Don’t get used to being around him, she reminded herself. He might not be willing to let her set the ground rules for their association, but she’d damn well set some for herself. Rule one: she wasn’t letting Radcliff call all the shots this time. Rule two: she wasn’t letting herself be marginalized if she really, truly thought she could help solve her patient’s murder and prevent others—including herself—from being harmed. And the third and most important rule: she wasn’t getting emotionally involved with him all over again. She’d already been there, done that, bought the heartache.
The chemistry between them might still pack a punch, but that didn’t mean she had to stand there and take it. She was older now, and wiser. And, she thought with an inner grimace, if she told herself that a few thousand more times, she might actually believe it, despite all kissing evidence to the contrary.
Sighing, she pushed her plate aside to make room for the medical files she’d carried with her. “Okay, so where do we start?”
PARKER VETOED his first three responses to a question that seemed innocuous enough on the surface, but in reality had far too many layers. Then again, he thought, she might’ve meant it exactly as it sounded, and he was the one adding layers and complications that didn’t need to be there.
He was the one who’d initiated the kiss. He was the one complicating things.
For a guy who’d ended their potentially messy relationship before it’d gotten too serious four years earlier, he wasn’t doing a very good job of keeping it simple this time around. Because knowing it made him edgy and irritable, he scowled and did what he did best—focused on the things he could control. Like medicine. And information.
He frowned down at the hospital files. “My initial thought was that if we could identify the weapon, it could lead us to the killer.”
“I take it you changed your mind?”
“No. Just haven’t had much luck figuring out which toxin he’s using. I’ve ruled out most of the usual poisons and environmental toxins we’d associate with intense pain. I even tried a few really out there theories, but so far everything’s come back within normal limits.” And if that both ticked him off and fascinated him, he figured the first emotion was his medical training speaking, and the second was his mother’s heritage. She’d been a good cop, and had nearly been among the first women to make detective in the Pittsburgh force.
He figured curiosity would be a legacy she’d enjoy, just as she would approve of his detachment, because it had been her emotional involvement in a case that had gotten her killed.
Mandy tapped the files. “Did you find any connections among the vics?”
“Vics?” he repeated, then scowled. “You’ve been watching too many cop shows again.” The reminder of that frivolous vice only served to underscore the gap in their ages, as it had done before. She watched junk TV, while he read six scientific journals cover to cover per week, trying to keep himself abreast of the latest breakthroughs.
“Oh, for the love of…Give me that.” She reached out, flipped open the topmost file and read aloud. “Julian George, retired widower, sixty-six years old. History of heart attack and high blood pressure, neither of which explain why he ended up at Mass Medical with sudden onset, acute systemic pain.” She paused and glanced at him. “In other words, he hit the Mass Med E.R. because everything hurt for no reason. Same reason Irene’s husband brought her to BoGen.”
Parker nodded and picked up the story from memory. “Julian was in the city for the weekend, visiting his daughter and her children. When he and the daughter started getting on each other’s nerves she sent him to pick up dinner on the edge of Chinatown. He was on his way back when he was mugged two blocks over from your alley.”
“It’s hardly my alley,” she retorted, but bit into her sandwich rather than saying anything else.
“Before that,” Parker said, flipping to a file that held a police report rather than medical charts. “Twenty-six-year-old Missy Prieta was mugged one street over on her way home from a lo-mein run. She filed a police report ten days ago. Two days after that, her roommates filed a missing persons report, and so far we’ve got nothing.”
Mandy winced. “Poor Missy.” Neither of them bothered with the optimistic platitudes. Odds were that Missy Prieta’s body would come to light sooner or later.
“She was just about your age.” Parker glanced from the photo to Mandy and back again. “Similar coloring, too.”
“Don’t try to make me part of a pattern just because it suits your needs,” she said with unexpected steel. “The only reason he went after me is that I stuck my nose where it didn’t belong…or rather, where he didn’t want it. And quite frankly, the same could be said of your nose, too.”
“True,” he agreed, “but one of us is licensed to carry concealed, and it’s not you.”
That earned him a long, speculative look. “You’re packing heat?”
Parker snorted at the TV-ism. “Not at the moment, no.” But he would be for the foreseeable future, because he’d be damned if he stood by again with nothing but his fists as weapons when the killer took another crack at her.
And if the thought of that brought more anger and determination than it should have, given that they were nothing to each other, he was the only one who needed to know it.
Oblivious to his thoughts, Mandy pressed, “So what are you thinking about these deaths? Infection or poison?”
“It’s almost certainly a toxin.” Parker retrieved Julian George’s file from her and flipped through the notes again, though he’d practically memorized them already. “Even though the killer wears a mask and gloves, he isn’t bothering with eye protection. I’m guessing the get-up is for the scare factor, or to give his victims something to focus on other than his face.”
“I’m sorry to say that it worked.” Mandy grimaced. “I can picture a guy in powder-free gloves and a mask, with a 10 cc syringe and a 10-bore needle. That pretty much had my attention.”
