by Julie Miller
Beth fingered Kevin’s badge where it hung against his chest before sliding her hands inside the front of his jacket and trying to absorb some of the abundant strength that lay underneath. “Can’t we at least turn on the lights?”
Kevin caught her hands and pressed them flat against his chest. “That’s not how sneaking in late at night works,” he teased. “I don’t want Tyler James and his people finding out we’re here.” He backed her up a few steps until her wool slacks brushed against the chair. He sat her down, swiveled the chair to face the computer and kissed the crown of her hair. “Now, I’m giving you ten minutes to find something that proves those clinical trial results have been altered—and that there’s motive for a cover-up. Whether we find anything or not…ten minutes. And then we’re booking it out of here and getting you someplace safe.” He repeated the argument he’d given when she’d first suggested they take another look at the data on the flash drive. “We’ll come up with some logical reason to obtain a warrant to access GlennCo’s computers.”
Now that they were inside the eerily silent high rise, Beth was less inclined to argue. She reached up to squeeze the hand that rested on her shoulder and nodded. “Ten minutes.”
By nine minutes, she had the computer running and the flash drive loaded. By eight, she’d typed in Elisabeth and had the HE4210 file open. After pulling a small flashlight from her purse, she opened the presentation binder and thumbed through the pages looking for a similar code so she could begin comparing data. “Should I be looking for something in particular?”
Kevin looked over from the window where he’d been watching some sort of activity on a rooftop or the street below them. “Arthur Harrison’s name would be a start. Any discrepancies between the published report and the original data.”
At six minutes, Beth hit pay dirt. “Arthur Harrison. Age 80. Oak Park Retirement Care Center grouping. Alzheimer’s diagnosis…dates…sciencey stuff…yada-yada-yada…responds well to Gehirn 330,” she read aloud as she skimmed the paragraphs before and after the poor old gentleman’s name. “Here.” She marked the spot on the screen and thumbed through the binder’s printed pages, searching for a matching entry. Bingo. She held her fingers on both spots, indicating where Kevin should follow along with her. “Liver toxins rising dramatically. Countermeasures ineffective. Recommend termination of treatment.”
He read the corresponding paragraph in the binder. “There’s no mention of any side effects beyond stomach cramps. That’s what Miriam said he complained of that last morning she saw him.”
“So they knew his liver was failing and they didn’t stop giving him the drug?”
“And when he died, they cut out the liver and disposed of the body, and continued administering the drug to other test subjects.”
“Poor man.” For a moment, Beth understood that what she’d suffered these past few days could have been much, much worse. “We have to ID the other subjects in the clinical trial and warn them of the danger they’re in. That must be what Dr. Landon wanted me to do with the data.”
“Four minutes.” Kevin tapped his watch and thumbed toward the door. “Warnings come later. This gives me enough of a picture to fit all the puzzle pieces into so we can start building a case. I want you out of here.”
Beth wasn’t going to argue. “Now we just have to figure out how many GlennCo officials knew about the cover-up.”
He closed the binder, indicating she shut down the computer, as well. “We as in Atticus and me. I’m putting you in a safe house as soon as I can arrange it.”
“But I thought you—”
“Atticus?” Kevin was on the phone to his partner when the elevator door at the end of the hallway dinged.
Beth held her breath.
The sound was faint but distinct.
The soft rumbling sound of the door sliding open and the silence that followed was even more sinister.
“I’ll call you back.” Kevin folded his phone shut and tucked it into a pocket. In the same silent motion, he pulled back his jacket and drew his weapon. “Can you kill the light from the computer monitor?”
He turned off his flashlight while she quickly closed down the files and computer screen. C’mon, c’mon, c’mon. Why was it taking so long to shut down? “Do you think someone knows we’re here?”
“Could just be the guard making his rounds. I’ll go check it out.”
Beth shot to her feet and latched onto his arm. “You’re leaving me?”
“If it’s nothing to worry about, he won’t see me.”
“What if it is something to worry about?”
“Then I’ll deal with it.” He pried her fingers from his sleeve. “Lock the door behind me. I’ll knock when I get back so you can let me in.”
Almost as soon as the door closed behind him, the computer shut down, plunging the room into darkness. The moon outside the window was hidden by cloud cover, the stars nonexistent. The shadows in her office loomed large and closed in as Beth turned the lock and pressed her back against the frame.
Beth closed her eyes to block the ghostly images her mind was conjuring around the room, and tried to focus her hearing on the noises out in the hall. Her thundering pulse in her ears made it difficult to pinpoint exact sounds. One set of footsteps paused. A door creaked open. Why couldn’t she hear two sets of footsteps? Where was Kevin? Were those footsteps any more real than the man who’d followed her through the garage in Kansas City?
A murmur of sound closer by popped her eyes open. The shadows still surrounded her. The dim moon glow chilled the room. The murmur became a rustle. Beth held her breath and pressed her ear to the door to listen more closely. Kevin?
The rustle became a whisper of air across the nape of her neck.
A shiver of terror drained the blood from her head straight down to her toes.
In the room.
She spun around. A tall shadow separated itself from the darkness.
