by Rebecca York
When an image of the animal leaped into her mind, she lowered her head into her hands and pressed hard against her eyes, trying to wipe away the picture of the animal. But it stayed firmly in her consciousness.
Ripples of cold traveled over her skin, and she rubbed her hands up and down her arms.
The wolf. The symbol that she was coming unglued.
At Ross's house, the wolf had threatened her. And she'd let herself be convinced that the confrontation had taken place in a dream.
But last night had been different. She'd been attacked. And she'd told that cop, Jack Thornton, that Ross had rescued her, although the image in her mind was of the wolf. Snarling, teeth snapping, chasing away the attacker.
In unguarded moments since the assault, memories of the wolf had nipped at her heels. So she'd carefully constructed a cage in her mind to keep him trapped. But she couldn't always keep the door closed. And when it sprang open, the way it had just now, the wild animal leaped out, ready to dig his claws into her mind.
Although she struggled to keep him from prowling through her thoughts, his will was stronger than hers.
The wolf had saved her. Then the animal had disappeared into the darkness of the storm. There was a strange, unreal quality to the way he had appeared and the way he had disappeared that left her dizzy—and terrified.
The rational part of her mind wanted to understand what had happened. But the rational part wasn't in control. Because every time she thought about the lithe gray animal with the bright yellow eyes, she had no choice but to make him go away.
Teeth gritted and eyes squeezed tightly closed, she finally succeeded. Briskly she opened the car door and got out. But she knew the simple act of walking from her vehicle to the lab was never going to feel the same. Her body was strung as tight as a wire by the time she reached the roof overhang. She wanted to rush past. But her legs stopped moving, and she stood stock-still—stared at the place where the man had thrown her to the ground.
Her breath caught. Then she moved on, feeling as if she'd passed some kind of invisible barrier.
Stepping through the door was a relief—until she saw that Betty was staring at her, wide eyed.
She stopped in her tracks, fighting the impulse to back away.
"Oh, God, Megan, the police called last night. Are you okay?"
"Yes," she answered, knowing the high, thin tone of her voice made it sound like a lie.
The receptionist continued to study her as if she were trying to determine the truth of the statement for herself. "I'm so sorry."
"I'm fine."
"You stayed late to work?"
"Yes," she clipped out, hoping to cut the conversation short. She'd never liked being the center of attention, and in this context she liked it even less.
"Do you want to talk about it?"
"I had to talk to the police. I don't want to go over it again," she answered, hoping Betty would drop the subject.
"Is there anything I can do?"
"Let's just get things back to normal."
Betty glanced over her shoulder, lowered her voice to a whisper. "With all the bad stuff happening lately, I'm thinking about looking for a new job."
Megan nodded but didn't say she'd been having the same thoughts.
The receptionist prolonged her agony a moment longer by repeating one of her previous statements. "If there's anything I can do, let me know."
"I will," Megan promised, moving past, wishing she could turn the clock back a day and live the last twenty-four hours differently.
Steeling herself for an even more painful confrontation, she made her way down the hall. To her vast relief, Walter's door was closed. Apparently he was inside licking his wounds. Or he'd gotten his wrath out of the way over the phone this morning.
Like Betty, Hank gave her a long look as she came into their office. But after their conversation the previous day, he didn't press for details she didn't want to give. Thankfully, he went into the lab and left her alone.
Which didn't mean she could concentrate on what she was supposed to be doing. Because she couldn't get her mind off Ross, she got out her notebook and wrote down some of the details of yesterday's test.
Then a kind of numbing lethargy blanketed her. Realizing that she'd never had a cup of coffee that morning, she went to the coffee room and poured a mug.
When she returned to her desk, Walter was standing beside her chair, her notebook in his hand, as he thumbed through the notations she'd been keeping on Ross.
Her little gasp of dismay made him turn and look up.
"What are you doing?" she asked.
"I wanted to have a chat with you about last night's incident," he said, his voice cold and hard and his eyes focused directly on her. He sounded angry. Or was he afraid of something?
She swallowed as he continued to stare, as if trying to pick up some hidden cue.
He didn't say, "I'm sorry you were attacked." He didn't ask how she was feeling. God, was he worried that she was going to sue the lab or something?
After several seconds of nerve-racking scrutiny, he continued. "Then I saw this."
Her eyes flicked back to the notebook. "That's confidential…"
"It's not confidential. It's information about the guy from Lisbon—Ross Marshall. Pretty interesting."
"I wasn't prepared to share it with you yet."
"So I gather."
She set the mug down on her desk, sloshing coffee onto the fake wood surface. Reaching for a tissue, she dabbed at the brown liquid.
"It looks like this guy is pretty amazing," Walter went on. "An undocumented extra chromosome. And he's in good physical and mental health? Why the hell didn't you tell me about it?"
"I haven't exactly had time," she hedged.
"Well, you've got the time now. Give me your impressions. If he's got something that other people might want, like accelerated healing, that could mean big money for the lab."
"He's a private citizen. In the first place, you can't appropriate genetic material from him. And in the second place, it's not something people would want. It causes female offspring in his family to die at birth. And only about half the boys survive puberty."
