Beneath the Surface

by Meredith Fletcher

  “Those babies,” Ci’an said in a hoarse voice a long moment later, “were all monsters. Abominations. Two of them killed their own mothers. I saw it happen, and there was nothing anyone could do about it.”

  Chapter 28

  “A s Dr. Chow’s head nurse, I was present at the birth of all those children,” Ci’an continued. “The first was born in Shanghai, and I—” She faltered then. Tears filled her eyes.

  Slowly Shannon leaned forward and put her hand on the old woman’s shoulder. Sometimes a single touch was better than a million words.

  After a few minutes, Ci’an got control of herself. “Forgive me.”

  “It’s all right.” Shannon released her and leaned back.

  “All of this,” Ci’an whispered, “has been hard. Dealing with it then and talking about it all these years later. I’ve been silent about all the bad things that happened for so very long.”

  “Sometimes,” Shannon said, “it helps to talk about things.” She deliberately didn’t try to tell the woman that talking about this, now, would help. That would have been too direct. What the woman had shouldered for so long took a more subtle approach because it had become so much a part of her.

  “Dr. Chow persuaded me to join him with the very argument you mentioned,” Ci’an said. “He said that only being able to change the genes of women indicated how special we were.” She shook her head sadly. “I was no young woman then. I wasn’t a fool. I just wanted to believe what he said.”

  “We all want to believe we are special at some point,” Shannon told her.

  Ci’an reached for Shannon’s hand and took it in her own. Her palm was hard from years of manual labor in the hospitals.

  “I recruited the girl who was killed by the giant baby,” she whispered. “She was the daughter of my sister. My niece. My sister knew she shouldn’t have kept a daughter, but she did. Her husband was too softhearted to insist that my sister do her duty and get rid of her.”

  The woman’s pain and guilt radiated through Shannon. She couldn’t save herself from it. Her eyes filled with tears just as the woman’s did.

  “I thought I would do them a favor,” Ci’an said. “I talked my niece into volunteering for the experiment. I helped them negotiate enough money for my niece to attend college in America and make something of herself.” Her voice broke. “And it was done. Everything went well, except that the baby got really big from the very beginning. My niece…she was such a small girl. But we thought there would be no complications.”

  Shannon held on to the woman’s hands, anchoring her to the room instead of that time years ago.

  “But there were. When I told Dr. Chow of the difficulties my niece was having with the pregnancy and that it needed to be aborted, he had her brought in. Then they strapped her to a bed and watched. My niece screamed in pain for days as the baby grew inside her like some rotting fruit.”

  Shannon cursed, but she didn’t break eye contact with the woman. That would have broken the spell.

  “They wouldn’t give her anything for the pain,” Ci’an continued. “They didn’t want to taint the pregnancy. So my niece screamed until the baby grew so large that it suffocated her and burst her heart.”

  Shannon shuddered. She noted that Rafe sat at the desk mesmerized. And I can’t do this story, Shannon reminded herself.

  “Once my niece was dead,” Ci’an said, “they had no choice but to take the baby. They did. When they delivered the baby, she weighed almost thirty pounds.”

  “Why was she so big?”

  “Because of the things that Dr. Chow and Dr. Peters did to her genes. The child continued to grow at an alarming rate, but her bones were brittle. When she tried to walk or even pull herself along, she suffered multiple fractures. The doctors had to find a way to immobilize her at all times. She was made a prisoner of her own body. I was told she was incredibly intelligent, though. A genius.”

  “Were all of them like that?”

  “No. The second was born to a girl in India. The surrogate mother died, as well. At first no one knew why. Her water broke, and she went into toxic shock. She was dead within seconds. The surgical team that delivered the baby died, too.”

  “Why?”

  “Because the child’s skin secreted poison. No one knew this till later.”

  “What about the third child?”

  “That was the only birth that seemed not to be marked with tragedy. But only weeks after the delivery, someone killed the surrogate.”

