by Nancy Holder
Cat stifled her surprise. “Bioluminescence?”
The woman cocked her head thoughtfully. “I believe so. His name is David. He’s been over here with her.”
That has to be Sara’s new boyfriend. I’m hitting the mother lode. She picked up her fork but didn’t eat, pointedly waiting for Mrs. Steinmetz, as hostess, to take the first bite. She wanted the elderly lady to sit down and really spill.
“Wasn’t Dr. Tiptree in some kind of biology field?” Cat asked disingenuously. “A consultant for the government?”
The teakettle screamed. Mrs. Steinmetz zoomed into the kitchen. “Yes. Oh, what was it. There’s a word,” she called out to Cat. “Something scientific. All three of them used it all the time. It starts with ph.”
“Phosphorescence?” Cat called back.
“That’s close. It has to do with smelling. Like when animals want to attract mates.”
Pheromones. Cat’s fork hovered over the cake as she mentally willed Mrs. Steinmetz to say the word. She didn’t want to put words in the landlady’s mouth. She wanted to make sure she got as straight an answer as was possible.
“Oh, golly, my memory’s not what it used to be. The four of us used to play Scrabble and they came up with such outlandish words that I finally bought a Scrabble dictionary so I could look them up.”
She reappeared with a teapot covered by an embroidered cozy and two pretty china cups. She set everything down. “Let’s see. Where did I put that dictionary?” She bustled down the hall.
About half a minute ticked by. Cat checked the time on her phone. If she and J.T. were going to keep his lunch date, she’d have to leave in five minutes.
“Here we go.” The woman reappeared with a paperback book in hand. She was holding a pair of glasses. “‘Pheromones.’”
“Oh,” Cat said. “Is that what Heidi’s studying?”
“Well, I guess they had a project they were working on together. She and David. They were consulting Dr. Tiptree about it.”
Cat considered. Could be coincidence. But she sure didn’t think so.
“Have some tea, dear.”
Mrs. Steinmetz poured and, needing to hurry, Cat bolted back the steaming hot liquid. Her throat blazed. Stifling a gasp, she put down her cup and said, “Thank you. I wish I could stay longer, but I have an appointment.”
“A lady police officer. We’ve come a long way.” Mrs. Steinmetz looked very impressed.
“Yes.” Cat scooted back her chair. “Thank you. May I call you if I have any more questions?”
“Of course. And if you know anyone who wants to rent a nice apartment…”
“I’ll let you know. Thank you again. The cake was delicious.”
“You barely touched it. No wonder you’re so thin.” She sucked in her breath. “Do you have allergies? Poor Heidi has all kinds of them. She has a terrible immune system.”
“I’m fine,” Cat assured her, keeping careful track of every scrap of information Mrs. Steinmetz was giving her.
She made her goodbyes and left the apartment.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
At the warehouse, Vincent remained in the shadows until the arson investigation team left. The chief investigator had put forth a theory that the warehouse had been burned down because of a gang war. From one perspective, that was true.
He found it impossible to believe that no other players were hiding in the shadows, as he was, waiting for the officials to clear out. Had all the FFNYs died in the shootout? With them and Major Howison dead, who was minding the beast? Or had the FFNY ever even seen it?
The combined odors of the warehouse reminded him of the flight deck of an aircraft carrier—metal, rubber—and he chalked that up to whatever had been originally stored in there. His boots kicked up ashes and the smell of humanity wafted around him like ghosts. Next he focused on visuals, then sounds, confirming that he was alone. Although the pyre had burned, Vincent easily distinguished that pile of embers from the others by the scent of Private X distilled into the charcoal-like sticks. The bones of the victims had been reverently collected and transported, with more dignity than he would have accorded all but one of them. Now he squatted before the remains of the pyre with a pair of thick protective gloves. Methodically sifting through the debris, he concentrated on the last moments of Major Howison’s life.
I loved her.
Take it.
