Stronger than Sin (Sin Hunters)

by Caridad Piñeiro

  Which made him wonder about the young doctor who had just walked into his home. How had she become a part of the illegal activities? Or maybe she didn’t know the truth about the group?

  He shut the door and walked to the living room where she stood, once again gripping the little black bag as she waited.

  “Nice digs,” she said, perusing the large open space and windows that faced the ocean. Then, “Who’s he?” she asked and motioned to the man on the porch, visible through a far window.

  “FBI,” Jesse lied, unsure of just what she knew. “They said they would keep an eye on me 24/7 until they were able to track down Edwards and Morales.”

  Her full lips tightened with displeasure at the mention of the names of the fugitive scientists.

  “Do you know them? The Wardwell guys?” he asked.

  “My new sister-in-law was one of their patients,” Liliana replied, omitting her own kidnapping by the two criminals. With what she knew of Jesse Bradford, he wouldn’t much care about anything that didn’t involve him, so her story would matter little.

  Jesse tucked his hands into the back pockets of his jeans. It made the T-shirt he wore ride up, exposing a line of lean muscle and sandy blond hair that matched the color on his head, although those shaggy locks had sun-kissed streaks of a lighter shade. She dragged her gaze back up to his face—a very handsome one—and found him considering her with his blue-eyed gaze.

  “Why don’t you sit down so we can get started,” she said and motioned to the sofa.

  He plopped down onto the overstuffed cushions, his long legs spread-eagled before him.

  She sidestepped one muscled thigh, perched on the edge of the low, espresso-colored wood coffee table, placed her bag beside her and opened it. She was removing her stethoscope and blood-pressure apparatus when he asked, “Is that how you got this gig? Your sister-in-law?”

  “Gig? As in, being your physician?” She slipped the stethoscope over her neck and juggled the blood-pressure cuff in her hand as she waited for his explanation.

  He shrugged shoulders so broad that it looked like he still had on his football pads. “Well, you look a little young.”

  “Not that I should have to explain, but I’m thirty and was currently working on my orthopedic surgery specialty.”

  “Was? As in, you’re not now?” he pressed, mimicking her earlier statement.

  “Now I’m supposed to give you priority according to Special Agent Whittaker and my hospital administrator.” She grabbed hold of the large hand he had resting on his thigh and pulled his arm toward her. As she did so, she eyed the roughness along his knuckles and back of his hand.

  She ran her fingers along his skin gently, but he jerked his hand away, brought it close to his chest, and rubbed it.

  “Football injury?” she asked.

  That intense blue-eyed gaze, the same color as the ocean outside the windows, zeroed in on her again. “What did Whittaker tell you about me?”

  “Not much. Actually, nothing that I didn’t already know from the news reports,” she admitted.

  He dragged a hand through his shaggy blond hair and looked away. “And what would that be, Dr…. What was your name again?”

  “Carrera. Dr. Carrera.”

  “So, Doctor. Tell me what you know,” he said, the tone of his voice growing harsh.

  “Award-winning college player. Top draft pick. MVP, I think. Hell-raiser. Playboy. Degenerative bone disease that put an end to your career,” Liliana recited and watched his face harden with each word she uttered.

  “Seems you already know all about me, Dr. Doctor—”

  “Liliana,” she corrected in annoyance.

  “Liliana. How about we get this over with so you can go back to your hospital and forget about me,” he said and stuck out his arm.

  Liliana wasted no time in getting all his vital stats and drawing the blood samples she would need for Carmen to analyze. Much like Caterina’s blood, Bradford’s glowed as it was exposed to the light, but the phosphorescence was duller and not as prevalent as with her sister-in-law.

  After she was done, she rose, expecting him to walk her to the door, but he just sat there, muscled arms spread across the back of the sofa. An icy chill in his gaze communicated more than any words could.

  “I’ll be back,” she said and left the house.

  Jesse watched her go, relieved by her absence. He’d had enough preaching from his father about the sins of his ways. He didn’t need the prim little doctor reminding him about how he had managed to screw up his life.

  As he had before, the heat of rage pooled within him, only this time, he let it grow until it needed physical release.

  Surging from the sofa, he stalked through his house to the gym in one of the back rooms. Throwing himself onto one of the benches, he started pressing weights. One hundred pounds. Two hundred.

  It wasn’t enough. He racked the pin into the bottom-most notch and pressed upward, jerking the weight up and down as if it was light as a feather.

  With a loud final clang, he allowed the weights to drop back onto the stack. The noise reverberated throughout the house, and a moment later, the guard from out front came running into the room.

  “Jesus Christ,” the guard said and whipped out a gun from behind his back.

  Jesse sucked in a breath and held it. Calmed himself enough to say, “I won’t hurt you, Bruno.”

  “You’re like the fuckin’ Hulk,” the man said and motioned to him with the weapon.

  Jesse’s gaze was snared by his image in the floor-to-ceiling mirrors along one full wall of the room. His clothes were drenched in sweat from his exertions, and the muscles on his arms and chest were pumped and more pronounced from the lifting. With his six foot four inches of height and the thickness of his body, he had always been on the large side for a quarterback. His captivity and the genes Wardwell had sneaked into his body had made him even bigger. Stronger.