“The other reason to think toxin rather than pathogen is that to the best of our knowledge, nobody who came into contact with the victims has gotten sick.” Parker was vaguely surprised to realize it was helping him to work through the argument once more, in front of a critical audience he knew would call him on the disconnects.
Rather than admit it, he bit into his dinner, chewing and swallowing mechanically without tasting the sandwich.
“There are a few bioengineered bugs that are one-shot deals, designed to infect the initial host but not spread beyond that person,” Mandy said slowly, staring at Julian George’s file with a faint wrinkle at her brow, as though she feared she was missing something important.
“True,” Parker agreed, “but it’d be tough for a street crook to get his hands on an engineered virus of that caliber.”
“Not if he’s working for someone who can supply the bug.” Mandy paused, and the frown lines smoothed out as she shrugged. “You’re right, though. A toxin is far more likely. Question is, which one?”
“That’s the rub.” Parker slid a blue folder from beneath the others and laid it on top of the pile, then gathered the plates and loaded them into the dishwasher, saying over his shoulder, “That folder has the results from all the tests I’ve run on the samples from Julian George, and partial results from today’s tests on Irene Dulbecco’s remains. Have a look and tell me what else we need to do in order to catch the latest fad in toxic herbal cure-alls.”
Her eyes flashed at the dig, but she said simply, “There are more things on heaven and earth, Radcliff…”
Figuring he’d let her have the last line—for now—he headed upstairs. Not because he was retreating, per se, but because he knew that if they shared space any longer, he might do something very, very stupid.
Like start thinking they could pick up where they’d left off four years earlier.
Chapter Five
Mandy went over the files until her lower back ached, her eyes went blurry and her head started to pound, but she didn�
��t give in to the discomfort, because she knew the answer had to be there somewhere.
All of the test levels had come back within normal limits, true, but some were skewed to the high or low ends of the “normal” spectrum. There was a pattern in the small test irregularities. She was sure of it. She just wasn’t sure what that pattern was telling her yet.
When she reached the end of Julian George’s file, she flipped back to the beginning and started over. As she did so, she yawned, popping her ears and spiking the headache into a quick bolt of pain behind her right eye.
“Ow.” Wincing, she rubbed her eyes, then glanced around the kitchen, wondering where Radcliff kept his aspirin.
She jolted when she found him standing in the doorway, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed over his chest. He’d changed into a gray Harvard sweatshirt and a soft-looking pair of jeans that were worn at the knees and frayed at the cuffs. On any other man she would’ve figured they were his handyman jeans. On Radcliff, she had to assume they’d been artistically aged for some designer label, because she could hardly see him with his head under the sink, cursing at the plumbing.
And if for a moment she could picture exactly that, and the image brought a tug of longing for the domesticity it implied, then that was nothing more than a product of the late night and the strange situation she’d found herself caught up in.
“What?” he said, raising an eyebrow.
Realizing she was smiling for no good reason, she waved off his question. “Nothing,” she said at first, then was forced to laugh at herself. “I was just thinking that when I got up this morning, if anyone had told me I’d be spending the night at your place, I would’ve called them a liar…after I got done falling off my chair, doubled over with hysterical laughter.”
He frowned. “I’d hardly call this a laughing matter.”
Refusing to be bullied for even an instant—because she knew if she gave in this time she’d be playing catch up from then on—she lifted her chin and met him stare for stare. “Of course you wouldn’t. I, however, don’t see humor as a sign of immaturity or an indication that the other person doesn’t understand the severity of the situation. I see it as a coping mechanism. You should try it sometime.”
“I cope just fine.” He pushed away from the door frame and crossed the kitchen in three long strides, until he was near enough that she could feel the heat coming off his body, and sense his irritation with her, with the situation.
“If you’re trying to intimidate me, it’s not working.” She looked back down at the notes, dismissing him with a wave. “You’re my boss at work, not here, so you can’t order me around. If you’re not going to help, then go away.”
“Trust me, I’m helping.” Without a by-your-leave, he swept up the files, snapped them shut and tucked them under his arm.
“Hey!” she yelped, anger spiking quickly. “What’s the deal?”
“The deal is that it’s nearly two in the morning and the only thing keeping you going is adrenaline and sheer bloody-mindedness.” He paused, and made a visible effort to soften his delivery when he said, “Shut it off for a few hours, okay? Unless we get seriously lucky, it’ll all still be here in the morning.”
Mandy shot up from her chair intending to rip into him, but had to pause and grab onto the edge of the counter when the world took a couple of spins around her. That got her heart rate up, which made her head hammer and her vision blur.
She hung on to the counter for a second, breathing through her nose. When everything settled down again, she exhaled. “Okay, maybe you’ve got a point.”
Realistically she’d been on her feet since early that morning. Sure, she used to go thirty or forty hours at a stretch during her training years, but she’d gotten out of the habit since then. Besides, the fear and adrenaline from the attack had probably taken more out of her than she’d acknowledged, even to herself.