  “Do you know where these children are now?”

  “If there is justice in the world, they are all dead.”

  The vehemence in the woman’s voice shocked Shannon.

  “I don’t know where they are,” Ci’an said. “Their wretched mother took them.”

  “I thought their mothers were dead.”

  “The surrogates only. Remember—the eggs were harvested from a single woman. It was she who funded this program as Dr. Peters was getting ready to move to America. He wanted one last attempt to make as much money as he could. I was told the woman paid millions to have her children carried by others. They took her eggs and, according to her request, each was fertilized by a different father.”

  Rafe held up a manila folder. Seated as he was, the old woman couldn’t see him.

  “Did you meet the woman?” Shannon asked.

  “Yes. On a number of occasions.”

  Shannon freed one of her hands and reached for the manila folder on the floor beside her. “I have pictures of a woman here. Can you tell me if this was the mother?”

  Ci’an took the manila folder and opened it. She gazed at the pictures for only a moment before nodding.

  “This is her.”

  All of the pictures were of Jackie Cavanaugh at different ages.

  Finally, it was over. Shannon put on a smile and thanked Ci’an for her time. She and Rafe escorted the old woman downstairs and put her into a cab.

  “Damn,” Shannon whispered as the cab drove away.

  “Yeah,” Rafe agreed. He knew neither of them had the words for what they’d just heard.

  “Kwan-Sook couldn’t have figured you’d have found out about Jackie Cavanaugh,” Allison said. She sat in front of her computer console and studied lines of code pouring across her screens. They represented the huge search that was going on through China’s banking systems.

  “We don’t even know if Kwan-Sook is her name,” Shannon said sourly.

  “It really doesn’t matter.” Allison typed in another line of code to narrow the search. She was beginning to detect a pattern, and that was definitely good. “Kwan-Sook beats calling her Madame X.”

  On the computer screen, Shannon grinned. “Madame X sounds more sexy for journalism.”

  “We’re not doing journalism,” Allison reminded her gently.

  “I know. That hurts, because this is a great story.”

  “A lot of people would get damaged by this story if it were allowed to go public.”

  “I agree. And I understand why you want this closed out.”

  “Not just me,” Allison said. “President Monihan does, too.”

  “The biggest thing would be the harm it would do to the school.”

  “We narrowly avoided that last time. If this came out—”

  “It would look like a cover-up.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Athena does too much good to be shut down,” Shannon said.

  “Glad to hear you say that. Considering the way you’ve felt about the school in the past.”

  “Not the school. Just some of the people.”

  “Point taken.”

  “Don’t count on the competition between Tory and me going away. That was there even before the thing with Josie.”

  Allison grinned. “I know. I remember.”

  “What are you doing now?”

  “I,” Allison declared with authority, “am tracing Dr. Chow’s bank accounts in the Caribbean.”

  “He had accounts th
ere?”

  “Yes. And before your meeting with him, the combined amounts swelled to over a million dollars.”

  “That’s what he said Kwan-Sook paid him to meet with me.”

  “That’s right.”

  “I thought information about those accounts was limited.”

  “It is. But I refuse to be limited.”

  Shannon looked straight at her through the computer camera link. “You’re tracking the money that was put into those accounts.”

  Allison nodded. “It’s proving harder than it should, but I’m patient. Kwan-Sook used a number of different accounts from different shell corporations. But she hasn’t invented any tricks that I haven’t seen.”

  “What do we need to do?” That was Rafe from somewhere in the background.

  “If you want to leave,” Allison said, “I—”

  “No,” he said. “I told you I’d stick for the duration. I meant that. You want to speak to this woman.”

  “I do,” Allison said. “One of those packets Cavanaugh fired off headed in this direction. I want to know what they were.” She typed in more code, furthering the search field. “Until I find out anything concrete, all you can do is wait and make sure you’re rested for when that time comes.”