  He understood the man’s fear, but Jesse would not jeopardize helping his sister. Understanding his ability to create bone was the first step in finding a cure. He was willing to remain a guinea pig even if the uncontrolled bone production could one day take his life.

  “Go away. I’m just working out,” he said and faced Whittaker’s goon.

  Bruno scurried from the room, clearly fearful even though he had been armed.

  Jesse looked down at his hands once again. Ran his fingers across the thickening, and for a moment, his rough touch became that of the doctor.

  Liliana, he thought, recalling the smoothness of her skin and the gentle contact. Imagining how it might feel to have a woman touch him like that once more—with gentleness.

  With caring, he thought.

  It had been forever since anyone had touched him with love.

  Jesse dropped to his knees and buried his head in his hands and did another thing that hadn’t happened in forever.

  He prayed.

  CHAPTER 3

  As Carmen sat at her workstation in their new lab facility, Liliana handed her the tubes with the blood samples she had taken from Bradford.

  “How was he?” Carmen asked, a bit of excitement in her voice. There had been no hesitation about joining the project when Liliana had asked her. Being a fan of the Marauders team and Bradford had just made it better.

  “He was… annoyed,” she said, lacking the right words to describe their new patient.

  “What I meant was, ‘Is Jesse really hot?’ ” Carmen said as she took the test tubes. She frowned after a quick visual exam and then passed them under one of the lights at her workstation. A barely perceptible glow radiated from the samples.

  “Weird. I wonder if they used different fluorescent proteins to track the genes,” Carmen said and labeled the tubes to begin processing Bradford’s blood.

  “I was surprised by the lack of phosphorescence, as well,” Liliana offered.

  Carmen rolled her stool about a foot away from her workstation and engaged a nearby black light. She
waved Bradford’s blood samples beneath the bulb, and this time the glow intensified, but barely. “Interesting,” she said but then quickly backtracked to their earlier conversation.

  “So is he hot?”

  Crossing her fingers the way two people might be joined together, Liliana said, “I thought you and Ramon—”

  “We’ve been dating, but just because you’re on a diet—”

  “Doesn’t mean you can’t look at dessert,” she finished for her friend and laughed. Shaking her head, she tried to conjure up an image of Bradford.

  Large came to mind. Very, very large, with ripped muscles and amazing blue eyes. Condemning blue eyes, she thought as she recalled the way he had glared at her as she walked to the door.

  “He’s handsome, I guess. Big. Exceptionally big,” she advised her friend and held her hands out in a guesstimate of the width of his shoulders, then lifted one hand to mark his height.

  “That’s because you’re so tiny,” Carmen teased and inclined her head in the direction of Liliana’s new office space. “Messenger brought a box for you.”

  “I better check it out. I’ll be by later to see what you’ve got for me.” She headed to her office, just shooting a quick glance at the other scientist, who had come onto the team courtesy of the FBI financing. Dr. Gary Charles was a top genetic engineer who had lost some funding for his research project. His participation on the team would allow him to continue his research at a local university.

  In addition to Dr. Charles, two other technicians had come on board to help Carmen run the various tests and procedures necessary to evaluate what was happening with Bradford.

  The rather intense, slightly disturbing Mr. Bradford, she thought, hurrying into her office.

  Liliana wouldn’t have thought it possible, but somehow the bankers box in the middle of her desk managed to look threatening. She approached it, reminding herself that any misgivings about Whittaker could not override all the good that could happen.

  They might find a way to control the genes in Caterina’s body and allow her to have a normal life.

  Then there were all the other patients to be helped. Whittaker thought it was just a matter of time before the FBI recovered the other Wardwell experimentation victims, and if he was right, the patients would require treatment.

  It was why she had become a doctor. To help others. So why did that suddenly seem so daunting a proposition?

  Maybe because of Whittaker. His highhandedness rubbed her the wrong way, as did his possible surveillance of her.

  Or maybe it was because there was something unnerving about Jesse Bradford. His size, for one. His propensity for violence, the other. Possibly add to that his disregard for women, she thought, recalling his antics off the field and how he had eyed her as she stood at his door.

  Based on the heat in his gaze, his thoughts had likely not been about how good a doctor she was.

  Dropping her medical bag on the spare chair in her office, she grabbed scissors, sliced open the tape sealing the box, pulled off the cover, and peered within.

  Bradford’s medical files, and other materials marked with Wardwell’s distinctive logo. She wondered how the FBI had obtained them but remembered that her own brother Mick had managed to steal similar files from the Wardwell labs. The FBI must have swooped in to grab evidence once Wardwell had been shut down due to their unlawful experiments.

  Pulling the papers and folders from the box, she placed them on her desktop and sat down to read, hoping to get a better idea of what she would have to deal with, both the man and the medical.

  As she flipped through the information, she was surprised to find not only Bradford’s medical history, but also psychological profiles and a background check Wardwell had run prior to accepting him into their program.