Not her imagination at all.
A hand went up in the air, the syringe it held silhouetted against the window.
Beth threw up her arms, blocking the attack.
The sharp point of the needle pierced the sleeve of Beth’s sweater and pricked the skin of her forearm before she knocked it away into the darkness.
A high-pitched yelp of pain grated against her ears, but it wasn’t her own.
Tall figure. Slender build. Bright red nails.
A moment of stunned surprise was a luxury Beth didn’t have. When Deborah Landon charged Beth with her bare hands, she lowered her shoulder and rammed into the other woman’s gut with as much strength as she possessed. The two women hit the edge of Beth’s desk and went tumbling over the other side.
“Beth!” Someone pounded on the door.
The chair tipped. The computer, keyboard and monitor crashed onto the carpet in a mini avalanche.
Deborah shoved the chair at Beth. “I want whatever Charlie gave you!”
“Are you crazy?” She dodged the rolling projectile and kicked out at the other woman’s knees. “I don’t know what you’re talking about!”
“Beth!” More pounding.
As Deborah toppled, Beth dived on top of her, driving her hip into the other woman’s stomach, pinning her wrists to the floor, trying to remember all the wrestling tricks her brothers had taught her.
“I need that information.” Deborah’s long blond curls got stuck between her lips, forcing her to spit the strands from her mouth. They were both breathing hard. Their blood was pumping fast. “It belongs to me.”
“You know about the falsified research?” Deborah’s big blue eyes swam out of focus.
“Where is it?” Deborah demanded. Beth’s grip on her opponent was slipping. “I know Charlie gave you a copy. I told him we could both benefit from my plan. He could retire and we could go somewhere exotic together and we’d never have to worry about money again. But he wanted to tell the other board members. The stupid man.”
“Don’t call him…stupid.”
Beth’s world tilted. Had she really just uttered such an inane thing? “He was trying to do…the right thing. And you…killed…him.” What was wrong with her? “What did you do to me?”
The injection. Something had gotten into her system. She was feeling so weak.
“Beth!”
“Move out of the way!”
“No! Don’t!”
She heard a loud crack of thunder. So unusual for this time of year. Two massive storm clouds blew into the room.
Not clouds. Men. Focus.
Not thunder. A gunshot.
Kevin threw Tyler James up against the shattered door and stripped the gun from his hand. “You son of a bitch—you could have hit one of them! Beth?”
Deborah turned her head to the side, smiled.
The flash drive. Knocked loose from the computer. Lying beneath the desk next to the partially empty syringe.
“Get off me!”
If Beth’s reflexes weren’t moving like slow-melting ice, she might have dodged the pain of Deborah’s fist smacking against the side of her head. One of the stitches split and pain knifed through her skull.
If Deborah had been a little less greedy, she might have seen that Tyler James hadn’t come to rescue her.
The moment Kevin turned to lift Beth in his arms and carry her away from the struggle, Tyler scooped up the syringe and plunged it deep into Deborah’s neck.
“We’re not paying you another dime, you bitch.”
The blonde was dead before Beth could scream.
Chapter Eleven
“I’m beat, Kev. How about you?”
Atticus pushed his chair away from his desk and leaned back to stretch out his long limbs as A. J. Rodriguez and Josh Taylor were escorting Raymond Glenn and Geneva Landon to their respective holding cells.
“We’ve got everyone’s statements—including your eyewitness testimony regarding Deborah Landon’s death. All the GlennCo board members involved in the cover-up are under arrest and the company is temporarily closed pending investigations by any number of government groups. And we’ve got legal aid sorting through that omnibus of research data to make sure any patients who were exposed to Gehirn 330 during the clinical trials understand what the lethal side effects might be so that they can speak to their own physicians. I also found out that Gehirn is the German word for brain.” He closed the thick folder sitting on top of his desk. “And on that random bit of info, I’m going home to my wife.”
Kevin was too exhausted to even laugh. It had been a long night, a long day, and if he gave it another twelve minutes, he could make it a long thirty-six hours that he’d been running on coffee and a few catnaps at the hospital where he’d been waiting for news on Beth’s recovery. By the time her family from central Missouri had arrived, the doctors had told him she was out of danger and resting comfortably. Deborah Landon had only been able to inject a minimal amount of potassium nitrate into Beth’s system. And while her blood pressure had dropped to a dangerous level, she was young and healthy enough that her body would completely recover.
Deborah, unfortunately, had received such a high dosage that her heart had stopped beating almost immediately. Kind of poetic justice for a woman who’d used the same means to murder her husband when he’d threatened to expose her blackmailing scheme.
“Are you heading back to Truman Medical Center?” Atticus asked.
He shook his head. “Beth’s family is with her now. I made sure she was okay before I left.”
“I was thinking more along the lines of whether you were okay.”
“I’m fine.” He scraped his palm over the stubble of his jaw. “I’m not the one who was in the line of fire.”
Atticus rose from his chair, picking up his jacket and shrugging into it. “Are you that thickheaded that you don’t know, or that thick-skinned that you don’t care? That woman was into you.”
