Stronger than Sin (Sin Hunters)

by Caridad Piñeiro

  It occurred to her that while he was checking things, he could inquire about one other item. “We have another patient in the lab. Whittaker says that local law enforcement found him on the side of the road.”

  “If it was anywhere nearby, I should be able to check with my fellow police chiefs in the neighboring towns.”

  “Would you?” she pressed.

  A long, drawn-out sigh followed her request before Ramon said, “You really don’t trust this guy, do you?”

  As she recalled the beatings Jesse had endured and all the little things that didn’t seem professional, it wasn’t hard to confess her misgivings.

  “I don’t trust him. Not at all, so anything you can get me would be truly appreciated.”

  “Anything for you, Lil. What about Mick?” he asked, well aware, as she was, that her older brother had the ability to access a wealth of information legally unavailable to a police chief like Ramon.

  “Mick has enough on his mind right now. I’d rather he not be involved.”

  “Got it,” Ramon said and hung up.

  She closed her cell phone and slipped it into her pocket. For a moment she considered calling Mick, but he was only just getting his life back on track after the nearly fatal events of six months ago. She wouldn’t rupture that peace because of her cynicism about Whittaker.

  A knock came at the door and Liliana rose, opened it.

  Whittaker stood there with Howard. Behind them were two paramedics she recognized from the hospital, wheeling a gurney toward the examination room.

  “Good to see they got here so soon. Let me just grab my bag and I’ll ride with them to the hospital.”

  Whittaker nodded, a chill look in his eyes almost like that of a serpent as he examined her. “Is something wrong, Dr. Carrera?”

  Liliana schooled her features, worried that they were giving away her distrust, and shook her head. “Just concerned about the patient.”

  A sudden commotion pulled her attention toward the examining room. She hurried there to find the two EMTs staring at the patient.

  “He’s going into quarantine. Is it contagious?” the one EMT asked, snapping on latex gloves.

  “I’m not touching him,” the other EMT advised, his eyes wide and a fine line of sweat across his upper lip.

  “It’s not contagious, but I understand your worry. The three of us can transfer him to the gurney.”

  Together with Carmen and the EMT, they lifted him from the table to the gurney, and at the last second, the fearful EMT relented and assisted them.

  The EMTs wheeled the man from the room, and Liliana met Carmen’s concerned gaze. “I’ll keep you posted on his condition. Let me know ASAP what you get from the blood tests.”

  Liliana turned, pushed past Whittaker and Howard, who were still lingering by the door. Outside the lab, she climbed into the back of the ambulance and sat beside the EMT, who was wrapping a blood-pressure cuff around their patient’s arm.

  Liliana had opted not to try to get a reading earlier, fairly sure she would obtain an irrational result. After a few tries, the EMT gave up.

  “His skin—or whatever this is—is too thick,” he mumbled.

  “It’s compact bone, from the looks of it. I’m worried about how much of his body has been compromised,” Liliana advised as she checked the IV she had inserted earlier. It had fallen out, and the former spot for the IV had closed up with bone.

  “Can you find a clear spot to re-insert the IV?” she asked the EMT who searched for a visible vein along a thin ribbon of skin at the crook of the man’s elbow. The needle went in cleanly, but shortly after insertion, the area around the needle whitened as bone formed around the site.

  The EMT reared back from the patient, his earlier cooperation replaced by shock and fear.

  “What is this?”

  “Science gone wrong.”

  With little left to do for the patient until they reached the hospital, she and the EMT covered him, hiding the damage to his body beneath a crisp white sheet. Within minutes, they reached their destination. Before the ambulance stopped completely, Liliana advised, “I want to get some x-rays before we get him in quarantine.”

  Nodding, the EMT swept into action as the vehicle stopped and his partner opened up the back doors. Liliana followed the two men as they pushed the gurney into the emergency room. The duty nurse approached and greeted Liliana.

  “Good evening, Dr. Carrera.”

  “Hi, Maggie. Good to see you again. I need this patient taken to x-ray and then quarantined.”

  “You got it.” Maggie handed Liliana a chart and pen, raised her hand, and waved over another nurse to take responsibility from the EMTs.

  “Get this patient to radiology, stat,” Maggie instructed, and the nurse took hold of the gurney and began wheeling it down the hallway.

  Liliana was about to follow when Whittaker and Howard entered the emergency room. They moved forward, clearly intending to accompany her, but she held up her hand to stop them.

  “It’ll be better if you wait down here until we know more.”

  “Don’t make us wait too long,” Whittaker warned and, with a jerk of his head, commanded his man to a line of hard plastic chairs in an adjacent waiting-room area.

  “I understand, Special Agent,” she advised, her biggest concern for the moment ascertaining what she could do about the patient being wheeled to x-ray.

  Turning on her heel, she hurried down the hall and navigated the assorted twists, turns, and elevator banks to reach the radiology department. The nurse was waiting at the door for her beside one of their x-ray technicians. Peering into the room, she noted that her patient had already been transferred to the table for the procedure.

  “We can’t retract the IV needle,” the x-ray technician advised.

  “You’ll have to take them with it intact. Is it all right if I watch while you complete the shots? I need you to get his entire torso.”

