by S A Gardner
And if speaking glances could really speak, Damian’s would have roared Make one false move and you’ll wish you’ve never been born.
Was he really jealous? I mean, Rafael was handsome to a fault and a genius to boot but he could be a god and it wouldn’t do a thing for me.
Still, it didn’t feel half bad, watching Damian wrestling with all that premium testosterone thundering in his system over me. A dash of jealousy never hurt anyone, did it? Kept the fires raging and all that jazz?
Damian seemed to have wised up to the fact that Rafael was baiting him. Which, son of a gun, he was.
Who’d have believed it? Though I knew this wasn’t over me. Not on Rafael’s side. To him this was strictly between two hot-blooded Latin males.
“I know that.” Damian turned to the rest of us, his gaze once more a placid lake at sunset. “But I think I have what we need to get inside as honored guests whom they’ll do everything to accommodate. At random intervals, the center’s phantom financiers send consultants of their own to inspect the doctors’ and researchers’ work. Those consultants are never the same, and are never announced, either in arrival time or identity.”
“Wow, Damian,” Lucia exclaimed. “That’s just perfect. And since those consultants’ visits are random, it will be the easiest thing in the world to go in as them.”
I winced at Lucia’s optimism. Never a good thing to tempt fate to show you just how not easy everything could become.Sure enough, Damian sighed. “It would be easy if said ‘random’ visit wasn’t taking place within the coming week. The week we can’t afford for our enemies to have a whiff of suspicion about our actions against them.”
“So if we go in and then the real consultants follow before the week is up we’ll be exposed.” Ayesha compressed her generous lips. “Not good.”
“But you said it’s random.” Lucia couldn’t let go of that specific point. She still had a problem with taking things too literally, clinging to the letter of promises and declarations from authority figures. Must come with the territory of being twenty-three. “How come you know when they’ll be visiting?”
Damian only said, “I know.”
Suz cleared her throat. “And you know who those random consultants are going to be this time, too?”
Damian ran his hand over his beard. “I have an ID on three. Three are still being picked. They do like to leave everything un-finalized till the last possible minute, to make sure the results of their surprise sweeps are as unbiased as possible. Consultants’ reports have been bought before.”
Suz persisted. “Then all we have to do is stay with your sources until they find out who the other three are then we’ll make sure we postpone their visit till after the week is over.”
Damian nodded. “That’s the only thing to do. José, Shad, Pierro and you can take care of that.”
“Can’t I stay with Anna’s retrieval team?” Suz imploring eyes darted from her leader to Matt. The woman had it bad. And Damian knew it too well. He also knew too well what having the object of your desire in front of your eyes and in jeopardy could do. To you, and to team effort.
He wasn’t adding another us-like combo to our situation.
He shook his head. “The guys will need your diplomatic skills and distracting presence to pull this off, chica.”
And with that, we got down to laying down plans.
Ten
Everything was going according to plan.
So much so I was beginning to itch.
In disguise, Damian, Matt, Ayesha, Lucia, Savannah and me had entered the facility, had had a conquering hero’s reception. Right now, doctors and researchers were running ahead of us with smiles big enough for us to stumble into and get lost. Sheesh. They sure needed their sponsorship money.
My itching had another reason. And it wasn’t the damned wig and synthetic face. It was nearing the moment of truth. And there, sitting half-propped up in bed in a spacious, sterile room, hooked to drips and monitors and looking wan and heartbreaking was a nearly unrecognizable Anna.
Hot needles erupted in my eye sockets, pushed forward. Damn. I hadn’t even thought of this. What seeing her would do to me. The Anna I knew was another superior physical specimen like her team, perfect and powerful in every way. During Russia, she’d taken a bullet in the arm in our welcome-to-Russia raid. I’d operated on her in our Surgical Trailer Suite. I’d marveled at the speed with which she’d bounced back from injury, how she’d leaped over post-operative recuperation and went back to full active duty in a couple of days. I remembered how torn Ed had been over her comparatively minor injury, how he’d been unable to stop obsessing over her wellbeing even when I assured him she wasn’t in the least danger.
