The door hissed unlocked when she applied enough pressure. She pulled her arm back and rushed behind the partition to Luciano. “Oh, god, what did they do to you?”
She tore off her already ripped shirt and tried to stop the bleeding.
There was too much. She found no discernible place to apply pressure, nowhere to stem the flow of warm crimson liquid.
Luciano’s fingers wrapped around her wrist. She held his hand and stared into his green eye. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
His already weak grip grew slack. The gurgling stopped, and his eye went glassy as Ana cradled his head in her lap.
Luciano had always complained to her of being bored and lonely, stuck behind glass like a goldfish in an aquarium—always twiddling his thumbs with nothing to do.
And now the poor man’s night had been anything but boring. It was a cruel twist, and Ana’s head filled with rage at the bastards who’d done this. And then the focus of her anger pivoted onto herself. She’d let them go. Being shot and left to die on the highway had torn her flesh, but the doctors and medical therapies had ensured she’d heal—physically. She wondered if any doctor could fix what else had fallen apart within her and prevent her from acting to subdue the two intruders.
She doubted any medical treatment existed for a broken spirit.
Chapter 12
Chris laid his head on the pillow and squeezed his eyes closed in Jordan’s guest room. In case Jordan discovered any promising leads, Chris wanted the opportunity to act on them immediately. He’d tried to stay up, waiting on the couch while Jordan paced in his office, but Jordan hadn’t let him. He had practically commanded Chris to get some rest so at least one of them would be prepared for the next day.
His thoughts rushed with the added urgency provided by the several cups of coffee he’d downed while talking with Jordan. They’d both decided they’d still go in to TheraComp tomorrow, and Chris hoped to squeeze in an hour or two of sleep before he’d be up again for supervising more lab experiments, searching for grants to support his research with Robin, and seeking out potential buyers with Jordan for the veterinary therapeutics.
All that piled on top of the task from Dellaporta to find Jeremy Vincent Kar.
He scolded himself for his self-pity. Robin had told him she’d be at the hospital far past the end of her day. Knowing her, she was probably taking care of patients well into her next shift.
The faint throbbing pangs of a headache flared up beneath his skull. He knew what that meant. Tomorrow morning would hit him as though he’d spent the night drinking those mojitos Jordan had offered before. Now he wished he’d taken his friend up on the offer. A hangover would be a better excuse for a headache than stress when he considered how far Robin extended herself.
The comm card on the nightstand flashed green and rang. Chris picked it up, and Robin’s name and number scrolled across the holodisplay.
“Hello?”
“I’ve found something strange, Chris. Something I think you and Jordan might know about.” Robin wasted no time on casual greetings or apologies for calling so late in the night—or early in the morning. “Can I come over to your place?”
“Right now?”
“Of course, right now. I’m back on shift in...looks like four hours.”
“Well, that’s fine. Sounds good. I’m at Jordan’s.”
“Perfect!” Her voice sounded unnaturally perky considering the time she’d spent at the hospital. “I could use the dual consultation from you guys.”
“I’d be glad to help however I can. What exactly are you dealing with?”
“I found something unusual in one of my patients.” Her voice was strained and her breathing heavy as though she was in a hurry. “I think it might be evidence of a genetic enhancement.”
He wouldn’t have thought the statement odd if it had been uttered by another doctor, but she was a pediatric oncologist. “In a child?”
“Yes, and in his mother.” She spoke in a more hushed voice. “I’m not supposed to share any of this with you, so please keep it quiet.”
“Definitely.”
“I tried to get a hold of Dellaporta, but she didn’t answer any of my calls, and all I could do is leave a message through her work line. Anyway, I hope I’m not imposing on you.”
“No, I’d be glad to see you. I’m always up for a late-night call from you. ”
“As long as you understand this isn’t one of those desperate pleas for a romp in the sack.” She chuckled before turning serious again. “I’m bringing a sample of the vector I think the enhancements were delivered in.”
