Then she looked over at him. “How about you?”
He laughed. “Hell, no. I smoked pot all through junior and senior high school and shoplifted gum and candy bars in elementary school. But other than that, I’ve always been pretty straight, too.”
As she nodded, he added, “Of course, today I broke another law besides smuggling.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, I kissed my boss. In some places, that counts as sexual harassment.”
She blushed. “Well, I won’t tell if you don’t.”
“What if I want to do it again?” he asked.
“Kevin, doing that to get me to calm down and take my mind off of the Customs officers was one thing, but making a habit of it—”
He glanced at her and interrupted. “Making a habit of it is exactly what I want to do.”
She shook her head and put a hand on his arm. “Kevin, I am too old for you, and a relationship between us just wouldn’t be proper.”
“Bullshit,” he said. “I have cared about you—cared deeply since almost the first moment I met you, Kat. And age just doesn’t figure into it.”
She sat back, stunned. She turned her head to look out the window, thinking back to all the hints of his feelings for her that she should have picked up on. Would have picked up on, if she hadn’t been so damn obsessed with her research.
“Kevin, I never knew . . .”
He smiled, less serious now. “I know you didn’t, Kat. When we were working together, you were so intense about the work you hardly noticed if it was day or night. In fact, your dedication to the project was one of the things I liked best about you.”
“Kevin, I don’t want to hurt you, but . . .”
He took one hand off the steering wheel and held it up. “I know, I know that you don’t feel the same way about me . . . yet,” he said. “So let’s just table this discussion for the present and pretend it never happened. I’m a patient man, and I can wait until things are less turbulent to see whether a relationship is in the cards for us.”
She started to respond, but then she realized she didn’t really know what to say, so she just kept quiet and spent the rest of the trip looking out the window and wondering just what the hell she’d started.
* * *
After picking Angus up from the dog sitter who lived in an apartment down the hall from Kat’s, they drove to Sheila’s building. They parked on the top floor of Sheila’s parking garage and took the elevator to her apartment. After they rang the bell, the door was opened about two inches and a bloodshot eye peered at them from over the safety chain.
The door shut, the chain was pulled back, and then Ramsey opened the door again, barely enough for Kat and Kevin to squeeze through.
“What’s with the cloak-and-dagger routine?” Kevin asked.
Ramsey pointed over his shoulder toward the door to Sheila’s bedroom. “We’ve got a guest, and I just wanted to make sure you weren’t those private eye fellows coming to check up on us.”
Kat held up the thermos. “I got the human fetal brain tissue from your friend, Dr. Garza.”
Ramsey frowned. “He’s not a friend, just a useful contact. How much was he able to provide?”
She shrugged. “Depending on the weight of the subjects, enough for six, maybe seven doses.”
Kat glanced over as Sheila appeared in the bedroom doorway, wiping her face with a hand towel.
Kat immediately went to her. “Sheila, are you okay?”
Sheila nodded. “Yes, I’m just tired is all. I’d forgotten how difficult it is to care for a severely sick patient, especially without a group of nurses to help.”
Ramsey bristled and walked over. “What do you mean ‘without help’? I’ve been helping, or did you forget who changed all those bedpans and cleaned up after him?”
“Uh,” Kevin said from the doorway where he stood holding Angus in one arm and the dog’s bed in the other. “Do you mind if I put the big guy down somewhere? He feels like he’s gained ten pounds since we left.”
Sheila distractedly pointed toward a corner of the living room.
Kat looked from her to Ramsey. “Is he that bad?”
“Come and see for yourself,” Sheila said, leading her into the bedroom.
Kat saw an extremely emaciated male lying on Sheila’s bed, an IV in his arm and his wrists tied to the bed frame with cloths. She moved to look closer and saw further that his skin was tinged yellow and he looked to be about eighty years old.
“Jesus, couldn’t we find someone younger? I thought the chart you showed us said he was only in his mid-sixties.”
Sheila chuckled. “He is sixty-four years old, but he has a lot of miles on him.”
