Lady Justice

by Vicki Hinze

  In less than twenty minutes, Gabby convinced Max their marriage was real.

  Get a grip, Max. This is a show for Elizabeth, fool.

  That reminder blindsided him. Something good and warm went hard and cold in his chest and then died. She didn’t love him, with or without conditions, and he couldn’t afford to forget that again.

  Having distanced himself emotionally, he watched Gabby. What he saw worried him even more. Something worse, even more mysterious than memory loss, was going on with her. Something even more baffling. She seemed to have selective recall. But how could that be?

  He continued to watch her intently, monitoring nebulous signs, minute details. In forty minutes, she never—not once—breached her cover. When Elizabeth went to the kitchen, Max moved over onto the bed beside Gabby and gently quizzed her. “Your recall of the specifics on Paris is amazing.”

  She grunted. “Every woman remembers falling in love, her wedding, and her honeymoon.”

  “But the details about Paris …”

  Her blank look turned curious. “What about them?”

  Don’t panic. Push. Force her to remember the truth.

  “They never happened.”

  She looked at him as if he’d lost his mind. “What?”

  “They never happened.” He spoke softly in case Elizabeth returned unexpectedly.

  “Of course, they happened. Is the heat getting to you? Maybe Keith should look—”

  “The heat is fine. I’m fine,” he insisted. “Gabby, we didn’t go to Paris.”

  She ignored him, tapped a fingertip to her chin. “I’ll bet it’s the flu. It can confuse you, Max. Elizabeth says it’s the fever. She knows about these things.”

  “Gabby, honey, listen to me,” he insisted. “Paris never happened.”

  “What the hell is wrong with you? Of course, Paris happened. Look, I’m sick enough without you deliberately trying to make me worse, Max. I don’t know why you’ve forgotten our honeymoon, but I haven’t, so stop trying to tell me I have.”

  That set Max back on his heels, and he stilled. Gabby clearly recalled nothing of her life as a senior covert operative, her association with SDU, or even Commander Conlee. She sincerely believed her marriage to Max was real. That she was a judge in Carnel Cove, and he was a health and safety expert, working primarily in Third World countries. As strange as it sounded, Gabby had forgotten the truth.

  Which meant, aside from Max’s personal concerns about her, he had no idea how to stop the Warriors’ attack because he had no idea what Gabby knew. Worse, Gabby had no idea what Gabby knew.

  Or where she’d put the evidence.

  “Wait out in the hall, Max,” Keith said. “Give me a few minutes to try to get her calmed down. What did you do to her?”

  “Hell, I don’t know.” Max was totally confused. “One minute, she was talking about when we got married, and then she said something about our honeymoon I didn’t remember, and then next thing I knew she was crying her heart out and cursing a blue streak.”

  Keith frowned, hiked up a hand. “How long have you two been married?”

  “Why?”

  “Because there are certain things a man just doesn’t do in a marriage if he wants any peace in his life, and one of them is to admit forgetting anything about your wedding, honeymoon, the day you met—the first of anything—or anything else remotely significant to women. Usually a man figures that out in the first year or so.”

  Max shrugged. “I’ve been out of the country a lot.”

  “Yeah, I’d say.” Keith clapped Max on the shoulder. “A wise word from the trenches, my friend. When in doubt, keep your mouth shut. Nod and smile a lot. That’s pretty safe.”

  “Right.” Max cast a worried glance into the bedroom at Gabby. She looked waxy and pale against her bronze sheets, but at least she wasn’t sobbing anymore. That was good. He didn’t want to leave her—shouldn’t leave her—but it had nothing to do with protecting her security clearance, though that was his responsibility. How could he have predicted she’d be so devastated by the truth? So adamant that he was wrong about it? So hurt?

  He couldn’t leave Gabby’s side when she was hurt. Turning his gaze, he focused on Keith. “I’ll be staying.”

  “All right.” Keith gave him a man-to-man look of understanding.

