Lethal Cure

by S A Gardner

  My nod was frantic. “And it hurts—even more than Clara, more than Mom…” I bit my tongue. Couldn’t believe I’d said that. Guess it came out because it was true. Clara was at peace. So was Mom. I hoped. Knowing that made the pain only mine. I could handle myself. But him—his pain I couldn’t deal with.

  “Yeah. The dead and the gone have no problems.”

  He understood. Of course, he did. And it was the same with him.

  He sighed. “You have nothing but, sweetheart. Missing you all so much that it messes with my sanity is one thing. Even the rage and futility are survivable. Not sure worrying clear out of my mind over you is.”

  “Says the Terminator! God, Dad, you sound like Damian!”

  His all-seeing eyes turned my mind inside out, spread out the pieces for inspection. “So—you’re on those terms now.”

  Yeah. Now I remembered I hadn’t disclosed the change in Damian’s and my standing. Not that I’d had the chance to in our last twenty-minute call, which he’d spent informing me of the depth of Damian’s duplicity. If I’d told him anything then, it would have been that I was on my way to split Damian’s head open!

  I nodded, then shook my head. “I don’t know what terms we’re on. Or should be on.” He made no comment. Probably none to be made. And I blurted out, “Have you heard from Mom?”

  Silence boomed. Great going, Calista, rub it in. Remind the man that the woman he loved with every last spark of his tempestuous soul couldn’t bear the burden of loving him. Went in search for peace of mind and left him behind.

  “Yeah. I did.”

  My heart rammed against my throat.

  Then he said two more words, and it crashed back. “I do.”

  She contacted him. She still did.

  Oh, Mom—why not me, too?

  If she was in contact with him, then she knew where to find me if she wanted to. She must not want to.

  His exhalation was heavy. “She—sends letters. Didn’t want me to tell you. She can’t face you.”

  “She faces you!”

  “I left her, in a way. She left you. She doesn’t think it’s forgivable.”

  “Tell her it is. It’s me who needs forgiveness, for disappointing her. Please, Dad. Tell her I just want to hear from her, maybe see her sometime, hold her. I won’t drag her into my life or do anything to scare her.”

  He turned my face with a gentle finger that had clawed men’s eyes out, examining my concealed injuries, making his point. “Just being who we are scares her beyond endurance, sweetheart. In my case, she seems to have accepted it. In yours, I don’t know if she ever will. Or can.”

  The world turned watery again. Dammit. I wasn’t shedding more tears. Served no purpose. Wouldn’t change her mind. Or mine.

  I spilled off his lap, looked around the swimming office. “So how come they’re letting me see you? In the warden’s office no less?”

  He leaned formidable forearms on his knees, bent forward in a relaxed pose. “The new warden is Newt Kawolski.”

  Uncle Newt? Dad’s partner from his days as a beat cop? Wow. “How and when did that happen?”

  “As for how, he got a degree in criminal psychology, got involved in penitentiary system reform, became a warden about the time I was convicted. Seems he’d been trying to get a hold of a prison I was in for a while. He succeeded just a month ago.”

  “So why didn’t I see you before? And why are you in solitary? The Uncle Newt I know would have let you get away with murder!”

  “He did. And he does. There was this con who was in for ‘attempted child molestation.’ My investigations turned up six raped, dead boys, ages four to seven. But he had a good lawyer, appealed and was about to walk out. They kept him guarded so we couldn’t get to him. The piece of shit teased me about it the one time I saw him, told me to lie in bed sweating what he’d be doing out there. Couldn’t take the chance he’d slip through my net once he was out. So I took care of him on the spot. Smashed his head wide open, as he had all those little boys’.”

  Ferocious fury and pride. And fear. All ran down my tangled nerves. The system had punished Dad for acting as judge and executioner. To me, he hadn’t only been justified, he’d been compelled. For two decades he’d watched the system letting monsters slip by, or catching them only to let them go, even more rabid. But what if he—we—ever made wrong decisions? Executed the undeserving? That was where fear came in.

