“I am a firm believer in practice making perfect.”
Her bowl empty, she settled onto the stool to watch him. “Because you intended to be a thief?”
Eyes glinting, he corrected, “A recovery specialist. A master thief hired by the best to retrieve their lost or stolen objects.”
“Taking from those who can afford it.”
“I’ve warned you before, Kat. I’m no Robin Hood.”
She looked up at him, eyes sparkling. “I know. But you’re also not exactly the flint-hearted thief who robs little old ladies of their pearls.”
“Unless the pearls are from a descendant of the Imperial Family of Japan. Then, Madame Takamori had to forgive my lapse. Lucky for me, Felix stepped in.”
She paused. “You enjoy putting your life in peril?”
“I enjoy living a life that’s filled with excitement. We all have our callings, Doctor. Don’t tell me you don’t savor the rush from a new discovery?”
“Science is different,” she countered.
“Why? Because you can study it in school?”
“Because I help people.”
“Like the pharmaceutical companies, right? All noble intention and none of the guilt.”
“Would you rather live in a world without medication?”
“Of course not, but don’t climb onto your high horse so quickly, Kat. Scientists have been the architect of some of the world’s gravest tragedies. Hiroshima. Tuskegee. Hell, even Bahia is the fault of some scientist who taught the Chinese to make guns and let them fall into the hands of the Spanish.”
“Touché.”
“Not to knock your profession, darling. Maybe you do something different.”
Kat heard a personal bite, and decided to change tacks. “I try to keep people alive using what’s at hand. Native remedies, especially in developing countries, can be critical. Plus, I preserve a part of a culture that might be lost forever otherwise.”
“Saving the world, one fig leaf at a time.”
“It’s a living. And I should get back to work.”
Across town, Senora Martinez peered through the peephole at the two men standing on her porch. Beyond the wooden platform, a police car idled, driven by a young man who didn’t look old enough to shave. The men did not wear uniforms, and she didn’t recognize them, despite her sixty years in Canete. A tall, thin man of middle age and middle features stood half a head shorter than his companion. From the single-breasted charcoal gray suit down to the black oxfords that shone despite the dust, she pegged him as an outsider. A determination that solidified when he spoke to her in Spanish heavily accented by American inflections.
“Hello? Is anyone home? It is the Canete police.”
“Yes?”
A lean man with a cat’s face lifted a badge for her inspection. “Senora Gabriela Martinez?”
“Yes?”
“I am Detective Selva and my partner, Detective Avilar. We have questions regarding the death of Senor Felix Estrada. Can we come inside and speak with you?”
The glint of gold on the shield caught her eye, and she quietly lifted the chain to latch the door. Her father had served as police chief for twenty years, earning her the friendship of many of the wizened members of the force. The new captain did not know her, but she had many friends. None of whom carried a badge similar to the one waved for her review.
Her husband had taken a fishing trip, leaving her alone but not without protection. She brought the double-barreled shotgun to prop against her leg. “I am happy to come into the police office tomorrow, but I am busy today.”
On the porch, she saw the brawny man scowl, watched a hushed conversation that ended with the skinny one raising his hand for silence. Suspicious, she clutched the shotgun barrel with one hand and slowly turned the dead bolt with her other.
“Senora Martinez, this will only require a moment of your time.”
“Tomorrow.” She picked up the shotgun and leveled the weapon, which forced her to move farther from the door. Pitching her voice sufficiently loud to carry, she instructed, “I will contact the chief of police today and make an appointment.”
“There is no need,” Enzo protested, his temper rising. Behind the door, his best clue for finding the Cinchona waited. After circling the house, hiding until her husband drove their aging truck out for what he discerned was a fishing trip, Enzo finally had a chance to speak with her alone.
If she cooperated, he probably didn’t have to hurt her, though he’d promised Turi some sport if she proved uncooperative. “Please open the door, Senora Martinez. I do not wish to cause you any harm.” He lifted his gun.