  Max stood against the wall next to the window. A stream of four men carried in a small power supply and medical equipment, and then disappeared the way they’d come. Keith bent over the bed, hooking Gabby up to all of it. Heart monitor, oxygen monitor, blood pressure, and pulse rate monitors. He started an IV drip and prepared an injection.

  When he reached for the plastic tubing to insert it into Gabby’s veins, Max interceded. How could he be sure none of the men had been Warriors wanting her dead? “What is that you’re giving her, Keith?”

  “Antibiotics,” he said. “A lot of them.”

  He sounded more confident than he had about the odds of the vaccine injection working earlier, so Max kept quiet and waited, hoping when he got a chance to talk privately with Keith, he would learn Candace’s condition had improved.

  A good while later, Keith finally stood up straight. Gabby had stopped crying and cursing, but she was still out of it, totally oblivious to anything going on in the room. The tense set of Elizabeth’s shoulders, the worry etched in her face, expressed every nuance of Max’s fear.

  Pressing a hand to his lower back to work out a kink from being bent over so long, Keith stretched, turned to Max, and nodded toward the hallway.

  Max followed him out and pulled the door closed behind him. “Is she going to make it?”

  “Right now it doesn’t look good, but Candace looked a hell of a lot worse, Max, and she’s totally turned around. I wish I could say the vaccine made the difference, but the truth is I don’t know what happened. One minute, Candace needed the respirator to get enough oxygen in her system to sustain life. Then next minute, she was breathing fine on her own and coming around. Maybe the vaccine kicked in and it put the antibiotics on a fast track at getting through her system, but I would have bet against it.”

  “Nothing that happened in the lab could substantiate it?”

  “No.” Keith worried at his lip. “The lab results were consistent. The vaccine’s effect was either immediate death or significant improvement within an hour. After that, we saw no effect. We didn’t see that in any of Candace’s reactions, Max.” He shook his head, still trying to figure out what had happened. “I gave Gabby the same treatment. Maybe it’ll work for her, too.”

  “You don’t think your treatment turned Candace around,” Max said.

  “It’d be great for my stock if I did.” Keith sighed. “But, no, I don’t. All I know to be true is that Candace was going down fast. I left her with Erickson to come check Gabby, and when I returned, Candace was coming back.”

  Dr. Erickson—who had been arguing with Dr. Swift about the missing black-banded canister in the lab. What if that black-banded canister hadn’t held Z-4027? What if it was supposed to have had a yellow band, signifying it was a trial vaccine and not the Z-4027? What if someone had switched the bands? Max looked at Keith. “What if Erickson was responsible for Candace’s recovery?”

  “It’s possible, and I’d be lying if I didn’t admit I’ve wondered if he did something to treat her in my absence. He says no. But—”

  “But you think he did.”

  “I honestly don’t know, Max. But something happened. L.I. is working a mirror contract on a vaccine, and Erickson does know more than any other living human being about EEE. They’re very similar—Z-4027 and EEE. I would have hired Erickson to run my program at Burke Pharmaceuticals if Marcus Swift hadn’t beaten me to him.”

  That had the hair on Max’s neck standing on edge. So say the bands were switched on the canister. For optimum control over the chemicals, that made the most sense. Who would have switched them? Swift seemed an obvious choice, and maybe he was. Or maybe he was a decoy set up to d
etract attention from the real guilty party. Could be either way. Or neither way.

  Unfortunately, the bigger questions didn’t come with a built-in suspect, and they were by far the most deadly.

  Where was the missing canister of Z-4027? Who had it? And what did they intend to do with it?

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Elizabeth’s hand felt clammy against the phone. She leaned back against Gabby’s kitchen cabinet, and willed herself to calm down. “You’re going to have to pick up that package, Miranda.” Conlee’s second team was due to arrive any minute. Elizabeth had been ordered to intercept and assist them, but she couldn’t leave now.

  “What am I supposed to do with them?”

