Her face burned and new awkwardness tightened her shoulders. This wasn’t what she’d intended at all. She’d figured they would talk, fight, set some ground rules or maybe agree to never touch each other again.
She hadn’t planned on them going at each other in a locked laundry room.
Thinking to turn it into a joke, she started to say, Do you think the laundry people will know what we’ve been up to? But instead a plaintive question leaked between her teeth. “What now?”
His eyes darkened and he sat up, dislodging her. She levered herself up, as well, and readjusted her clothes, needing the armor against the sudden chill in the room. Where moments before there had been giggles and gasps and the slap of overheated flesh, now there was an uncomfortable silence.
Finally he said, “Damned if I know.” He sighed and ran his fingers through his hair until it stood on end in silvery-blond spikes. “I’ve been thinking, though.”
Nia’s heart jolted. “Yes?”
Maybe he was ready to admit he’d been wrong to leave her, wrong not to come back when she’d called. Maybe he wanted to move forward, be partners, lovers, all the things she’d once wanted. But that thought brought her up short.
True, she’d once wanted those things, but what did she want now?
“I’ve been thinking that maybe you have a point about Maria. Maybe I have been using her death as an excuse for some things.” Rathe tugged his shirt on and snapped his pants as though he, too, felt the chill. Or maybe he needed armor of his own. “Maybe I used my promise to Tony for the same purpose. You’re right, it wasn’t fair of either of us to make your decisions for you.”
She heard the reservations in his voice and knew it wasn’t that simple, could never be that simple between them. “But?”
He acknowledged her accuracy with a wry grimace. “But excuses or not, it’s how I feel. In the foster system, Father Timory taught us boys that it was our job to protect the women. Cherish them. If something happens to you on this case…” He shrugged uncomfortably, as though the shirt pulled too tight across his chest, or maybe his heart.
A lead weight settled in Nia’s stomach. “Which leaves us where?”
He looked at her then, with a wealth of regret and hope in his eyes. “In the middle of a dangerous assignment with nothing resolved.” He took a breath. “I care for you, Nia.”
It wasn’t a declaration of undying love, but coming from such a reserved man as Rathe, the words hit her like blows. She sucked in a breath and pressed a hand to her stomach to steady herself. “I…I care for you, too, Rathe.”
His eyes darkened further. “Then bow out of the case. Please. I’m afraid something terrible is going to happen to you.”
The subtext was clear. If you care about me, you’ll drop the investigation.
When the words failed to do anything more than twist her stomach and harden the ball of disappointment already there, Nia knew she’d expected this all along. Their problems had never been about Maria or her father. It had always been their opposing philosophies. “I can’t do that, Rathe. What’s more, I won’t. If you truly cared about me, you’d understand that.”
If you truly cared, you’d support me.
His silence was answer enough. There was no middle ground between them, no compromise.
No hope.
Tears prickled in Nia’s eyes and she stood, needing to be away from him, away from the room where they’d loved each other so well, yet not enough in the end. She opened the door, stepped out into the hall and was vaguely surprised to see that nothing had changed outside the little room.
All the changes had been internal.
When he didn’t call her back, didn’t try to convince her she had it all wrong, Nia knew it was well and truly over between them. She stumbled to the end of the hall, fogged in misery—
And stopped dead.
“What is it?” He had followed her, perhaps to give an explanation, perhaps to fight some more, but now he bristled beside her, ready to protect her from an unseen enemy.
His presence might have irritated her, might have wounded her breaking heart, but her mind focused gratefully on a number. “Twenty-six.”
“What?”
She paced back down the hall, all the way to the end and back, Rathe a silent shadow at her side. “This hallway is twenty-six paces long.”
The hallway that ran parallel, where they’d found Short Whiny Guy’s body, was only twenty.
Rathe cursed quietly. “Nia, I don’t think—”
But she was already running toward the dead end, her sneakers nearly noiseless. She stopped when she reached the end and faced the blank wall. “It’s too short. There’s something behind it. A room, maybe.” Or worse.
“You don’t know that.” But Rathe checked the edges of the dead end, tested the doors on either side.
“I have a hunch.” Her left eyelid ticked in answer. When he didn’t argue, she knew he felt the same. Why else had they discovered Cadaver Man lurking near this hallway several times?
Gratefully, she let the information and the thrill of the hunt distract her from what had just happened between them, what would never happen again. She ran her fingers along the wall. Nothing. The back of her neck prickled in warning, but there was nobody behind her. The floor was sealed off, with a police guard near the elevator.
But there was danger here. She could feel it.
Her fingers found the camouflaged pressure pad just as Rathe touched her arm. He said, “I have a bad feeling about this. I want you to walk away.”
His eyes said so much more. They offered, promised, tempted.
But in the end it wasn’t enough. She wanted it all—both lover and career.
“I have the same bad feeling,” she agreed, “but I’m not going to quit on my dreams. No matter what.” She held out a hand. “Partners?” Lovers. Compromise, she wanted to say. We can work together. We can watch each other’s backs. This isn’t my father’s life to live, it’s mine!
But he didn’t take her hand. His lips flattened to a thin, worried line. “Just push the damn button.”