“Isn’t that illegal or unethical or something to be transporting it out of the hospital? Can’t you lose your job?”
“Yes,” Robin said. Chris didn’t press her to affirm which options warranted the “yes,” but he suspected her actions might cover them all. “But this is important.”
“All right. Please be careful.”
“I will. See you soon.” She hung up, and the creeping pain in his head intensified.
Chris felt his eyelids drag down, but his mind raced too fast for him to fall asleep.
He swung his feet over the side of the bed and slid his jeans back on. Trudging back out into the kitchen, he turned on the coffeemaker and stood at the counter as the scent of freshly ground coffee beans permeated the air.
The French doors to the office burst open. Jordan made a dramatic show of sniffing the air. “Ah, smells wonderful. So nice of you to think of me.” He sauntered to the counter and grabbed a couple of mugs. After pouring out the coffee, he handed a cup to Chris and sipped from his own. “Didn’t I tuck you in already?”
“Robin called. She’s coming over.”
“I thought I told you no girls after curfew.”
Chris shook his head but couldn’t restrain his smile. “She said she needs our help with a delivery vector she found in a patient. She thinks it has something to do with an enhancement.”
“Wait. Aren’t all her patients children?”
“That would be correct.”
“Christ.” Jordan slumped onto a stool. “That’s a hell of a find. We might be able to identify where the enhancement originated from if we can analyze an intact vector.” He rubbed his chin. “And speaking of finds, I’ve begged and nagged and threatened about everyone I know with any tenuous connection to the enhancement scene for Vincent’s whereabouts. It sounds like Tallicor is all but a burned-out husk of its former self.”
“No word on any of the organization’s leaders that might’ve slipped between the Baltimore PD’s or the FBI’s fingers?” Chris sipped his coffee.
“Not too much. I did find Vincent already left the United States before Dellaporta’s SWAT forces came raining in on Tallicor’s offices.”
“Did he fly out when he got word of the raid?”
Jordan rubbed a hand over his smooth-shaven head. “I don’t think so. Sounds like there were rumors he’d been gone for a while. In fact, if my sources are correct, I think he flew the coop and left the country the day he escaped Fulton State Penitentiary.”
Chris recalled that day. While Vincent had somehow managed to escape during a violent uprising, a gang of inmates attacked Chris. He’d always assumed his cellmate died in the riots, and the news streams had reported as much. “So we already suspected the whole riot to be an elaborate ruse.”
“Right.” Jordan nodded. “We’ve got to take Veronica’s word that Vincent was the one to break into her apartment and torture her to get information on you.” Vincent had been after intelligence on a rival genetic enhancement business using Chris for the design of its products.
“I believe Veronica,” Chris said, “but are you sure these people of yours can be trusted? Do they know why Vincent personally interrogated Veronica instead of sending one of his thugs?”
“I have no clear answer, unfortunately, but my people did say they thought Vincent made frequent visits to the States to check up on Tallicor and take care of
local business.”
Chris pictured Veronica’s almost-lifeless body again. He imagined Robin in her place and shuddered. “I suppose we know what kind of business he was taking care of. That bastard needs to be stopped.”
“I suppose so.” Jordan gazed into his coffee. “I’m going to keep pressing these people for more information...see if I can’t find something more concrete, some location or new front Vincent’s running overseas.”
“Better find out quick, because I’m ready to pack my bags and do some traveling.” He wouldn’t let a destructive asshole posing a risk to Robin—or any of the others, for that matter—run around untethered by legal restrictions and ramifications.
“You planning on going after him yourself?”
“Why not? Dellaporta doesn’t have jurisdiction outside of the States, so her department isn’t going to be real helpful.” Chris recalled the last time Jordan had said anything to the cops about Tallicor. As soon as Baltimore PD and the FBI found out the company served as the legal front for Vincent’s organization, the men and women performing illegal research there began to flee. They’d received a warning from someone. He and Jordan harbored no illusions about where that information might have come from. “I don’t trust the cops, and I don’t trust the feds.”
