Fatal Reaction (9 page)

CHAPTER 19

Dorian waited outside of Mitchell’s office, watching the suited woman from Finance, whose name he couldn’t remember, gather her things and leave in a huff. He ran his hand through his wavy, blond hair and sighed to vent the stress.

A large vein pulsed in Mitchell’s forehead, and the tone of his previous meeting set Dorian even more on edge.

“Get in here.” Mitchell peeled off his pin-striped suit jacket, two large circles of sweat drenching the armpits of his monogrammed, white dress shirt. “And close the door.”

“Absolutely.” Dorian paced the length of the office, too nervous to sit. “Look, Mitchell, I know I should’ve come and talked to you last night.”

Mitchell flopped in his chair and leaned back in a way that emphasized the curve of his belly. “Listen, I’ve had a real bad couple of days. Riley Martin’s threatening to sue, the ethics committee called an emergency meeting, and I have to sit with a panel of attorneys after lunch. I’m annoyed that you avoided me yesterday.” He mopped his bald head with a white handkerchief. “But I’m even more pissed off about the timing. Will you please sit down? You’re making me nuts.” Dorian pulled a chair back from Mitchell’s desk and sat. “We expect a huge turnout for tonight’s fund-raising event—
your
fund-raising event, to which Cynthia Davis has purchased a seat.”

Cynthia Davis had entered the research stage for uterine transplantation a year before Dorian, and a paper she’d written, though Dorian would never admit it, was the genesis of his early work. She was smart, but lacked ambition, and treaded lightly where Dorian went full speed ahead.

“Cynthia’s not half the surgeon she thinks she is,” Dorian said, “or this would be
her
fund-raiser.”

Mitchell smirked. “But you realize that what happened with Stephanie Martin bolsters her points that you’re too eager and reckless. Cynthia’s smart, not like the other fanatical protesters, and she has facts. She can turn people against you if word leaks far enough, so I’d be careful about her. There are going to be at least a dozen high rollers there tonight, checkbooks in hand. I’ve managed to keep Stephanie’s case somewhat quiet, but I need to know what, exactly, happened.”

“Exactly?” It was an answer Dorian didn’t have. “There was extensive clotting, bad enough that I had no choice but to remove the uterus. Cynthia made no point about that in her speculation, and her trials are so far behind, she’ll never be competition. No one could’ve seen this coming. As for Riley Martin, let him threaten. You think we didn’t have every waiver and release signed before we went ahead with the surgery? The Martins knew what they were getting into.”

“But did they, really? I hate to even bring this up, but you know you’re going to have to work with Marco to give me something more definitive about what went wrong, right? How are you going to handle this?”

The mention of Marco made Dorian’s hands shake. “I’m doing everything I can,” he said, not yet willing to admit more than he absolutely had to. “The Martins and the Warrens are on separate units, totally opposite ends of the hospital. Emily should be discharged in the next twenty-four hours, which should give us a little breathing room. I’ll get you your answers, with or without Marco.”

“You’d better. Bill Warren is one of those checkbooks I was talking about. Fail again and you’ll tank your whole project.”

“That’s not going to happen,” Dorian said. “I’ll send Emily home with a visiting nurse, on us, to make sure nothing goes wrong. It’s the closest thing to a guarantee I can give you.”

“On
us
,
or on County Memorial? Your program is expensive, Dorian, and a goddamned hornet’s nest. That last meeting was to talk about your budget, and believe me, there’s no room for absorbing any more costs.”

“You’d really rather risk a repeat of what happened with Stephanie Martin to save a couple grand? Really?”

Mitchell wiped his hands down his face and grunted. “I knew this was going to happen. You told me you had this perfected and tested.”

“In rats, Mitchell,
in rats
. This is one complication. Put it in perspective.”

“One hundred percent failure, that’s my perspective.”

“Fifty,” Dorian corrected. “Emily’s case will be different.”

“It better be, or consider me at the front of the growing line of people calling for your head.”

CHAPTER 20

“How long did you know?” Ana stood in the entranceway of Mike’s ranch home, her anger as pure as the moment she first heard Misty was pregnant.

Mike ran his hands through his wet hair, a cloud of menthol and cologne surrounding him and his face half-coated with shaving cream. “I didn’t want you to find out that way.”

“How
long?”

“Less than forty-eight hours,” Mike said. “And Anthony wouldn’t have even told me if it wasn’t part of his alibi.”

