“The gack could be not saying much because he’s running scared. Which means he bleedin’ knows what has happened to Stef and didn’t have the balls to come to the authorities for help.”
Erin sighed. “I didn’t go to the authorities. I was alone and up against Dr. Cinatas and Sno-Med. I found four dead bodies in the lab. I knew if I was caught, I’d be dead too. So I had to get out of there, but also knew the second I left, the bodies and any proof that I was telling the truth would disappear.”
“But you didn’t run scared,” Annette added. “Or you would have hid out on a beach in Mexico somewhere rather than coming right to the lion’s den.”
“I figured the four dead were just the tip of the iceberg, and I’d find the proof I needed at Dr. Cinatas’s research center.”
“And you’re right,” Annette said, with a sick feeling in her gut that Stef was going to be part of that cold, hard truth. “Sno-Med has to have been doing something to those women in the X-files. There is no way that many of them died from natural causes. I wish I had time this minute to fly to Nashville and see Torres, but that’s going to have to wait until I can get legitimate access to her.” The feeling that if she didn’t hurry all proof of Sno-Med’s crimes and all hope of finding her sister would be lost hovered over her head like an ax of doom, raking her every nerve.
“What if Abe Bennett is my Mr. X, the man who asked me to meet him at Sno-Med?” Annette asked, trying to focus on the conversation and not her panic.
“I’d say you hit the nail on the right head, then. It would also mean that he’s hiding somewhere close.”
Annette’s chest tightened, and she had to roll down her window, desperately gasping in air.
Was that why she was apprehensive? She studied her surroundings as she pulled out onto the road. Nothing hit her as being out of the ordinary. It was a perfect summer day in the rural mountains. Warm sun. Nice breeze. Farmers on their tractors in plant-striped fields. To her right four boys raced along the grassy side of a creek, a scrappy-looking puppy nipping at their heels.
“There’s an off chance everything Mrs. Bennett was told is legit,” Erin said softly, as if talking out loud. “I know that Sno-Med has contracted with the government before to provide medical testing, but as far as I know it’s never required secrecy.”
“The question is, what can we do about it? How can we get to this Abe Bennett fast via e-mail and get him to respond? Once he contacts his mother, she’ll be sure to tell him of our visit, and he may run.”
“No worries, luv,” said Emerald. “Dr. Em has everything all figured out, provided our friend Abe is a heterosexual male.”
“How?”
“Instructional porn. I’ll just send him a wee message from my Dr. Em Web site, inviting him to take part in a survey. I’ll ask him to view my photographic Kama Sutra book and give me feedback from a male perspective about any changes that need to be made before republication. It’s a survey I have up for my clients, not just anybody. If he’s heterosexual, I doubt he’ll be able to resist logging on and taking a peek. Once he does, my server will have his IP address, and unless he’s cloaking where he is with a long-distance server, we can get his general location.”
“You’re a genius.” Annette laughed.
“Bleedin’ hell,” Emerald said sharply, turning up the radio newscast.
“WTWZ is reporting to you an earlier news release from this morning: Dr. Cinatas, head of the Sno-Med Corporation that has suffered two fires in two of their major facilities this past week, is reassuring all those receiving medical treatment from Sno-Med that they will be taken care of. Sno-Med will make a full recovery in providing quality, inexpensive medical care to all of the world’s people in need.”
Dr. Cinatas’s voice came over the radio waves loud and clear, giving Annette a cold chill and increasing the pressure on her chest. “Have no fear. We will find and prosecute the person or persons responsible for these horrendous attacks.”
The cacophony of questions being shouted by reporters quieted as soon as Cinatas spoke again.
“Yes. As you can see, I suffered injuries from which I am still recovering, but I felt it necessary as head of Sno-Med to let you know that all is well. Please rest assured that patients who have entrusted Sno-Med with their health care are our top priority during these troubled times. We already have facilities near both the Arcadia Center and our Manhattan Clinic open to care for you. Sno-Med will not let any arsonist cause our patients to suffer. We’ve set up a hotline for directions and help—”
“Oh, my God!” Erin gasped. “I’m going to be sick. I can’t believe he’s still alive.”
