Covert M.D. (21 page)

A lone hospital bed and an empty IV stand gave the featureless room a medical feel, though who would keep a patient in the basement? A rolling stool suggested a doctor’s office. And the stains on the wall spoke of torture.

“Why did he stash the body so close to the hidden door?” Nia stayed near the stairway. Footprints, he realized, she was trying to preserve the evidence for the cops. Cursing, he backtracked.

“To confuse us, maybe, or because he’s arrogant. He didn’t think we would find the door.” They nearly hadn’t.

“Or because he’d stripped the room clean.”

Rathe felt it, too, the sense of having just missed the break. They had a crime scene, yes, but that might not help them a great deal with the larger case. Whatever had happened here was long gone.

He ran through the connections in his head, hoping something would jump out. They had a hospital bed in a bomb shelter. A similar bed in an ambulance disguised to look like a laundry van. Missing drugs but no missing organs. Two dead men and a doctor in custody.

But Logan Hart maintained his innocence through a high-priced lawyer, and Cadaver Man was still at large.

“We’re missing something.” Nia frowned, breaking his train of thought. “There’s something here.”

Rathe shook his head. “There’s nothing here. Let’s call Peters, he’ll want to see the room.” He turned for the door, suddenly hungry for the clean air above, for the slightest scent of fabric softener, which was now inextricably linked to the sensation of making love to Nia.

“You go. I’d rather stay.” Seemingly oblivious to the heavy, fetid air, she leaned inside the room.

She didn’t offer to phone Peters, didn’t offer to go upstairs with him, which told Rathe she wanted time alone. And the hurt at the back of her eyes told him it wasn’t just to examine an empty bomb shelter. She wanted to process what had happened between them, to make some decisions.

Hell, he needed the same time. He didn’t like how they’d left things, couldn’t stand the thought of them going their separate ways after this investigation, but what was the alternative? He couldn’t work with the distraction of a woman partner, he sure as hell couldn’t be in a relationship with a woman who knowingly endangered her own life, and Nia had no intention of leaving HFH. So where did that leave them?

Nowhere.

He stifled a curse. “Come upstairs with me. It’s not safe down here.” He held out a hand and willed her to take it, willed her to understand that he’d barely survived Maria’s death, and he’d never felt a fraction for her of what he felt for Nia.

The realization gave him pause, but she was already turning away. “There’s a cop by the elevators and the whole basement is sealed off. I’m safer down here than I am in the lobby.”

The cool dismissal fired his temper, though part of him knew he had no right to be angry with her. Not about this.

“What will it take?” He caught her arm, turned her
until he had her nearly pressed up against the cool wall. “What do I have to do to convince you to give this up? To give us a chance?”

He thought about kissing her, but the snap of temper in her eyes told him that would be a miscalculation. Besides, there was no need to prove they were explosive together. It was the other stuff that had them at an impasse.

“There is no
us,
Rathe, there’s you and some image of a woman you have in your head. That’s not me. Until you can see that, until you can accept me for who I am, then there’s no point.”

“I want you. I’ve always wanted you. Isn’t that enough?” He didn’t say
need
this time. It was too close to the truth.

When she said nothing, merely looked up at him, he snapped, “What? You want some sort of grand gesture? You want me down on my knees?” He crowded her with his body, felt the answering flare of warmth between them.

She caught his face between her hands, surprising him. “I want you to accept that I’m an HFH field operative, and will be for the foreseeable future. And I want to know that if it came down to it, you’d choose me over the job.”

The inherent unfairness of it struck him square in the chest, and he stepped away from her. “Let me get this straight. You want me to choose you over the job, yet you’re refusing to do the same for me.”

She lifted her chin. “If that’s the way you see it.”

If there had been tears in her eyes, he might have
kissed them away. If she’d been angry, he could have picked a fight and dispelled some of the awful tension suddenly strung between them. But her eyes were dry and calm, unnerving him.

She meant it. But he was damned if he understood it. As far as he could see, she wanted him to give in on everything, while she gave up nothing. It wasn’t fair.