“Sydney knew, didn’t she?” Ana started to cry. “I thought there was no way she would commit suicide, but she wanted children so badly. This would’ve killed her. It
did
kill her, didn’t it?”

Mike grabbed a dish towel off the counter and wiped the shaving cream from his face. “Sydney didn’t commit suicide.”

The affirmation was both a shock and a relief. For the past twenty-four hours, since finding out about Misty’s pregnancy, Ana wondered. “What about the suicide note?”

“I’m looking into that, but it seems the crime scene was staged.” Mike cleared his throat. “Kim confirmed cause of death.” Ana had met Kimberly Taylor, the county medical examiner, on several occasions and knew she and Mike were close. “There were traces of zopiclone in Sydney’s system, but not enough to have killed her. Kim says she suffocated.”

Ana took a minute to process the grim fact. “And you went to Anthony for an alibi?”

Mike nodded. “We both know Anthony’s no murderer, but I had to ask. No matter what happened between him and Sydney, he loved her, and anything he said otherwise was out of anger because of the divorce.”

“And Misty?” Ana ran down the short list of suspects.

“No way either of them had anything to do with what happened. Misty and Anthony were at County Memorial the night Sydney was murdered. Misty had some minor complications after a fight with Trish Dentmore over the engagement.”

Ana wiped her eyes, already red and raw from crying.

“I’m going to find who did this,” Mike said.

“How?” Ana needed to know he had a plan.

“Julian is searching Sydney’s house for leads. He has the best investigators with him, and we’ve called in a computer forensics expert. If anyone’s contacted Sydney online, even if she deleted the message, he’ll find it. I need you to promise me you won’t go anywhere near her house until I give you the all-clear. Something that seems unimportant might be exactly what we’re looking for. I can’t have anything moved. You understand me?”

Ana considered telling him she’d already been there, but his paternal tone changed her mind. All she’d taken was a business card, anyway.

CHAPTER 21

One sin didn’t wash away another. Marco knew that, and yet, somehow he was sure he’d be forgiven for dealing with Dorian Carmichael. Others saw Dorian’s transplant procedure as a gift to women who wouldn’t otherwise be able to have children, but Marco knew that Dorian was a God-playing egotist the first time an unexplained request for cross-matching hit his desk. Today was the day he would finalize the proof.

The lab was, as usual, quiet.

Brenna sorted reports, registered the morning’s specimens, and straightened the stack of paper on her desk.

“I’m going to lunch.” She took the black vinyl clutch from her desk drawer. “I’ll be back in a half hour.”

“I need you to make a run to the mail room, too,” Marco said, buying himself time. “I didn’t get there this morning.”

Brenna huffed. She’d normally be expected to cut her lunch short for such errands.

“Take as much time as you need.” Marco worked at a smile, but the look on Brenna’s face said it came across as something else, something that made her uncomfortable. She leered at him as she emptied the mail room outbox, and left.

Marco waited until she disappeared from view before retrieving his file, the one thing Clara Lynch hadn’t moved, from the locked cabinet drawer. He withdrew a red biohazard bag from cold storage, pulled on a pair of latex gloves, and untied the knot holding the plastic sack closed.

The remains of OR 3, more specifically the Stephanie Martin case, were mixed together inside. Blood-soaked gauze and disposable surgical pads obscured the recently removed uterus. Marco shifted the bag, reached in, and retrieved the discarded sample.

The organ was in terrible shape, much of the tissue necrotic and clotted, but it worked for his purposes: proving the donor’s identity.

Marco sifted through several reports of the patients Dorian had operated on over the past seven months. There were more than a handful of ablations, a couple of D&Cs, and enough of a surge in hysterectomies to have raised Marco’s suspicion. Each of the women underwent extensive and, given the nature of their procedures, unnecessary testing, including tissue typing and antibody screens—the types of tests necessary to match a donor to a transplant recipient. One of them was a match to this organ, which should’ve been sent to him instead of thrown out. Marco had barely beaten the operating room cleanup crew to it, and he had to pick it out of the trash. Had he not verified the surgical schedule, he might have never found the one thing that implicated Dorian in his wrongdoing.

CHAPTER 22

The ballroom of the Dakota Creek Country Club bustled with loud music and laughter. County Memorial staff mixed with an affluent guest list—young, new-money types who would respond to the good time everyone seemed to be having.

For Dorian, the night couldn’t be over soon enough. He waited for the call to the podium and hoped to slip out unnoticed after his speech.

Noreen swept her bangs across her forehead and engaged him in the kind of light conversation he dreaded.

