by Nancy Gideon
"When she finally died, there was this huge feeling of relief that our lives could go on again. And then the guilt over being glad she was gone. My dad never got over it. He took a security job out of state just to escape. I haven't seen him in two years. There were phone calls at first, then a few letters. Now, nothing. I couldn't call him out of the blue. I couldn't tell him about me."
"And so you've gone through everything alone."
"What's the point in starting a new relationship you won't be around to finish?” She shrugged philosophically. “It wasn't so bad. Relationships rarely live up to their PR anyway."
That boldface lie made his heart ache with admiration. How brave she was, and how personally he felt her loneliness.
"I didn't believe it at first,” she continued in a distancing monotone. “I had a full blood count, blood film reports, bone marrow examination, chromosome analysis, the whole nine yards. Leukemia. There was some suggestion that it might have come from exposure to the radiotherapy I saw my mom through, but why did it matter. Knowing why wouldn't make it go away. I jumped into the first available clinical trial, using a combination of drugs to kill the abnormal cells. The intensive chemotherapy made it impossible to work, so I took a leave of absence from the police force and finally had to quit all together. By the time I hit remission, I had another goal in mind. I wasn't going to let it take me like AIDS did my mother. My field of study changed from the dead to the living. With good risk AML, there's about a 60% chance of being alive and well for up to five years, but with poor risk, that chance of survival without a bone marrow transplant or a stem cell transplant is extremely low. I'm a poor risk. I'm going into relapse, Louis, and there's no way to effectively stop it. I could start up the treatments again, but then I'd be no good to anyone—not to you not to me. It would mean being transfused three times a week because the drugs affect the production of normal blood cells. I'd have a catheter in my chest to take samples more easily and fill me with antibiotics. Later, they'll have to use the tube to feed me when the chemo makes me too sick to eat.
"I won't be useless. I won't just lie down and die while those in my field pursue gene mapping that might take up to ten years to perfect. I don't have ten years. There aren't any viable candidates for transplant, so that leaves finding a cure."
"So you came to Harper."
"Yes. After I rounded out my medical degrees, they were thrilled to have me. I don't kid myself about who's behind their funding and why, but sometimes you just have to overlook the bad in hopes of grabbing onto a little good. It's like making a deal with that devil we discussed earlier. The sacrifice is worth the benefits of success."
"Is it?"
Her expression toughened. “Harper can give me what I need. If they demand a price, I'll pay it. Hey, if I'm alive when the bill comes due, I'm not going to complain about the interest rate."
"What will they do with your research, Stacy? Have you thought of that?"
"Bad things. Things that will make them a lot of dirty money. But I can't let that matter. Not now. Not when I have a chance to wash that antiseptic smell off my hands for good."
"There are worse things to have on your hands, Stacy."
She gave him a perplexed look. “You've had blood on yours for centuries. Why should you care if mine get a little stained?"
"That stain never comes clean. And the price is hard to live with."
"But you do. You live with it. So will I. I will live, Louis. I will have my life back. I will have the things I deserve, like family, children, things only a future can give you."
The same things he'd once hoped to have and hold forever. How could he begrudge her?
Then he thought of the price Arabella had paid—her father's life, her ability to walk after an attempt to kill him went awry, the pain of growing old beside an eternally youthful husband. The price of loving her still hung heavily upon his heart.
"And you will turn your back on the consequence of the price you've paid?"
"Won't you, Louis? Won't you happily accept the cure and walk away just grateful to be returned to the state of humanity you so desire? You know you will. Don't pretend otherwise. We want that future, damn the cost. That doesn't make us monsters. It makes us human. If I can keep the research from being bastardized by the government, I will, but it's not my priority. I can't afford that luxury of conscience. I'm a scientist and I'm dying. If I can use the one to prevent the other, you can be damned certain I will."