“Yeah, he looks like he’s been rode hard and put up wet,” Kevin said over Kat’s shoulder.
Suddenly, Jordan’s eyelids fluttered and opened wide, his eyes flicking back and forth rapidly. Low-pitched mewling sounds came from his lips, and his nose began to run.
“Holy shit!” Kevin exclaimed, stepping back. “He’s not going to die, is he?”
Sheila shrugged. “I hope not. A dead body in my bed would be hard to explain to the apartment house manager.”
“Not to mention to the police, since he didn’t exactly come in answer to an invitation.”
Kat grabbed Ramsey’s shirt and pulled him out into the living room. “You mean you kidnapped him?”
He grinned sourly. “Actually, it was more like a rescue operation.” He went on to explain how they had found Stone passed out and severely dehydrated, lying in his own vomit in an empty lot. “I have little doubt that if we hadn’t brought him here, he would not have survived the night.”
Sheila moved up beside him. “Burton is right, Kat. It has taken all the skills I possess to keep him alive here in my bed. I’ve poured gallons of saline and electrolytes and potassium and vitamins and antibiotics into him, and it hasn’t seemed to make a whole lot of difference. He’s still going in and out of DTs, in spite of massive doses of Librium given via IV.”
“DTs?” Kevin asked.
“Delirium tremens,” Kat replied. “It’s the body’s response to rapid detoxification from alcohol. Primarily shaking, drooling, muscle spasms, and occasionally seizures.”
“Yes, and it is about twenty-five percent fatal even in a hospital with ’round-the-clock care,” Sheila chimed in.
“When will he be coherent enough to gain his permission for the experiment?” Kevin asked.
“I’m hoping another twelve hours of IVs and vitamins and a few more doses of Librium and he’ll wake up.”
“Is there anything we can do?” Kat asked.
“Are you tired from your trip?”
She shook her head. “No, at least I’m not. I slept on the plane, and we got a good eight hours’ sleep last night before heading back.”
“Good,” Sheila said, handing her the washcloth. “’Cause I’m dog tired. If you can make sure his IV doesn’t run out and clean him up if he vomits or soils himself, then I’m going to get some much-needed sleep.”
“Why don’t you get some shut-eye, too, Burton?” Kevin said. “Your eyes look like the inside of a tomato sauce can.”
Ramsey yawned and said, “You should see them from this side.”
He put his arm around Sheila’s shoulders. “Come on, darlin’, I’m too tired to be a danger to you.”
She snorted. “As if I couldn’t handle you, even if you weren’t too tired to tango.”
He laughed and slapped her bottom gently. “Oh, is that so? Well, maybe I’ll just make a supreme effort to see if I can’t make you change your mind about that,” he said as they shut the door behind them.
Kevin, watching them, shook his head. “I just hope they don’t start making a lot of noise in there. That would be TMI.”
“TMI?” Kat asked.
“Too much information,” Kevin answered.
CHAPTER 25
John Ashby leaned his head back against the pillow and ran his Montecristo
cigar back and forth under his nose while he watched the men standing in front of him. He considered himself an expert at evaluating men and knowing when they were telling the truth and when they were lying. In the many years of his early days in the oil fields, it had often meant the difference between life and death.
Harold Gelb and his two minions were standing at the foot of Ashby’s bed, a fine sheen of sweat beading their brows. This in itself meant nothing—most men tended to sweat under Ashby’s steely gaze. Gelb himself had a stellar reputation both for getting the job done and for being discreet about it afterward; Ashby wouldn’t have hired him otherwise.
Finally, satisfied he was getting the truth, Ashby moistened the cigar with his lips and pulled a gold lighter from beneath the covers and lit up, his eyes steady on Gelb as he rotated it to get it burning evenly. As he replaced the lighter under his bedcovers, he felt the cold steel of the Beretta forty-caliber semiautomatic pistol he kept next to him, hidden from view.