“Can I get you another drink?” she said, leaning over too far and standing too close.

“No, I’m good for now.” Three gin and tonics landed Dorian with a faint but comfortable buzz, and he was starting to suspect that getting him drunk was part of Noreen’s grand plan to get him into bed.

“Are you
sure
?”

He held his glass to his lips, the drink now little more than ice and a slice of lime, and glanced over the rim at Jared and Colby, just arriving.

Colby looked amazing and, for a minute, Dorian stared. The black, floor-length gown fit her perfectly. The low-cut bodice cradled her full breasts, and the slit over her shapely right leg extended midway up her thigh.

“On second thought, I will take another.” Dorian handed Noreen his empty glass and smiled.

A growing line of partygoers backed up at the bar, and Noreen struggled to get the bartender’s attention.

Dorian kept his eyes on the Monroes.

Jared disappeared into the crowd, and Colby remained at the ballroom’s threshold, her body language and the expression on her face saying she’d rather be anywhere else. There was an obvious disconnect between her and Jared, and a glance around the room told Dorian he wasn’t the only one who noticed. The women gossiped and rolled their eyes. Several men, including Simon Walker, made a few steps toward the door, drawn in by the siren’s song of the most beautiful woman in the room. Dorian took that as his cue to move. He pushed in his chair and crossed the room, keeping his head down and doing his best not to be seen, except for by Simon, to whom he flashed a look that said, “Don’t even think about it.”

Dorian walked past Colby and pressed his back to the lobby wall next to the entrance where she was standing. She was close enough to touch, and he was sure she could hear him. “You haven’t returned any of my calls.”

“Dorian, I can’t be seen with you here. Not tonight,
please
. I shouldn’t even be here.”

“Then why are you?” He took a step closer, so that their shoulders were nearly touching.

“You know Jared likes to keep up appearances.”

“For what it’s worth, I’m glad you came. We should talk.”

“There’s nothing to say. It’s over.”

“Is it?” Dorian closed his fingers around hers, knowing the answer, for him at least, was that it wasn’t. “I should’ve told you ‘I love you’ back.”

“Isn’t that just like you? A little too little, a little too late.” Colby’s crimson lips bent into a frown, and she pulled her hand away, walking, teary eyed, toward the bar.

Common sense warned Dorian to leave her alone, but he followed her anyway.

“Colby, wait.”

Colby pushed through the crowd at the end of the bar and held up her hand for the bartender. “Vodka and cranberry, please.”

“Colby, come on, will you at least look at me?” Dorian’s tone garnered its share of attention.

“Vodka and cranberry,
please
.” Colby slapped her hand on the bar, and a man, Dr. Jennifer Oliver’s husband, if Dorian’s memory served, whistled for the bartender’s attention.

“Can we get the lady a drink, please?” The six-foot statue of a man smiled at Colby as the bartender came down from the far end of the bar to serve her.

“What can I get you?”

“Vodka-cranberry, lime, no ice.” Colby spoke softly, her cheeks blushed with embarrassment. “Thank you,” she mouthed to the attractive man who had helped her.

The bartender set a short glass on the bar and poured a heavy-handed shot.

Colby waved for him to keep going.

“Colby, seriously?” Dorian stepped between her and the man undressing her with his eyes.

“You know what? Make it a double.”

The bartender repeated the overpoured shot in a fresh glass, topped both off with just enough cranberry juice to tint the drinks pink, and dressed each glass with a slice of lime.

Colby slapped a twenty on the bar.

“You know drinks are free, right?” Dorian said.

The bartender leered at him.

“For the fast service.” Colby shot the first drink back in one long gulp.

“Please, can we talk?”

“You don’t give up, do you?” Colby shook her head, and a lock of reddish-gold hair fell from the twist, settling along her jawline. “This isn’t the time or place.”

“Then when?” Dorian set his hand on her forearm, and she pulled away, just as Noreen swept in from the other side of the bar.

“There you are.” Noreen handed Dorian a gin and tonic, her hand lingering a long moment on his.

Colby flashed her daggers and recovered with an obviously fake smile. She chugged her second drink and ordered a third.

Dorian set his drink on the bar and turned to Noreen. “Think you can give me a minute?”

“A minute for
what
?”

Dorian could tell Noreen had no intention of leaving regardless of his answer.

“Excuse me.” Colby stepped away from the bar, but she hadn’t made it two steps before running into Jared.

“I’ve been looking for you,” he said.