It happened so quickly, Enzo had no time to react, no time to plan. Like cannon fire, the blast streaked through the door and slammed into Turi’s knee. Falling, Enzo heard the clatter of the knife as it tumbled to the porch. The wood door shattered along its panels, splinters flying out in rough-edged shards. A sliver embedded itself in Enzo’s cheek, blood welling in a sudden rush. A second shot rang out and, in preternatural instinct, he dived low before it struck him in the face.
“Rafael!” Enzo bellied across to the car, waiting for another blast. He swiped at his cheek, his hand sticky and wet. “Rafael, engine.”
The boy had plunged to the car floor, ears covered by his hands. Cursing, burning, Enzo dragged Turi to the vehicle, flung the Taurus door open, and scrambled inside. Though he dearly wished to spray the homestead with cannon fire, he screamed at Rafael to drive.
“Turi?”
“The crazy bitch shot him. Drive.” Enzo slumped in his seat, removing himself as a target. He checked the empty road for real police officers. Somehow, he figured, she’d discerned they weren’t real officers. A painful error for Turi, a stupid bumble for him. His meanest employee felled by a shotgun. He could have captured her anyway, but his team was making too many mistakes.
When Rafael whipped the Taurus onto the main route, Enzo slid against the blistering leather and sat up straight. “A hospital,” he instructed Rafael. “He’s bleeding all over everything.” Turi’s wail added unnecessary emphasis.
“What will we do now? About the woman? Want me to go back and take care of her?”
“No.” Enzo closed his eyes, focused on the goal. “She will be gone by now. We leave her until I say otherwise. We will take Turi to the hospital, then head for the Canete Police Department. We have business there.”
Chapter 18
“Sebastian, can you go to the storage unit and grab the vial labeled Tabebuia impetiginosa: bark: quinoids?”
“Sure.” For the life of him, he couldn’t have explained half the words in her sentence, but he’d grown used to the hunt for the indecipherable. With quick strides, he entered the temperature-controlled storage unit that they’d discovered and found the bottle she’d asked for. Moving silently, he crossed to the extraction room and stood in the doorway.
Inside, Kat sat at the work space entering instructions into the system, and the odd machine hooked to the computer began its whirring. Breakfast had passed hours ago, and both had opted to skip lunch, for very different reasons. That his had anything to do with cowardice compelled Sebastian to step fully into the room. Kat’s sly pronouncement about breaking his third rule might make him antsy, but he wasn’t one to retreat. Unless retreat was the more profitable course.
When it came to his partnership with Kat, he couldn’t tell yet. But he’d made one decision earlier, an e-mail to Helen. The text was straightforward and to the point.
TO: [email protected]
FROM: [email protected]
RE: Finders Keepers
Cinchona is no longer for sale. Will refund money upon return to U.S.
He had never refused to complete a job before, but Kat had been the start of many firsts. So he’d continue on this path and take the necessary course corrections later. He sighed, a quiet, annoyed exhalation and held out the vial. “Making any progress?”
“I think so.” Kat continued to review t
he data on the monitor and nodded in satisfaction. With an absent gesture, she brushed a curl away from her forehead and turned to Sebastian, accepting the glass bottle. The green scrubs rode low on his lean hips and the white T-shirt he wore stretched taut across his chest. Built more powerfully than Tio Felix despite his leanness, Kat understood why some women swooned over doctors. It certainly wasn’t simply the brains.
She kept her thoughts to herself and her eyes shaded, her increasingly indiscreet thoughts her own. Given that his question had been the first words he’d spoken since she flirted with him at breakfast, she decided to maintain the peace by focusing on work alone. Probably for the best, she mused. Caring for Sebastian entailed perils she hadn’t fully considered. Better for them both to focus on the task at hand and leave romance for a more appropriate time.
After dinner.
With a secret smile, she inserted the tube into a tray and pointed to the vials that had been inserted into the machine and the tray that remained, prepared for extraction. “The Mutambo who saved Father Borrero had incredibly sophisticated medical practices for fifteenth-century peasants. Separately, the teas, juices, and tinctures exceeded the level of care most people get from their general practitioner. What Borrero describes is a method of combining certain chemical properties from the plants and creating a master elixir that can operate as both a preventative and a curative.”