Bone do…
He sifted through the fine gray powder, and his memory cast back to a day in the desert when he had sifted the hot, arid sand through his fingers in just this way, trying to quell his anger.
AFGHANISTAN, 2002
Lafferty was in the infirmary, goldbricking. Faking illness to avoid combat. At least that was what the medic who was attending her claimed. She just lay there staring at the ceiling in a T-shirt and shorts and telling Vincent that she didn’t feel right in her skin.
Then once the medic was out of hearing range, she clasped Vincent’s hand. Her face was flushed and tears welled and spilled.
“You’re going to get me out of here,” she whispered. “I figured out how. He does rounds at twenty-two hundred hours, checking on all of us. Making sure we’re still alive,” she added bitterly. “And then he leaves. He goes and plays video games or watches some stupid movie and I’m lying here on fire. I am in agony, Keller, and they’re making it worse.”
“What about Dr. Chandler?” he asked her. “Doesn’t she check on you?”
“Swear to God, if I had a gun, I’d shoot that bitch. She did this to me,” Lafferty grunted. She wrapped both her hands around his wrist. “This whole thing is wrong. We shouldn’t even be in Afghanistan. We’re not helping the locals. We’re only getting them killed.”
Vincent stiffened. “Lafferty, we’re soldiers. We don’t see the big picture. We follow orders.”
She glared at him fiercely. “Our orders are wrong, Vincent. All of this is wrong. You should refuse to fight. Or better yet, take over the camp.”
He was shocked into speechlessness. He understood her anger and confusion—they were in a war zone, and it did often seem that they were doing more harm than good, same as the army was doing to them. But Dr. Chandler had backed off on the injections, and now she was monitoring symptoms as they arose. He had faith in her.
“Yes, I’m talking mutiny,” she said. “And desertion. I say you stockpile some weapons, start talking to people. There’s an officer, he agrees with me. I’ll put you together with him.”
Vincent shook his head. “No. No way.”
Suddenly she caught her breath and clamped her jaw shut. She began to writhe back and forth. Contracting into a fetal position, she wrapped her arms around her abdomen and made guttural, growling noises that made his hair stand on end.
“Jeez, Lafferty.” That was Adams, the medic. He was carrying a hypo. “Can it, will you?”
“Don’t drug me!” she screamed. “Don’t!” Her eyes were huge, wild, as they fastened on Vincent. “Do something!”
* * *
By the time I did something it was too late for Lafferty, Vincent thought, pulling himself out of the memory and back into the present in the warehouse. He wondered if Howison was the officer she had wanted him to connect with back then. If Howison had gotten her out… if he then helped her heal from the burns she had sustained in the infirmary explosion and kept her off the grid for all these years. It wasn’t so far-fetched.
If this is Lafferty doing all this, her crimes can be traced back to me. She was one of mine. I should have believed her. I’d known her to be a brave soldier. Why did I walk away?
He knew the answer: That was when he had begun to seriously question what was going on. Lafferty had been giving voice to his own doubts and he’d moved away from her as if her fears were contagious.
Fear. That word again. Just remembering how afraid he had been yesterday made him shaky.
Resolutely he continued to sift through the ash. His fingertips made contact with something solid. He dug down and wrappe
d them around an object about an inch in diameter and two inches long. Coated with powdery gray, it resembled a large ammunition shell casing. He cleaned it off with the tail of his shirt and cradled it in his palm.
It was a metal vial. He must have missed it while going through Howison’s pockets, either because it was so small or he had missed the pocket itself during his rapid search. He pulled out his phone and turned it on. He hadn’t wanted to risk detection; even the vibrations of a silenced phone could be picked up by sensitive surveillance equipment… or the ears of a beast. But surely he had been noticed by now—if anyone was even watching.
Pretending to aim the phone camera at the pile at his feet, he took a video that included a zoom of the vial. Then he sent it to Catherine and J.T., surreptitiously slipped the vial into his boot, and continued to dig in the ash in case he was being watched. Observers might assume that whatever had caught his attention, he had rejected. He kept himself on alert for the snick of a weapon, whether it be an AK-47 or a tranquilizer gun. If no one was watching him, it might be safe to assume that FFNY had been eliminated, and that Howison had either been working alone, or his fellow operatives were on lockdown.