But I’d been wrong. According to Damian, it was the injury, the curtailed recuperation and the taxing activity that had come on its heels that had unearthed her rare and fatal disease. Another thing that had led to her rapid manifestation and deterioration was her surprise pregnancy.
The pregnancy she’d refused to terminate, even to buy the months she needed to survive. In fact, it was danger to her fetus from her disease that had made both her and Ed more desperate for treatment.
Anna had a fulminating case of Primary Antiphospholipid Syndrome, an autoimmune disorder characterized by recurrent venous or arterial thrombosis and embolism and fetal loss. It caused an alteration in blood coagulation, but the mechanisms were not yet defined.
Anna had manifested by a cerebrovascular accident, which contradictorily occurred with higher frequency in younger, healthier individuals.
She was just recovering from the CVA with apparently no residual neurological damage when she had an angina attack from an embolus to her coronary artery. When they were told that there were no treatments but anti-coagulative medicines and other hopeful prophylactic and unproven-to-do-any-good experimental treatments and procedures, and that she’d probably end up losing her baby in the second or third trimester and/or have a catastrophic and a most probably fatal episode of multi-organ infarctions over a period of days to weeks, I guessed it was the final thing that had sent Ed berserk.
Now this center was offering Anna treatment, not amelioration. She was part of was an outside-any-jurisdiction-radar cloned stem-cell therapy clinical trial, and so far, it was working. According to Damian’s reports, Anna had not had an embolic episode for four months. And her pregnancy had advanced without mishaps till well into the third trimester.
I approached Anna with the entourage of the center’s heads hot on my heels, explaining, bragging, shoving results under my nose. I blocked them out as I took in Anna.
She was as white as the sheets she lay over, her Titian hair a splash of jarring contrast among the colorlessness, her freckles standing out like sunspots against her pallor. Her breathing was labored and deep. Not surprising when her long, strong body had lost so much mass and it all seemed to have migrated to her enormous abdomen where her protective hand lay over her precious baby.
She might not be dying, but she wasn’t a well woman. The toll the illness had taken on her before the treatments had begun to take effect showed. But what showed more was her anguish. It was etched on her every distinctive feature. Anna was torn. Was it with fear? That the treatments would cease to work? That she would carry her baby to term then die and leave it alone? Leave Ed alone with the responsibility and the grief? Or was it over the price of her survival and her baby’s?
I stopped by her bed and she kept her eyes closed. I took in the computer and video set-up by her bedside. It must be how she communicated with Ed. The urge to tell her to just get me the son of a bitch online rose like a tidal wave. I could see myself ranting at Ed, telling him to just give himself up before something went even more wrong and I lost the last tatters of control over Damian and he went out and rent him limb from limb.
I thought curbing that urge showed a great advancement in what Damian had called “weather control.”
I congratulated myself on my hard-won restrai
nt, absently answered one of my followers and Anna jerked as if she’d been shot. What the…? Oh, God—no.
She’d recognized my voice!
OK, OK, calm down. So what? Even I hadn’t recognized myself when I’d looked in the mirror a couple of hours ago. She’d take one look at me and think she’d imagined it.
Next second my self-placations were at my feet in ashes. Her eyes had snapped open and lodged into mine, wide on a blast of incredulity. And definite recognition.
So much for my disguise.
Dammit. Damn PACT vanguard elite. Damian had trained her too well.
Her eyes filled then overflowed with chaos, and I knew.
Her next breath would bring exposure.
Eleven
Exposure was not an option.
In a fraction of a heartbeat, I advanced on Anna, the sedative injection I kept at my wrist slipping into my hand.
I had to silence her.