"But if you could alter the unfortunate aspects, you might have something salable."
"He's not a commodity."
"He came to us. The genetic material we tested is our property."
She had no idea if that was true, legally, but she pretended to know what she was talking about. "I don't think so."
He gave her a hard stare. "I want to see the full report on the cytogenetic analysis you did."
"And if I don't want to give it to you?"
"You don't have a choice. You work for me, and anything you do in this lab is my property."
She wanted to protest, but she knew she was already in trouble over what she'd said last night to the police detective. So she silently cursed her stupidity for leaving the notebook where Walter could see it.
Apparently he considered the matter settled. Turning on his heel, he exited the office, leaving her feeling a mixture of relief, anger, and guilt.
When Walter had seen her notes, he'd gotten off track. He hadn't blasted her for the information she'd given Thornton. But now his interest was focused on Ross, and it was her damn stupid fault.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
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JACK WAITED UNTIL almost noon before bugging Stan Murray, one of the technicians who had showed up last night. Stan worked for an independent lab that handled a lot of the Montgomery County workload. Which made for quicker results than going through the government bureaucracy.
He'd cultivated a friendly relationship with Stan. Still, he knew he was pushing when he asked, "You got anything for me on that attack outside Bio Gen Labs yet?"
"Jesus, it was raining pretty hard out there, you know. If there was any fiber, saliva, skin cells, or hairs from the perp, they're probably in a storm drain on their way to the Chesapeake Bay by now."
; "What about the bag of her clothing I gave you?"
"I was waiting for you to ask me that. If I had to guess, I'd say the perp was wearing a raincoat. I do have a little bit of wool fiber."
"From his ski mask."
"There was one thing we picked up from the spot where he threw her to the ground. Dog hairs over near the edge of the building, where the overhang kept some of the rain off. Maybe she was attacked by a German shepherd."
"She said it was a guy."
"Yeah, I guess it would be hard to mistake a dog for a guy. Maybe she was rescued by a Saint Bernard."
"Or she owns a dog."
"The hairs weren't on her clothing. They were on the ground."
"There's a wooded area near the lab. Maybe the dog's a stray, and it was sleeping next to the building sometime in the near past. Or maybe someone who came to the lab for testing left his dog outside. Are you kidding about German shepherds? Saint Bernards? Or do you know what kind of dog hairs?"
"Well, it is something like a shepherd, or a shepherd mix. They're dark gray with light tips. Want me to send them to the FBI?"
"No. Thanks for getting right on this. Let me know if you come up with anything else."
After hanging up, he sat drumming his fingers on the desk, thinking about the attack on Dr. Sheridan. There was something at the edge of his mind. Something that he couldn't quite pull into focus.
Shrugging, he went back to the paperwork on some other cases, sure that if he let the Sheridan thing roll around in his mind for a while, he'd make the connection he was looking for.
HOME again, Ross changed his clothes and fixed himself another rare steak. As he ate, he decided that his leg was almost back to normal. Good news. In contrast to his worries about Megan.
He couldn't stop thinking about the car that had pulled up in front of her house after she'd left for work. Couldn't stop wondering if the attack the night before wasn't what it had appeared to be—a rapist picking a random victim, a woman working late at a lab in an industrial park. What if it had been personal?
He tried to shake that notion. Tried to shake all thoughts of her completely out of his head. After going down the hall to his gym, he picked up a couple of forty-pound dumbbells and started doing arm curls.
When he finished with them, he set the universal gym for leg presses and started on those. Then he went on to push-ups, working until a sheen of perspiration covered his body and his arms were too shaky to lift his weight one more time.
After an hour workout, he showered, then flopped into his office chair, thinking that he was going to catch up on the paperwork he'd promised himself he'd do. After half an hour of staring into space, he decided he might as well go back to Bethesda because it was clear he wasn't going to accomplish anything at home.
JACK pulled out his cell phone and dialed.
"Dr. Sheridan?" he asked when a woman came on the line.
"Speaking."
"This is Detective Thornton. I interviewed you last night after the attack."
"Yes."
"I'm about a mile from your office at the moment, and I was hoping to catch you in."
He heard her voice hitch. "Why?"
"I'd like to ask you a few more questions."
"I wasn't expecting to see you again—I mean, unless you had some information for me."
"Well, what I've found in the past is that when I interview a victim of a violent crime right after it's happened, he or she is usually confused, upset, and running on pure adrenaline."
She gave a nervous laugh. "I guess that's a good description of me last night."
"So I'd like to go over a few details with you now that you've had time to get a little distance. Is there somewhere at the office we can talk?"
She hesitated a minute before answering. "I don't want to talk about it in front of the people here. They've been asking questions, and I just don't want to get into it. Plus…"
When she didn't finish the sentence, he said, "Plus your boss said something to you this morning about our previous conversation."
"How do you know?"
"From his attitude last night."
He heard her suck in a breath, then let it out. "Well, I'm not getting any work done." She paused for another moment. "I might as well stop and have some lunch."
He looked at his watch. One-thirty. He hadn't eaten either.