He kept digging around for a few more minutes, then moved on to another pile. He remained in search mode for another half an hour, now in constant contact with J.T. and Catherine. They had new suspects to add to the list—Heidi Schwann and David Mazursky, Ph.D., Sara’s new boyfriend. Vincent couldn’t help a grunt as he parsed that Dr. Tenure was probably a bad guy.
He compared his vial to the image Catherine sent him. His appeared to be significantly smaller than the container she had just retrieved. So they weren’t uniform. They might not even contain the same substance.
She called him as he left the warehouse. “Listen,” she said, “what if each of the victims has one ingredient of the serum? Let’s say they were in on it together but they didn’t trust each other. Six victims, six parts of the formula? Seven if you count Indira Patel, but I don’t think she was a party to this.”
“Six vials,” Vincent mused. “Or a couple of vials, maybe a jump drive with the formula, other things they needed. It makes sense.”
“J.T.’s got a lunch date with Heidi Schwann. He’s going to wear a wire and I’m going to follow him.”
“I’ll come too.”
She started to say something—maybe suggest that he continue searching for more vials at the five other crime scenes they were suspicious of—but after last night, there was no way Vincent was going to stay back while J.T. met up with a suspect. Maybe Cat knew that. Whatever the case, she said, “I’m going to J.T.’s place now.”
“Meet you there.”
He put the phone back in his pocket, blurred to conduct a few more passes of the grounds, and decided not to bother covering over his footprints. He had to get to J.T.’s.
He had a feeling things were going to go sideways very soon.
* * *
By the time Vincent arrived at the gentlemen’s club, Cat had just finished wiring J.T. Then Tess checked in. She sounded slammed. The press was really beating her up.
J.T. had just completed a hack into the bank’s protected archival system, and the good news was that Sky hadn’t received the footage he had requested. J.T.’s program would divert any email from the bank’s address to his desktop computer and blind-copy Tess so that she would know it had been done. However, as a safety measure, she wouldn’t receive the footage herself—there would be too many risks that someone else might see it. Then he could examine it for beast images, doctor it if need be, and send it on to Sky. The Malibu cop would be none the wiser.
Checking in with Cat, Sky told her that while he was waiting for the footage, he had moved on to deepening their dossier on Indira Patel. He had come up with some troubling information: Aliyah Patel had been admitted to the emergency rooms of at least two hospitals and three urgent care facilities. Some New York City medical facilities had joined a pilot program to share information about individual cases, and there’d been reports of two broken bones and numerous contusions.
The picture was very grim, but in Tess and Cat’s line of work, not unique. They dealt with the dark side of human nature. Still, after seeing the excited little girl in the photo with Mr. Riley, clutching her gift certificate for an ice cream cone a week for a year, Cat’s objectivity went out the window. Sensing her distress, Vincent put his arms around her and held her. She breathed in the essence of him and allowed his warmth into her sad heart. It was so very hard to live the life of a protector, because you had to face, to know, what you were protecting people from. To fight injustice, you had to call it by name.
Most days, she could steel herself against softer, more nurturing emotions if they got in the way of her purpose. But just as her humanity had served as a beacon for Vincent as he subdued his beast side, he had lowered her defenses with his love. Before Vincent, Cat’s life had been black and white, and guys had disappointed her because she’d picked disappointing guys. After some trying times between them—horrible times, really—she and Vincent had found their way back to each other. Fear, jealousy, and mistrust had served as a crucible for the oneness they now shared. Cat knew with every bone in her body that Vincent was the great love of her life. Her only love. Her one true love.
