Sins of the Flesh (16 page)

Her femininity was there in the press of her breasts against his chest as he eased her onto the sofa and held her. In the softness of her hair which tangled with his fingers as he pushed it back from her forehead, offering comfort.

“It’ll be okay, Cat,” he said and she sighed softly, her warm breath against the side of his neck.

Liliana gingerly entered the room, concern etched onto her features. When she saw Mick had the situation under control, she sat down in the chair across from them, vigilant.

Mick continued with his soft caress and leaned his head against the top of Caterina’s as it rested on his shoulder.

He looked across to Liliana and she bopped her head in Caterina’s direction. He knew what she wanted to do.

“Will you let Liliana examine you so we know what’s happening?”

Caterina shivered in his grasp, but nodded.

Liliana popped up from the chair, rushed from the room, and then came back with her medical bag. She laid her hand on Caterina’s forearm and stroked it gently. “Let me see your eyes,
amiga
.”

Caterina turned her head toward Liliana, but her gaze remained downcast. Fearful.

Liliana tucked her forefinger under Caterina’s chin and urged her head up slightly. With her penlight, she illuminated Caterina’s irises, activating the phosphorescent trackers which shot off a bright blue-green glow.

Releasing her chin, Liliana swept the penlight across her skin. Reflected light, as if Caterina had dusted her skin with body glitter, twinkled in reaction.

“I don’t recall seeing this behavior before. How about you?” Liliana asked Mick.

He thought back to the night he had captured Caterina. There had been the weird fluorescent blood and skin camo, but nothing like this unusual glow.

“Definitely a no. I’m gathering that’s not good news.”

Liliana shook her head. “Carmen said the cells were replicating at amazing rates. Maybe so much so that they’re overwhelming the true cells in her body.”

Caterina uttered a shocked, “I want to stay human. I want to stop this.”

“Focus for me, Cat,” Mick murmured.

Caterina gripped his shoulder roughly, experienced the jerk of his body as she did so, and tempered her hold. She concentrated on the gentle tug of his hand against her hair, on the constant heartbeat beside hers.

Before their eyes, the deep coral color and glowing bits on her skin and in her eyes faded, while the outlines disappeared and Caterina’s normal sight returned.

When Caterina dared to look up at Mick, she tried to explain what she had experienced.

“I wasn’t sure I was supposed to come down. When I got downstairs, I heard you, but all I could see were weird auras around everything and strange colors,” she said and shot an anxious look from Mick to Liliana and then back. “I don’t want to be someone’s lab experiment. I want to be normal again.”

A muscle twitched along the line of Mick’s jaw and his eyes became flat as he looked at her. “I have no control over that.”

She doubted his words. He seemed to have control over so much, but she wouldn’t push the issue right now. Not when she was relying on the two of them for her safety.

Since Mick’s face had become hard and unyielding, she grabbed hold of Liliana’s hand. “You’ll help me, right?”

Liliana squeezed Caterina’s hand, trying to keep her calm and avoid another transformation. “I’ll do what I can.”

Facing Mick again, Caterina spoke in a tired, but determined voice. “Isn’t there anything in my medical file that can help?”

Mick closed his eyes, as if mentally scanning the file again. “Plasmapheresis was one of the treatments mentioned.”

Liliana let out a low whistle. “Plasmapheresis will be tough. It’s not like I can whip up a cell separator to bring here. The machine is too big. Plus it’ll require us getting information on what needs to be filtered out of Cat’s blood for the plasmapheresis to be effective.”

Caterina glanced back at Mick. “Was there any other treatment in the file?”

Liliana answered this time. “It mentioned an inhibitor drug, but didn’t state its composition.”

“Inhibitor?” Caterina asked.

“I’m assuming from the file that it’s some kind of chemical concoction they worked up that slows down the gene replication going on in your body,” Mick advised.

“But if you don’t know what’s in it—” Caterina began, but Mick cut her off.

“We would need to get the medication from Wardwell.”

“You can’t risk going back there,” Caterina said.

Mick exhaled roughly and slipped her off his lap and onto the sofa. Jamming his hands on his hips, he considered her, rattled that she seemed more concerned for him than for herself. He wasn’t used to people other than his family caring for him. And he didn’t like that he was starting to care for her in ways that had nothing to do with the job.

He needed distance from Caterina, physically and, more importantly, emotionally. “What made you think I was volunteering for the job?”

M
ick had been expecting the call from Edwards for days. It finally came while he was on his way down to the Wardwell facilities. He held the phone in his hand, tempted to answer and rattle Edwards’s cage, but he held back.

He needed to save any shock-and-awe tactics with Edwards for when they would be most effective. Luckily the call reminded him of one thing—to silence his phone.

Half an hour later he had reached his destination.

Caterina had traveled for miles after escaping the Wardwell labs and finding refuge at the Music Academy. He estimated it was only about a mile from the roadside rest area where he had stopped to the woods nestled against the Wardwell complex. The woods were one of the farthest western edges of the Pinelands. Because of the complex’s location close to the National Park and on top of the state’s largest natural aquifer, the Wardwell facilities had generated controversy amongst local environmentalists during construction.

The protests had resulted in quite a number of public meetings, which in turn had created lots of news about Wardwell, including various published versions of the
physical layout of the facilities in relation to the nearby Pine Barrens. This made it easy for Mick to find a back way toward the labs through the woods.

The very muddy woods.

Mud was not good. It would provide too much evidence that someone had been there. Someone who shouldn’t be.

Mick was about two hundred feet away from the first Wardwell building when he noticed tracks in the soil. Booted footprints from one person.

Someone other than Mick had been reconnoitering the area. Maybe mud wasn’t so bad after all.