  The technician nodded and prepped shot after shot, the kathunk of the x-ray machine registering with each exposure until his task was completed.

  “How long will it take to get the x-rays?” Liliana asked.

  “Not long. It’s a slow night,” he said and shot an uneasy look over his shoulder at the patient.

  Liliana suspected that even if it hadn’t been slow, curiosity and fear would have driven the young man to develop the exposures quickly.

  “Would you arrange for the patient to be transported up to his room?” She noted the room number the duty nurse had provided on a slip of paper and handed it to the technician.

  “Yes, Dr. Carrera.”

  Liliana returned to the ER area to meet up with Whittaker and his goon. When she arrived, Whittaker stood by the chairs, pacing back and forth. Howard was seated, still pale. Beads of sweat dotted his upper lip and forehead.

  As she neared, she noted a slight bulge beneath one pant leg and a darkened area on his other pant leg.

  Blood? she wondered.

  “Are you hurt, Special Agent Howard?” Although she didn’t care for the man, she also couldn’t watch him suffer before her eyes.

  “He’s fine,” Whittaker responded curtly, and Howard didn’t contradict him.

  With a slow nod, Liliana provided her report. “Patient is headed to his room, and we should have the x-rays shortly. I would suggest we go there to discuss his condition.”

  As she turned to walk to the quarantine wing, she noted the grimace that crossed Howard’s face as he rose, and his slight limp.

  Howard had been roughed up during the day’s earlier encounter with Jesse, but she didn’t remember any kind of injury with the symptoms he now exhibited. She guessed that he could have been hurt doing some other task for Whittaker but questioned why they would be keeping it from her.

  Refraining from further conjecture—she had enough to think about with her nearly ossified patient—she remained silent.

  When they arrived at the quarantine wing, the patient had already been transfer
red to a bed, the IV had been reconnected to another bag of saline solution, and he was wired to a variety of monitors.

  Liliana walked over to the monitors and reviewed the stats. All troubling: oxygen saturation down, blood pressure low, heart rate slow. Very slow, which was likely contributing to the reduced O2 and blood pressure.

  She adjusted the oxygen flow and, deciding that a more thorough physical examination was in order, eased on latex gloves. Beneath her fingers his skin and flesh were hard, even in those spots not covered by the thin layer of exoskeleton.

  When the X-ray technician arrived, her worst fears were confirmed.

  Thick areas of white glared at her from the x-rays, pointing to advanced levels of bone formation throughout his body.

  “Well?” Whittaker prompted, his tone irate.

  “There’s little I can do for this patient. The damage is extensive, and his major organs have been compromised.”

  “What about the inhibitor? Can’t that help?” Whittaker once again pressed, triggering even stronger distrust in Liliana. But she needed to play it carefully until she knew more.

  “As soon as I get some additional information, I can decide how to treat him.”

  Her acquiescence mollified Whittaker, and he left the room but instructed Howard to stand guard.

  The special agent did so inside the room, hands crossed before him as he silently stood by the door while Liliana noted the patient’s vitals on the chart. As she was finishing, she shot a fleeting look at Howard.

  Sweat marked his face, and his pristine white shirt was damp in spots. His skin was as white as chalk against the black of his suit.

  “I’m assuming our patient is a John Doe?” she asked and Howard nodded, but not without some apparent discomfort.

  She dropped the metal chart into the holder at the foot of the bed and approached Whittaker’s man.

  “Are you feeling all right, Special Agent?” she asked, eyeing him up close for any additional symptoms.

  “I’m fine, ma’am,” he answered woodenly.

  “Right,” Liliana replied and eased a chair to where Howard was standing.

  “Why don’t you take your jacket off and rest a bit.”

  That he didn’t argue was a testament to how badly he must have been feeling. When Liliana returned to the patient’s bedside, she caught a glimpse of Howard as he removed his jacket. His shirt was totally soaked in spots. Beneath the fabric near the small of his back, she detected what looked like a bandage and a trivial spot of blood staining the fabric.

  Trivial, except for the location of the apparent wounds.

  His femurs and the area right above his ilium. Perfect spots for the sampling of bone marrow.

  “You didn’t care for Bradford beating the crap out of you, did you, Special Agent?” she asked, hoping to elicit a response.

  “Bradford’s a loose cannon. Has been ever since his playing days,” Howard replied, calmly and with no hint of malice.

  “Still, it must have pissed you off,” she continued while easing her hand into their John Doe’s to test one of the reflex points there.

  No reaction came from either man.

  She shot a look at Howard, who remained impassive as he sat on the chair, some color restored to his face.

  “Well, Special Agent? Did it make you angry?” she pressed.

  A deadly smile spread across his features, creating a chill in her as he said, “I don’t get angry. I get even.”

  She was spared from answering as her cell phone chirped—Carmen calling.

  “What do you have for me?” she asked.

  CHAPTER 23

  The lab results Carmen had provided had been bad, but not as bad as the call that had come from Ramon in the wee morning hours.

  Whittaker was not an FBI agent. At least not anymore. He had been forced into retirement after a mission had gone wrong thanks to a serious error in judgment on his part.

