When she found it, it wasn’t thumping. It was galloping. Racing. Threatening to burst out of him. Her own blood burned in response, charring Archer’s memory and blowing it away on a hurricane of greed. She ripped at the rest of his buttons, sending them flying, and tugged at the pants that still hung at his hips, urging him to move faster. To hurry. Hurry!
But there would be no hurry. Nick worked his way down across one collarbone, then fastened his lips on a nipple, suckling it through the cloth of her lacy white shirt. Genie moaned and let her head fall back while her legs clutched at him, begging. He paused to torment the other breast as one hand wandered to her bare thigh, played for a moment making paths with the wetness he found there. And then he pressed his thumb square on that tight little bud and she bucked.
And screamed his name.
The developer groaned in response, its noise drowning out almost everything else, and the red light seemed both darker and brighter all at once. Then Nick replaced his thumb with his mouth and nothing seemed like anything at all, because Genie was lost in a sightless, soundless whirling vortex of sensation that ripped through her like a tornado and stayed there, swirling and churning and pulsing until she didn’t think she could take any more.
And then Nick stood, pressed his forehead to hers and plunged into her in one fierce, slick motion, and Genie discovered that there was more to feel.
So much more.
The heat roared through them both and swirled around the red-black room, catching the scents of developer chemicals and hot, rampant lovemaking. Genie opened herself to Nick and felt him inside her, felt him touch her heart. Her soul. And felt the need and the tension begin to build again. Only this time it was stronger, more consuming, clawing at her with velvet talons and demanding that she take Nick deeper. Harder. Faster.
On a roar, he pulled her off the counter and held her against it so her hips were pinned between the film cabinet and his body. So he could thrust deeper. Fill her more fully. Make love with her until the tears came to her eyes and the pulsing began deep within her, in a place she hadn’t even known existed, and grew in ever-widening spirals to include him as she clenched his hard flesh in a dewy vise and he gripped her hips with bruising fingers and drove into her, through her one last time and his body bucked and shuddered.
And her name tumbled from his lips like a prayer.
THE DEVELOPER GRUMBLED its customary song and the red-black lights made Genie’s hand, tangled with Nick’s, look like a rose in the twilight.
She felt him sag against her, slide out of her, and she put her feet to the floor with a pang of regret. She wished they’d made love the night before, in front of the fire where there would have been an opportunity for soft words and cuddling. There was neither time nor place for that now. Not here, where there were two uniformed guards in the lobby and a nightmare of recessive genes hunting her.
Nick didn’t speak, leaving her to break the loud silence in the clanking developer room. His chest heaved and he braced his palms against the counter, let his head hang as he sucked air into his lungs.
She didn’t have to be a genius to figure out that in the aftermath, he felt awkward about the situation. Disappointment shimmered softly at the thought that he was more interested in the chase than the cool-down. But he’d never claimed any differently. He’d made it plain he wasn’t looking for anything meaningful. His father and ex-wife had seen to that.
Genie would’ve cursed them, but she hadn’t the energy.
“Well, then,” she said, smoothing the navy skirt down over her legs and lingering over the unfamiliar trembling in her thighs. If she never had another moment alone with Nick—and the thought was almost too painful to bear—then at least she’d have the memory. And everyone knew her memory was her best feature. “I’m going to stay in here a few more minutes and make sure I’ve remembered everything important. Can you go call Sturgeon?”
Nick finally moved. With a shudder, he pulled himself upright and fumbled in the red darkness. Genie heard the sound of his zipper, the splat of the condom hitting the waste basket in the corner, and made a note to remove it before the cleaning staff came to empty the garbage.
“Sturgeon? Remembering? Is that all that was to you, a freaking mnemonic?” Disgust laced Nick’s tone and Genie stepped back, stung.
“Of…of course not. But you were— I thought…” She blew out a frustrated breath. This was another one of those things they didn’t teach in grad school—making conversation after spontaneously combusting, memory restoring, multiply orgasmic sex.
