The Bloodline War (5 page)

Just as she had.

Her face flushed with heat. Well, not this time. Acquisition number seven, whoever that new kidnap victim might be, was the last straw. “You want me to find something meaningful to do around here? Well, all right. I’ve got something in mind.” She spun around hard on her heels and marched for the stairs. She was damn well going to save the new woman.

“Ah, hell.” Sedge raced up the stairs after her. “Kimberly, please, you’ve got to stop stirring the pot around here.”

She kept trudging. “Somebody’s got to.”

“You’re going about it all crazy, Berly.”

She didn’t say anything.

“I mean, Jesus, you tried to get equal rights for the Stânga Town kids.”

“You bet I did. Your system of hierarchy around here is prejudicial and asinine.”

He threw out his arms. “You complained that there wasn’t a health inspector for the
two
places in town there are to eat out.”

“Three,” she shot back. “Besides Garwald’s Pub and The Diner, you can buy snacks and drinks at the movie theatre. And Roth hired one, didn’t he?”

“For the love of God, you lobbied for a longer lunch recess for the school kids.”

“So?”

“They’re
preschoolers
,” he told the side of her face as she came to the top of the stairs; she was refusing to look at him. “The stuff you do doesn’t make any sense. It’s completely off the wall.”

She planted herself in their bedroom doorway, her hand on the doorknob. “Oh, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet, buster.” She slammed the door in her husband’s face.

Chapter Four

Toni peeled open one eyelid, swept the room with a glance, then closed her eye again.
Wonderful
. She was hallucinating. Damn, she’d known something like this was going to happen the moment that strange male nurse had come into her hospital room.
Strange
, not as in strange-looking. No, actually he’d been gorgeous: stylish flattop blond hair, cheekbones that could cut steel, and a double scoop of sculpted butt that even hospital scrubs hadn’t been able to camouflage. But strange in that he hadn’t known what the hell he was doing.

Change in doctor’s orders
, he’d said,
get some solid sleep now
. Ludicrous. She knew her doctor, for Pete’s sake, and Steven wouldn’t have altered her treatment plan without first discussing it with her. Not only that, but what kind of change in orders would knock her out right before she was supposed to be discharged?

She’d just been tee’ing up for a good harangue when Incompetent Nurse…Nurse Goodbody or…Ratched, or whoever he was, had sedated her. And now whatever medication he’d given her had screwed up her poor concussed brain. When she’d cracked open her eyelid just now, she’d found herself not in her hospital room, but in some extravagant bedroom decorated in Louis XVI furniture…which just upped the weird factor even more because if she was ever going to hallucinate, she imagined it’d be in Country French.

Not that she had any idea what it was like to trip out. She wasn’t straight-laced or anything, just focused and determined. She’d had to be to get where she’d wanted to go in life; the bio undergrad program at UCSD had been brutal, and med school at UCLA even harder, but she’d graduated at the top of her class in both.

Her mother had responded to these achievements by dubbing her a blonde-haired, blue-eyed, D-cup’ped, over-achiever. Basically,
straight-laced
in mother parlance, although Toni didn’t do more than secretly roll her eyes over it. Comments from her mother came few and far between these days, and Toni didn’t want to risk putting any more distance between them than already existed.

Odd thing about her mother. Shannon Parthen had been a fantastic parent when Toni and her older brother, Alex, were growing up. Toni’s Mom and Dad got divorced when Toni was about six, and after that—no doubt
because
of that—Shannon had thrown herself into the job of motherhood with all her heart. As soon as Toni had gone away to college, though, it’d been like,
bam
! No need for further involvement now that her daughter was launched into the world. A grown woman. Raised.

Although the truth was, none of Toni’s female relationships had ever been all that close. Single girls were threatened by her looks, homemakers treated her like an alien from the Planet Zorg because she was thirty-two and still didn’t have any children, and professional women were…well, threatened by her.

Boyfriends hadn’t exactly proved fertile ground for intimacy, either.