The fierceness in her gaze extinguished with the gentle brush of his hand over her hair. “I do not judge you, Stacy. Who am I to do so? I want what you want. I don't deny it. I am hungry for that taste of humanity. I have starved for its lack these centuries past. I understand your urgency, your desperation, your fears. You are not alone any more."
She filled his embrace without a sound. There was no quiver in the strong shoulders that bore the burden of her mortality. As he held her, as he shared her determination, Louis truly understood at last the quixotic woman in his arms.
Her lifestyle was a rebellion against things over which she had no control. Her slovenly apartment defied the sterility of her mother's deathbed. Her promiscuous manner and shocking clothes held the threat of a commitment at bay when she feared she could not keep it. She smoked and ignored the eating habits that would extend her time. She spat into the wind with a gesture so bold, one couldn't help applauding its challenging bravado.
How well he understood her. They lived parallel lives.
Didn't he shun contact with mortals, afraid his attachment would lead to the inevitable agony of loss? Didn't guilt over the sacrifices made by the two women he'd loved haunt him every time he lay down alone as dawn claimed a world he was forbidden to roam? Yet here he was, tempting fate, alongside this brazen woman who refused to surrender to odds beyond her wildest hope of conquering. Because he still was enough of a romantic to dare to dream. Because the eternity he longed to share with those he loved was in a realm beyond this dark dismal Earth he walked alone.
"We will have those normal lives we deserve,” he promised with the forcefulness of one who had the power to make it so.
"Then keep me alive, Louis. Protect me long enough so I can see both our dreams realized."
"I will, Little One. I will. Now rest and know that I will not leave you."
And secure in knowing that he was there, she was able to do just that.
* * * *
It was an agony to get out of bed. The fever was back, burning through her like a furnace to consume her strength as fuel. Popping antibiotics, Stacy dragged herself to the shower and stood, letting the water wash the sluggishness from her mind. She hurt deep in her bones. That ache lent a prodding urgency to ambitions. Time was running out.
Louis knew the truth about her. Strangely, it left her feeling stronger, not vulnerable. She'd been struggling against the fear, against fate for so long, she'd forgotten what a luxury it was to share the burden. And now he was with her, not just in word but in mysterious deed. They were as one. She could feel him within her, as if a part of his essence resided in her soul. And again, strangely, she didn't see it as an invasion but rather a completion of who she was. As if another facet of her life had just been discovered, a door opening upon possibilities and potentials she'd fiercely denied.
She was no longer alone.
She met Cobb on the steps coming up to get her. She brushed past him without a word and headed straight for his car. She had no patience for clever banter. Her thoughts were racing through the protocols she would run in the lab that morning.
Perhaps this would be the day knowledge would grant her a full lifetime.
As they drove through town, Cobb's casual comment neatly severed her train of thought.
"Who's Quinton Alexander?"
She shot a look at him. but he watched the road behind his mirrored sunglasses. “Where did you hear that name? Listening at keyholes?"
"It doesn't matter if I can't find out who he is and what d
anger he presents to you."
Her apartment was bugged.
That knowledge stabbed through her, a violating shock of surprise and alarm. What else had he heard? The sense of invasion shortened her already frayed temper.
"Maybe you should have kept your car off the sidewalk long enough to let my friend Alex find out for you."
"I didn't kill your reporter. I had no reason to. He could have been ... useful."
"Ha! He never would have told you anything."
"Grow up, Stacy. We were already negotiating a price. He was about to give us everything."
Stacy stared straight ahead. Tears of denial and a deeper certainty that Cobb was telling the truth blurred her vision just as his words distorted her faith. She should have known Alex would try to find a way to make a fast buck off his investigative prowess. He'd only promised her that he wouldn't go to the press. Selling out to her employers, who'd already guessed most of it anyway, must not have seemed like a betrayal when they were waving a bunch of zeroes in his face. What was thirty pieces of silver compared to a condo in Key West? Bitterness burned in the back of her throat and laced her reply with acid.
"I guess you'll just have to do your own legwork now, won't you?"