  The child killer wasn’t undeserving.

  And knowing Dad, how meticulous he was, I was sure he’d never executed one who was.

  I inhaled, nodded. “So Uncle Newt had to lock you up, for appearances’ sake?”

  “Yeah. The DA was enraged but everyone, the guards included, testified that it was a fight he instigated, that he fell. Since I can’t get more than any more life sentences, it all died down. As usual. So—solitary for me. Where I want to be, really. It’s where I take breaks to plan stuff, conduct business in peace. The only drawback about that in the past years was being unable to see you. In this past month I was preparing the autobiographer business with Newt.”

  “But why? Why am I not here as me again?”

  “I have too many enemies now. You’re safer this way.”

  Okay. Didn’t matter how I got to see him. This was better than any arrangement I could have dreamed of. “What about when no book materializes? What will the grapevine make of me?”

  “Says who there’ll be no book? I am writing one. A series. I will include everything up to the time I got convicted.”

  A whistle escaped me. “It’ll be a bestseller! Aren’t you afraid of the high profile?”

  “Why? I can’t have more enemies than I have now. And it’s all public knowledge already. I’ll just put it in my own words. I have publishers already in a bidding war over me before I even show them one page. And the money will go to financing even more efficient operations, for both of us.”

  He was really going to do this! And he’d thought it all through. As usual.

  I shook my ringing head as his eyes cleaved into me, searching for the focus of my agitation. “But you’re not here just to see your dad. Tell me, Calista.”

  I told him. He listened, as he always did. It took a while to give him a precise account of the past three days. Couldn’t give him the watered-down version of my own imperfect views.

  “You’re sure Colombia is their common factor, huh?” He scratched the silver growth on his jaw. “I can’t see how, after all our precautions. We sent them in one at a time, and their stuff even later. But there are rumors of an operation in Colombia that’s sponsored by an unannounced terrorist organization. They blend in among the guerrillas in the area. They’re researching a new agent designed to incapacitate then kill. It’s said to be almost or completely impossible to counteract. My intel says it’s revolutionary, could do most of what you described.”

  I blinked. “Could?”

  “No updates suggest the beginning of production. But there are too many correlations for it not to be a possibility.”

  “Without the two months’ delay, I’d say it is. But this time frame—it just makes no sense.”

  He nodded. “Maybe that’s what makes it so dangerous. It resembles nothing we ever heard about or encountered before.”

  I exhaled. “Shaky, but I’ll buy that—for now. Okay, so I got my new lead. Now to roll up the ball of twine to its origin!”

  “I’ll get you the info you need.” He fell silent for a beat before he added. “Another coincidence I’m unwilling to buy, is that all of them are your deputies.”

  “You think it’s a personal attack?” He inclined his head in answer. “Dad, that also makes no sense. If it is, why not go for me?”

  He didn’t answer for a moment. Then he turned in that Dad’s-got-something-to-tell-you way I knew and dreaded. “Maybe whoever it is, is toying with you. Or maybe it’s the first wave in something far bigger. Or maybe it’s something else completely. Whatever, it reeks of a serious, if not ter
minal, breach in your security. It’s time to review all your methods and moves and relationships, Calista. Time to find your hidden enemy.”

  Seventeen

  Damn you, Damian De Luna.

  Where are you hiding?

  Every ring scraped louder, screwing me tighter. Then the click. I jerked. Again. Line disconnecting for the sixteenth time.

  The creep was lying low. More like laying it thick. The offended, upstanding man who’d had it with his woman’s suspicious, capricious ways. Letting me accumulate missed calls in atonement. Showing me he’d keep his word this time?

  Would he? Had I pushed him away once and for all, like Ayesha warned me I would one day?

  Yeah. Sure. And I was a two-headed Venusian!

  Not that I figured my irresistibility was responsible for that. Damian was just incapable of giving up. I bet his surveillance-interference machine was in uninterruptible mode. The “woman he loved” had him pissed. He’d leave that one alone. “The warrior he created” was another matter, would just have to abide his guardianship. Tough for me if I came as a two-for-one.

