“Did he say something that scared you? Did he do something?” Nick rubbed an impatient hand through his overgrown buzz cut. “Come on, Genie, give me a little help here. I know he says he has an alibi, but…”
She shook her head. “No, it was nothing like that. George was…clingy. Insistent. He wouldn’t go away when I said I didn’t want to see him anymore. He kept saying we had a deeper connection and that I shouldn’t deny it.” When Nick’s eyes sharpened, she held up a hand. “Not in a creepy, violent way, though. I just don’t see him as being involved in this.”
“Why the hell not? The guy admits he’s obsessed and you don’t think it’s even a remote possibility that he might’ve tackled you in the darkroom yesterday?” Nick swore and paced her office, not getting very far because it was crammed with journals and X-ray films. “He has a passkey, for God’s sake. He could’ve just waltzed in and out and nobody would’ve thought anything of it!”
Genie closed her eyes as her headache kicked up a notch. Wellington just didn’t understand. She’d gotten the restraining order to prove to George that she was serious about not seeing him, not because she was afraid. In a way, she was more like Dixon than she was like Wellington. George was a little strange and a lot lonely, and Wellington was…
Well, he was Wellington. And people like Wellington didn’t understand people like Genie and George.
“He said he had an alibi,” she repeated tiredly. “And if you’re going to pace, go do it somewhere else. I have a headache.”
She was spared his answer when the phone rang. Waving Nick out of her office, she picked up the receiver. She didn’t bother to scowl when he ignored her gesture and plonked himself in a chair while she said, “Boston General Genetics Testing Unit, Dr. Watson speaking.”
“Ah, Doctor! Just the person I was hoping to reach.” The voice was rich and cultured, with the requisite touch of old Yankee to it. “This is Richard.”
Nick mouthed, Is it Sturgeon? When Genie shook her head in the negative, he grabbed a gene therapy journal and started reading it, last page first.
“Yes, sir, it’s lovely to hear from you!” Belatedly, Genie remembered that she had meant to return the wealthy patriarch’s call the day before, but other things—such as a trip to the E.R.—had intervened. “What can I do for you?”
The old man harrumphed. “Well, I wanted to talk to you about that new wing your hospital is building for the Eye Center…”
They spoke for a few minutes about the sizable donation he’d promised, then before he hung up, Richard mentioned the DNA study he and his family had just joined—the Gray’s Glaucoma project.
“Have all of those children and grandchildren of mine given you what you need?”
Genie grinned into the phone. She had a feeling the old man ruled his extended family with an iron fist. “Now, Richard, you know that sort of information is strictly confidential. If you want to know anything about the other people in the study, you’ll have to ask them.” Genie noticed that Nick had flipped through all the advertisements at the back of the journal and was in the process of reading a cloning article from back to front.
The man on the phone harrumphed again, neither conceding nor arguing the point. “So have you run any tests on my family yet? Find anything?”
“No,” Genie said slowly. She had thought Richard understood the releases he’d signed when he donated blood for the Gray’s Glaucoma study. “It’s too soon for any results. You do understand that I can’t share ongoing results with you, right, Richard? That would be a breach of my ethics and my responsibility as a researcher.”
“Of course, young lady. Of course.” He paused tellingly. “But before you make any final decisions, think long and hard about your Eye Center, won’t you? And then you can phone me back.” The line went dead.
Genie stared at the phone for a good long minute.
“Something wrong?”
She glanced up at Nick and shook her head. “Not really. Just a study participant.” Punching an internal extension, she said, “Steph? Can you come in here a minute?”
Her hail was answered immediately by her clinical coordinator—a pretty redhead with freckles galore and enough self-confidence to wear lime green on a regular basis. “Yes?”
Ignoring Nick, who didn’t seem in a hurry to go away, Genie tapped a gray folder on her desk. “I just spoke with Richard Sr. and he seemed strange. He wanted to know whether all of his family members had given blood and whether we’d found anything yet.”