Love is rarely easy, or fair.
Rathe started, remembering Tony saying those words in farewell as he’d loaded Rathe, bruised and battered, onto an HFH cargo plane bound overseas. For all that he’d kicked Rathe’s ass over his daughter’s honor, Tony’s hands had been gentle as they’d buckled him in. Even then Nia’s father had known Rathe’s emotions were true.

Even then he’d known the relationship was doomed to failure. They were too different.

And too alike.

Suddenly he missed Tony with an ache akin to pain, sharper than the dull sadness he’d felt before, when he’d been far away from the family he’d once called his own. He wished his friend had been there to talk to. But he wasn’t. He was dead, and Rathe hadn’t said goodbye.

“Rathe? What is it?” Though still cool, Nia’s eyes were worried now. “What’s wrong?” She stepped forward and lifted a hand, but he moved away, suddenly needing some distance, a moment alone to regroup.

“Nothing. I’m fine.” He turned for the stairs, followed by the overpowering stench of death. “I’ll go find Peters.”

She was right, she was safe in the basement with a
guard at the elevators and all the doors locked. And he needed a moment. She’d be there when he returned, and their problems would remain, as well. Neither she nor their differences would disappear simply because he wished it.

He’d tried that already. It hadn’t worked. She was still in his heart. Had been all along.

Halfway up the stairs he glanced back to say something more, but she had already turned away and focused on the empty, bloodstained room. Her mind was on the job, as his should be. She didn’t look back, didn’t look up, and after a moment he turned away and continued up the stairs, followed by a creeping sense of disquiet.

The cop nodded when Rathe reached the elevators. “Everything’s calm upstairs. The patient hasn’t regained consciousness again.”

Zero. Pig.
Marissa’s words echoed in Rathe’s mind, still making no sense, especially when they were combined with a bomb shelter and a disguised laundry truck.

“Dr. French will stay down here while I check in with the detectives.” Though the officer could easily radio the crime scene to Peters, Rathe needed the moment alone. He aimed a finger at the young officer. “Nobody gets in here, understand? And if anything happens to her…”

Something must have shown in his face, because instead of bristling at being lectured by a civilian, the officer nodded man-to-man. “I’ll watch out for her.”

“Yeah, that’s what I keep thinking, too,” Rathe muttered as he stepped into the service elevator. He rode up alone, or maybe Tony’s ghost stood at his side, but he
couldn’t outdistance the feeling that he should be doing something different.

Couldn’t escape the suspicion that things were about to go very wrong.

DOWNSTAIRS, in the bomb shelter beneath the subbasement, Nia leaned on the door frame and shook her head when the bloodstains seemed to take on shape and form. A dead man. A sick woman. A four-legged creature. All drawn in arterial spurts.

But instead of the case, her mind kept returning to Rathe and what had happened between them. Damn it, she wasn’t being unfair. She was only asking for the things she’d give in return. Mutual respect. Unconditional love. Partnership. That was fair.

Unfortunately, Rathe didn’t see it that way. Though she respected what he’d come from, and what he’d made himself into since those humble beginnings, she hated that he couldn’t see her as an equal. As herself. An investigator.

So investigate, already.

Cursing the thick air, and the gut-deep sense that the room had more secrets to reveal, Nia tried to focus into the dim corner behind the hospital bed. Instead she saw Rathe’s cool gray eyes, alive with emotion as he asked her to take him on his terms or not at all.

It wasn’t that simple. She balled her hands into fists and used them to wipe away the tears she’d been strong enough to hide from him. “Damn it, Rathe.”

With the words came another tear, and the realization that it was time to end this. Time to solve the case
and tell Wainwright that she would never again work with Rathe McKay. It hurt too much.

The thought drove her into the bomb shelter, past the dried blood and all the way to the hospital bed. Crime-scene investigators be damned, the answer was in the small, dank room. She could practically taste it, just as she could taste Rathe’s flavor on her tongue and smell him on her skin.

Cursing, she shook off the thoughts and focused on the bed. It was stripped of linens and bore no unusual marks. The stool was much the same, featureless and unprepossessing. She’d leave those untouched in the hopes that they would yield a print for the detectives. A fiber. A hint as to who was doing this and why.