Out of the corner of her eye, Annette saw that Emerald already had her cell phone out, calling Sam and Jared. She disconnected a moment later. “They heard. They’re on the way back. And we’re dead meat because we left your place.”
Annette’s hands shook, and her heart raced. Something besides hearing about Cinatas was wrong. Suddenly a sharp pain cut across her left shoulder and down her arm. She exhaled in a whoosh as she swerved off the road and hit the brakes.
“Fookin’ hell, Nette!” Emerald braced herself on the dash.
Erin grabbed the seat back. “What’s wrong?”
Annette gasped for air, shuddering with the pain. “I think…I’m having a…heart attack,” she cried as the symptoms she’d been experiencing all morning fell into place. The anxiety, the tightness, the sense of doom, the radiating, sharp pain.
Emerald and Erin made a beeline for her. Erin lurched up from the back, checking her carotid pulse, while Emerald shoved the gearshift into park and cut the engine.
Just as Annette thought she was going to either pass out or be sick from the pain, it disappeared, leaving her feeling perfectly fine. “Holy hell. Never mind. No, I’m not. I don’t know what’s wrong.”
“That’s not bleedin’ good enough. What’s going on, Nette? You’re the cardiac ex—”
“Ugghh!” Annette cried, grabbing her face as pain exploded in her left cheek. Her heart raced, and a cold sweat broke across her brow. Then everything was fine again.
“I’m calling 911,” Erin shouted. “Get her out from behind the steering wheel, Em. She could be having a seizure.”
“No,” Annette yelled. “It was my cheek that hurt. But it’s fine now. Oh!” She doubled, feeling like she’d been punched in the gut.
“Good heavens, it’s as if some invisible force is beating her up.”
Erin’s words sent Annette’s mind racing, and her heart centered on Aragon. They’d made such a connection. He’d been so into her that she’d felt his thoughts, felt his pleasure. “Oh, no! What if it isn’t me? What if Aragon has been captured?”
An even deeper pain stabbed right through her—then nothing. Everything disappeared. The doom. The anxiety. The pain. Everything.
With a wrenching cry, Annette shoved open her car door and barreled out onto the roadside. She sucked in deep breaths of air and fought against the growing fear inside her. Tears stung her eyes.
Without even seeing where she walked, she crossed over the gravel and mown grass to a split rail fence where a pair of horses, one black and huge, the other slighter and gray, played in a rich, summer-green pasture. Blue-hazed mountains rolled along the tree-lined horizon, and a light breeze brushed her face, reminding her of Aragon’s first tentative touch. Her heart contracted painfully.
“Nette!” Emerald cried. “By the Druids! Tell us what is happenin’!”
Erin grabbed Annette’s left arm, and Emerald grabbed her right.
“It’s gone,” Annette whispered. “The pain is all gone.”
“Thank God,” Erin said.
“Uh-oh,” Emerald added. “No! You can’t do this!” Emerald said. “You can’t!”
“Do what?” Erin demanded.
Emerald’s BlackBerry tinkled. One of her patients needed some advice ASAP. For the first time ever, Emerald turned the BlackBerry off. “Sex will have to wait. Nette, you ca
nna let yourself think that Aragon is dead just because you doona feel any weird blows.”
Erin groaned. “How could I be so dense? Emerald is right! Listen, whatever is happening with Aragon, even if he has been captured or worse, your spirit crying out for his will keep you connected. If you give up, then you lose that! You have to believe. My belief might have been what brought Jared back to life. I wouldn’t let him go.”
I promise I will not fail you. The last words Aragon spoke to her rang through her mind. She dashed at her tears and squared her shoulders. “You two are right. Let’s get back to my place and set the trap for Abe Bennett before the men arrive and mess it up.”
On the return, Erin and Emerald read out facts from the medical files they were looking through, and Annette cut everything else from her mind but the project Stefanie had been working on.
She pulled into her drive and cut the engine.
What if Stef hadn’t been working on a project, but had stumbled on one and was investigating it? The X-files? What if Stef wasn’t one of the medical records but had discovered them? Calling it Tuskegee would indicate that treatments had either been given to or withheld from the group of women without their knowledge. Treatments that caused death or a stroke.