  I rang him again, five more times, and—nothing.

  So maybe he had had enough. Had to factor in this possibility. I could be pretty aggravating. I had been. I’d had every right to be—but that would be in my own not-always-valid opinion. Great. He’d managed to make me second-guess every word I’d said.

  But none of this was important now. I needed, not guardianship mind you, just his help.

  My deputies, as Dad had called them, had fallen. I stood alone, and I couldn’t afford pride or disillusion or doubts or the thousand misgivings I had about Damian’s methods. Let alone his organization’s.

  Dad had offered me Rafael’s services, plus muscle and resources. I’d take the last two. But when it came to taking turns at the helm steering through this mess, there was no contest. I had to have the best. It had to be Damian.

  If he’d pick up the damn phone!

  Didn’t seem that was happening. Okay. The hoops were hovering right there, snickering at me. Wanted me to hop through them, did he? Fine. I’d hop. He’d better not take it personally!

  Time to ferret him out of hiding.

  An hour later on the outskirts of Bel Air, I stepped out of the taxi. I took a minute to come to terms with where I was, what I was looking at. Again. I got the same whack of amazement as the first time I’d been here.

  Shaking my head, my thick braid wagging like a confused tail, I went down the cobblestone passage winding through manicured lawn and lush shrubs, the magnificent two-story brick and stucco house’s real size manifesting with every step nearer. It looked even more imposing as the last glimmer of twilight gave way to the eerie, strategic grounds lights.

  Who would have associated a house like this with Damian? Not me, for sure. No wonder he called my dump a dump.

  Not that it was his. This address was listed in the white pages under Desideria Henderson. Sounded like a porn star’s name. And I wasn’t wondering who she was!

  This was where he laid down his weapons. Yeah, I’d tracked him down the last time he resurfaced. Two can play the under-a-microscope game.

  It was me at the end of a telescope right now. A sniper’s night-vision rifle scope. I could almost feel the crosshairs tickling my back. PACT troops guarding their commander. I hoped they either knew me, or would check with Damian before shooting me down. Hoped he’d answer them!

  I reached his front door un-punctured. Light burst behind the French windows on the extensive patio a dozen feet from the door. So they’d sounded the alarm. Then the door opened.

  And again, in the space of five hours, I found myself staring at a huge man, senses on a spiraling nosedive. Radically different glands at work here, though. Instead of the father I’d craved the sight of, there stood the man I craved, period.

  And he was naked.

  All right. Breathe. And let’s not exaggerate. He wasn’t naked. He did have a tiny towel around his hips.

  “You called?” Harsh-velvet baritone poured over me, the intimate lights at his back sifting golden overtones over his work-of-art outline. Bet he was posing for maximum effect!

  “You always answer the door naked?” Heat rushed to my head, the geyser holding its breath before flooding down my body.

  One of his hands secured his towel knot, the other leaned on the door frame. Another pose. I knew it!

  “When I’m dragged from bed in response to a situation, yes.”

  “I’m not a ‘situation.’ Yet. And who goes to bed at six p.m.?” And he went to bed like that, draped only in silk skin and steel muscles? He had when he’d slept with me, but I’d assumed it was because we’d been making love….

  Maybe he’d been making love now. With Desideria Henderson…

  Had they just shot me in the back? That ripping in my gut felt like a high-caliber gunshot penetrating my colon. Only worse.

  You told him you didn’t want anything to do with him. You set him free. Fool!

  Stop it. None of my business. He was free; he owed me nothing.

  But he didn’t have to say he loved me!

  So—sue him later. He had, and now he’d stopped. A man’s prerogative. Get on with business.

  “Will you answer your phone?”

  He took yet another pose, indolent, insolent. Arousal punched through me, no longer acceptable, a stamp of weakness, a taunt of humiliation. I wanted to punch him. Sardonic eyebrows rose.

  “You came up to my door to tell me to answer the phone?”

  “Any other method you’d like to recommend when someone insists on ignoring you?”