“True.” Jordan leaned forward, his eyes piercing Chris’s. “And you’re afraid if Vincent slips through their fingers again, he’s going to take us out.”
“You, me, Robin, Veronica, and Dellaporta. The longer that guy is alive, the closer we are to our own deaths. Frankly, I’m surprised—barring Dellaporta—none of us have been attacked yet.” A shiver crept down his spine. He wouldn’t rest until he knew they were all safe—especially Robin. “Back in prison, back when I was cellmates with Vincent, the correctional officer told me he’d died. This time, I want to see him go down with my own eyes.”
Chapter 13
Robin tied back her hair as the hospital elevator groaned to a halt. She stepped into the lobby and stole a furtive glance at the security guards pacing the barren atrium. A couple of baristas opened the gate to the coffee shop as they prepared it for the day.
One waved. “Hi, Dr. Haynes. We’re not quite open yet, but I can whip you up the usual.”
“No, that’s okay.” She fought to sound normal as she toyed with the tiny vial she’d stowed in her pocket. Within the plastic container, she’d pipetted a drop of saline solution containing the delivery vectors she’d isolated from the Wrights’ blood. On her comm card, she’d stored the results of her laboratory analyses.
No one has any idea what you’ve got. Her attempt at self-reassurance made no difference. Her heart beat wildly, her pulse throbbing in her ears. She felt certain the security guards saw the drops of perspiration trickling down the back of her neck.
Before she’d left, she’d ensured the genetic data and the computer models of the delivery vector she found in Jacob and Nancy Wright’s bloodstreams had been deidentified. Unless someone had access to either of her patients’ genomes, the data on her comm card didn’t contain any information revealing to whom the genetic sequences belonged.
Still, her burgeoning anxiety didn’t abate. She couldn’t compromise her patients’ privacy by sharing the intimate contents of their individual genetic makeup with others; she’d adhered to HIPAA standards and the Hippocratic Oath throughout her career.
Tonight she needed to transgress those boundaries to help a family.
One of the security guards offered her a cursory nod as she strolled through the glass exit doors. She stepped onto the empty sidewalks, exhaled, and took out her comm card. Her fingers tapped across the holodisplay to call a cab.
The display spit out a reply: “No cabs available.”
“That’s strange,” she said to herself. At this time in the morning, before rush hour, before the sun had even begun its ascent, who occupied all the taxis?
There must have been an error with the application, or maybe standing right in front of the hospital entrance interfered with it. She’d never had this issue before, but she didn’t usually leave at this time, either.
A tennis ball–sized security drone floated past her in its rounds circling the medical complex. Lights illuminated it, and it glowed like a miniature sun, making the bright streetlights appear weak in comparison.
She watched the drone pass.
Of course. A common complaint among the hospital employees claimed the increased security measures imposed by the hospital over the past few weeks interfered with everything from comm cards working properly to one instance of overzealous drones tasering an orderly taking out biological waste in one of the alleys behind the hospital.
The drones were one answer to a bombing that had taken place recently in one of the oncology wards. To Robin, a temporarily malfunctioning comm card was worth the price of preventing another local terrorist attack on the University of Maryland Medical Center.
She sauntered over to the street corner and tried to call a cab again. The application reported the same message as before. “No cabs available.”
Squinting at the display, she spied a couple of self-driving taxis on the map near her location. Maybe it was a problem with her card after all. She stared at it as she followed the sidewalk. Jordan’s place was only eight blocks or so from the hospital anyway. Maybe she could wave down a taxi if the card continued to malfunction on her way toward Jordan’s.
A hand wrapped around her mouth, and another grabbed her shoulder. “Stay quiet, little lady.” The man’s low voice growled into her ear. His breath stank of a mixture of onions and tobacco.
