Warrior Reborn

by KH LeMoyne

  He would have preferred to stay in his office, especially with Briet in the hospital. However, Max’s appearance in his office an hour after he and Dr. Sanyu returned from the lab indicated watchful eyes were a little too alert.

  Max hadn’t even mentioned Dr. Sanyu, which in itself was unusual. Jason had left Sanyu outside the conference room Max used as an office on his increasingly frequent trips to the hospital. Sanyu had still been in the conference room with Max, the door closed, on a conference call thirty-five minutes later when Jason left for coffee.

  He could hear their voices, but no intelligible words. Not that he’d been snooping.

  For Max to show up so often was unprecedented. For him to have no objective when he dropped in on Jason was stranger.

  The patients would be finished with their inpatient process in two weeks. The remainder of the trial called for weekly visits and treatments and then biweekly visits for the subsequent months. In theory, processes should be calming down. Results should be evening out.

  So what was Max involved with Dr. Sanyu on that precluded giving details to him?

  The final round of treatments would ship next week. Each, closely monitored and accompanied by registered courier, would be housed in a secured environment in the lab building.

  Jason had positive confirmations of shipment and receipt from the Welson lab point of contact. He had reviewed and found no inconsistencies with the patient data. All the doctors were comfortable with the current protocol and the responses of their patients.

  Then there were Briet’s slides.

  He pitched the apple core into the sink for the disposal. Not sanitary, but he scored. He plucked through the unopened pile of mail the housekeeper left on his coffee table. The apartment didn’t need much cleaning. Yet given the unpredictability of his hours, he paid willingly for clean rooms, laundry, and the nice elderly woman even stacked the mail in a tidy fashion.

  Trash, he tossed to the left, bills to the right until only one envelope remained in his hands. With a stiff exhale, he stood to toss the envelope in a black rattan basket in his bookshelf. It slid to rest on top of several dozen other unopened envelopes. He blinked and looked away from the basket. Discipline and restraint, either could constrain almost any sin imaginable. That and a good set of rules.

  Jason walked back to the computer and stared down at the DNA sequence, the box of slides sitting open to the side. Shaking his head, he moved back to the couch.

  His life was about rules.

  Give everything two hundred percent. Work and play.

  Don’t let one side interfere with the other.

  Don’t wear out your welcome. Never hard to do if you didn’t keep people too close.

  Don’t get too involved. It will only lead to errors in judgment and misunderstandings. Relationships should be enjoyable but brief. He’d always treated women with respect, but kept his associations short. Honesty about his lack of desire for commitment made it easier to move on without problems on either side.

  So why was he so intent on pursuing Briet Hyden? She was the epitome of the reason he kept relationships superficial. Occasionally, he ran across a nice woman. He’d cut them loose in a flash.

  However, Briet wasn’t just nice. She was smart and appealing. He would find himself knee deep in conversations with her, just waiting for her smile. He wanted to please her, protect her, and meet minds with her.

  Yeah, fuck that. He wanted much more from her. At dinner, in the office, and in his bed, the last with a deep, dangerous, hot, aching want. For her, he was slowly breaking every rule he’d so carefully instituted. Those rules were there for good reasons—to protect him and others.

  What was worse, he knew he wasn’t about to stop seeing her.

  Now he was crossing the line with his job. He scrunched his eyes and leaned back against the couch. No, be fair.

  Briet hadn’t forced his current direction. She had made him aware of inconsistencies in the project. He didn’t like inconsistencies. Yet he had left the office so he wouldn’t be caught researching his current obsession.

  The monitor still displayed details of DNA and genome structures. His eyes burned from reading and looking at those slides. Only one slide had made it out of the box since he’d been home. It was all it took. He could see the DNA strands without the damn microscope. If he hadn’t focused his breathing and fought for control, he would have ended up on his face on the carpet.

  Now, hours later he had only a fraction of a clue more than he had in Briet’s lab. If what he had researched was true, then some sort of DNA splicing existed in each of the patients from Briet’s blood samples.

  The objective of the splicing he couldn’t fathom, but he hadn’t achieved his level of success without tenacity. These patients had nothing in common from a DNA perspective, except for one thing.

  Jason didn’t want to consider the option, but he was a believer of Occam’s law—the simplest explanation tends to be the correct one.

  In this case, the commonality among the patients was the Welson protocol.

  CHAPTER 14

  Jason slid his hands into his pockets and looked from his office window to the street below. The familiar figures of Detective Frost and his partner moved toward a car parked in the hospital’s visitor space and then drove away.

  Why would they come out here for a follow-up?

  Administrative issues could be handled by phone. As much as he didn't want to bring it up, he would have to ask Briet. His business or not, the circumstances surrounding Sheri Arnault’s death still didn’t sit right with him.

  He shook his head. He would have to manufacture an excuse to go find her and then keep his concerns from her. No, better that she knew his thoughts.

  With a pause, he considered her schedule. Her lab hours were early in the morning. By now, she was usually finished with the patients but lingered around the nurse’s station until the beginning of the next shift. Damn, he could probably close his eyes and sniff her out like the hound dog he’d become.