Steph looked surprised. “We just started that family. And besides, he signed all the releases and I explained them myself. He knows we can’t tell him anything confidential.”
“Do we have any results from his family yet?”
“No.” Steph shook her head and her reddish curls bobbed gently. Genie envied the other woman’s curls on a regular basis, though she’d never tell her employee that. “One set of experiments was in the…darkroom yesterday. And the other was set up this morning when the spill happened. I’m going to reexpose yesterday’s films and use the developer upstairs, though.”
Genie nodded and felt her head swim. She needed to go home. She wanted a nap. “That sounds like a good idea, but you can wait until tomorrow. It’s almost quitting time and I think I’m going to head out a little early. You can do the same if you want.”
Steph grinned. “Thanks, boss. I’ve got a date with that cute new rep from Petrie Pharmaceuticals and I wouldn’t mind a few more minutes to get ready.” She danced an excited little twirl and left in a flurry of red hair and lime green.
Suiting action to words, Genie shrugged on her suede jacket and shut down the computer she hadn’t touched all day before she turned her attention to Nick Wellington. He hadn’t moved—apparently he shared Dixon’s resistance to the words “go away,” though she doubted that Wellington felt the same “deep and metaphysical connection to her soul” that George had claimed.
When he followed her to the elevator, she finally had to ask, “What do you think you’re doing?”
Wellington shrugged his big shoulders and grinned. Genie’s throat tightened and she swallowed hard, trying to force the sudden lightness in her chest to go away. “What does it look like? I’m walking you to your car. Though I’m still not sure you should be driving.”
They stepped into the elevator together and when the doors closed, Genie thought that the little space had never felt smaller, even when she’d been stuck for a half hour between floors with two pathologists and a body bag. “The doctor said I’m okay to drive. And you needn’t walk me to my car. It’s out of your way and I’m okay, honest.”
Wellington hit the button for the lobby and the car started down. “Humor me. Sturgeon seems like a good cop, but he and Peters don’t seem to have much of a clue who grabbed you yesterday. I’ll feel better if I see you home.”
The implication wasn’t lost on Genie. “You think you’re coming home with me?” If she’d been uncomfortably aware of him the night before when she’d been suffering from a concussion, there was no way she’d be any less awkward a day later. “I don’t think so. There’s no reason whatsoever to think that it was anything other than a random thing. That’s what Sturgeon said. Right?”
Wellington held the door for her as they exited onto the street. “Sure, but then there was that spill today… I just don’t like it, okay? And is it really so bad to have me around for another night?”
The way he said it sounded so sensible, but Genie was feeling anything but sensible as she and Nick dodged a clump of pedestrian traffic and their bodies bumped together at hip and shoulder. The warm rush of contact sped through her and she knew she was in serious danger of willingly repeating the Archer mistake.
“Can I get your car, Dr. Watson?” With a start, Genie realized they had reached the little Chinatown lot where she had parked her car the day before. The young attendant held up her keys and the late-afternoon sun glinted on them. Parking was at a premium in the city, so lots
like this one stacked the cars nose to tail and shuffled them all day long.
She nodded. “Thanks, Randy. I appreciate it.”
The diamond stud in Randy’s nose winked when he grinned, then sobered. “Are you okay, ma’am? I heard there was some trouble in your lab yesterday.”
“She’s fine, Randy. Can you just get the car, please? Dr. Watson has a headache and she’d like to go home.”
“That was rude,” Genie murmured as Randy grumbled off to move the two cars that were blocking in her boring tan sedan. “He’s a nice boy.”
“And you’re dead on your feet.” She felt Nick’s arm wrap around her shoulders and leaned a little, grateful for the solidity. The warmth. “You need to go home and turn it off for a bit. We’ll deal with the rest tomorrow.”