“A supermedicine.”
“Exactly.”
“And now? What exactly are you trying to accomplish?”
“What Tio Felix was working on with Dr. Burge. A stable version of the elixir.” She blinked once, then bent low over the vials as she carefully measured out the liquid. “According to Tio Felix’s notes, the chemicals reacted poorly each time he tried to find the proper combination. Borrero didn’t have access to the sophisticated equipment or even the scientific methodologies used today.”
“If your uncle studied medicine, couldn’t he—I don’t know—just whip up a batch of the Cinchona?”
“Not without causing some chemical reaction that could blow this place up.” She indicated a row of vials that she’d been preparing since their arrival. “Each one tries to combine the various plant extracts mentioned in the manuscript. But some of these have evolved on basic levels over time. I won’t be able to test out the elixir, but I will at least be able to verify that it is a stable compound.”
“When?” Sebastian lightly touched her shoulder, watched her profile as she tipped one green liquid into a beaker containing a yellow concoction. Slowly, she added a deep red using a dropper. “We’re on borrowed time, Kat. My client plus whoever hired our friends out there aren’t going to be deterred by this bunker forever. If there’s another way out, then someone will find it and use it to get in.”
“Well,” she murmured, setting the beaker on the worktable, “I think I’ve done it.”
“What?” Sebastian looked down at the beaker, the strangely hued mixture an eddy of green and blue and magenta. “Is that it?”
“Unless we explode in the next fifteen seconds, I’d say yes.” Amazed, excited, she whirled toward him with a laugh. “We did it! The Cinchona formula is stable. It looks just as Father Borrero described it in the manuscript.”
Sebastian caught her around the waist, dipped her in triumph. “You did. I’ve been a glorified lab assistant.”
“An excellent one!” Exhaustion fled, leaving her giddy. “We’ve done what Tio Felix asked. We have the Cinchona!”
“And what will we do with it now?”
“What he asked. Return it to the Mutambo.”
Sebastian held her, asking the question that had bothered him since he understood the purpose of the Cinchona. “Why didn’t they do it for themselves? Then? Why leave a miracle cure to the annals of a priest?”
“It wasn’t supposed to end there.” Because she had considered little else, she explained her theory. “From Borrero’s notes, I think the Mutambo had an archaic version of what Tio Felix tried to create, which they called the Cinchona. Borrero and the head of the Mutambo reasoned that the potion, which took three to four years to manufacture for a small dose, could be mass-produced with the proper techniques.”
“But the Spanish weren’t all that more advanced than the Mutambo, right?” Sebastian queried. “I’ve read the diary a dozen times over. Borrero spent five years with the Mutambo and offered them the gift of a written record of their medical practices. Then he vanishes for nearly two years, and when he starts writing again, he doesn’t mention the manuscript again. He lives with the Mutambo until his death ten years later. But he never talks about the Cinchona again.”
Kat had a theory on that as well. “Remember the wars in 1538? If the Spanish had learned about Borrero and the Mutambo, they might have overrun the rest of the continent. A medicine that could heal wounds, fight fever, and make an army nearly invincible.”
Sebastian rubbed a thoughtful hand over his chin. “For Borrero, that would have meant betraying the people who saved him.”
“His gift might have meant their slaughter,” Kat agreed.
“So he leaves the Mutambo to hide his gift.” Beneath his fingers, a light stubble scratched at his skin. He hadn’t bothered with shaving, though he’d be more comfortable once he did. Felix had a rudimentary setup in the bathroom, more monastic than hedonistic. “That’s it!”
“What’s it?” Kat demanded quizzically. “What?”
“The answer, Doctor. I know where Borrero vanished to all those centuries ago.” Sebastian grabbed Kat and hauled her excitedly up from her chair. Looking inordinately pleased with himself, he led her into the main room and to the computer that accessed the Internet. To see better, Kat stood behind Sebastian, her eyes tired from hours of reading. While she watched, he called up a search engine and typed in Bahia and monastery. When a list of holy orders and their locations appeared on the screen, there was one entry for the Brothers of Divinity.