Radcliff nodded, thankfully not pushing it. “The guest room is upstairs, first door on the right. The bathroom is across the hall, but the shower in there is pretty anemic, so you’re probably better off using the one in the master bath, straight through at the end of the hall.”
“Where will you be?” she asked, not caring what he read into the question.
“For the immediate future? Downstairs in the weight room, keeping middle age at bay.” He paused, as though wanting her to look at him and see—what? An older man? A fit man? He was both of those things, as well she knew. Problem was, her body didn’t seem to care about a few years age difference, and muscles were muscles, and he had plenty of them. When she didn’t say anything, he cocked a brow. “I won’t walk in on you while you’re showering, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“I’m not worried, I’m trying to figure out the ground rules,” she snapped suddenly beyond tired, beyond frustrated. “I might’ve had a seriously long day, but that doesn’t change the fact that I’m getting mixed signals here. For the past month we’ve done a pretty good job of ignoring each other and getting along at work, and then this morning, you march up to me and—oh.” She broke off as their early-morning encounter rearranged itself in her head, taking on new meaning. “You’d just found out about Irene, hadn’t you?”
He nodded. “I knew the moment I heard who’d signed her in that there was going to be trouble. You don’t let things go easily.”
“You’ve got that right.” Mandy paused, squelching the faint sting of disappointment. “So I’ll accept that this morning’s little encounter was damage control, not a come-on. But the way you refused to let me go home with Stankowski and kissed me when we got here, then said it was a mistake but refused to discuss the situation…” She shook her head. “Forgive me if I’m looking for a few definitions of terms here, but this is all making my head spin.”
“The concussion is making your head spin.” But he backed off, returning to his former position leaning against the door frame with his arms folded across his chest, right over the Harvard logo. “And you’re the one who used to be all about spontaneity and letting the chips fall where they may. Since when do you want rules?”
“Since I got burned by assumptions,” she said quietly, deciding to let him interpret that however he wanted, because at least some of his answers would be right. “So if you’ll indulge me, I think we can agree on the following.” She ticked the points off on her fingers. “One, because of—or perhaps despite—our past history, there’s some residual chemistry between us. Two, neither one of us is looking for a relationship right now. You don’t want to make your life any more complicated than it already is—which I can respect—and I need to focus on the fellowship. It’s still a year away, but I’m not letting anything distract me or make me think twice when it comes time to leave.”
When she paused, he nodded. “No arguments here, but you’ve left out an option.”
“I’m getting to it.” She added a third finger. “Three, you may be an expert at keeping things simple and forgetting your patients—and your women—the moment they’re out the door, but that’s not how I work.”
He nodded, expression guarded. “That’s…blunt.”
She lifted one shoulder even as a tremor of nerves took root in her stomach. “I don’t mean to be rude.” Maybe she did, a little. She hadn’t liked hearing the front-desk rumors about Radcliff and the rotating cast of younger women he dated, which had only further cheapened what’d happened between them. “The point is that I’m a long-term kind of girl. I keep my friends as long as possible and I keep in touch with all my family members, even the ones I wouldn’t necessarily like if I met them at a party.”
The irritation on his face gave way to sardonic amusement. “If you give this speech every time a guy asks you out, I can’t imagine you date much.”
“There’s no speech,” she said stiffly, unwilling to admit that he’d struck a nerve. “I don’t go out with men with whom there’s no possible future, because when I fall, I fall hard and it hurts too much to have the tra
mpoline yanked out from underneath me before I land.”
A faint shadow flitted across his expression, but he said, “Are there any more rules I should know about?”
“Not about this, no.”
“Then I’ll say good night. Sleep well and I’ll see you in a few hours. Our shift starts at nine, and we’re meeting with Stankowski at seven.”
Like he needed to remind her of that, Mandy thought, unreasonably irritated when he turned and exited the kitchen, leaving her feeling as though he couldn’t have cared less about her rules or the reasons behind them.
Then again, why should he? He’d already said they shouldn’t work together, that there was chemistry between them but no future. She’d only been telling him what he already knew.
She was tired, that was all, Mandy thought, pressing her aching forehead to the cool granite countertop and closing her eyes for a second. Her defenses were low. That was the only reason she wanted to burst into tears, the only reason she was tempted to chase after him and poke at him until…what? What response did she want from him?
She couldn’t articulate it, but she knew damn well she hadn’t gotten it just now.
“No big surprise there,” she whispered to herself. “Parker Radcliff never could give you what you wanted.”
Or rather, he’d given her the raunchy, no-holds-barred sex they’d both wanted, but he hadn’t been able to give her the closeness she needed. Unfortunately the guys she’d met since then who’d been willing to give her the closeness she’d wanted hadn’t even registered on the raunchy sex Richter scale, leaving her just as lonely and dissatisfied as she’d been without them, making her think she would’ve been better off having never met Radcliff, having never tangled with him, fought with him, made love with him…
“Argh!” she finally growled in frustration, when old and new memories crowded too close and fused together in her head, creating a hot, wanting mess that left her jumbled up and far too needy for her own good.
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