So it was her brother, Alex, who got an earfull of her woes whenever she had them. In fact, she really needed to talk to Alex about that cabbage-headed maneuver she’d pulled by giving her phone number to Detective John Waterson. She’d hadn’t had a chance to talk to him before the accident and—

The soft chiming of a clock brought her back to her current situation. She snapped her eyes open, both of them this time.
Damn
.
Same Louis XVI head trip going on
. Right. She needed to get her fuzzy brain on task here.

Sitting up slowly, she swung her legs over the side of the mattress and sat on the edge of the bed. A wave of dizziness overtook her, but it passed quickly, leaving a dull ache behind her eyes. She waited another minute, but the swanky bedroom refused to change back into the hospital room at Scripps. Crap, this was real.

She looked around and found the clothes she’d worn into the hospital the night of her car accident neatly folded on a bedside table, piled next to one of those fancy white-and-gold French Contessa-style phones. And her purse? She reached out carefully to look through her belongings. No purse; no cell.
Perfect
. She eyed the Contessa phone. There weren’t any numbers on it, but, well…. She picked up the receiver.

There was a soft
hum
, then a woman’s voice came on the line. “Operator.”

Operator
? Weird. Had she somehow landed herself in a hotel? “Um…hello, yes…uh….” How did one go about asking
Where am I?
without sounding like a complete nincompoop? “Could you dial a number for me, please?” Her brother was probably the best option. “It’s a 619 area—”

“Ah, Dr. Parthen,” the operator interrupted. “It’s good to hear you’re awake. I’ll send the doctor in to see you right away.”

The…?
Wait
—The line went dead.

She pulled the phone away from her ear and eased the receiver back into its cradle.
Doctor
? Was she at a—? She shot to her feet, her heart thundering. Dear God, whatever drug Nurse Fine Ass had given her had put her into a coma and now she was in some high-class treatment facility for…for
how long
?! Holy crap!

Her head started to spin, and she gripped her forehead, forcing herself to take slow, even breaths.
Okay, calm down, Toni
.
Be logical
. She wasn’t hooked up to an IV or a feeding tube, and her muscles were in working order. Weren’t they? She took a few experimental steps.
Yes…yes
. Okay, then.

There was probably a simple explanation for this.

She spied a set of long, gold velvet curtains across the room. The San Diego skyline would be just outside that window, or some landmark which would clear up this
where am I?
mystery, and then she could stop worrying. She walked over and parted the curtains.

Bong
. She could almost hear her own jaw drop.

A sliding glass door led out onto a wrought iron balcony…and that’s where all semblance of normalcy ended. About twenty feet beyond the end of the balcony were prison bars. Each steel post was about as big as a birch tree, no more than a couple of feet of space between them, and appeared to surround the entirety of whatever building she was in. As ease of escape-ability went, the place ranked about a Houdini.

Beyond the prison bars was the real freak-show. Rock above, rock below…she was inside a cave! And a cave that’d been converted into a small town. At the beginning of a long street that continued into the distance she saw a coffee shop called Aunt Ælsi’s, a clothing store named The TradeMark, and around the corner and just visible from the building she was in, there was a movie theatre where Transformers blinked on the marquee, with plenty more of the same, plus people bustling about, doing their everyday business. This was unbelievable. She dropped her forehead into her palm. How concussed was her brain, anyway?

Jesus, knowing her luck, she was probably—

Male voices approached her door. She whirled around, her heart speeding again. The raucous voices grew louder, laughing about somebody named Cleeve, then passed her doorway and faded. She dove for the nightstand and started hauling on her clothes: bra and panties, a pair of navy slacks, a turquoise cotton blouse, and Italian leather flats. She’d be damned if she was meeting some stranger, regardless if he or she was a doctor, in a show-your-crack-to-the-world hospital gown. This place was giving her a major case of the creeps.

She finished dressing and darted her gaze around, searching for a hair brush or comb. Nothing. There wasn’t time to go hunting for one, either. The lock clicked and the door swung open.