  She set those aside, wanting to concentrate on his medical issues. It was never good to get personally involved with a patient, although she knew some of his life story already.

  A degenerative bone disease had been discovered after Bradford had been injured during a game. She remembered the hit. Recalled how he had spun around in the air like a pinwheel before landing in a heap in the end zone.

  Liliana had been watching the game with her family, Ramon and Carmen. They had all been celebrating the touchdown until they realized that Bradford was not getting up. Moments later a trainer had run out, but Bradford had not left the field on his own steam. Within a few days everyone had found out that his career had come to an unexpected end.

  She leaned back and considered the comments in the file about the injury to his leg and the deterioration that had been detected. Weak areas in the uninjured leg, as well as in the long bones in his body and hips.

  Bradford had been lucky in that respect, she thought as she selected one of the X-rays and held it up to the light. Had that fateful hit been higher, on one of the bones in his pelvic girdle, Bradford might have been crippled or required replacement with an artificial hip.

  Not that Bradford considered himself lucky, she suspected.

  Over the course of the months that followed the injury, there had been much conjecture about whether steroids had played a role. She hadn’t doubted that possibility, having been personally aware of his bar brawls and aggressiveness. Such hostility could have been due to ’roid rage.

  But as she read through the files, she realized that all the tests Bradford had taken ruled out steroid use. And even with the various procedures and an assortment of theories about the reason for the degeneration, his doctors had not settled on any definitive diagnosis for the bone loss.

  The only thing of which the assorted physicians had been certain was that Bradford could not resume his career.

  A solid reason for his anger.

  Football had been his life from an early age and had been prematurely ripped away from him.

  Shifting the medical file to the side, she grabbed the first volume of the various Wardwell folders, wondering how Bradford had managed to become a patient there. The FDA had fairly stringent requirements before they gave patients the right to access investigational drugs and procedures that were not yet commercially available.

  Because of her terminal illness, Caterina had been able to obtain permission for such compassionate use of the experimental Wardwell gene therapies. Bradford, on the other hand, would not have qualified. His illness, while severe enough to end his career, would not have stopped him from leading a relatively normal life.

  Nothing in the preliminary Wardwell notes provided any rationale for Bradford’s participation in the investigational treatments.

  One thing was certain, she thought as she dug through reams and reams of notations, X-rays, and test results: Wardwell had produced the response Bradford had wanted. The therapy had helped repair the weak spots in his bones, but according to the files, the implanted genes had also produced episodes of rage.

  Liliana had seen similar entries before.

  Caterina’s file had also mentioned uncontrolled periods of anger. In Caterina’s case, the notations had proven to be false and intended to frame her sister-in-law for the murder of Dr. Rudy Wells. Wells had been about to blow the whistle on the illegal activities of his two Wardwell partners—Edwards and Morales.

  Despite the lies behind those entries, she had personal knowledge of another Wardwell patient with real rage issues.

  Robert Santiago, a cop killer sentenced to life in prison, had been suffering from an aggressive form of diabetes, making him perfect for Wardwell’s experiments. Unfortunately, the implanted genes had magnified an already violent personality.

  Santiago was long buried, but Whittaker had somehow produced blood and tissue samples from the convict. Caterina had agreed to allow her samples to be used, as well.

  Liliana’s first order of business would be to have Carmen and the others in the lab identify similarities, if any, among all three samples. In particular, she wanted to know if Santiago and Bradford had anything in common.

  She didn’
t deal with violence well. Between her experience with her fiancé and being kidnapped by Wardwell, her aversion to aggression had only intensified in recent months.

  Of course, having the FBI only a shout away was a relief should Bradford’s violent side emerge.

  Or at least she hoped having Whittaker nearby was a good thing.

  With one concern alleviated, she returned to reviewing the files, determined to find out as much as she could about Bradford’s illness.

  Jesse stood on the second-story balcony of his home, hands braced against the white vinyl railing. A strong ocean breeze blew westward, creating waves that the local surfers would be sure to take advantage of once the sun had risen just a hair more.

  Right now, the sun was only a hint of rosy pink along the horizon. The damp morning chill still lingered, yanking goose bumps to his skin as he waited for dawn on his balcony. He wore only a T-shirt and fleece sweatpants, relishing the bite of the cold air on his skin after months of being trapped indoors.

  Like a dog chasing a scent, he picked up his head and deeply breathed in the ocean-kissed air and closed his eyes. The sounds around him became more alive then. The pounding of the wind-whipped surf against the shore. The crackle and crunch of the dune grasses, and, in the distance, the blare of a train horn.

  To-o-ot, toot.

  He listened more carefully, and there it was again. The toot-toot of a train coming into a station and the clang of the warning bells at a street-level crossing.

  He was surprised he could still hear it with the wind blowing in this direction, but then again, the train line bisected many of the villages along the water. As the railroad crossed through town after town it left its mark, oftentimes separating the haves from the have-nots.

  Jesse knew about being from the wrong side of the tracks. He had grown up just blocks from the train. Had heard its toot and clang for most of his life. His family still lived there in the modest colonial in which he had gone from boy to man to pariah.