"Unless you'd care to enlighten me."
"I don't think so, Cobb. I'm assuming you have all the legal approvals for the wire taps and other goodies you've placed in my private dwelling, right? So that if I sic a lawyer on you, you won't be looking at, say, five to ten years in an exclusive bad boys club. You know Harper would never admit to authorizing such a thing. They'll leave you swinging in the breeze."
"Goes with the job, Doc."
"It's a crappy job."
"Don't I know it. So who's Alexander?"
She sighed heavily. What difference did it make now if he knew? “He's the manic who's been leaving bodies all over town. And I'm next on his dance card. So what are you going to do about that, Cobb?"
He slanted a sidelong glance at her to see if she was making some poor joke. “There's always protective custody."
"Guess again."
"How comfortable is your couch?"
"You'll never know."
"I've got to be close if I'm going to take care of you."
"You should have thought of that before you became such a jerk."
She sat back with a pathetic slice of satisfaction in knowing she'd rocked his confident boat. A faint smile etched her lips as she considered the scrambling to come.
Let them try to find Alexander. That would keep them off her case. Let them try to deal with the reality of what he was. She didn't have the energy for it today. She needed all of her focus concentrated through the lens of her microscope. She had dreams to rescue.
Let Cobb worry about the demons.
Chapter Eighteen
She had the day to herself to work and explore the ramifications of her findings. Cobb disappeared as soon as he saw her through security. Probably to intensify his search for the illusive—and inhuman—Quinton Alexander. No one looking over her shoulder. No one's gaze burning a hole in her back, or sneaking peeks at her computer screen and scribbled notes. The perfect time to produce. If only she could.
Nothing went right.
She destroyed her first three samples through careless error. Her hands were unsteady, her mind unclear. Fatigue was a three hundred pound gorilla on her back making it such an effort to simply move from work station to keyboard that she had to rest up to enter the results. And then, looking at the figures in retrospect, they made absolutely no sense at all.
She wanted to weep. She wanted to curse. She wished Cobb was there to bear the brunt of her frustrations. She wished Louis was awake so she could feel his presence more personally and take strength from it.
She had to finish while her mind was clear, while she had control of her system.
She knew the leukemia drill. A twofold drug cocktail that would cause nausea, vomiting and inflamed mucous membranes. Fevers, infections, agonizing pain in her joints. A low platelet count that led to bleeding. Intensive chemotherapy would sap her remaining strength, along with constant transfusions and the frantic yet futile search for a bone marrow transplant match. She'd have to be isolated because of the threat of infection. Her food, even her water, had to be cleansed and bland. She wouldn't be able to work. She would lose her independence. She would lose hope. And because her risk was poor, she would die.
Unless she could gut it out until the answers came. She would not go peacefully to some sterile hospital bed knowing she would never leave it again.
Then, that afternoon, after the sandwich she hadn't been able to keep down, she struck gold.
Uttering a shaky breath, she went through the steps a second time, just to make sure her overanxious mind wasn't toying with her. But there it was, a stabilized alteration of her blood cells with no sign of AML abnormalities.
She slumped over the keyboard, her forehead resting against the computer screen as she suppressed the wild need to either laugh or cry. But she could do neither.
If they bugged her house, why wouldn't they treat her lab with the same caution?
She couldn't let them suspect she was on to anything. And she had to find a way to smuggle her disks out without erasing the data they contained. She would work through the night, studying to see if the integrity held. And if it did, tomorrow she would be running unauthorized human trials. On herself.
Phyllis Starke arrived at 4:30 on the dot to snoop through her day's accomplishments. For once, Stacy saw her as a possible confederate instead of as an enemy. She drew the immediately suspicious woman aside for a tete-a-tete.
"Phyl, I need to talk to you, privately."
She glanced around. “We're all alone here."
Right. Stacy betrayed none of her wry disbelief. She leaned in closer, assuming an intimate pose. “I haven't been feeling well lately."
