WAR: Intrusion (25 page)

The man’s energy had drained out of him while Lachlan spoke, and he clutched the sheet against his chest. “It is as I feared, then,” he murmured, closing his eyes on a grimace. “They suffered a horrible death.”

Helen bowed her head. “I am so sorry.”

The man’s skin had gone gray, but he placed his hand over Helen’s, his dark fingers sticking out beneath the cast that stretched to his wrist. “None of this is your fault, child.” His eyes conveyed compassion as he looked into Helen’s face. “Do not listen to the others who are looking for someone to blame.”

She flinched, and the man gave her hand a reassuring squeeze. “If you had been the primary target, then the initial attack would have occurred at your clinic. These rebels, they hate anyone who doesn’t…agree…with them…” His face spasmed with pain and his hand fell away.

“Adome!” Helen pressed the nurse call button with one hand as she felt for his pulse with the other.

A moment later a nurse and a doctor hurried into the room. Helen explained what had happened, but before she could offer to help, Lachlan pulled her out of the way.

“We need to leave, lass.”

Clearly torn between her desire to assist and her acceptance of her lack of authority here, she hesitated.

“Now, Helen.” Lachlan tugged harder on her arm. One of the nurses looked over. “He’ll be fine. But it’s best if you leave.”

“Okay.” With a final glance at the man on the bed, Helen allowed Lachlan to escort her from the room. Lachlan nodded to the guard on duty in the hall, then walked Helen down to the staff elevator at the back of the building.

Once again, Lachlan had no idea of the right thing to say to Helen. When a nurse stepped into the elevator on the next floor down, he felt relief that he wouldn’t now be expected to talk.

The nurse hesitated when she saw Helen, then took an aggressive step forward. “I know who you are,” she snarled. “You’re the liar who cost Dr. Endeme his job.”

Helen sucked in a breath and turned to face the woman. “No,” she said firmly. “Dr. Endeme lost his job because he was illegally selling medications on the black market and treating his patients with placebos.”

The nurse gave Helen a look dripping with hate. “Do not lie to me, white woman. You were jealous that a black man should hold a higher position than you. So you spread lies and bribes to trick the police into arresting him. And then you arranged for more innocent people to die in the festival attack.”

“That’s enough.” Lachlan stepped in front of Helen. “You should thank Dr. Kirk for all the lives she saved during the festival attack. She worked herself to exhaustion treating the injured.”

“It is her fault they were injured in the first place.” The nurse glared at Helen and made a warding gesture. “You are just as cruel as your murderer mother. The rebels should flog you in public, then display your severed head as a warning for all foreigners to leave the country.”

Lachlan heard Helen’s faint gasp and her distress only added to his anger. She’d been through enough. “Who are you to pass judgment on Dr. Kirk? Would you have had those people die rather than receive treatment from a foreigner?”

“Yes. Better to die than to be touched by evil. And this woman is evil.” The elevator doors opened, the cheerful chime a sharp contrast to the nurse’s words. “I hope you burn in eternal hell,” the nurse spat as she stalked into the corridor.

“Thanks for defending me,” Helen said. She sounded calm, but she stared woodenly ahead of her and her lips trembled as she held her arms tightly crossed over her chest.

“You’re welcome, lass.” The doors closed and the elevator continued its descent. “I wonder if her bosses realize that she’s a rebel sympathizer.”

Helen gave a slight shrug. “I’m not certain it would make much difference. There aren’t so many qualified nurses that they can afford to turn anyone away.”

“She’s a security risk to the surviving villagers,” Lachlan pointed out. When the elevator arrived at their destination, he used the hospital’s phone to call upstairs to the head guard. He explained the incident and provided the name of the woman that had been embroidered onto her uniform’s pocket.

The guard promised to alert the rest of his team and to bar the woman from the survivors’ floor. Satisfied that he’d done all he could, Lachlan confirmed that their police driver was waiting, then shepherded Helen into the hot, humid day.

The driver took them back to the police station, then Lachlan and Helen walked to the safe house.

“We have time for lunch before your appointment,” Lachlan said once they were inside.