He’d named the piece his “Enforcer,” and he had only needed it once. A foreman on one of his numerous projects had been skimming from the expense budget, thinking that the bed-bound Ashby would never find out. When called into Ashby’s bedroom and informed that he was being fired and would never be allowed to work in construction again, the man had lunged at Ashby and had gotten so far as to climb up on the foot of the bed before the Enforcer blew him head over heels to land flat on his back, bleeding profusely from a massive chest wound.
Ashby had calmly replaced the gun beneath his covers, lit a cigar, and waited for the bleeding to stop before he let the house staff call for an ambulance and the police.
Ashby had never had the rug cleaned, and he delighted in telling anyone who asked about the stain exactly what it was, using it as a lesson to never, ever think about crossing him.
Now he motioned at Gelb with his cigar. “Go on, Mr. Gelb. Tell me what you’ve found out about the subjects of your investigation.”
Gelb licked his lips and began, glancing at notes in a small notebook he carried. “Each of the subjects is a well-respected citizen, and none of them have any sort of criminal history.”
He went on to give a brief synopsis of the lives of Kat, Ramsey, Kevin, and Sheila Goodman. “In short, Mr. Ashby, none of the subjects has significant financial resources, other than Dr. Goodman, whose net worth is probably a little over two hundred thousand dollars. Doctors Williams and Ramsey live hand to mouth, and Kevin Paxton, as you know, is a grad student dependent on his uncle, Dr. Alexander, for his living and college expenses.”
Ashby pursed his lips. “So, what you are telling me is that without my financing, these people do not have the resources to double-cross me or to run and hide if they feel threatened?”
“That’s correct, Mr. Ashby.”
Ashby inclined his head toward Johnson and Gomer standing slightly behind Gelb. “Have you two found anything when you searched their laboratories and homes?”
Both men shook their heads. Johnson spoke up, “Nothing as relates to any chemical formulas, which you asked us to look for, boss. We even copied their computers’ hard drives and had the professor you recommended look ’em over. He said the stuff on the drives was rather routine and didn’t represent any breakthroughs in medical treatments of any kind.”
Ashby grinned. “They are smarter than I gave them credit for. They knew I’d come looking, and they’ve managed to hide the formula from me.”
He suddenly frowned. “Are you sure they haven’t made you two? You’re sure they don’t know they’re being followed?”
Both Johnson and Gomer nodded vigorously. “We’re sure, Mr. Ashby. We’ve been very careful not to let them see us, and we switch cars a couple of times a day so they won’t see the same one following them.”
Ashby nodded. “Okay, so what did you find when you followed Williams and Palmer to Mexico?”
Johnson pulled a small notepad from his shirt pocket. “They flew directly to Monterrey, and met with a lawyer named Felix Navarro and a doctor named Humberto Garza. At the meeting, the doctor handed Dr. Williams a thermos container, and she handed him a wad of cash.”
Ashby leaned forward, a look of intense anticipation on his face. “Did you find out what was in the thermos?”
“Not right then,” Johnson said. “But later, after crossing Dr. Garza’s hand with five hundred dollars, he told us the thermos contained human fetal brain tissue.”
Ashby’s eyes widened for a moment. “Aha,” he said, while thinking to himself the formula was at least in part using fetal stem cells. Not wanting to give the detectives anything else to think about, he changed the subject.
“And what about the lady doctor and her husband? I assume you have had them under surveillance.”
This time Gomer nodded and consulted his own small notepad. “The couple went out the other night and drove to a really seedy part of town down near the ship channel . . . Navigation Boulevard, I believe,” he said.
“What the hell were two yuppie doctors doing in that part of town at night?” Ashby asked, eyebrows raised.
“They were looking for someone,” Gomer answered. He checked his notepad again. “Someone whom the locals called ‘the Professor.’ A longtime drunk and homeless man who evidently used to be some sort of college teacher.”
“What did they do when they found him?”
Gomer smiled. “According to another homeless drunk named Billy, they stuffed him in the trunk of their car and took off.”
“The hell you say!” exclaimed Ashby.
Gomer nodded. “I can only assume they took him to their apartment, since I lost track of them by staying behind to question Billy and other witnesses.”