“There’s a lot of that going around,” Dorian said. As if Noreen weren’t enough interference, Jared all but sealed his fate.

Colby smiled, enjoying the benefit of her two stiff drinks. “I was just coming to find you.”

“Really?”

“Yes,
really
.”

“How many does that make?” Jared pointed at Colby’s drink with a look of heavy suspicion.

“Two. Why? Does it matter?”

It wasn’t hard to see why Colby cheated. Jared treated her like an unwelcome child. Dorian couldn’t imagine why she stayed.

Jared adjusted his bow tie and ordered a glass of cabernet. “It’s been less than a half hour,” he said condescendingly. “Maybe you should slow down.”

“For you?
Anything
.”

Dorian knew if he didn’t step in, Colby would leave in a cab if she had to. He took a long sip of his gin and clapped his hand on Jared’s shoulder. “Jared, how are you?”

“Better than you, I’d imagine. Must be nerve-racking, worrying about the Stephanie Martin news getting out on a night like tonight. How does it feel to be such a failure?”

“Jared, stop it.” Colby’s eyes went wide.

“Ah-ah-ah.”
Mitchell appeared behind them, wagging his finger. “We’re supposed to be enjoying ourselves. Take the night off, would you?” he said to Jared. “Dorian, may I speak with you a minute, in private?”

“Excuse me.” Dorian followed Mitchell to the outskirts of the ballroom, his heart lodged firmly in his throat and his eyes fixed on Colby.

“What the hell did I just walk into?” Mitchell said. Dorian couldn’t decide if he was being rhetorical. He started to answer, and Mitchell held his hand up. “You know what? I don’t even care. I don’t want her name brought up again tonight.”

Dorian stared off into the distance.

“Are you even listening to me?” Mitchell said.

“Yeah, I’m listening. It wasn’t me who brought her up.”

Mitchell checked his watch. “I don’t care who it was. Don’t let it happen again. You’re on in thirty minutes, so get your head together.” He snatched Dorian’s drink from his hand. “I don’t want you even
thinking
about Stephanie Martin right now. I’ve got three people looking to make large donations and two more considering it. You’re going to talk this transplant procedure up as if you’ve answered the highest calling in the world, you hear me?” Dorian nodded. “And tell a cute story or something. People love stories about babies.”

“I’ll do what I can.”

Colby teetered on her stilettos and stumbled into the ladies’ lounge.

“Anything else?” Dorian asked.

Mitchell followed his sight line and shook his head. “Yeah, stay out of trouble.”

Dorian smirked, checked on Jared and Noreen’s positions, and finding them both embroiled in conversation, slipped through the crowd toward Colby. He pushed the ladies’ room door and called through the slight opening, “Anyone in here?”

“Go away,” Colby said.

“Are you
sure
you want me to leave?” A long silence followed. “Is anyone in there with you?”

“No.”

“‘No,’ you don’t want me to leave or ‘no,’ there’s no one in there with you?”

“Both.” Colby sniffled and answered the door, blotting her mascara.

An oversized chaise and mirrored vanity decorated the sitting room, which smelled of the dozens of roses in the crystal vases surrounding them. Dorian went inside and closed the door behind him.

“Are you all right? What happened?”

Colby forced a chuckle. “Do you know how long it’s been since someone asked how I was?”

“I’m sorry . . .”

Colby held her well-manicured finger to his lips. “I don’t need you to be.” She kissed him, pressing her body against his and pushing him backward until he hit the door. Reaching behind him, she locked it.

Dorian returned her eager kisses with the aggression and passion that had always sent her over the edge. She reached down and slid her hand over the length of him until he couldn’t stand it a minute longer. He turned her to face the full-length mirror and worked the slit of her dress up over her hips. He kissed the back of her neck, watching her willing expression as she moaned in response. Her hot breath steamed up the mirror, and he backed up, for only a second, to take her in.

Stiletto heels. Black silk panties. Thigh highs.

She was stunning.

“Tell me you want me.” Dorian cupped his hand between her legs. Her wetness soaked through the silk and coated his fingers. She smelled like vanilla and sex, and her heat drove him crazy.

She arched to meet the curve of his hand. “I want you.”

He all but tore off her underwear, and unzipped his pants.

A knock came at the door, and she begged him not to answer. He covered her mouth with his right hand and thrust into her, squeezing her left breast. She pressed her palms flat against the glass and met his driving pace.

Soft moans escaped through his splayed fingers and mixed with his own stifled cries, just loud enough to drown out the sound of his name being repeatedly called from the podium.