Too tired to argue, Genie let her aching head fall to his warm, strong shoulder as they watched Randy shift a blue station wagon out of the way. “Are you always right?” she wondered idly, and she felt him chuckle.
“My ex-wife would say not, and I expect you’ll want to deny it tomorrow when you’re feeling more like yourself.”
“That’s right, you were married.” Genie didn’t want to care, but she had to ask, “What was she like?”
She remembered hearing that the former Mrs. Wellington was blond, beautiful, wealthy—a fit wife for a prince.
“Lucille was…Lucille.” Nick might’ve gone on to say more, but a passing pedestrian bumped Genie from behind and she lost her balance on already shaky legs. She squeaked and clutched at Nick on the way down.
He grabbed a handful of her coat to stop her from falling, and caught her around the waist with his other arm. She swung around and they were suddenly face-to-face, belly to belly. Genie realized she had grabbed handfuls of his shirt to keep upright. She could just feel the scrape of wiry hair beneath her fingertips, the hard, smooth muscle beneath that. The fine tremor that ran through him as he moved—not to push her away this time, but to pull her closer.
The warm lethargy that had stolen through her at the feeling of his arm around her shoulder suddenly bloomed into a tingling burst of heat that burned away the fatigue and the headache and left behind only the feel of the man against her. The sight of his icy blue eyes, darkening as they looked down at her.
Came closer.
Stupid, yelled her brain. Really, really stupid!
But she didn’t care. She was going to do it and damn the consequences. She stood on shaky tiptoes, closed her eyes, felt his breath on her lips, heard the familiar rattle of her car’s engine turning over—
And the world exploded.
Chapter Five
The concussion slapped at Genie with an open fist, driving the air out of her lungs and hurling her into a stinking gutter filled with cabbage and fish left over from the market. She hit hard and gasped, but there was no oxygen in the red-black heat. She sat up and tried to scream.
“Get down, damn it!” She could barely hear the words over a roar that sounded like a hundred T trains coming into Chinatown station at once.
Something pushed her back into the shallow gutter and held her there, and Genie realized there was a thin, rank breath of air among the garbage. She also realized that the great weight pushing her into the filth was Nick, that he was trying to cover her face with his shoulder as the roaring gave way to a strange series of pinging noises as debris rained down around them.
There were screams, running feet, and a second loud explosion that drowned out everything else for a few moments. Genie cowered in the gutter with Nick’s arms tight around her as she struggled to understand.
Her car had blown up with Randy inside it.
Someone was trying to kill her.
When the second explosion died down, the banshee wails of a hundred car alarms rose up and Genie and Nick struggled to their feet to see not one but two burning cars. Her boring tan sedan was a black-and-orange inferno feeding off the minivan beside it. The burning cars were ringed by dozens of honking, whooping, wailing automobiles whose flashing headlights and flickering ambers pointed at Genie as if to say, You killed him. Randy’s dead and it’s all your fault.
“Genie!”
She started to shake as she looked at her car. At the twist of flames that might’ve been a young man’s hand reaching for impossible safety.
“Genie!” She felt Nick shake her roughly and heard him repeat her name again.
“Nick?” The name seemed to pass between lips that belonged to someone else.
“Genie! Are you hurt?” She could tell he was yelling, but she could barely hear him over the shrieking cars. She nodded that she was okay, then remembered that he’d asked whether she was hurt, and shook her head no.
“Randy—” she said, then noticed the streak of red running down the back of Nick’s forearm and dripping off his index finger. “You’re hurt.”
He turned and tried to get a glimpse of his own shoulder, and Genie realized he’d been hit by some of the shrapnel he’d shielded her from.
“Sit down,” she yelled over the sirens, pointing to the curb. He sat, which she counted as a measure of just how much the jagged piece of metal in his shoulder must hurt. She touched the fragment and was appalled to find it burning hot.
She placed her hand on his good shoulder and leaned down to yell in his ear, “We’d better wait for the paramedics.”