  “All right.”

  “And it will come, Rafe. Whoever this woman is, she owes me for what she’s been doing.”

  “Let me know.”

  Allison said she would. Then she broke the connection and focused all her energies on the search for the money Dr. Chow Bao had gotten for meeting with Shannon.

  The answers were there. All she had to do was sift away everything that wasn’t an answer.

  Shannon lay awake in bed and listened to the whirlpool bath working. The sound wasn’t keeping her awake. That noise was low and moderate, not intrusive at all. It was thoughts of Rafe Santorini sitting in the tub that haunted her.

  After they’d basically been put on hold by Allison, there hadn’t been much to do. Both had agreed that returning to the basement where Xiaoming and her crew had let him recuperate didn’t sound pleasant. Rafe had also been reluctant to let her stay on her own, so they’d gotten the suite.

  Xiaoming and the others had rooms at other nearby hotels. That way they weren’t all together in case Kwan-Sook or the other person involved in the attack on Dr. Chow proved to be more adept at finding them.

  Although they’d tried, Rafe and Shannon hadn’t had much to say to each other. There was a subtext going on beneath the surface of their words that kept demanding attention. Only neither of them would address it.

  Shannon knew what her problem was. Being around that much male was distracting. When she’d been watching over Rafe while he was in a coma, she hadn’t once thought of him in a sexual manner. She’d just wanted him to be all right.

  But now that he was up and around, now that she had gotten Ci’an to talk and linked Jackie Cavanaugh to the egg-babies and the genetic experimentation at Lab 33 and was feeling good about herself, she was definitely aware of Rafe hitting her sexual radar. Big-time.

  You need to just chill and relax, she told herself.

  However, relaxation seemed to be something she couldn’t do. She kept thinking of Rafe in the tub. She knew he was running the whirlpool because of his leg. He’d gotten around on it well throughout the day, but she knew he’d probably damaged it dropping off the balcony to become a human shield to save her.

  She still couldn’t believe he’d done that. No one she knew would have done anything like that.

  He’d been watching her today, too. She’d caught him doing it. And when she did, he’d gotten embarrassed and looked away. That made it even harder to have a normal conversation. As if there was anything normal about what they were doing there.

  They were risking their freedom, if not their lives, by staying. But Shannon didn’t want to leave any more than Rafe and the others did. Kwan-Sook—if that was her name—owed her.

  Jackie Cavanaugh owed her, too, for crossing her up at Athena, but it was too late to collect on that debt.

  However, the sins of the mother—if that’s what she was—could be delivered upon the child.

  Abruptly, the whirlpool stopped.

  Shannon listened as Rafe got up and returned to the living room area. He’d already pulled out the queen-size bed from the couch.

  A moment later the television came on.

  Evidently he couldn’t sleep either.

  With a sigh, Shannon got out of bed, thinking maybe a glass of wine would help her sleep. She wore a long T-shirt over panties. She missed the negligee she’d bought, but she hadn’t felt like shopping while they’d been busy the last few days.

  Chapter 29

  I n the living area, Rafe sat on the couch/bed clad in a pair of gray gym shorts that looked pale against his bronzed flesh. He had a pistol beside him. Both his hands were busy massaging his knee. It was visibly swollen, but he hadn’t complained.

  Shannon was willing to bet not many people heard complaints from him.

  His eyes raked her from head to toe, pausing at her breasts and along her thighs. Shannon suddenly felt the heat of his gaze. He looked away quickly.

  “How bad is your knee?” she asked.

  “Not too bad,” he replied. “I still have to work to keep it loose. The surgeon told me I’ll eventually get most of the articulation back. It’s just going to take time.”

  “I’m going to get a glass of wine. Do you want anything?”

  “I think I saw a beer in there.”

  Shannon padded to the refrigerator. After she poured a glass of wine, she asked, “Do you want the beer in a glass?”

  “No. Thanks.”