  “Follow the plan. Just fill in for me. Meet their boat at my dock. Use the rental car, not yours. Darlene has it rigged. They’ll be lights out within three minutes. Then you drive over to Faulkner’s house and park at the curb. It’s that simple. Paige will take it from there. Just make sure you’re seen outside Faulkner’s house in that rental.”

  “What if no one is outside?”

  “Honk the damn horn.” Elizabeth looked heavenward, whispered a silent apology. That she’d cursed warned Miranda how frayed her nerves were at the moment. “The only other thing you have to do is drive the rental to the bank. Paige and Darlene will do the rest.”

  “I’ll handle it.” Miranda assumed control. “Darlene’s ready. She has to act between eight fifteen and eight forty-five or Jackson’s going to be out of his office and she’ll be cutting her escape too close.”

  Praying Gabby still had those communications scramblers on her phone Miranda had sworn were there and they didn’t all wind up in Leavenworth because of this call, Elizabeth turned toward the door to the family room. “Be careful with the oxygen, Miranda. No one smokes in the car or we’ll be scraping all of you off the street.”

  “I know, Elizabeth. Stop worrying. We’ll handle it. We can do this.”

  “Of course, you can.” Elizabeth bit her lip and walked into the family room. Keith rounded the corner, leaving the hallway and headed toward the kitchen. Elizabeth stiffened. “Call me later.” She paused by the sofa table, next to a vase of spiky twigs and magnolias. “Is Gabby okay?” she asked Keith.

  It took effort, but he met her eyes. “No, not really.”

  “Well, where are you going, then?”

  “I need more antibiotics.” He motioned through the kitchen, obviously intending to cut through the garage to save a few steps. “They’re at Candace’s.”

  “No, use the front door. I mopped the kitchen floor and it’s still wet.”

  Elizabeth’s voice carried into Gabby’s bedroom, and what she was doing hit Max right between the eyes. She was keeping Keith out of the garage, away from Jaris Adahan’s bloodstains on the concrete floor. “Oh, God,” Max muttered. Elizabeth had seen the blood. What did he do about it now?

  All of Gabby’s friends—Candace, Elizabeth, Miranda, and Paige—had in some way helped or protected him. He couldn’t kill them.

  Max walked into the living room. The news was on and a woman was giving a report outside Carnel Cove Memorial Hospital.

  Elizabeth muted the sound. “It’s okay. Keith’s gone.” Her eyes turned solemn; her expression, cautiously serious. “No one has been in the garage.”

  Having no idea how to respond without raising questions he didn’t want to answer, Max said nothing. He couldn’t lie to her. Elizabeth obviously knew far too much, and insulting her intelligence wouldn’t endear him to her. Right now he was totally dependent on her goodwill, and unless he and Keith Burke were wrong about the way the women in their circle operated, that meant all the ladies’ goodwill.

  “Gabby is getting worse.” Elizabeth drank from a sweating glass of pale tea, and then set it down on a coaster. “If we don’t do something drastic, she’s going to die—just like William.”

  Losing her husband had been hard on her. It showed in every move she made, her every glance, and every word. “We’re trying everything we’ve got.”

  “I know.” She rocked her head back against the sofa cushions. “But this time, it’s got to be enough.” She cut her gaze from the ceiling to Max. Her eyes shone overly bright, and she blinked hard. “I’ve buried enough people I’ve loved, Max. I don’t want to bury any more.”

  “Me, either,” he said. This time, he couldn’t convince himself his reasons were solely, or even mostly, professional. They were personal. Simple and complex and very personal.

  Elizabeth studied him, her gaze filled with skepticism. “I believe you mean that.”

  “I do.”

  “I’m glad to hear it.” She stood up and grabbed her purse. “I need a shower and to check on Candace. I’ll be back afterward so you can take care of whatever business you need to do.”

  Oh, yeah. She knew a lot more than he had thought. So much so Commander Conlee would consider her a national security threat. Hell, with their network, all the ladies probably knew too much, but Max wasn’t going to report it. Conlee would only send in a tactical strike force rather than just a second team to cancel them all, him and Gabby included.

  Couldn’t he catch even one break on this mission?