She didn’t know who she’d expected to come striding in, but somehow it wasn’t this tall, lean gentlemen. He was elegant and stylish, if a bit too “cleanliness is next to Godliness” in his hygiene standards. His black hair was groomed down to the last follicle, and his Armani suit had been pressed to within an inch of its life. His age was indeterminate. There seemed to be a wisdom and maturity in his turquoise eyes that suggested substantial life experience, yet there wasn’t a single wrinkle on his face.

“Oh, you’re on your feet,” the man observed delightedly. “Splendid.” He crossed to her, holding out his palm. “I’m Dr. Jess.”

She didn’t shake his hand, instead pointing to the balcony window. “Excuse me, but where am I?” So much for pleasantries.

“Yes, I imagine you have many questions. If you’ll come with me, the head of the department will explain everything.” The doctor offered her a close-lipped smile.

That was probably meant to reassure her, but it didn’t. A guy who gave a girl a big, toothy grin, now
that
was a man who could be trusted. “Head of
what
department?”

Dr. Jess moved to stand by her bedroom door. “I’m sorry, I know this must be unsettling, but the head prefers to give these explanations himself.” He politely waited for her to precede him, that enigmatic smile still on his face.

She exhaled sharply.
Unsettling
was putting it mildly. She didn’t trust this Dr. Jess, but what choice did she have but to meet this “head” if she wanted to find out what was going on. “Very well.” She crossed through the bedroom door and into a wide, balconied hallway thickly carpeted in burgundy Berber.

Dr. Jess moved past her and led the way down an even wider staircase.

Wow
. Whatever this place was, it was clearly backed by a great deal of money. It was almost overwhelmingly palatial and lavishly decorated, with large oil paintings on the walls, mostly landscapes, life-sized Greek and Roman statues, and gold-fitted, shiny wood banisters. At the bottom of the stairs, they cut through what could only be The Grand Entrance Hall. The floor of the room was tiled in checkered mauve and white marble, with potbellied brass vases standing sentinel next to soaring white marble pillars, a sparkling gold-and-crystal chandelier lording over the entire room.

Dr. Jess took her down another smaller staircase, this one leading into a long hallway lined with doors. Passing one of the doors, she heard male voices again, their bantering and cursing punctuated by the distinct
thud
of fist meeting flesh.

She slanted a look at Dr. Jess.

He smiled pleasantly at her.

They came to a large set of double doors at the end of the hall. Dr. Jess pressed an intercom button. “Dr. Parthen and I are here, sir.”

“Ah, excellent,” came the affable reply. “Come in, of course.” A buzzer sounded and the double doors
snicked
open.

Dr. Jess again politely stood back for her to enter first. She stepped into a room that appeared to be a combination library and office. Tall mahogany bookshelves lined three of the walls, and an arrangement of plush, dark leather chairs of the kind one might find at an Oxford men’s club was set around a coffee table of polished oak.

All of this received no more than three seconds of her attention. As magnificent as the décor was, her eyes couldn’t help but rivet on the two black-haired men across the room.

One was rising from behind a desk, unfolding himself to a height of well over six feet. He was dressed with understated wealth, pleated gray silk slacks and a v-necked cashmere sweater in cobalt: a completely respectable look that should’ve offered reassurance, except that there was just something about this man. Something…that whispered danger.

Yet, even
he
only received about one second of her attention. As much as this man demanded notice, the man who was standing statue-still off to the side of the desk, his hands clasped behind his back in a stance that pushed his enormous shoulders forward and made them look even more enormous, demanded it more.

He was, without doubt, the most frightening man she’d ever seen outside of the movies. No whispering here; this man’s danger came at a person like a wrecking ball. He was dressed in clothes directly out of a Gangstas Я Us catalog, steel-toed biker boots with thick silver buckles at the ankles, black leather pants that hugged a pair of powerfully built thighs and lean hips, and a black lycra T-shirt that similarly clung to his torso in a way that displayed every delineated muscle the man owned, of which there were
a lot
. The scary dude look was made complete by a pair of dark sunglasses that hid his eyes, and a jaw so hard she’d bet she could take a crowbar to it and never crack a smile out of him. Maybe someone had already tried that maneuver; there was a line of scabbed flesh streaking the man’s cheek.