I pretended to be leaning over her for a hands-on exam, ready to inject her, keeping my eyes on hers all the time, judging which fractured breath would be held and let loose on the cry I dreaded.
Then her reaction came and I almost keeled over her.
She let out a ragged rasp, closed her eyes again, sagged into an even more boneless posture. It was the sight of her tears that got me to recoil worse than if she had screamed.
God. Oh, God. Thank you. Good girl, Anna. Good girl.
“Don’t mind her, Dr. McAllister,” the closest head to me blurted out at detecting my distress. “She’s always crying, and she won’t talk to anyone. We find her disposition baffling since she’s the only one who so far had an almost a 100% result. Would you like to take a look at her latest tests?”
I gave Anna another protracted look. Her chin quivered and fat tears made tracks down her cheeks into her dry lips.
Oh, Anna.
She thought I was here to remove her as the reason behind so much death and destruction. I’d seen the fear and the resignation in her eyes before she’d closed them.
She really must no longer be thinking rationally if she thought me capable of sacrificing an innocent for any reason. And then how could she not realize that harming her would not end Ed’s danger? She was the only thing he feared for. Remove his fear and he’d be unstoppable.
Damian had given me an eloquent analogy. Imagine me as a loose cannon. His damage could be incalculable.
But whatever she thought, she wasn’t going to do anything to jeopardize my cover or defend herself. God—if only I could reassure her. Get her out of here first.
I moved away from her, expressed my interest in moving to the next case. As I exited her room I turned to the man who seemed to be tied to me with a ten-inch piece of rope with a stern look. “100% results? That’s a bit overzealous, isn’t it?” At his overeager denials, I sighed.
“Let’s see those tests.”
As he spilled over himself providing me with evidence to the accuracy of his declaration and the proof of his genius, as he’d been the one responsible for Anna’s procedure and continuing treatments, my mind churned.
The test results, if they were not doctored, were astounding. No presence of aPL antibodies, no abnormalities in phospholipid-dependent tests of coagulation.
My heart raced, in thankfulness for her recovery, then it compressed when I remembered at what price it had been bought for. And if not for our desperate efforts in Colombia, the price wouldn’t have been our dead there, or the new six lost lives, or even the dozens still in danger. If we hadn’t been able to stop Jake from his genocidal plans, the plans he’d only been able to complete by breaching our defenses thanks to Ed’s betrayal, the death toll would have been in the hundreds of thousands, even millions.
I shook myself, focused on the problem growing in my mind. Though the tests concerning her disease were good, her general condition wasn’t. And then came her pregnancy. I’d only ever seen anyone so heavily pregnant in a twin pregnancy.
I didn’t ask her doctors if this was true. It wasn’t wise to display any special interest in her. But now moving her was taking new dimensions. What if she wasn’t up to being moved?
Not that not moving her was an option anymore.
We’d come this far. And since it was so far so good…
“Dr. McAllister, would you mind stepping outside with me for a moment?”
Uh, oh. Thought too soon.
I turned to the woman whose harsh voice had almost grazed my back through the layers of clothes and disguise.
She was standing at the threshold looking like a vulture who’d just swooped in on a fresh corpse.
Bracing myself, I turned to her, shot her a this-had-better- be-good-or-else glare. It didn’t have any effect on her.
I strolled outside the room at a nonchalant pace, caught Damian’s eye as he followed Matt out of the adjacent room, playing assistant to Matt’s consultant.
Possible trouble, mine alerted. Acknowledged, his answered.
Then I looked down a few inches at the gaunt woman, studied her for a second. Irritable, vindictive lines scoured her face.
Hmm. This one thought spite was a way of life. I decided to fight fire with fire. I arched one artificial eyebrow, ignoring the bold-font nameplate on her atrophic breast. “And you are?”
“Dr. Megan Drew, Executive Director of Department Alpha—this one,” she added the unnecessary qualification as if talking to a mentally-challenged person. “You’re in violation of due procedure. You’re required to turn in your credentials so they’d be photocopied and kept on file in each department.”