“That woman needed me,” Kevin corrected, standing to gather his things, as well. “I’m not going to force myself on her. She’s young, gorgeous, smart, mouthy—and I’m…” Well, hell. Was this guy his partner or his therapist? “I’m going home.”
“Well, what do you know.” Chief Mitch Taylor stopped by Kevin and Atticus’s desks. He’d just started B shift off on their day with the morning briefing. One of his announcements had been that they’d ID’ed the two John Doe murder victims through the GlennCo data on the memory stick Beth had surrendered as evidence—Arthur Harrison and Franco Deltino would now be returned back to their extended families or estates for a proper burial, thanks to KCPD. Chief Taylor was still smiling about having good news to share around the holidays. “I assigned you two murders and you boys went and solved four and broke a conspiracy case. Congratulations.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Thank you.”
He shook hands with them both before Atticus asked, “So I take it we’re dismissed, sir?”
Chief Taylor nodded. “You’re dismissed. Grove? I need to see you in my office. Before you leave.”
“Sir?”
The smile faded as his barrel-size chest rose and fell with a weary sigh. “I’ve had a complaint filed against you. By one of the women involved in the investigation.”
“You’re kidding me.”
“Atticus, I’ll see you on the next A shift. Grove, you’re with me.”
As he followed the chief down the hallway to his office, Kevin replayed every moment of the past several days in his head. The only person he’d been remotely coercive with was Tyler James. The GlennCo security chief had been more than happy to make a deal and spill his guts about the people he’d taken orders from once Kevin had made it clear to him that terrorizing an innocent young woman—assaulting her, spying on her, firing a gun into a room where she was already under attack—was a surefire way to guarantee Kevin’s personal appearance and professional testimony at each and every hearing the man had between now and death.
Atticus had interviewed and processed Raymond Glenn and Geneva Landon. Deborah Landon was dead. The only other person in all this who might file a complaint would be…
“I’ll leave you to it, Grove.” Chief Taylor opened his office door but made no move to enter. “I’ve got a meeting with the commissioner. Lock up when you’re done. Like I said…” He winked. “Good job.”
Well, hell.
“Kev?”
“Beth?” Mink-colored hair. Freckled cheeks looking a little paler than usual.
Kevin dropped his coat where he stood and hurried across the room to guide her back to the chair where she’d been sitting.
“What are you doing here?” He brushed aside the wisp of hair that clung to her cheek, checked the fresh bandage at her temple, knelt down in front of her to make sure her eyes were a clear gray-blue. “You should be in bed. In the hospital.”
She wore the long brown coat that he’d first met her in over a pair of jeans and a plain, off-white sweater. She pulled off her gloves and squeezed and smoothed the leather in her busy hands. “They released me this morning. You once said that if anything…bothered me, that I could call you.”
A protective anger fired in his veins, burning through his fatigue. “What’s wrong? Are Glenn’s lawyers already hassling you? Did Tyler James make some kind of threat?”
Squeeze the gloves. “I think…”
“You think what?”
Smooth the gloves. “You look awful.”
“I get that a lot. A few hours’ sleep and I’ll only look half as ugly as I do now.”
Her peachy mouth curved with the most serene, most generous of smiles as she squeezed the gloves again. “Not ugly. Never ugly.”
Kevin covered her hands with one of his, stilling the nervous movement in her lap. “You think what?”
She waited. He worried. Beth spoke.
“That you love me.”
Kevin’s heart lurched inside his chest.
Where were the bad guys she needed defending from? Where was the mystery she needed him to solve? The truth
she needed him to find?
So he’d been found out. He wondered what had given him away? The rush of concern? The hungry look? The bedside vigil that had ended only when her mother and father had arrived to take his place?
Reality check.
“And that bothers you?” Kevin pulled his hand away, rolled to his feet, put the length of the office between them before he could turn and say, “I would never force you into something out of gratitude.”
“I know you wouldn’t.” She rose from her chair, left the gloves behind. “That’s one of the reasons I love you, too.”
“You don’t have to say that—”
“No, I don’t.” She took one step toward him and then another. “What bothers me is that…when I said a man was following me and no one else saw him, you believed me.” Her chin tipped up, her eyes locked onto his. And she kept walking. “When I thought I was losing my mind, you believed I was sane. Yet when I tell you I love you…? Miriam said you’d be a tough nut to crack.”
Beth was right in front of him now, filling up his head with vanilla and spice and faraway ideas about happily-ever-afters. “You talked to Miriam?”
“She said to go for it. To ‘man up’ and tell you how I feel.” Beth’s mouth twisted into an adorable frown. “I don’t think she quite grasps how that phrase works, but she told me she gave some similar advice to you.”
Something inside his chest cracked, leaving him a little breathless. He threaded his fingers into the velvety softness of her bangs and brushed them away from her forehead to press a kiss there. Her eyes drifted shut and he dropped petal soft kisses on the tip of her nose, the edge of her bandage, the bow of her lips.
Emotion welled up inside him and eased out on a mix of a laugh and a sigh. “I don’t think I can fight both you and Miriam. And I guess the chief’s in on it, too. And Atticus.”