“I see,” Ashby said in a distracted voice. He suddenly realized that this man must be the human patient the doctors were going to try their serum on to see if it worked. “Okay, Mr. Gelb, I want you and your men to back off the surveillance temporarily. Continue to monitor the GPS trackers on their phones, but I want all audio and visual surveillance to cease until I tell you otherwise.”
Gelb looked puzzled but slowly nodded his head. “Okay, Mr. Ashby, if that is the way you want it.”
“That is exactly the way that I want it, Mr. Gelb, and,” he added with narrowed eyes, “if I find out you are doing otherwise, you and your men will face dire consequences.”
Gelb held up his hands, palms out. “No need to make threats, Mr. Ashby. We work under your orders, and if you want us to back off, then of course we’ll back off until you tell us otherwise.”
“Good,” Ashby said, nodding. “Now, take off and I’ll call you with further orders unless you see something out of the ordinary on the GPS tracking devices.”
As they nodded and filed out of the bedroom, Dr. Tom Alexander stuck his head around the doorjamb and waved. “Mind if I come in, John?”
Ashby smiled and waved the doctor in. “Not if you will reach me one of my Montecristos and turn on the exhaust fan so I can have a smoke.”
Alexander wrinkled his nose. “Smells like you’ve already had a smoke or two recently.”
“Come on, Doc. I’m about to become younger and smarter, so a couple of cigars won’t hurt me any.”
Alexander turned on the exhaust fan next to a window and cracked the pane so the smoke could be drawn out, then he picked a cigar out of a box next to the bed and handed it to Ashby.
As he got the cigar going, Ashby raised his eyebrows and said out of the corner of his mouth, “So, did you hear what those idiots said?”
The doctor nodded, a concerned look on his face.
“What’s the matter, Tom? You look worried about something.”
“I am just wondering why you have placed the doctors and my nephew under surveillance, and I am also a little worried about what you might be planning, John.”
“What? Why?” Ashby asked, his face a mask of innocence, at least half of it anyway.
Alexander smiled grimly. “Let’s not kid each other, John. I k
now you as well as anyone on earth, and I know you are a shrewd and ruthless and greedy bastard. In fact, those are the things I like about you. You don’t pretend otherwise, and generally you tell me the truth ’cause you know I am on your side and in your corner.”
Ashby nodded. “Uh-huh, but how about this time, Tom?”
Alexander shook his head slowly. “This time I am conflicted, John. I don’t particularly care about the doctors, but I love my nephew Kevin dearly, and I would hate for anything. . . untoward to happen to him.”
“First, let me assure you that I do not plan for anything ‘untoward’ to happen to either the doctors or to your nephew, Tom. Of course, I cannot just ignore the unbelievable opportunity having this serum would provide, not to mention the power-wielding potential such a formula would give a man. However, other than eventually controlling and owning the formula, I have no dastardly plans for the doctors or your nephew. Hell, even if they wanted to, they couldn’t tell anyone that I’d stolen a formula from them that they, in fact, had stolen from their previous employers.”
Alexander leaned forward in his chair. “So I can rest assured that no matter what happens with the formula, Kevin will be taken care of appropriately?”
Ashby nodded. “You have my word as a friend that Kevin will come out of this so rich that he will never have to work again as long as he lives . . . and you, too, pal. I won’t forget it was you who brought this formula to my attention.”
“Speaking of the formula, John, there is something that we need to talk about.”
“Oh?”
“Unless you want everyone in the world to know of the existence of the serum, you are going to have to fake your death and take on a different identity.”
Ashby laid his head back on his pillow and blew smoke rings at the ceiling, staring at them as he thought. Finally, he said, “I see what you mean, Tom. The formula is much more valuable if no one knows of its existence.”
“With your contacts, it shouldn’t be too difficult to arrange a false identity, one that could be mentioned in your will as a sole-surviving relative who would inherit all of your assets,” Tom suggested. “That way you could start fresh, with all of your ‘inheritance,’ without having to look over your shoulder for old enemies who might be coming after you.”
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