Chapter Twelve
As Rathe watched, Nia pressed the button, and a section of wall loosened. A dark crack opened up between the cinder blocks, where a line of trim and a subtle change in paint color had disguised a rectangular outline. It might not have started as a hidden door, but someone had gone to great pains to camouflage the entrance at the end of the hall.
“Well? Open it!” she demanded.
Rathe glanced over his shoulder. The excited gleam in her eyes punched him in the chest. She loved this. Well, hell, so did he, but he didn’t love the sick worry in his gut or the rampaging fear that filled his mind with images of Nia shot dead in a leafy jungle or propped up in a storage room with bloody tracks where her eyes used to be.
He’d made it this long without cracking because he’d trained himself not to care too deeply. At least until now.
“Let’s get Peters.” He drew his hand away from the knob. “The police should go in first.”
“Then get him yourself. I’ll just have a quick look around.” With an irritated, faintly disappointed glance in his direction, she opened the door. And paused.
Stairs curled down and to the left, looping behind the dead end. Old-fashioned bare bulbs lit the space with an unhealthy yellow glow. A familiar three-rayed symbol was painted on the wall in black and yellow.
“A bomb shelter?” she guessed
Rathe nodded. “Looks like. Must’ve been forgotten over the years, as the newer wings were built on top of the older building.”
“There’s no dust. No burned-out bulbs.” She descended four steps, then turned back toward him. “Someone uses this place.”
Their eyes locked, and all of his planned platitudes fell away. He didn’t bother trying to talk her out of the search. He would’ve failed, anyway. She’d made her choice, picking the job over him. And he probably deserved it.
God knows he’d done the sam
e thing seven years earlier.
After a moment he nodded sharply. “I’ve got your back.”
They descended the long, twisting flight of stairs. Though the narrow space was no darker than the hallway above, the walls pressed in and the shadows seemed long.
“We should go back up and have the officer radio Peters,” he said unnecessarily, knowing they wouldn’t. The compulsion had snagged them both, the siren call that touched every doctor crazy enough to trade a lucrative practice for HFH fieldwork.
The lure of the unknown.
“There’s a door at the bottom,” she said, keeping her voice to a near whisper though there was no sense of another human presence. They were alone. Whispering simply seemed appropriate, just as it seemed appropriate for him to stay close behind her, breathing in their mingled scents and wishing things could have been different between them.
He lowered his lips close to her ear and breathed, “Stay to the side, just in case.”
She nodded and glanced back at him, eyes dark in her lovely face. Then she swung the unlocked door open in a smooth move and flattened herself against the wall. But no bullets assaulted them. No cadaverous murderer leaped toward them. Nothing happened.
Then a roiling, charnel stench filtered out, and Rathe swallowed a mouthful of bile. “Oh, hell!”
All thoughts of their recent sexual encounter fled in the face of the smell and the sight of the cavernous room.
There was no body, but it had been the scene of a slaughter. The walls were splashed with a macabre Rorschach pattern of rusty stains. Long rivulets streaked down to pool on the floor, dry now, though they had once been warm and wet.
Nia turned away, breathing through her mouth. “Short Whiny Guy was killed here.”
“Yes.” Rathe stepped into the small, cool room and felt the walls close in, as though he’d stepped out of the open into a dark, ominous cave. He shook off the sensation and glanced around, though there was little to see.
A lone hospital bed and an empty IV stand gave the featureless room a medical feel, though who would keep a patient in the basement? A rolling stool suggested a doctor’s office. And the stains on the wall spoke of torture.
“Why did he stash the body so close to the hidden door?” Nia stayed near the stairway. Footprints, he realized, she was trying to preserve the evidence for the cops. Cursing, he backtracked.
“To confuse us, maybe, or because he’s arrogant. He didn’t think we would find the door.” They nearly hadn’t.
“Or because he’d stripped the room clean.”
Rathe felt it, too, the sense of having just missed the break. They had a crime scene, yes, but that might not help them a great deal with the larger case. Whatever had happened here was long gone.
He ran through the connections in his head, hoping something would jump out. They had a hospital bed in a bomb shelter. A similar bed in an ambulance disguised to look like a laundry van. Missing drugs but no missing organs. Two dead men and a doctor in custody.
But Logan Hart maintained his innocence through a high-priced lawyer, and Cadaver Man was still at large.
“We’re missing something.” Nia frowned, breaking his train of thought. “There’s something here.”
Rathe shook his head. “There’s nothing here. Let’s call Peters, he’ll want to see the room.” He turned for the door, suddenly hungry for the clean air above, for the slightest scent of fabric softener, which was now inextricably linked to the sensation of making love to Nia.
“You go. I’d rather stay.” Seemingly oblivious to the heavy, fetid air, she leaned inside the room.
She didn’t offer to phone Peters, didn’t offer to go upstairs with him, which told Rathe she wanted time alone. And the hurt at the back of her eyes told him it wasn’t just to examine an empty bomb shelter. She wanted to process what had happened between them, to make some decisions.