Sebastian spun around and grinned up at Kat, reaching up to capture her waist in triumph. “We’ve got it!” Holding on, he jerked his head toward the screen behind him. “The monastery, Kat. That’s where Borrero lived during those missing two years, and that’s where Felix found the manuscript.”
“Father Borrero went home. Of course.” In delight, she curved her hand over his cotton-covered shoulder and squeezed in mute congratulations. “To hide the manuscript and maybe to develop the potion. The order would have had more advanced equipment than the Spanish armies or the Mutambo. I’d bet anything the Brothers of Divinity trained their monks in the medical sciences.”
“Army medics.” Sebastian relaxed against the chair, flexing his hand along the resilient waist he held. With intention, his thumb drew circles at the wedge of skin exposed by the drooping waistband. The softness lured him, the strength bound him. The combination threatened to undo him. He glided an exploratory touch along her arrow-straight spine, savoring the tiny gasp that sighed out. Catching her inquiring look, he merely added, “Monks were jacks-of-all-trades, weren’t they?”
Beneath his touch, shivers fanned across Kat’s skin, jellied her knees. She stood between his braced thighs, his fingers splayed low against the curve of her hips, wide along the terribly sensitive expanse of her back. Of its own volition, her hand slid beneath his collar to search. Along his nape to explore. She loved him, the whole complicated package. She needed to be with him. Soon. “They had to be,” she murmured. “They were often the most educated of the conquest party. Men like Pizzaro and Almagro had been raised to be soliders, not leaders. In fact, Pizzaro grew up an illiterate swineherd.”
Testing, Sebastian drew her deeper inside the V formed by his legs. When she brushed against the iron heat of him, he shifted suddenly, bringing her astride his leg. “Sit down, Kat.”
She locked eyes with him, and wordlessly, sank onto his lap. The dark face, usually on the edge of mocking, met her gaze with an intensity that rushed heat into her belly, clenched her hand around his neck. “Seb
astian?”
He smiled then, a tender curve of the mouth that owed nothing to mockery, nothing to cynicism. “I’ve never known anyone like you.” He cupped her cheek, tracing the haughty line of bone that brought her beauty into sharp relief. “You’re not afraid of anything. Of anyone. Be afraid of me.”
Kat laughed, a simple, sultry sound that wound through him and hardened him impossibly more.
“Not afraid? God, Sebastian, I’m terrified. A week ago, I was a scientist. I understood plants and the people whose lives depended on them. I traveled from village to hamlet to tribe and thought I knew the world. I was an idiot.”
She slithered forward, drawing his response as his hips surged beneath her once, before he controlled the movement. “I’m afraid of the men chasing us. I’m terrified of the death I’ve seen, of what my uncle brought me into. I’m scared that my promise to him will get both of us killed.” Quietly, she brushed her lips across his furrowed brow, creased in disbelief. “But I’m not frightened of you.”
“Kat—”
“Listen to me.” She rested her forehead on his, her words a whisper feathering his mouth. “I’m not of your world, no. I can’t dance my way past dead bolts and impenetrable security systems.”
“But I can. I do.” Sebastian wrapped her flush to him, the bodies meshing perfectly. Already, he could feel her beneath him, above him, surrounding him. He tilted her quiescent face to meet his eyes, the promise stark and unyielding. “I’m a thief, Kat. I can make love to you and leave you once we’ve completed your mission. Do you understand that?”
Kat flattened her hand, covering the heartbeat that thundered in his chest. And with a brazenness she barely recognized, she stroked the ridge of flesh that stood between them. “Believe what you’d like, Sebastian. I’m not afraid.”
As he lunged up, sweeping her high in his arms, her lips pressed to the thud of pulse in his throat, Sebastian muttered, “By God, I think I am.”
In long, hurried strides, he carried Kat to the spartan cot where they’d slept the night before. Gently, he lowered her to the unforgiving springs, to the thin mattress with its spare white sheets. Ranging his body beside her, he slid his arm around her waist, dragged her lithe, supple form against him.
Secrets and Lies Page 19