She got out of the car, then froze, her gaze shifting in the direction of the Rankins’ house. If the lab tests were right, Celeste was in danger of having a stroke. Celeste had been a friend of Stefanie’s. Stefanie had been worried about a friend involved in the project. Celeste had mentioned that she’d received B-12 shots for anemia in the past, and that’s why she’d been worried about it now.
“Nette? What is it? Is something happening again?”
“No. Hold on,” Annette said and pulled out her cell phone, dialing the Rankins. The number was busy. She tossed her keys to Erin. “You two go on in. I’ve got to run over to my neighbor’s and have her come back to my office later today to repeat a lab test that was really off. I’ll be right back.”
She didn’t wait for Emerald or Erin to answer, but took off down the drive at a brisk walk. The fresh air would also help her think more clearly. Was she grasping at straws? Trying to make the pieces of the puzzle fit because she was desperate for answers?
“Wait up, luv,” Emerald called out. “I’ll walk with you. This is about more than repeating a lab test. You canna hold out on us.”
“I’m not. It’s just what I’m thinking seems sort of wild, but then not.”
“What is it?”
“What if Celeste Rankin is one of the X-files?” Annette breached her doctor’s code and told Emerald about Celeste’s highly elevated red-blood-cell count. “She came in worried about anemia. If the lab is right, then her blood is no better than sludge, making her ripe for blood clots—”
“Or a bleedin’ stroke. Like Consuela Torres.”
“Then I’m not crazy?”
“No. Only one of the women in the files so far has been alive. How can the fookin’ doctors get away with so many patients dying? People had to have realized this was happening.” Emerald’s bracelets jangled in her irritation.
The day was too calm, too bright. Trees swayed in the light afternoon breeze, making it seem as if all was well and good with the world.
Emerald’s cell phone rang when they neared the end of Annette’s drive. She looked at the display and paled. “It’s Meggie’s school.”
“Hello? Yes, this is Megan’s mother.”
“Hold on, I’m losing reception.” Emerald had to go back three steps. “What’s wrong now? A stomachache? Yes, let me talk to her.”
“I’ll be right back,” Annette whispered to Emerald as Emerald waited for her daughter. “If I don’t go now, Sam and Jared will be here, and then who knows what we’re going to be doing.”
Emerald nodded. “I’ll be right over just as soon as I speak to Meggie.”
Annette crossed the street and dashed up the drive. Celeste’s car was parked in the front with the trunk open. Several plastic bags of groceries were still in it. Annette grabbed two of them and climbed the steps to the porch. “Celeste. It’s Annette.” As she stepped through the doorway, the strong odor of bleach assaulted her, making her nose itch. When she brushed her nose with the back of her hand, she noticed one of the bags she carried felt mushy when it hit her arm. A quick glance told her that the ice cream had melted and leaked from its carton into the bag, making an unappetizing mess.
An odd tingling ran up her spine. She glanced around the great room of the cabin. Other bags of groceries sat on the kitchen counter. Annette’s heart pounded. Was she too late? Had Celeste suffered a stroke? The doctor in Annette took over. She dropped the bags and ran to the open bedroom door. “Celeste?”
Inside, she didn’t find Celeste, but her blood turned cold at what she did see. Besides the normal quilt-covered four-poster bed, dresser, and stand-alone swivel mirror, there was a desk capped by a huge corkboard, like something anchoring a police investigation. On it were pictures and articles about Stefanie. Though the Rankins had been thoroughly involved in searching for Stef, the collection still struck Annette as off—then screamed foul at her when she spied a dragon-covered laptop on the desk. The artwork was unmistakably Stefanie’s.
Annette ran to the desk and snatched up the laptop; anger alone forced her brain to work through the numbing realization that the Rankins were involved with the disappearance of her sister. On the screen was an open e-mail account for Abe Bennett.
“A convenient time for you to stop by, Dr. Batista. Celeste isn’t feeling well at all.”