  She took the beer to him and saw that he was watching the news on television.

  “Mind if I join you?” she asked.

  “Sure.” Rafe looked up at her with worry in his eyes. “Are you all right? That thing today was pretty ugly.”

  “I’m fine.” Shannon sat. “Just wound up. Finding out a big piece of the last fifteen years of your life has been based on a lie is kind of…disturbing.”

  “Yeah. But you get through it. Everything in life changes you one way or another.”

  Shannon thought about the childhood she knew he’d had. His strong fingers worked the scar tissue surrounding his knee. She set the wineglass to one side.

  “Here. Let me do that.” She reached over and took his leg.

  “It’s all right,” he protested. “I can handle this.”

  “Hey,” she said quietly, “you jumped off a building and got shot to save my life. A knee massage is the least I can do for you.” She didn’t release his knee.

  Reluctantly he let her pull his leg into her lap. She kneaded his flesh, feeling the taut muscles and the hard scar tissue beneath her fingertips. She also felt the heat of his flesh.

  This is such a bad idea, she told herself. But she was too stubborn to stop. She was conscious of how quiet and still he’d gotten, and he didn’t feel relaxed at all.

  “I think that’s good,” he said.

  She looked up at him and saw how uncomfortable he was. She also noticed that her touch had had an effect on him that the gym shorts didn’t quite disguise.

  “Still feels like there’s a lot of tension,” she said, staring into his eyes. “But maybe that’s just me.”

  Rafe had to clear his throat to speak. “Really. It feels better. You just worked a miracle.”

  Unable to stop herself, she trailed her fingers up the inside of his thigh to the edge of the shorts. He trembled under her touch.

  “Don’t,” he whispered.

  Shannon smiled at him. “Don’t what?” Her fingers snaked upward again, and this time she slid them under the edge of the shorts.

  “I’ve never much cared for a tease,” he said.

  “I’m not teasing,” she whispered.

  He hesitated for just a moment, then he reached for her, gripping her by the shoulders and hauling her up to him a
s he leaned back against the couch.

  Shannon straddled him, feeling his hardness against her flesh as she scooted upward. He groaned and his hips bucked slightly. He pulled her close, wrapping her in his strong arms. Then his lips were on hers.

  She kissed him back, and her need was so great that she ground down to meet him as his hips rose. He felt so hard, so good, that her head seemed to spin and turn inside out.

  He broke the kiss and looked up at her. “I’ve wanted you from the moment I first saw you almost three weeks ago. If this isn’t what you want to do, you’d better stop now.”

  “I don’t want to stop,” Shannon whispered. “I bought a negligee a few days ago that I intended to tempt you with. If you ever caught up with me again.”

  “I saw it.” Rafe rolled beneath her, sliding his length along her channel. “I thought you’d just bought it to wear.”

  “Not just to wear,” she replied huskily. “I had you in mind.”

  “Good.” He put his hands on her hips and pulled her even more tightly against him. He moved and drove himself against her.

  Her liquid heat had already dampened her panties. She felt herself swelling with need, wrapping his engorged flesh through the material. He bumped against her just right, and the rocking motion was already threatening to push her over the edge.

  “Are you sure this is what you want?” he asked. Fire danced in his eyes.

  “Yes.”

  With one hand, he reached down and tore the panties away. He lifted the T-shirt, then lifted her to graze his flesh against her. She was so slick that he slid through her puffy lips easily. But he didn’t penetrate.

  “We don’t have anything,” he said.

  “Wait.” Dizzy with passion, Shannon went to the minibar. Inside, with the snacks and bottled water, she’d seen an intimacy kit. She took out a condom and returned to Rafe. She held it up with pride. “I love staying at a hotel that thinks of everything.”

  Rafe started to get up.

  Shannon put a hand in the center of his chest and pushed him down. Then she tore the condom package open and sheathed him with hardly any trouble at all.