Lovemaking, insisted her brain.
“Never mind.” Nick swore. “I’ll go call Sturgeon and meet you in the break room in ten minutes.” And with an angry rubba-thump, he was gone. The darkroom was empty.
So very empty.
Genie slumped back against the stainless-steel sink and pressed her hands to her aching eyelids. She didn’t need the time alone to remember. She and Nick knew what had happened and why, and even had information she could ethically give Sturgeon. All of the facts were neatly lined up, one following the other like a well-designed experiment.
The only piece of the week’s puzzle that refused to be put into a space was Nick.
Where would they go from here? Soon she and Wellington would be free to return to life as usual. He could keep his silly Face of Erectile Dysfunction poster on his door—though she now knew firsthand that it was a lie—and go on with his Rolex-wearing, mansion-living existence without feeling as if he was leaving her unprotected.
And she could wear her stupid old-person clothes and drive her boring new car and work until ten every night and grow old in her little condo with a pair of cats named after characters in a fictional spy series.
Then she heard movement out in the hall. Rubba-thump, rubba-thump. The light lock cycled and she wasn’t alone anymore.
“Nick?” Maybe he’d come back to fight. Maybe he’d come back to take her in his arms, kiss her, and vow his undying love. Yeah, and maybe she had been popular in college.
Then the red lights clicked off and the fluorescent white lights came on, momentarily blinding Genie.
She pressed back against the sink as the man, a blurry silhouette against the harsh glare, came toward her.
It wasn’t Nick.
Her eyes finally cleared and she blinked him into focus. He was slightly under six feet tall, dark-haired and handsome in a rich, pampered sort of way. His hair was artfully done, his nails manicured and his expression haunted.
It seemed odd to meet the owner of the DNA she’d pored over all morning and to realize that, except for a few red-black images, he was a stranger.
Nick. Where are you? I need you. I need help!
She stalled, trying for cool when she really wanted to scream. A trickle of sweat ran down the side of his face and his hand trembled, index finger tightening convulsively on the trigger of the neat black pistol in his hand.
“Richard Fenton Jr., I presume? Or should I call you Collins, like your daddy?”
He giggled, a high-pitched, unnerving sound against the rumbling backdrop of the churning film developer.
“You figured it out. Dolores said you’d figure it out and that’s why we had to stop you. Old Fenton’s been looking for an excuse to cut me out of the will for years, and once you told him I wasn’t his kid, it’d be goodbye to all that lovely money. And if you told anyone about Dolores being Deborah and Deborah being Dolores, then they wouldn’t let us be together anymore. She said so.”
“What are you going to do?” Genie couldn’t keep the quiver out of her voice.
He raised the pistol, aimed it at the line of stitches on her eyebrow, and giggled again.
“Elementary, my dear Watson. I’m going to kill you.”
Chapter Fourteen
“Excuse me? Dr. Wellington?”
Nick looked up in surprise. The young, dark-haired woman at the break room door shouldn’t have been there.
“How did you get in here
? Are you with Peters and Sturgeon?” He’d left messages at Sturgeon’s desk, on his cell phone, and his beeper, so it was possible he’d sent a co-worker over to the lab.
She shook her head, came all the way into the room and closed the door. Nick stood slowly.
“I’m going to have to ask you to leave. This floor is closed to visitors and staff because of some recent trouble Dr. Watson and I have been having.”
“Don’t worry, I have an I.D.” She smiled and flashed a passkey bearing a picture of a pretty redhead. Stephanie. “I know all about your troubles, and I’m sorry for the inconvenience. My brother Richard should have just killed her in the first place and been done with it. Instead, like husbands always do, he messed it up, and now I’m going to have to clean things up for him. Again.”
Sick certainty chilled in Nick’s gut. This was the piece Richard Sr. had known nothing about. The wife. From the look in her eye, the woman was mad. Cold. Wouldn’t even hesitate to take care of Nick before she finished off Genie.