  The taste of her mouth still lingered on his taste buds. Beneath everything he ate, he caught a hint of her sweetness. The soft press of her lips against his followed him through the day. Two days and ten hours to be exact. The time since he’d last dropped her off and kissed her good night outside of her apartment building. With little persuasion, he would have spent the night with her, satiated this overwhelming compulsion he had to feel her hot skin against his and been done with the need to watch her crying his name as he screwed them both into oblivion.

  If only it were that easy. Every time he turned around, a whisper of her presence dissipated before he could make contact, leaving him a captive of her scent.

  He ran a hand across the back of his neck. He’d known the first night he’d kissed her, the woman was like an addiction. One quick night wouldn’t be enough. The only option he had was to follow the compulsion where it led. To burn himself out in the hot frenzy she lit inside of him and purge his need once and for all.

  Might work? He grimaced. More likely, it would suck him in deeper.

  “Jason.”

  He spun around to see Max in the doorway and waved him in.

  “I won’t keep you, just wanted to know if you have all the confirmations for the hospital fund raiser next week.”

  Jason leaned over his desk and pulled a sheet from beneath his folders. His CEO, Hauer Gault, was on the board of several of the city’s hospitals. Not this one, but given his connections he was more than willing to show and display his project team for PR and advancement. “Waiting on Panelli and Hyden, heard back from Barton this morning. All the rest are good to go.”

  Of course, she hadn’t responded. Social functions for the project were nowhere on Briet’s list. Not that he could blame her after the stockholder’s meeting. “I can get the others locked up this afternoon. Benefit’s before the end of the inpatient phase, so everyone should be available.”

  “Good, you’ll want to make sure they’re th
ere.” Max nodded. “Hauer’s bringing some high rollers who would benefit from exposure to the medical teams and some of the primary researchers.”

  “These are existing contributors of hospital funding or new contacts?”

  “All of them will contribute for the hospital benefit. But they’re scoping the Welson process to support another potential venture.” Max leaned against the table. “One you might be interested in directing. This project should wind down enough to consider something new in a couple of weeks.”

  Jason frowned. “Trial doesn’t end for a few more months.” He’d never left a trial mid-stream and had no inclination to start.

  Max shrugged. “Not pulling you off. Just figured there won’t be much action. The new project won’t officially launch for six months so you’d have time to prep and a little down time between the two. Unless you’re not interested?”

  “I’ll certainly consider what you have next. But I don’t want to walk away without finishing here.”

  Max pushed away from the table to leave. “I hear you. Trust me, your work here has been noticed. I think you’ll find the company will make it worth your while. I’ll send you some details next week, before the meeting. Give you a chance to ask Hauer and his constituents some questions.”

  Jason watched him leave and considered Max’s words. Worth his while? Since when did Hauer Gault have constituents?

  He grabbed his jacket. At least Max had given him a legitimate reason to hunt down Briet.

  ***

  Not diet.

  Mouse click.

  Not drugs.

  Mouse click.

  No change in family circumstance. Parents were here every day.

  Briet closed each window on the monitor of her terminal and leaned back in her chair with a frustrated exhale. She’d checked every possible cause, physical or otherwise, with the potential to provoke Annie’s relapse into nightmares. Nothing had changed in the girl’s treatment procedures or daily routine. While Annie was now back to a full forty-eight hours of demon-free dreams, Briet couldn’t quite discount the worry that there was more reason for concern.

  But precognition wasn’t her power. Her scope was limited to the ability to confirm the presence of the spliced DNA strand in Annie, and each of her other patients enduring the trial.

  Random house calls to other doctors’ patients weren’t the norm, but she had spent several long nights on the ward and most of the trial patients were on the same wing as Annie. Her checking in on extra patients had gone unnoticed by the few people on staff during the off-hours. Walking into the children’s rooms to validate her suspicion had been simple. Yet, verification of her suspicions did nothing to ease her mind. More wasn’t better. Triggers existed in the body naturally, each corresponded to natural phases of human degeneration over time, be it skin cells, or muscle, bone or brain. The new splice was retarding the cancer growth. If the result had been the objective of the Welson trial, Briet would have been pleased. Surprised, but pleased.

  This sophistication of the engineering and delivery of the DNA modification was beyond current human knowledge and technology. Heck, she didn’t think she could reproduce, much less unravel, the process on her own without enormous effort.

  “Very deep thoughts, Dr. Hyden.”

  She swiveled around on her stool. Jason leaned against the doorway, arms crossed, his expression casual, but questioning.

  “Trying to figure out what set Annie off again,” she responded with an absent tap to the mouse.

  He nodded and walked over to lean on the table beside her. “What did the police want?”

  “You do keep on top of things.”

  He shrugged, not giving up his secrets. She decided to try the truth. “Detective Frost wanted more details. When and where I’d last used my car, where I normally kept it. Pretty mundane stuff. What’s wrong?”

  Jason was frowning, his brows drawn tight together in response to her statement. “Anything else?”