Starke eyed her candidly. “You look terrible."
Trust Phyllis to sugarcoat it. But that was all right. Things were going in the right direction.
"Well, I think I know why, and I have to ask you a very important favor."
"What?"
"I think I've been ill so much because I'm ... I'm pregnant."
Phyllis jerked back as if the condition was a dangerous contagion. “How?” she demanded.
"The usual way, I assume. Anyway, if I am, I can't go through these x-rays twice a day without endangering the fetus. Is there something you can do, quietly, woman-to-woman?"
"Why don't you just tell Forrester?"
Stacy lowered her head, taking full advantage of every nasty thing Starke had ever thought of her. “I can't tell him, Phyl. Not until I'm sure."
"The baby's his?” Her shock was so great, Stacy almost felt sorry for her.
Saying nothing to alter her assumption, Stacy pleaded woefully, “You won't say anything, will you? I mean it may be nothing but indigestion."
But Phyllis's narrowed gaze fixed upon her flat abdomen with an angry intensity. “I can see your difficulty."
"But will you help me?” She played out the desperation ploy, wondering if she was wasting her time fishing for sympathy in a dried up pond. But she had to keep casting out, hoping to snag something, some charitable or maternal instinct. “I know you and I haven't been friends or even particularly friendly. But if this got out, especially to Greg—"
She didn't need to elaborate. Phyllis saw the writing on the wall. If Stacy was knocked up by the boss, there was no chance that she, herself, would ever get a second shot at him. The longer the news was kept under wraps, the longer she had to seduce the fickle Forrester back into her embrace.
"And if you're pregnant, what would you do?"
"I'm Catholic. I don't have many choices. I guess I'd have to leave Harper before the secret got out. I wouldn't feel right about breaking up a marriage because of my carelessness."
Those words were a sweet symphony to Phyllis.
"I won't say anything."
>
Stacy expelled a gusty sigh of relief that wasn't feigned. “And the x-rays?"
"I'll take care of that. When will you know for sure?” The hardness was back in her tone, that rift of hatred and an older woman's envy chafing just below the carefully professional surface.
"I have an appointment at the end of the week. If you could shut things down for that long at least, I'd be so grateful to you."
The word grateful conjured up all sorts of future potential in the other's mind. For once, Stacy was glad for the greedy ambition blinding Starke to her duty or decency.
"If you'll give me a minute to make a backup of my disk for you, we can both go home."
"Fine. I'll go see the x-rays are turned off."
Quickly, Stacy ran a full copy for herself, secreting the disk in the side of her bra. Then she deleted several pathways on the computer and copied a second, incomplete disk to placate Harper a little while longer.
Hopefully, by the week's end she wouldn't need to play these games.
By then, she shouldn't need Harper at all.
* * * *
Cobb was oddly preoccupied on the drive to Stacy's apartment. With excitement and anticipation bubbling like a wellspring inside her, she missed his irreverent banter as an excuse to relax and unwind. Her nerves were jumping, her muscles twitching, her fingers drumming a restless tattoo upon the top of her briefcase. Inside, was the answer to her every wish—a normal life expectancy and maybe, just maybe, a chance at happiness with a certain reclusive beast made man again.
It felt strange to consider a lasting relationship with a man, even stranger because the man in question now lived out the daylight hours sealed out of sight in a casket. She'd guarded herself from having private ambitions for so long, letting down the barriers was like opening a rusted door. Would the struggle be worth the reward? She hoped so.
But once freed of his curse and his need of her, would Louis Redman still be in her future? No guarantees there. Unfortunately, all her experience was in getting men not to fall in love with her when fleeting lust would do. She wasn't sure she knew how to invest in the long haul banalities of the day to day. The night to night. A shiver of longing rippled through her when she thought of lying down with Louis Redman—and waking up with him in the morning. He'd been gone before her alarm went off this morning, and his absence filled her with a sorrowful despair. Because of his bite or because she'd felt so secure with him beside her?