If Nick let her. This time he would be smarter. Faster. Better. He had to be, or Genie was dead. He held out his hands and stepped toward Richard Jr.’s wife. “I’m certain we can work something—”
“Stop moving right now, or you’re going to be sporting a few new cavities.” Nick hadn’t seen the gun until it appeared in her hand, pointed at his chest. It looked like a police-issue weapon.
She followed his gaze. “Nice, isn’t it? I borrowed it from one of the gentlemen in the lobby. It’s amazing how many men are surprised when a woman overpowers them. Sexist, don’t you think?”
Nick managed a strangled, “Um,” and wondered desperately how much longer it would be before Genie joined him for their meeting in the break room.
He’d planned to apologize for his complete lack of coherence in the aftermath. There had been so many things he’d wanted to say, but she’d beaten him to the punch and her complete nonchalance over the whole incident had just plain irritated him. So much for candlelight and soft words—even if his own desire for them had been a shock.
But now he hoped she wouldn’t come for him. Hoped she’d stay in the darkroom for a long time, at least until Sturgeon apprehended Richard Jr. and got his message.
Assuming Sturgeon had found the man.
“Don’t worry about your girlfriend,” the woman suggested with a smile. “Richard’s taking care of her right now.” She licked her lips. “And this time he’s not going to mess it up.”
Nick swore as a parade of images flickered through his mind. Genie in the elevator with her soft gray skirt and her high lace blouse. Genie crumpled under the darkroom sink with blood on her lab coat and a man’s fingerprints on her throat.
Genie laughing at something he said, sighing over a shared Bond moment, humming in pleasure as though grilled cheese and tomato soup was haute cuisine.
Genie crumpled under the darkroom sink with blood on her lab coat. Not moving.
With a primal roar, Nick launched himself at the woman, who smiled as if she had expected the move. Coolly, she pulled the trigger as he flew toward her, and in Nick’s mind the image would be forever engraved of the look on her face the moment the police officer’s gun jammed in her hand.
Then as she cleared the jam and fired a wild shot, he hit her in a full-body tackle he had perfected during the weekly, somewhat unorthodox Biochemistry Department basketball games. She went down, hard.
And didn’t move.
FINGERS PRESSED TIGHTLY against the lip of the developer room sink as though the cool metal could somehow help, Genie tried again to calm the shaking, sweating man with the gun.
“I wouldn’t have told anyone about the DNA results, Richard, you have to believe that. Do you remember signing papers the day you had your eye exam and gave blood?”
Richard Fenton Jr. shook his head doubtfully. “Not really. I remember that my father—no, Richard Sr.—told us the whole family was volunteering for research, like we were lab rats or something. It sounded like fun at first, but once the nurse explained everything, Deborah got real mad. She wanted to leave and not give blood, but Richard Sr. said we had to and she doesn’t like to sass him. She says if we’re nice to him, we’ll inherit the money we deserve when he dies.”
His simple speech pattern and occasional tic made Genie think that either he’d never been particularly smart or recent events had put him right over the edge. When you were dealing with first-degree relatives making babies, anything was possible.
“Well, we have your signature on the piece of paper that says we can’t tell anyone else about what we find in your blood. It’s yours, and we can only use it for research. Even if your father had called and asked me about the results, I wouldn’t have told him.” Genie didn’t mention the fact that Richard Sr. had done just that.
“Daddy and Dolores said you’d tell him if he promised you enough money. That’s how he does things. With money. Our money—Deb’s and mine.” Richard Jr. rocked back and forth on his heels, humming slightly, and Genie’s heart nearly broke for the man. Whatever connection he’d had to the world at large had been severed by the events of the last five days.
She didn’t know how Richard’s mother had come to be pregnant with her brother’s child, but with Mac’s jail record it probably hadn’t been pretty. And it seemed that the twisted old man was still controlling things from maximum security.
“Richard, how did you meet your wife?”