  “Don’t look so worried, Max. Your secrets are safe with us,” Elizabeth said.

  Had he spoken aloud? “What secrets?”

  She cocked her head, sending her long hair swinging forward, over her shoulder. “I cleaned up the blood on the garage floor and drowned the area in bleach.”

  Surprised, Max swallowed hard and kept his mouth shut.

  “I’m assuming you got rid of the body and that, if you didn’t commit the murder, Gabby did.” She hiked her purse strap up on her shoulder, and the cross she wore on a gold chain around her neck glinted. “If Gabby killed the man, then he needed killing. I can’t claim to know the same for you, but if you’re married to Gabby, then I’m willing to risk that the same holds true. She isn’t a woman to suffer fools, so it stands to reason she wouldn’t marry one.”

  Stunned, Max opened his mouth, having no idea what would come out.

  Elizabeth stopped him with a lifted hand. “No more needs to be said on the matter. I’ll trust Gabby’s judgment. In the past, it’s proven sound.”

  He managed to nod.

  “I’ll be back in a few hours,” she said, and then walked out the front door.

  Stunned, Max stood in the living room, letting what had just happened sink in. And then something hit him that had him breaking into a cold sweat and his blood curdling.

  If Gabby killed the man, then he needed killing …

  How had Elizabeth known that there had been a dead body, and that it had been a man’s?

  The director locked himself in his office and used the secure phone restricted for use in his dealings with the Consortium. He dialed and waited for the scrambler to kick in; then, finally, the chairman answered.

  “Yes?”

  How this information would be received, the director had no idea. The chairman made a habit of not reacting as expected, and unfortunately, there was no way to know in advance when that would be. He held his cards close, which is probably why he stayed alive. “Cardel just reported in.” The Warrior had been highly agitated. “Gabby Kincaid isn’t dead, but she is out of the picture.”

  “I believe you’d better explain that.”

  The director looked out his window onto Main Street. A patrol car sat parked at the curb. “There was an incident at the lab. Gabby was bitten by mosquitoes infected with Z-4027.”

  “So she’s dying.” He sighed. “Vice President Stone will be in mourning.”

  “Cardel says she’s critical. Her and Candace Burke.”

  “I’m aware of what’s going on with Candace Burke.”

  How could he be aware? Who could have told—of course. Logan Industries. “Cardel is looking into Jaris Adahan’s death.”

  “We know he’s dead. What is the challenge?”

  “It still hasn’t been r
eported to the authorities.”

  “Where the hell is the body?”

  “That’s just it. It’s disappeared.”

  “Tell Cardel Boudreaux he has twenty-four hours to find it. I want that murder reported and I want Kincaid’s husband on ice. He caused problems at the meeting this morning, and I don’t want him interfering anymore.”

  “Should Cardel see to that?”

  “No, damn it,” the chairman shouted. “Stacking up bodies isn’t compatible with our mission. I want bodies, yes. But only those associated with the trial studies. Not ones that will have the hounds from hell coming down here, getting in our way.”

  “Yes, sir.” The director walked to the window, looked down to the street, and saw Miranda Coffield talking with Sissy Blake. Miranda never engaged in idle chat, and she made him nervous. She saw too much and she never took anything at face value. Every time she looked at him, he had the feeling she saw straight through him. Naturally, he avoided Miranda. She was too smart and connected. Faulkner’s wife and Sissy were respected, but neither was smart. So what did Miranda want with them?

  “Keep me posted. And find that body.”

  The phone went dead, and the finality of the warning in that order rattled the director. Find that body. Right.

  Miranda stood waiting on Elizabeth’s dock. A boat’s running lights drew closer and closer, then homed in on the dock. Her heart beat hard and fast. Elizabeth was better at this. Miranda was good with hard data, facts, and figures. But she found gauging people difficult and, frankly, after she’d taken the biggest leap of faith in her life and married Sam and then he’d proven he had no character and she’d divorced him, she had little patience with subterfuge. Amazing, considering her line of work, but true.