  The current information on Whittaker, provided to Ramon by another FBI agent who happened to be a friend of her cousin’s, was that Whittaker headed a private security group known to engage in an assortment of activities, some of them not so legal. Unfortunately, neither the FBI nor any of the other organizations supposedly keeping track of Whittaker and his men had been able to find sufficient evidence to charge them with any wrongdoing.

  As for Howard and Bruno, more bad news.

  Howard had been dishonorably discharged from the military. Bruno had spent substantial time behind bars due to his participation in organized crime.

  Ramon had wanted to act immediately to round them up, but Liliana had asked him to wait, needing to know what they were doing and why. More importantly, desperate to know why Jesse had thrown his lot in with men like these.

  Sleep was impossible after getting Ramon’s news. Every time she closed her eyes, the image of her nearly skeletal patient replayed itself, and each time, his face had been replaced by Jesse’s.

  With sleep evading her, she had slipped on jeans, a sweatshirt, and a thick jacket and had gone for a walk along the boardwalk. It was dark, but the streetlamps along the walk cast a weak light. She paused in the dim circle of light, reached up, and took hold of the crucifix she wore.

  Closing her eyes, she said a prayer for guidance.

  How he could be lying to me even as he made love to me?

  It hadn’t been just sex, as rushed as it had been. They had made love, because she had no doubt they both had feelings for each other.

  But her judgment of men was suspect, she reminded herself again. Look at how horribly it had turned out with her ex-fiancé. And Jesse’s reputation with women was far worse.

  Which had her wondering how she could have developed feelings for him.

  Opening her eyes, she noticed the dawn inching up past the horizon. Crimson trails spread upward into the pitch-black morning sky, bringing to mind an old saying.

  Red sky at morning, sailors take warning.

  She had to maintain a sense of caution, she realized, even while acknowledging that she had to confront Jesse about his lies. Her one hope was that he would have a plausible explanation for why he was helping a man like Whittaker.

  Shoving away from the boardwalk railing, she walked toward the center of town, needing to work off the nervous energy that had kept her awake for the better part of the early morning.

  A lone jogger approached her, a mutt on a leash attached to the fluorescent safety vest he wore. He ran right past her, dipping his head in a breathless greeting.

  She returned the welcome and pressed onward on the empty boardwalk. In the summer there would be dozens of people along the beachfront, even at such an early hour. Surfers, joggers, and bicycle riders mostly, trying to get in their activities before it got too crowded.

  On Main Avenue, she turned westward and strolled past the still-closed shops. It was barely past six, and the seasonal stores would not open even later in the day.

  The bakery, however, was already active as people dropped by for breakfast rolls and pastries. When she walked in, one of the young women behind the counter tossed out a greeting.

  “Morning, Lil. The usual?” she said, and Liliana confirmed it with a smile. She was a creature of habit, which made her wonder why she had deviated from such routines with Jesse or even Whittaker. Her normal inclination would have been to refuse a request to leave the safety of what was familiar—the hospital. But then again, she would have done anything to extend her brother Mick’s happiness and help Caterina return to normal.

  And now there was Jesse to think about.

  And the John Doe in the hospital.

  And the nearly half-a-dozen missing gene-therapy patients from Wardwell.

  A bushel of reasons for why she had strayed from her comfort zone, but she had never expected that such a journey would risk the safety of her heart.

  As the young woman behind the counter handed her a cup of coffee and a buttered roll, Liliana thanked her, paid for the food, and then hurried from
the shop. She turned up Pilgrim’s Pathway, opting to return to her condo through town rather than back along the beachfront.

  As she sipped her coffee and nibbled on the roll, she considered her plan of action for the day, deciding on what she would say to Jesse. Trying to determine what, if anything, she was going to do about Whittaker and his men.

  She hastened toward her condo, past the ochre and brown auditorium with the large white cross smack in the middle of the structure facing the ocean. Nearby, small sheds and wooden tent frames stood empty. The tents dated back to the days of religious revival meetings but now sat empty, waiting for when the residents would return and pitch the tents in which they would live for the summer.

  For nearly a hundred years the tents had routinely been going up and down. Liliana suspected that a hundred years from now, the routine would be the same.

  Routine was important it reminded her as she sped the final few blocks to the street of her condo. As she entered her building, she had already decided what she would do. How she would restore order and protect all those who needed her.

  She only had one hope for herself for the day—that Jesse would not fail her.

  CHAPTER 24

  Jesse paced back and forth along the balcony of his home, staring out at the ocean.

  Angry red streaks colored the morning sky.

  Angry being an apt description of how he was feeling.

  He was angry at Morales and his partners for lying to him about the gene therapies.

  Angry at Whittaker and his thugs for threatening his sister and Liliana.

  But more than anything else, he was furious with himself.

  Once again he had failed to do what was right.

  God might forgive him for the sins of lust and greed when he had lost his way during his football career.

  God might even forgive him for the pride that had made him bribe his way into the Wardwell experiments.

  But he was certain God was never ever going to forgive him for making love to Liliana while he was living a lie.

  Jesse wasn’t even sure that he could forgive himself, much less hope that Liliana might absolve him.