  “They mentioned that the company who owned the garbage truck didn’t know it was missing. The driver hasn’t been identified, and all the traffic cameras in a four block section have been out of commission for several months.”

  He raised his brow, waiting for more and she let out a sigh. “There weren’t skid marks.”

  “For Sheri?”

  She shook her head. “No, the truck. He must not have seen her until the last minute.”

  His expression hadn’t changed, but his silence raised the tension in the room.

  “Why does this bother you? I’ve disclosed, now spit it out.”

  He looked away from her and turned back to stare at her as if considering. With a slight hesitation, he spoke. “The block where she was killed has been going through demolition for urban renewal. For a while.”

  She shook her head again, not understanding his point.

  “The few buildings there were demolished about six months ago, nothing but two to three blocks of open space. How would anyone not see her at night with her headlights on?”

  She popped out the first thing to come to mind. “Drunk driver? They manage to survive collisions remarkably well.”

  “During the several times I spoke with Frost last week, the police had no prints or trace to determine who was driving the truck. That’s a pretty limber and talented drunk to survive, clean up, and not be tracked.”

  “You can’t think it was on purpose? Sheri wasn’t the type to attract enemies.”

  He gave her an odd look. “You never know what it takes to rub some people the wrong way. They asked about your patterns, not hers. ”

  She leaned back in her chair and ran her fingers through her hair. He was sounding as paranoid as Ansgar. “Did you come here to check on the police report?”

  He smiled and reached two fingers to smooth over a few strands of her hair.

  “I need your confirmation for attendance at the benefit.”

  She winced. “I don’t have time.”

  Not very mature, but the last thing she wanted was to take time out to primp, posture, and pretend political correctness. “I don’t want to go dance attendance on the big wigs.”

  He leaned forward until his face was beside hers. His breath stirred her hair, percolating a tingle of delicious sensations along her nerves. “I can make it worth your while.”

  She turned enough to look at him. He didn’t move back, lips only inches from hers. “How?”

  “I’ll take you away for the weekend, somewhere relaxing and quiet. No worries, no crowds, just some fresh air, good food, and a little private company.” He raised an eyebrow, looked purposefully at her lips, and gave her a soulful glance.

  Yep, soulful. A perfect term for the look. She bet it had a one hundred percent closure rate on other women because it was damn well working on her.

  “In return, you can shimmy into a formal dress for one small hour next week.”

  She looked at his lips and bit her own bottom one to keep from leaning forward into him. “Just one. Promise?”

  “Promise. More than that would be inhumane.”

  Ah, there came the dimple with his smile. She didn’t even bother to hold her own back. “So where would we go?”

  He looked at the floor and pursed his lips in thought. “There are a few nice bed and breakfasts an hour or so out of town. Do you have a preference?”

  Yes. With a quick glance away and back, she mustered up courage and threw out her thought. “I have a place on the coast a little over an hour away. You can see the ocean, the stars, and there’s nobody to bother you within miles but seagulls.”

  He didn’t say anything for a minute, his stare causing her a minute’s regret. Maybe offering the lighthouse wasn’t such a good idea. She bet he was used to being in charge, calling the shots.

  “If you will feel relaxed and comfortable there, I think it’s a perfect idea.”

  Her heartbeat picked up with a quick surge.

  He pushed from the table and moved behind her, re
aching across her shoulder for a pad of paper and a pen to place before her. The movement positioned her between him and the open doorway. She watched his gaze shift to the hallway as he leaned in closer to her ear. “I have an executive meeting tomorrow afternoon, but I could pick you up at your apartment afterward?”

  Her nod ended in a sigh as he brushed his lips across her temple.

  “And, Briet…”

  She leaned into his cheek, feeling his words whisper warmth across her neck.

  “I’ll call before I head out, so try to remember your phone.”

  She hid her smile as he left the room. She would have him ready, willing, and able for a whole weekend. Maybe things weren’t as dire as she’d thought.

  CHAPTER 15

  Briet raked into the mud, pulled up three more victims, and layered them on top of the others in her wire bucket.

  The warm bake of the Indian summer sun and the low tide was providing a decent harvest. The focus of looking for soft squirts in the sand and digging kept her mind off Jason’s arrival.

  Well, not entirely. Her nerves jumped at the very thought of two days alone with him. What if he simply couldn’t stand her company that long? What if he had habits she couldn’t tolerate?

  Enough. She was only torturing herself.

  She walked further out toward the incoming tide to squat and rinse the clams. Raising a hand to shield her eyes, she looked back over her shoulder along the rise of the cliff face. The rickety stairway zigzagged up the rocks to the lighthouse. No silhouette of a man above broke the rock profile.

  It wasn’t as if he wouldn’t show up, but she couldn’t quell her nerves.

  He’d called her at eight the night before, still deep in his meeting. Regret and annoyance had resonated in his voice even across the cell connection. She’d convinced him to let her go ahead and extracted his promise to drive up in the morning. The decision hadn’t helped her anticipation, though she had been able to get some groceries and settle in.