbed Rathe’s wrist with surprising strength.

“It’s zero—”

And she passed out.

“Take her.” He jerked his head at the E.R. staff. “And keep her alive. We’re going to need her.” They gave him a filthy look, as if to say,
We always do our best to keep our patients alive.
And then they were gone, sucked back into Boston General.

The image gave him pause.

Nia nudged him onto the sidewalk. “What did she say?”

“She said ‘zero.’”

“Zero what?”

“Darned if I know.” He moved to scrub his hands across his face, then paused, remembering the sore places and the scabs. He let his hands drop to his sides, his chest echoing with defeat. Because of them, a woman was on her way to surgery.

If she hadn’t met with them, hadn’t given them the information on the folded piece of paper…

“Come on.” Nia touched his arm as Detective Peters pulled into the ambulance bay and parked illegally. “Let’s see if they’ve gotten anything useful out of Hart. And we’re supposed to meet with that sketch artist to describe Cadaver Man.” She touched his arm again, let her fingers linger. “We’re close, I feel it.”

Yeah, he felt it, too. But he wasn’t sure whether they were close to solving the case, or close to self-destructing and taking a number of innocent lives with them.

He feared the latter.

SKETCH ARTIST was something of a misnomer, Nia soon learned. She’d pictured an artsy type with a pile of charcoal and a half-dozen gum erasers. Instead they were introduced to a computer whiz almost two years her junior who stroked his keyboard like it was his lover.

“Eyes?”

“Yes,” she answered automatically, then winced at Rathe’s snort. “Sorry. Narrow. Pale blue, almost gray.” A pair of light-blue eyes appeared on the flat picture of
a disembodied head. She frowned and tried to remember the man she’d seen pushing a canvas laundry cart. “Narrower, and tilted down at the edges.”

It took them a solid half hour to agree on the composite, during which time Nia relaxed a bit. The police station felt safe. Protected. Peters phoned in to report that Marissa was in critical condition but alive.

She hadn’t yet regained consciousness, so they were no closer to understanding what ‘zero’ meant. Zero gravity? A zero-point-one CC dose of something nasty? What?

“That’s him. Or close enough.” At her side Rathe nodded and winced. He reached for his pocket and frowned.

“I took them when you weren’t looking.” Nia touched his cheek with the back of her hand and told herself she was checking for fever. “You’re no good to me if you make yourself sick with an ibuprofen overdose.”

His sour look was scant thanks, but it was more of a response than she’d gotten from him since the hit-and-run. He’d withdrawn into himself and she wasn’t sure how to follow.

Wasn’t sure she should try.

“I’ll e-mail this around. We’ll paper New England with this guy’s ugly mug.” The sketch artist cracked his knuckles as though anticipating the task.

“Fine.” Nia stood. “Tell Detective Peters we’ll check in with him in a few hours. We’ll be at the apartment until then.” She forestalled Rathe’s automatic protest with a warning hand. “I need to change your bandage. I put hard work into those stitches and I’m not going to let them infect. Period.”

He followed her out onto the street and down half a block to where she’d parked the Jetta. He paused on the passenger side. “Why does it seem that when we’re together, you’re always taking care of me?”

He might have been aiming for flip, but the question came out faintly surprised.

It was true. At eighteen she’d helped him past Maria’s death. At twenty-one she’d nursed him through the fever and probably saved his life. And now? At twenty-eight she just plain cared.

So she ignored the sarcastic, defensive responses that immediately came to mind and went with the truth. “Somebody has to care about you.”

The silent drive to the apartment seemed impossibly long, yet over too quickly, because once the door shut behind them, they were alone together.

And something had shifted in the air between them.

“Into the bathroom. Shirt off.” She meant the orders to sound professional, but her voice betrayed her, dropping an octave and emerging in a husky breath.

Eyes hooded, he obeyed her command, shrugging out of the garment and sitting on the closed toilet lid.

“Take this.” She pressed a stronger painkiller into his palm and tried to ignore the building electricity as she shoehorned herself into the tiny space.

The night before, the setup had seemed practical. Now, after their conversation early that morning, it seemed too enclosed, too intimate. When she kneeled and began to unwrap his wrist, she couldn’t avoid skimming his bare torso with her forearm. Aiming for some
distance, she sat on the rim of the tub and drew his arm into her lap, but that was no better. His curled fingertips rested a scant inch from the underside of her breasts.

If she leaned forward just so…

“Nia.” His voice was a low growl.

She kept her eyes fixed on his wrist, knowing if she looked up and saw desire reflected in his eyes, she was lost. He was wrong for her, all wrong. He didn’t respect her as a professional, didn’t see her as an equal. And though he’d apologized for his past actions, the facts remained—she couldn’t count on him to be there when she needed him. Couldn’t trust that he’d ever choose her over the job. Over his own desires.

Yet, foolish woman, weak woman, she still wanted him. More so now, because she’d seen the man beneath the legend’s charm.

And she cared for that man.

“Nia.” This time he hooked a finger beneath her chin, forced her to look up. But desire wasn’t all she saw in his sleepy blue-gray eyes, there was also something else, something less easily defined.

“What?” Her hands worked to rewrap his wrist, but they felt as though they were acting alone. Her whole being was focused on his face, his eyes, and the fear of what he might say.

If he was looking to seduce her, she was already lost.

“You did good today.” He shrugged one shoulder and glanced at the mirror above them. “Maybe you were right. Maybe I’ve let Maria’s death influence too many of my opinions. Maybe I’m wrong—maybe women do
belong in HFH. God knows you’ve been a better, more focused investigator than I have so far….” He swayed ever so slightly.