Helen shook her head. “I’m not hungry. I think I’ll lie down for a bit.”

“Don’t.” Lachlan set his hand against the smooth skin of her cheek. “I know the words the nurse said hurt you. I know you’ve endured more than your share of fear and anguish these past days. But please, don’t retreat. Brooding won’t help ease the pain.”

She arched her brows. “Speaking from personal experience?”

“Of course. Scots are prime brooders, we are.” He’d hoped his words would make her smile, but all he saw was a slight warming of her eyes. “What you need is comfort food, aye?” He nudged her toward the kitchen table, shoving away the memory of that morning’s kiss.

Helen sank into the nearest chair and put her head in her hands.

Lachlan awkwardly patted her back. “Now there, lass. Perhaps talking will ease the heartache. How about you speak while I cook?”

She lifted her head and shot him a look of utter disbelief.

“Och, now, I’m not going to poison you, lass. I thought you trusted me more than that.”

She waved her hand dismissively and stood up. “I don’t think you’ll deliberately try to make me sick, but you’re the one who thinks MREs are an acceptable meal.”

“While in the field, aye. In a real kitchen, I can put together an egg sandwich as well as anyone.”

She continued to stare suspiciously at him. Then, with a heavy sigh, she shrugged and sat back down. “Okay.”

“Brilliant.” He turned toward the small refrigerator.

“Lachlan.”

Something in her tone caused him to face her again.

“What you did in the elevator, it meant a lot to me. Sometimes it seems as if I’ve spent my entire life trying to prove to people that I’m not like my mother. That I have integrity and that I honestly want to help others. I can count on one hand the number of people who’ve defended me to the face of my accusers.”

Pressure built in his chest. He knew how lonely it was to have no one on your side. “Don’t be forgetting that I was one of those accusers, lass. I’m not proud of it, and I’m asking again for your forgiveness.”

She searched his face, then nodded. “After all that I’ve experienced in the past few days, I understand that knowing my family history as you did, on top of seeing those suspicious photos, would have made me appear to be a security risk. I don’t like it, but I’m learning that you military types view the world through a different lens than I do. You see everyone as a potential threat that might require you to take lethal action. In your world, a person is guilty before being proven innocent.”

“In most cases, aye. To believe otherwise could result in the deaths of our teammates or of innocents.” It was the truth, yet he didn’t like this chasm she was describing between them. Because her tone indicated that this divide was too deep to ever bridge. And much to his surprise, he didn’t want to lose the fragile closeness that had been building between them. “I save lives too, doctor. I’ve participated in my share of rescue missions and stopped enough attacks to know that some parts of the world are safer because my team was there.”

“I believe you. Still, our worlds are very different. I consider everyone innocent until proven guilty. That every life is worth saving.”

He started to protest, but she cut him off. “Let’s not argue that right now, okay? You promised me an egg sandwich.”

“Aye, I did.” Relief washed through him. Maybe she also wanted to cling to this new bond between them. “While I cook, will you tell me your side of what happened with your mother? I’ve read the background report and the news articles, but I’d like to hear how it affected you as her daughter.”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

“
I
DON’T KNOW how to begin.” Helen’s voice cracked. The details of her mother’s crimes had been spread across newspapers and led the nightly news for weeks, yet despite over fifteen years having passed, her throat still tightened as she remembered how hurt and scared she’d been when she’d first learned of her mother’s actions.

“It’s all right, lass. You don’t have to tell me.”

“No. You stood up for me today. You deserve to know.”

“All right, then. Take as long as you like.”

Helen took a deep breath as she watched Lachlan pull eggs and bread out of the refrigerator. “My grandmother died of colon cancer when my mother was ten. Her death devastated my mother, who once told me that the resulting hole in her heart had never healed. That’s why she went into cancer research. So no other little girl would ever experience such pain.”

“She started out with the best of intentions, then,” Lachlan said.

“Yes.” Helen sighed. “It hurts me to say this,” she continued, “but although I loved my mother, she wasn’t very affectionate. Growing up, I frequently accused her of loving her work more than me. Looking back, I suspect that after losing her mother so young her fear of undergoing another painful loss prevented her from forming close emotional ties. Her relationship with my father certainly never seemed to be a true love match. More of a partnership of two scientifically minded people.”