Yeah? If this was due process, I was born ten minutes ago. This hag suspected something, no idea how.
She must possess clairvoyance of some sort. All evil witches did, after all.
And I was born three minutes ago if all she’d do with our photocopied credentials was keep them on file.
She was running to her sponsors for verification, while we were still here.
So this is where what worked on the planning board stopped working in practice. Had to try to steer things back on course before I decided it was time for our auxiliary plan, though. I pursed my lips, gave her the best glacial stare my green contacts-covered eyes afforded me.
“We’ve been briefed in immaculate detail as to what level of cooperation we are to expect,” I said. “The absolute kind. And it’s not the kind we’ve been getting so far, Dr. Drew. In the last hour, your people have presented us with many obstructions and prevarications. But this latest distraction takes the cake. If you don’t pull your act together right now, all this is going into our reports.”
The beady eyes blipped at the fluency of my aggression. But then purpose settled into them. Sharp bitch. She smelled something fishy, and she was ballsy enough to play her hand and risk losing big.
I waited for her to spell it out. “Maybe you’d like to call our sponsors and verify the practice, Dr. McAllister?”
She was gambling I wouldn’t want to make that call. Did I already say, sharp bitch? Seemed it was time for our auxiliary plan; grabbing Anna among many other patients to make it look like we were after either acquiring or destroying the clinical trial and not after her in specific, keeping our real intentions and existence secret, and blowing our way out of the center.
I pretended to raise my eyes in exasperation, met Damian’s in the distance again.
Any moment now, I silently told him.
On your signal, he replied in kind.
Then I returned my eyes to my challenger, gave bluffing our way out of this one last chance. “Why don’t you lead the way, Dr. Drew? I’m going to enjoy the crushing slap on the wrist you’re going to get for disregarding your sponsors’ decrees just to flex some muscles in front of your subordinates. They hate stars, Dr. Drew. I would have thought someone your age would have learned to provide results and keep a low profile. But then that’s why I am the consultant and you’re the consultantee.”
This got to her, big time. It scar
ed her, sure, but it also enraged her enough to blind her to consequences.
Way to go, St. James . Decimate her, and in public, leave her no recourse but to lash back even if at suicidal costs.
Oh, well. Done now. Now to deal with it.
She turned on her heel and flounced for her office, leading the way as I’d demanded. I followed at a slower pace, glancing around as my team gathered, pretending concern over the cause of the interruption.
I caught Damian’s and Matt’s eyes, our two weapons of mass destruction. They just nodded. There were ten armed guards in this section. Ten times that many wouldn’t stand a chance once my two men were unleashed. Lucia, Ayesha and Savannah came forward, knew they’d be the second wave once gun-wielders were overcome. I quickened my pace. I was taking care of dear Dr. Drew before she drew outside attention to us.
“Dr. McAllister!”
What now? I tossed a look over my shoulder, found the bio-engineer who’d been so eager to impress me with Anna’s results, running after me, waving a folder. Didn’t the jerk sense the situation was going to mushroom out of control any moment now, that I was about going to give him an unrepeatable opportunity of seeing his boss’s ass kicked, literally?
“I saw how skeptical you were at Anna Summers 100% results, so I brought you her old tests. I also brought you the other cases’ that have been handled by—uh—other colleagues from the beginning—as a control, if you will.”
I didn’t slow down, let him almost run alongside me as I followed the stomping harridan ahead. He shoved an open file below my nose and I almost lashed it out of his hand and crammed it down his throat. I turned to blast him away with a few choice words—and I saw it. The agitation, the anticipation in his eyes.
He was sweaty and flushed and high on the adrenaline of—what? The desperation for me to take a look?
Yeah. No doubt about it.
He was showing me something and he was busting-a-vessel frantic for me to pick up on it. Whistleblowing?