  “You told me to stay away from you.”

  “Hello? I was calling you!”

  “You called me last time, too. You needed help and once you had it, I was scum of the earth again. Thanks, but I don’t feel like an encore.”

  And who was offering one? I hiked all the extra height I could into my body. “You said you want to offer assistance where you can. If you still mean it, just answer your damn phone!”

  I turned around, walked away. It was what I wanted. What should be. The confusion over, the heartache silenced. The reason and feeling and life extinguished…

  Oh, shut up!

  “You sure elevate aggravation to art status, St. James.”

  His words hit me in the spinal cord. I jumped. Hell! The man was just strolling after me for all to see, barefoot, lights and shadows slithering erotic fantasies over his shifting muscles, tiny towel dislodging with each powerful stride.

  He could save it for Ms. Desideria!

  “Nothing like the aggravation you’ll feel when the pneumonia you’re courting hits.” That was all I had? What a time for my doctor ingredient to poke its head. But since it had…“Do you have any idea what the windchill factor is tonight?”

  “Couldn’t be higher than yours.”

  A growl rumbled. From inside me? “Get the hell back inside, Damian.” I turned, walked on. This time I’d keep on walking. And this time, he let me. That was it, then. Good.

  Hell…

  Seconds later, my phone rang. I answered without checking the caller ID. “Yes?”

  “Come back on your own two legs, St. James. Ten seconds, then I’m hauling your butt in here.”

  My knees knocked once, my heart fired. I shouldn’t allow him that much power over me.

  I wouldn’t. I’d deal with this later. Much later. When my friends were out of danger. Time to talk business now.

  In the allotted ten seconds I was brushing past him into a foyer out of an interior-design-for-million-dollars-budget magazine. I walked straight through to a vaulted-ceiling living room with an even bigger spending margin, his body heat radiating at my back even through my layers of thermal clothes.

  Good thing there were distractions aplenty. That Desideria sure knew how to pull together a color-coordinated, all-luxuries dream. I reached one of the plush, cream couches, hesitated. When had I last washed my hands? Hell,
I’d keep them on my lap.

  My descent onto it was aborted by Damian’s harsh: “Don’t.”

  I bounded back up.

  So this was to be a standing up meeting. Say my piece, then get the hell out. Suited me.

  “Okay—this is the deal…” I started. The rest, whatever it would have been, went down Damian’s throat.

  My lips had been open. His pressed them back and plunged, aggressive, carnal. I tried to step back. I didn’t find my feet. They were now dangling over Damian’s arm. Then the world moved, in hard, hurried thuds. Strides. Each hitting my inner ear, spreading vertigo. The press of my head into his shoulder, the thrust of his tongue in my mouth pinned my gyrating existence. He was doing all the work—why was I gasping?

  At some point, ground found my feet again, and his image, wild and hungry, impacted my dimming retinal receptors. Then he pushed me. I fell.

  Something solid and soft broke my fall. Then my body broke his. Just like that time back in my apartment when I’d thought him an intruder, when I’d hit him with my truth serum combo.

  Felt as if I’d been hit with something even stronger now. Sure I was. The hallucinogenic compound of his hunger and my own. I gulped it, washed it down with his taste and hot, ragged Spanish. Shock waves hit in succession, each yanking a tangled nerve out of my taxed flesh. I shook.

  His hands and teeth tapped my quakes, fed them, his massive body between my legs—when had they opened for him? His doing?

  Sure. He got them around his hips in a vise. He was doing the rest, though—undulating against me to the rhythm of his tongue-thrusts, each murmur and stroke and lunge pulling me deeper, into him, into blind arousal, hard and deep and irrevocable, feverish for completion. Just take me now.

  Now. The word went off like a gong. I’d taken two “nows” with him. The “laters” should be enough of a deterrent. Not counting everything else. And Desideria.

  God, was this her bed?

  That jammed the cascade of arousal. Now if only my voice would produce more than ravenous grunts. I gave it a try. It worked. Still grunts, but coherent.