“I love you too,” he murmured against her hair, even though she hadn’t spoken a single word of her thoughts aloud. That was how it was with them. Their connection gave life a whole new meaning. She wasn’t just a cop, a friend, a sister, and a daughter. She was Vincent’s, and he was hers. And if anything ever happened to him…
I want all of this to stop, she thought in a rush, but that wasn’t true. She wanted to stop all the threats to Vincent’s life, to their privacy and safety, because of what had been done to him. But she didn’t want to stop helping others. Vincent’s lifeblood lay in serving and protecting, the same as hers. If they didn’t dare all, be willing to give all, they wouldn’t be living their true lives, be their true selves. She understood that, but it was so difficult to let him walk into danger, and in a way, to walk into danger herself, because she knew it would crush him if she died. And if he died—that wasn’t a thought she could even contemplate. And so the only way they could survive was to walk into danger together.
“Let’s go,” J.T. said as he put on his Summers coat. “I’m not getting any younger. Or less terrified.”
* * *
Heidi Schwann had chosen to meet J.T. in the Founders Room, a clubby old ivy-covered dining hall that had once been reserved for male professors only, then professors only, and now for professors and graduate students only. J.T. assumed she had asked to meet there because she wanted to emphasize that she moved in academic circles—and the fact that she cared what he thought gave him hope that she truly wanted to impress him and not run him over with a car.
With Vincent on the job, he’d argued with Cat that there was no reason for him to wear a wire. Vincent would be able to tell if Heidi was lying. But Cat said they might as well go ahead and record the meeting because if Heidi said something incriminating or useful, they would be able to hand it over to the DA. J.T. was still unimpressed. Being involved in criminal cases didn’t usually help with your tenure application.
Heidi was seated at a table in an alcove and when she saw him, she half-rose. He hoped the deference wasn’t an act because it was kind of nice, and he could easily see himself accepting her as a TA if only to get some of that respect. Face it, his self-esteem needed a recharge.
“I’m so glad you’re all right,” she cried.
“That I’m… all right,” he said slowly, mostly to buy time. It was not at all what he had expected to hear her say.
“I had my glasses off,” she said, “so I didn’t see the accident happen. That’s why Dr. Mazursky told me not to bother talking to the campus police.” Her cheeks went pink. Something in that statement was untrue. He wanted Vincent to have a good, clear shot at narrowing it down so he said, “Dr. Mazur
sky. So he was there at my… accident? I thought he and Sara had left.”
“He was walking Dr. Holland to her car. He heard the collision and came running back. But by the time we caught up with you, you were gone and that friend of yours was driving your car out of the way so it wouldn’t block traffic.”
“My friend.”
“Yes. He said he’d get you checked out and you went into his car.”
J.T. worked overtime to remain casual. “Oh. So that was all you saw?”
“I was freaking out! But Dav—Dr. Mazursky—went over and talked to the witness and he said you were okay.”
Vincent, J.T. to Vincent, J.T. thought. You reading this? He couldn’t wait to find out if Heidi was lying. Because if she wasn’t, then maybe David Mazursky was. And Sara hated lying. J.T. was the walking wounded proof of that. There were three possibilities for Mazursky’s version of what had happened: one, that he had been told by someone that he, J.T., was okay; two, that he had lied to Heidi because he figured J.T. was okay or else he didn’t really care, and he was trying to keep out of it; and three—the big kahuna—that Dr. David Lying Mazursky was in on it. If only he could let Sara know…
Hey, whoa, who cares? he asked himself.
“Do you remember who he talked to?” J.T. asked her. That should be “whom.”
“No. It happened so fast.”
In that case, moving on to Polygraph Exhibit B.
“So you want to be my TA. What are your areas of interest?”
A waiter came and took their order: a burger for J.T. Boom, simple. Heidi had a thousand questions about how each dish was prepared and if it contained a huge list of things she was allergic to, from peanuts to shellfish to strawberries.
“Sorry,” she murmured, playing awkwardly with her silverware. “I’m allergic to air, it seems.” She tried to smile. Despite all the cloak and dagger stuff, he was touched. It had to be difficult going through life like that.