She whirled around to see Rob Rankin leaning against the doorjamb. He sounded nonchalant, as if it was nothing out of the ordinary for her to be standing in his bedroom, clutching a stolen laptop. Two steps back brought her flush with the beveled mirror, something she could easily shove into Rankin’s face if he came after her.
“You called last night!” she cried, making a stabbing accusation that she hoped would fit. “What did you do to Stefanie?” she demanded. She was too angry over his deception to pretend ignorance even for her own safety.
He smiled. “Yes, I called. Things were getting too strange even for me at Sno-Med. Yesterday I thought I’d go on record that I’d tried to contact someone about Stefanie and the X-files, just in case there was an investigation. But now it’s all too late.”
“Where are Stefanie and Abe?” Annette demanded.
He smiled as if he were bestowing a great gift. “Why, I simply sent them way south of the border into the heart of the research project she was doggedly investigating.”
The X-files!
“Tell me where, you bastard.”
“That seems to be my name today.” He straightened from the doorjamb to face her. “Everything would have worked out perfectly fine if your sister hadn’t buddied up with Celeste and nosed into her treatments and files.”
“She wasn’t getting B-12 shots for anemia, was she? What did you all do to her, and why? Her red blood cell count is off the charts.”
His brows went up. “You’ll have to ask someone else what and why. All I cared about was Celeste’s poor chances of survival. Just my luck that she hung on longer than most of the others.”
“You set your own wife up to die?”
“An ingenious way to collect the life insurance and retire. Sno-Med will be responsible for her death, and they’re helping me pay for the life insurance policy to boot. The benefits are great.”
“You’re sick.”
“No, just greedy. The medical minds behind the experimental study are sick.”
“Interesting philosophy,” came an amused voice from behind Rankin, and he swung around, surprised at last.
Annette recognized the cool voice and those arctic blue eyes. The memory of his burning cold touch crawled over her, leaving a knot of fear in her gut. “Pathos,” she whispered.
“You really shouldn’t leave your door open, Rankin. Any manner of creature can just walk in,” said Dr. Cinatas. His face seem
ed different from what she remembered, but the bandages covering half of it made it hard to tell how.
Before Rankin could do anything but gape at his intruders, Pathos moved in and nailed Rankin by the throat up against the bedroom door. “Drop the knife or die this instant.”
A bloody butcher knife clattered to the floor.
“Not only are you stupid.” Cinatas put his face in Rankin’s. “You failed. If Celeste had really survived the treatments, then I would have paid millions. Instead, I have a mess here and, it seems, at Corazon to clean up. Right?”
Rankin managed to nod. Pathos held him so tightly to the door that she knew the man could barely breathe. Not that he deserved to—but she couldn’t just watch either.
“Let him go,” she demanded, searching for a weapon.
“We’re going to let him go,” Cinatas said.
“Straight to hell,” Pathos added. “See you shortly.”
“No!” Annette threw the only thing she could at Pathos—Stef’s laptop. He knocked it aside as if it were a fly. The computer landed on the bed, and she watched in horror as Pathos crushed Rankin’s throat. Rankin slithered to the floor, death spasms wracking his body.
Pathos wiped his hand off on his pants leg and faced her. His silver hair was now closely cropped to his head, a style much less impressive than before. “Surely you were expecting me?”
Somehow in the gaze he ran over her, Annette knew he was going to make her pay for every strand of hair she’d singed, but in a very different way from Rankin. A sexual intensity burned in Pathos’s eyes, one as strong as Aragon’s. It raked over her, making all her nerve endings recoil with dread.
Annette forced her voice past the lump in her throat. “Yes.”
He smiled, almost gently. “Good. I sense you understand your situation.” He held his hand out, like a gentleman inviting a lady to dance. “Come, I am anxious for the play to begin.”
“Sorry,” Annette said. “I’m busy.”
He lowered his hand, but his smile didn’t waver. “Yes, I know. Your sister. She will make a poor substitute, but I guess I’ll have to make do. Enjoy yourself, my dear. But keep in mind, your sister is only filling in until I can have you. I’m surprised Aragon isn’t lapping at your heels. Give him my regards,” Pathos said, and then swung around to leave.
The Lure of the Wolf Page 19