She crouched, peered into the dimness behind the bed. And saw it.

“Gotcha.” She knew she should wait for Peters and his crime-scene technicians, but couldn’t stop herself from scooping up the pill container. She held it by the edges and tilted the label to the yellow light.
Cyclophosphamide.

And just like that, it clicked. Pig. Antirejection drugs. Blood sang in her ears and joy raced through her body. She had it! She knew!

She heard footsteps coming down the stairs and called out, “Rathe, Detective Peters, I’ve got it. Marissa didn’t say ‘zero’ she said ‘xeno’!”

“Very clever, Dr. French.”

She whirled at the new voice. Froze when she saw the gun. Betrayal clawed at her throat, panic fled through her veins. “You!”

There was a disappointed “tsk.” “Sloppy of you, letting me sneak up on you like this. Not what I expected of a crack HFH operative.” A shrug. “Well, no matter. This suits me fine. I would have captured you one way or the other. I have a customer for your remaining kidney.” A faint smile. “That’s why you’re here.”

Nia thought of the holes where Short Whiny Guy’s eyes had been and gagged on the thick, redolent air. The eyes hadn’t been souvenirs, they’d been used for corneal transplants. Then the words
remaining kidney
shut down her brain. “No! You wouldn’t!”

“Watch me.” Thin lips curved in triumph, the gun jerked toward the exit. “Up the stairs. We’re taking a little ride.”

It wasn’t an ordinary gun, Nia saw. It was a dart gun, likely filled with a quick-acting sedative. If she moved fast enough, planned her attack well enough…

“Come on, move!”

She moved. She had to get out of the bomb shelter, which must have been used for the black market transplants until the HFH investigation had gotten too close. Up the stairs, in the basement hallways, she might have the advantage. She knew the mazelike twists and turns. If she could outrun—

“Don’t bother, I’d gun you down before you got three steps.” The barrel poked between her shoulder blades. “Don’t think the guard is going to help you. He won’t be waking up for quite some time. And your partner? My associate will be taking care of him shortly.”

Rathe. They were going to kill Rathe.

Numb with shock, fear and the wild belief that she’d find a way to free herself, Nia didn’t truly panic until they reached the loading dock. The laundry van was parked outside, its back doors open to reveal the bed within. The stainless steel equipment glittered and the monitor lights glowed menacingly amidst the slight foggy chill inside the cargo hold. The bed was empty. Nia feared it wouldn’t be for long.

Her kidney. If they took her kidney, she would have nothing. It would be a long wait for a rare-type transplant at best, a death sentence at worst.

“Get in.” The gun poked hard, just above the empty place where one kidney used to be. She remembered Rathe stroking the scar the night before, tenderly, lovingly. She thought of never seeing him again, never fighting with him again, never having one last chance to compromise—or, hell, give him what he wanted so they could be together.

In the end that was the most important thing.

“I said, get in!”

“No!” Nia spun and slapped at the gun, deflecting the first dart high and wide. She kicked and punched, self-defense classes and sheer survival instincts blending into a messy street fighting style of scratching fingernails and pistoning elbows.

“Damn it!” The gun spat again, and the dart whistled harmlessly past her ear. She broke for freedom, thinking if she could just get past the heavy metal door, just get it closed—

Ssst thwap!
The next dart buried itself in her arm.
Pain pinched, then flowed with cool…blessed…numbness.

The last thing Nia heard was the
thunk
of her own skull hitting the cement floor and the rattle of the pill bottle falling from her limp, ineffective fingers.

Then there was nothing.

Chapter Thirteen

The elevator doors hissed open, and Rathe stepped out, fuming at the way he’d been forced to leave things with Nia. There had to be a way to make this work. If only she weren’t so stubborn….

A tall, gaunt male nurse kept his head down as he pushed a rolling cart of surgical instruments onto the service elevator. Rathe held up a hand. “Sorry, the autoclave is off-limits today. Didn’t you hear? They’re outsourcing the cleaning until—”

Tall. Gaunt. Surgical cap and mask, though he’d just passed through the lobby where caps and masks were forbidden.
Cadaver Man!