Another man stepped in front of her. He wore a black knit mask with holes cut for his eyes. They glowed blue in the shadow of his brow. He plunged his hand into her pockets. When she struggled, the man behind her tightened his grasp on her mouth and shoulders.
“Got it,” the blue-eyed man said. In his hands, her comm card flickered in the streetlight.
Her eyes darted around the street in a desperate hope of seeing someone, anyone, and calling for help. Where had the drone flown off to? What about the security guards?
The blue-eyed man pulled a gun from behind his back and pressed the muzzle against Robin’s chest.
She squeezed her eyes closed. Her thoughts raced, wondering what would happen to the Wrights, when Chris would notice she hadn’t arrived, when he’d come looking for her, what being shot would feel like. She waited for the impact as her muffled cries fell weakly against the other assailant’s calloused palms.
“Quiet.” The man kneed her in the back, catching her spine. She buckled over and yelled louder against his rough hand. “She said she had a sample, too.”
The blue-eyed thug exhaled and pointed the muzzle of his gun at the comm card. “Yeah, all the data’s on here, bucko.”
“No, no,” the man with the low voice said. “A physical sample. Check her pockets.”
Rolling his eyes, the other checked her pockets again and withdrew the vial with the vectors found in the Wrights. “All right. I’ll give you this one.” He straightened and lifted Robin’s chin with the muzzle of his handgun. “I will blast you right here if you don’t tell it to me straight: Are we missing anything?”
Fear gripped Robin. She looked into the man’s eyes and saw only a sickening calmness.
“Is there anything else on your person related to the Wright family?” He pressed the gun into her neck, causing her to cough. “Because if we find out later you didn’t tell us the truth, you won’t be the only one with a bullet through your head. We’ll make sure Jacob’s victory over leukemia doesn’t mean he has to live a long, miserable existence. In fact, his whole family might be the victims of a mugging gone wrong. How would you feel about that?”
The man narrowed his eyes and leaned in. “I suppose maybe you wouldn’t feel anything, because I’ll have killed you first if you don’t comply. Understand?”
Robin’s stomach climbed into her throat, and her limbs trembled. With her eye
s locked on the man’s, she nodded.
“So again,” he said, “is there anything else on your person that might have anything at all to do with the Wrights?”
She shook her head as much as she could against the other attacker’s grip. It seemed as though the blue-eyed man smirked under his mask. “Perfect. The good news is we’ve got what we want. Bad news is you’re going to die anyway.”
Chapter 14
Robin refused to let them take her life like this. A couple of cowards wouldn’t end her here with a gun pressed to her head in the early morning before the sun had even risen. She had patients to consider. She gritted her jaw and tensed her body, ready to explode from their clutches.
A voice called from near the entrance to the Medical Center. “Hey! Hey! What the hell is going on?”
The man’s grip around Robin loosened. She dropped and ducked under his arm. He swung to grab her.
“Damn it! Stop!” the blue-eyed man yelled.
She didn’t look back. Instead, she sprinted toward where the other voice originated, back to the front of the hospital. Expecting gunfire, she ran low to the ground, her feet slamming against the sidewalk.
“Quick,” the figure before her said. He grabbed her hand and pulled her around the corner of the building. In his other hand, he held his comm card. “I already called the police.” He peeked around. “Those two buffoons are gone. Are you okay?”
Robin nodded. Her eyes went wide. Conrad Murray, the IRB unaffiliated public representative, stood before her.
“Let’s get inside before they come back.”
“Thanks,” she said, her voice shaky. Shivers ran up and down her limbs despite the warmth of the late summer air. “What were you doing here?”
Murray patted his shirt pocket, where a packed of cigarettes bulged out. “Out for a smoke until I heard that commotion. It’s usually a lot quieter out here this early. I wanted to see what was going on.” He brushed a hand over his head. A crown of shaggy brown hair traced a half-circle around the otherwise bald scalp.
The Black Market DNA Series: Books 1-3 Page 59