He snickered, scratched his ear with the muzzle of the gun, and resumed pointing it at Genie while the developer churned loudly in the small room and the odor of chemicals boiled around them.
“She ran away when we were both kids, but her father found her. He told her about me when he was dying of liver cancer in county lockup. Only he didn’t die. He’s too powerful to die. He sent her to help me. Sent her to make sure I got the money I deserve.”
Crack! The sound was muffled by the thick block walls and the pounding beat of the film developer, but Genie thought it had been a gunshot. Nick. Nick was out there with Richard’s wife and she was armed. Or was it one of the police officers finally doing his job?
She had to get out of the developer room. Nick might need her. He might be hurt.
That he might already be dead was a possibility she refused to consider. She slid a step to her right, talking to keep Richard focused on her voice, not her position.
“Did you know he was your father?”
Richard shook his head and, out of the corner of her eye, Genie saw the voltage flash from one hundred-twenty to one hundred-fifty and back again as the vertical electrophoresis unit sent killing current surging through the open buffer chamber. “Not then. She told me on our wedding night.”
Feet pounded in the hall.
Richard Jr. shifted uneasily and Genie talked loudly over the noise of the developer to cover the sounds from outside, just in case it was Nick or the officers coming to her rescue.
If it was Dolores/Deborah, she was already doomed.
“That must have been quite a surprise, finding out that you’d married your half sister.” Even as the words left her mouth, Genie wished them back. Richard’s face clouded and he took a menacing step toward her, gun held at the ready.
“Don’t say it that way! It wasn’t wrong! She loves me and I love her and it’s our money, we deserve it! It wasn’t wrong.”
“Okay, okay. I’m sorry.” Genie slid another step to the right, now keeping the high counter at her back. She repressed a shiver at the quick memory of Nick’s heavy body pinning her against that same counter as he pumped himself inside of her, lifted her higher, sent her spinning. Nick. Her heart thumped at the memory, then died a little at the thought that Nick could be in the outer lab, hurt. Needing her.
She slid another step to the right and kicked something metallic that pinged a protest and skittered across the floor.
“What? What was that?” Richard glared at her. “What are you doing? Where do you think you’re going? Stop righ
t there.” He bumped up against her with his body and shoved the gun beneath her chin. Genie stood almost on her tiptoes, trying to relieve the sudden pressure, the immediate threat. “You hurt me the other day—I’m gonna get you back for hurting me, and so is Deborah. She doesn’t like it when people hurt me.”
“I didn’t mean to hurt you, Richard.” She tried to keep her voice calm, but it quivered anyway.
Think! She had to think her way out of this one. Her captor’s eyes were getting wilder by the second, his body was warm and hard where it pressed against hers, and she could see a line of stitches behind his right ear where she’d hit him.
She saw movement out of the corner of her eye, and at first thought it was just those digital numbers blinking their mindless current change. But then it happened again, a slow, measured slide of the revolving door, and Genie realized that the light lock now faced outward to receive a new person.
Nick! It had to be Nick. Richard’s wife wouldn’t bother with stealth. She’d just come in with a loud rubba-thump. It had to be Nick.
And Richard would shoot him.
“Not so smart now, are you, Doctor?” Richard jabbed the gun a little higher into the soft flesh beneath Genie’s jaw and she whimpered. Satisfaction glinted in his eyes and he poked the gun again at the same time that he ground his hips against hers. She tried to squirm away and he grunted. “Like that, do you? Well then, why don’t we—”
Rubba-Thump! Rubba-Thump! “Drop it, Fenton!”
Richard swore sharply and spun them so Genie was in front of him, a human shield against the furious man who now stood in the tiny room. “Don’t do anything foolish, Wellington. You wouldn’t want your little girlfriend to get hurt, would you?”
Nick. Nick was here, he was okay, Dolores hadn’t hurt him. The words chanted a mindless litany through Genie’s brain and she smiled at him as though she hadn’t seen him for weeks. Then Richard shifted the gun to her temple and the smile died.
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