Hell, he needed the same time. He didn’t like how they’d left things, couldn’t stand the thought of them going their separate ways after this investigation, but what was the alternative? He couldn’t work with the distraction of a woman partner, he sure as hell couldn’t be in a relationship with a woman who knowingly endangered her own life, and Nia had no intention of leaving HFH. So where did that leave them?
Nowhere.
He stifled a curse. “Come upstairs with me. It’s not safe down here.” He held out a hand and willed her to take it, willed her to understand that he’d barely survived Maria’s death, and he’d never felt a fraction for her of what he felt for Nia.
The realization gave him pause, but she was already turning away. “There’s a cop by the elevators and the whole basement is sealed off. I’m safer down here than I am in the lobby.”
The cool dismissal fired his temper, though part of him knew he had no right to be angry with her. Not about this.
“What will it take?” He caught her arm, turned her until he had her nearly pressed up against the cool wall. “What do I have to do to convince you to give this up? To give us a chance?”
He thought about kissing her, but the snap of temper in her eyes told him that would be a miscalculation. Besides, there was no need to prove they were explosive together. It was the other stuff that had them at an impasse.
“There is no us, Rathe, there’s you and some image of a woman you have in your head. That’s not me. Until you can see that, until you can accept me for who I am, then there’s no point.”
“I want you. I’ve always wanted you. Isn’t that enough?” He didn’t say need this time. It was too close to the truth.
When she said nothing, merely looked up at him, he snapped, “What? You want some sort of grand gesture? You want me down on my knees?” He crowded her with his body, felt the answering flare of warmth between them.
She caught his face between her hands, surprising him. “I want you to accept that I’m an HFH field operative, and will be for the foreseeable future. And I want to know that if it came down to it, you’d choose me over the job.”
The inherent unfairness of it struck him square in the chest, and he stepped away from her. “Let me get this straight. You want me to choose you over the job, yet you’re refusing to do the same for me.”
She lifted her chin. “If that’s the way you see it.”
If there had been tears in her eyes, he might have kissed them away. If she’d been angry, he could have picked a fight and dispelled some of the awful tension suddenly strung between them. But her eyes were dry and calm, unnerving him.
She meant it. But he was damned if he understood it. As far as he could see, she wanted him to give in on everything, while she gave up nothing. It wasn’t fair.
Love is rarely easy, or fair. Rathe started, remembering Tony saying those words in farewell as he’d loaded Rathe, bruised and battered, onto an HFH cargo plane bound overseas. For all that he’d kicked Rathe’s ass over his daughter’s honor, Tony’s hands had been gentle as they’d buckled him in. Even then Nia’s father had known Rathe’s emotions were true.
Even then he’d known the relationship was doomed to failure. They were too different.
And too alike.
Suddenly he missed Tony with an ache akin to pain, sharper than the dull sadness he’d felt before, when he’d been far away from the family he’d once called his own. He wished his friend had been there to talk to. But he wasn’t. He was dead, and Rathe hadn’t said goodbye.
“Rathe? What is it?” Though still cool, Nia’s eyes were worried now. “What’s wrong?” She stepped forward and lifted a hand, but he moved away, suddenly needing some distance, a moment alone to regroup.
“Nothing. I’m fine.” He turned for the stairs, followed by the overpowering stench of death. “I’ll go find Peters.”
She was right, she was safe in the basement with a guard at the elevators and all the doors locked. And he needed a moment. She’d be there when he returned, and their problems would remain, as well. Neither she nor their differences would disappear simp
ly because he wished it.
He’d tried that already. It hadn’t worked. She was still in his heart. Had been all along.
Halfway up the stairs he glanced back to say something more, but she had already turned away and focused on the empty, bloodstained room. Her mind was on the job, as his should be. She didn’t look back, didn’t look up, and after a moment he turned away and continued up the stairs, followed by a creeping sense of disquiet.
The cop nodded when Rathe reached the elevators. “Everything’s calm upstairs. The patient hasn’t regained consciousness again.”
Zero. Pig. Marissa’s words echoed in Rathe’s mind, still making no sense, especially when they were combined with a bomb shelter and a disguised laundry truck.
“Dr. French will stay down here while I check in with the detectives.” Though the officer could easily radio the crime scene to Peters, Rathe needed the moment alone. He aimed a finger at the young officer. “Nobody gets in here, understand? And if anything happens to her…”
Something must have shown in his face, because instead of bristling at being lectured by a civilian, the officer nodded man-to-man. “I’ll watch out for her.”
“Yeah, that’s what I keep thinking, too,” Rathe muttered as he stepped into the service elevator. He rode up alone, or maybe Tony’s ghost stood at his side, but he couldn’t outdistance the feeling that he should be doing something different.
Couldn’t escape the suspicion that things were about to go very wrong.
DOWNSTAIRS, in the bomb shelter beneath the subbasement, Nia leaned on the door frame and shook her head when the bloodstains seemed to take on shape and form. A dead man. A sick woman. A four-legged creature. All drawn in arterial spurts.
But instead of the case, her mind kept returning to Rathe and what had happened between them. Damn it, she wasn’t being unfair. She was only asking for the things she’d give in return. Mutual respect. Unconditional love. Partnership. That was fair.
Covert M.D. Page 16