Given Franklin’s warning, Mick had an idea about who it was. Mad Dog might be keeping an eye on those places connected to Caterina until he had a lead on where she might have gone. He may even have been aware that Mick was working for Edwards and might also need information from the lab to locate Caterina. Mad Dog was mean, but he wasn’t stupid.

Easing on his night vision goggles, Mick perused the perimeter of the buildings. Aside from the faint signature of a night watchman in the guard booth at the gate to the complex, nothing registered.

Turning his attention to the woods, Mick caught a sign of motion close to the edge of the broad manicured lawn that formed a barrier between the trees and the building housing the medical complex where Caterina and the other patients had been kept.

He hunkered down, training his attention on the area. Another short rush of movement came, confirming that someone else was out there in the woods.

A glint of moonlight against glass—likely binoculars—became
clear in the dark of night. They were pointed in his direction.

Shit, Mick thought as he hit the ground to avoid detection. He pulled his Glock from the holster tucked into the small of his back.

Someone was clearly waiting for him. Maybe had even known about Mick’s previous visit, since the person had positioned himself close to the area Mick had canvassed the afternoon before.

Mick crawled hand-over-hand, cautiously propelling himself forward. The soil was wet and cool against his body. The soft ping of a gunshot traveled across the night, but the harder thunk against wood that followed sounded far from his current position.

Whoever it was had lost track of him, but that wouldn’t last for long.

Mick pushed ahead more quickly, his attention focused on the blob before him, a person kneeling in a sniper’s practiced stance. When he was about ten yards away, it was time to act.

Reaching into his satchel, Mick pulled out a flash grenade, pulled the pin, and immediately tossed it forward and away from him.

As the grenade exploded, the shooter rose, turning toward the light for a moment, his back to Mick.

Mick charged, plowing forward like a fullback, body low. He connected with the shooter mid-spine at full force and the man flew face forward hard, losing his grip on the rifle. The weapon skittered off into the underbrush.

Mick jerked his gun toward the man, but his opponent half-rolled to his side and snapped off a quick chop to Mick’s wrist that deadened his hand.

Exerting force, he once again got the man lying flat beneath him, but the man followed up with a sharp jab toward his face.

Mick avoided it by rolling off and coming to his feet, training his gun on the weaponless sniper, who rose slowly from the ground, hands outstretched in a sign of surrender.

“Should’ve known you wouldn’t be an easy kill, Carrera,” Mad Dog said and took a step toward him.

Mick jerked the nose of the weapon upward in warning, and then steadied it with the hand that still had feeling.

“No need for bloodshed, Mad Dog. I just have to get something from the lab.”

“Guess you found Shaw, then. She must be really good in the sack if you’re willing to sacrifice the bonus to bag her.”

Bonus? The original check had possessed enough zeroes to tempt a saint and now there was a bonus?

“Haven’t found her yet, but thanks for the heads-up about the bonus,” Mick lied, but Mad Dog clearly wasn’t buying it.

“Let’s make this interesting. You want something from the lab?” Mad Dog said, slowly, carefully reaching down into his pocket. Just as judiciously, he pulled out some kind of card. As the moonlight illuminated the plastic, Mick realized it was a key card like the one he had used the day before to enter the facilities.

“What do
you
want, Mad Dog?”

A cold smile crept across his face. “What I’ve always wanted, Mick—a piece of you.”

“A piece of me in exchange for the key?” It almost wasn’t fair. He would gladly have a go at Mad Dog with
no prize on the line. Getting the key out of the deal was gravy.

Mick took a step toward a fallen log and put down his gun, wanting it to be a fair fight.

“I’m all yours, Mad Dog.
Mano-a-mano
because I want to feel you break beneath my hands,” he said and urged the other man onward with a wiggle of his fingers.

“You always were too honorable,” Mad Dog replied. With a quick snap of his wrist, he suddenly held a small knife in his hand.

Before Mick could go back for his gun, Mad Dog had cut him off, the knife held out in front of him. With the repetitiveness of a pendulum swing, Mad Dog slashed back and forth, but Mick avoided the razor-fine point of the knife, his steps quick-footed and sure. Dodging each feint of the knife as he sought an opening to reach Mad Dog.

Finally Mad Dog pushed him back toward the edge of the lawn with a swift lunge. Mick stumbled on a tangle of roots, but quickly got his feet back under him.

Mad Dog immediately seized on that minute slip, swinging his hand in a wide arc that caught Mick on the forearm with the knife.

Heat erupted where the blade skimmed across his skin, but he didn’t let that deter him.

As Mad Dog’s arm swept by and he reversed the blade for another swipe, Mick moved in and grabbed hold of his opponent’s wrist. He jerked it against his knee and the blow loosened Mad Dog’s grip.

Mad Dog slapped out with his free hand, trying to get a hold on Mick’s head, but he yanked away. Slipping
beneath Mad Dog’s arm, Mick delivered a punishing blow to the other man’s ribs.

His ex-colleague grunted and doubled over.

Mick drove up with his knee, connecting with Mad Dog’s face. Immense satisfaction came with the crunch of bone that followed.

The satisfaction was short-lived.

Mad Dog retaliated with an elbow that caught Mick close to his liver, driving his breath from him. He stepped back to avoid the blow he knew would come next.

He wasn’t fast enough.

A hard jab connected with the side of his face and Mad Dog followed with an uppercut that had Mick staggering backward.

“Slowing down in your old age,” Mad Dog taunted. He was clearly ready for action despite the blows Mick had landed.

But Mick was ready as well.

The night became peppered with their grunts as fists or legs connected. With the slap of a deflected blow and the scuffling sounds of their boots along the underbrush and fallen leaves in the woods and along the edge of the lawn.