He didn’t look at her, but nodded with his jaw clenched so tightly the muscle balled beneath the skin. He stared out across the street to the lot where the cars still burned and wailed. When Genie stood, she felt Nick’s good hand come up to cover hers.
He gripped hard and hung on tight, and together they waited as the car alarms faded and their song was taken up by the sirens of rescuers who were on their way.
But still too late.
“RANDALL BAINES, age eighteen, local address, lives with his mother and younger brother, no father listed.” Peters flipped his notebook shut and Sturgeon sucked hard on a peppermint. Genie watched his cheeks move in and out, in and out. It was easier than looking at the smoking husk of her car. Easier than watching the ambulance pull out of the parking lot with its sirens quiet, its lights dim.
There was no hurry for parking attendant Randy Baines. The morgue would wait.
As the charred remains of her car were winched aboard a flatbed truck, Genie’s face throbbed and her eyes stung with tears and soot. A crowd had gathered at the small parking area, staring at the devastation with horrified glee. She wondered whether he was out there in the crowd, gloating over his handiwork.
From the way sharp-featured Detective Peters was scanning the mob, she wasn’t the only one to have that thought. Not that it would save Randy Baines.
Her eyes stung harder and she didn’t even realize she was crying until a hand came out of nowhere and brushed the tears away.
“It wasn’t your fault.”
She turned to Nick, grateful when he put his good arm around her and pressed her face to his chest, right next to the plain cloth sling the paramedics had insisted on when he refused the E.R.
“It wasn’t your fault,” he repeated. She could feel his lips in her hair, pressed against her tender scalp, but she found that even Nick couldn’t make this pain go away.
“Whose fault was it, then? Randy’s? The other people who parked their cars here? Your fault for driving me home yesterday so my car stayed overnight? You’re hurt. Randy’s dead. Who’s fault is it if not mine?”
She pushed away and swayed on her own two feet as they watched the flatbed drive away with what was left of her car. The tow truck paused before pulling into traffic, its brake lights flashing red in the twilight.
Red light. The red of the dark lights in the developer room. Black lights that reflected off of…what? What had she seen? What had she heard? Genie pressed her fingertips to her temples and tried to force her brain to remember. Behave, she snapped. Show it to me! Who did this? Why? How can I make it stop?
Pain stabbed bright and white
behind her eyeballs and she whimpered and sagged, would have fallen to the stinking pavement except for the hand that caught her on the way down.
“That’s it. I’m taking you home.” Nick half dragged, half carried her to the edge of the crowd and Genie found the energy to resent the fact that even with a heat-cauterized wound the size of a hand on his back, he could still push her around.
“A moment please, Dr. Wellington, Dr. Watson.” Sturgeon looked tired and his navy tie with little embroidered fishhooks was wildly askew. Peters, movie-star handsome next to his rumpled partner, stood at Sturgeon’s side with his notebook poised and his clever eyes assessing.
“What?” Nick didn’t seem inclined to stop to chat with the detectives, but Genie dug in her heels and pulled away. As her headache faded without parting the curtains of memory, she decided she’d rather stand on her own. People around her were getting hurt.
“What’s going on? Why is someone trying to kill me?”
Sturgeon nodded and his cheeks puffed in and out, in and out, as another peppermint was reduced to nothingness. In a flash of irrelevancy, Genie wondered whether he sucked them in his sleep.
Behave, she snapped at her brain again. This is no time for silliness.
“We’d like to know the same things, Dr. Watson, and we need your help.” He turned and gestured toward a drab brown sedan that looked like her ex-car’s cousin. “I’d like you to come to the station with us and answer a few questions.”
The whole scene was surreal, like something out of one of her 007 videos or a television cop drama, except that there didn’t seem to be any commercial breaks. Genie had the urge to ask if she should call a lawyer, or plead the Fifth, or hold out her wrists for handcuffs.
Dr. Bodyguard Page 6