"Do you know the Two Brothers Deli on Rockville Pike?" she asked.
"Yes."
"Could we meet there? In about fifteen minutes?"
He thought about it. A restaurant had its good and bad points for interviewing victims. There were a lot of distractions, although it was past the lunchtime crunch. On the other hand, the setting might help put her at ease.
"Fine." Hanging up, he turned right at the next intersection and started in the opposite direction down the pike, thinking this was his second luncheon meeting in as many days.
As with Ross Marshall, he got there first, found a table in an out-of-the-way spot, and waited for Dr. Sheridan to arrive.
She was prompt. As she came toward him, he noted that she was neatly dressed but frazzled looking. And she hadn't bothered to put on much makeup that morning.
"How are you?" he asked as she took the seat across from him.
"Not great," she answered, picking up the menu and scanning the offerings.
He let her hide behind the lunch selections. "How's the corned beef here?" he asked.
"Good. Lean."
The waitress came to take their orders, and he decided to indulge in a Reuben sandwich. When Dr. Sheridan ordered a bowl of matzo ball soup, he got a cup for himself, as well.
"You like matzo balls?" she asked as the waitress poured them each a cup of coffee.
"They remind me of Mom's dumplings. Where did you acquire the taste?"
"From some of the guys in medical school. I figured today I needed the curative powers of chicken soup." She took a swallow of coffee, as if she also needed fortification before she could talk to him about anything substantive.
"You should watch the caffeine."
"I missed my first cup of the day. Ross doesn't drink it."
"He stayed at your house last night?"
Her color deepened. "On the couch," she said quickly.
He wondered by whose choice. His? Hers? Or were they not as close as they'd looked to be last night? What he said was "I'm not trying to pry into your personal life."
"I hope not."
He'd give a lot to know about her relationship with Ross Marshall.
He reached in his pocket for a notebook, wondering exactly how to play this. Not Spenser for Hire. Maybe he could pull off Detective Marcus Welby.
"If you don't mind, I'd like to go back over the questions I asked you last night and see if you remember any additional details."
"I wish we didn't have to. I'd like to forget about it."
"I understand. But the more you tell me, the more likely we are to catch the guy."
She nodded, looked embarrassed. "There's something I forgot to tell you the other night. You were asking if anyone had a grudge against me or something. Well, it's not a grudge. But there's a doctor from NIH who's been coming on pretty strong to me. He started out acting as if he could help get my project past the roadblock on patient trials of gene therapy. Then I began thinking that his interest was more personal."
"He's threatened you?"
"Not exactly. But he said it would be a mistake to keep avoiding him."
Jack picked up his pen. "What's his name?"
"Dr. Carter Stillwell." She pulled a piece of paper out of her purse and handed it across the table. "I feel bad about making him a suspect."
"Do you think it could have been him?"
"I don't know. I told you the guy wore a mask."
"Could Stillwell have been sitting in his car outside, waiting for you?"
"I guess he could have been. He came to the lab the other day."
"Oh?"
"He'd been try
ing to get me on the phone—and I hadn't returned his calls."
"He sounds persistent. Thanks for filling me in."
"Please, could you be discreet in your investigation of him? I'd feel terrible if I got him into trouble," she emphasized again.
"You'd feel worse if he turned out to be the perp and he got away with it."
The food came, and they paused for a few minutes to eat.
"Do you remember anything else about the guy last night?" he asked.
She hesitated for a moment. "Nothing specific. But I keep having the feeling that I know him." She shifted in her seat.
"Something that makes you think it's Stillwell?" She deliberately took another bite of matzo ball before answering, and he was sorry that she could use the food as an excuse for staring down into her plate. "Not specifically Stillwell." She looked uncomfortable, then said in a tentative voice, "Um… there's something else I keep thinking about. When Walter said there had been some kind of mistake in a test. I started wondering if it was a mistake I'd made. If it was one of my clients."
"Do you often make mistakes?" "No. But I almost grabbed the wrong tube of blood when I started working on Ross's test," she said as though making a confession.
"So you care about him, and it flustered you." "I didn't come here to talk about me and Ross." This time he was the one who flushed. "Sorry." He thought she was going to switch topics until she cleared her throat and said, "You know each other."
"He and I have worked together on a number of cases. He comes to me with useful information."
She might not have come here to talk about Ross, but she was hanging on his words, so he went on. "We had a meeting about a case yesterday at lunch. He'd called me. So I was surprised to see him again the same evening—in a completely different context." "A meeting about the killer?" "What do you know about that?" "Ross dropped his phone near the killer's place and had to go back for it."
"How did he happen to tell you that?" "He said that if the guy found the phone, I was in danger, being at his house."
"You mean when you were taking care of him—after he got shot," he said, without missing a beat. "How did you know that?" "A lucky guess, actually." She squeezed her eyes closed. "Damn." "I'm not going to tell anyone. At lunch he didn't look his usual robust self. I asked what was wrong, and he said he'd picked up something when he was scoping out… the killer's place. I got to wondering if he'd picked up a bullet. Did you remove it?"