“Was your father more affectionate?”

“Yes. He was not always sure how to handle excessive female emotions, but he was the one I’d go crying to when I was hurt or scared. He’d hold me until the tears stopped. Without him, I’m not sure how I would have survived those horrible months after the news broke and I lost most of my friends.”

“I’m sorry, lass.”

She shrugged. “I rarely saw Mother those last few years. However, one day sticks out in my mind. I was twelve and suffering from the flu. I went down to the kitchen very early in the morning to get some ice water for my sore throat. My mother was just getting ready to leave. She seemed…” Helen struggled to find the right words, because her younger self hadn’t recognized the signs of burnout. “Pared down, I guess you’d say. Thinner. Unhappy. I asked if she was okay. She snapped that nothing was wrong and stormed out.”

Lachlan set a plate before her. Helen’s stomach growled in appreciation at the sight of the two white halves of soft baguette underneath the perfectly cooked fried eggs. She took a cautious bite. “Hey, this is good. I guess you really can cook.”

Lachlan put his hand over his heart. “Such praise! Careful or you’ll inflate my ego.” Chuckling, he returned to the stove to fix his own lunch.

Helen dug into her sandwich, only continuing her story once she’d finished. “That was the last time I saw my mother before her arrest.” She stared down at the few smears of egg left on her plate. “From my point of view, I went from believing that my mother was a very important, well-respected scientist who was going to cure cancer, to having reporters shout at me that my mother was a murderer and how did that make me feel?”

“That must have been rough.”

“Yes. At first, all I knew was that people claimed the cancer drug my mother had developed had ending up killing a few people. I didn’t understand that by this point her work had no longer been sanctioned by her company. In fact, it wasn’t until later that I learned all the gritty details. So in the beginning, I defended my mother quite fiercely. I insisted that she hadn’t known that the drug her company manufactured had potentially fatal side effects.”

Lachlan brought his plate to the table and sat down across from her. “And your father?”

“He was in denial for a long while. Of course, I was only twelve, so he didn’t confide in me at the time, but many years later we discussed his reaction to the situation. At the time, he’d tried to shield me from the news. Unfortunately, not knowing all the facts only helped strengthen my belief in my mother’s innocence. Every time someone accused me of being the daughter of a murderer, I lost my temper. Between kids teasing me at school in order to provoke a reaction, and my friends drifting away because they couldn’t understand how I could defend a woman who according to the media had knowingly given what amounted to poison to unsuspecting groups of people, I quickly became isolated. My father eventually pulled me from school at the request of the administration. Not only had my presence become a distraction for the other students, but reporters constantly invaded the school, disrupting classes and chasing down my teachers and classmates in hopes of getting dirt they could use against me. They tried very hard to paint our entire family as bad, instead of allowing us to be seen as innocent victims.”

She met his eyes and nodded at the understanding she saw there. “That’s why I was so horrified when Gloria suggested that a reporter do a follow-up piece on the clinic after the attack. I knew that some reporter would bring up my mother and somehow blame me for the attack.” She held up her hand to forestall his answer. “If there’s something like that in the news already, I don’t want to know about it, okay? I can’t deal with that right now.”

He gave her a sympathetic smile.

“Anyway,” Helen continued, “It was the tutor my father hired who finally explained to me the full extent of the charges against my mother.” She glanced at Lachlan. “You know the facts, right?”

“I know that the cancer drug your mother developed had lethal side effects, so her pharmaceutical company pulled its funding. Your mother continued her work on the side, isolating and eliminating the elements of the drug she believed had killed the lab rats. When she thought she had it fixed, she tried to get the company to restart the program.”

“Right. I didn’t learn most of this until her trial, but the pharmaceutical company refused her request. Still, she didn’t give up. She found a group of people just as passionate about curing cancer as she was. Other scientists who agreed that the benefit of a perfected product justified any risks.” Reminded of her conversation with Lachlan the other night, she caught his eye.