On Dangerous Ground

by Maggie Price

  “You need to hear about my meeting with Professor Linley, too.” With her free hand, she snagged a plastic water bottle off the floor. “We can talk in my apartment,” she added as they walked toward the frosted glass door. “Grant, I think what he gave me is enough to get a warrant to serve the hospital.”

  For the first time in hours, a smile curved his lips. “The plot thickens.”

  “There’s more than just what I learned from the professor. Before I left for my meeting, I finished the tests on the section of fuel line you had cut from the cruiser. The line’s gummed up with sugar, and has traces of the same brand of soda as in the can you found in the prison parking lot.”

  Grant’s eyes narrowed. “Maybe we’re on our way to catching a spider in our web.”

  “Maybe.”

  In less than five minutes, they reached Sky’s apartment. Grant stood back while she slid her key into the lock and punched her code into the alarm panel inside the door.

  “Want some lemonade?” she asked, crossing the living room toward the kitchen.

  “Thanks, I’ll pass.” Grant closed the door behind him, set the dead bolt and shrugged out of his suit coat.

  “So, what did the construction foreman tell you about Spider?” Sky pulled a pitcher out of the refrigerator, then retrieved a glass from a cabinet.

  “That he worked for a couple of months as an electrician’s helper.” He discarded his coat across the back of the couch on his way to the kitchen. “Got pretty good at it.”

  Sky flicked him a look while she poured pink lemonade into the glass. “Good enough to hot-wire an air-conditioning unit?”

  “I’d bet on it.” Grant leaned a hip against the opposite side of the counter from her. “Spider also runs with a guy who’s a locksmith by trade. Our boy probably has learned a little about the fine art of breaking and entering. Lock picks don’t leave any trace.”

  “Still, all that doesn’t prove he broke into my motel room and tried to burn me alive along with his father’s blood sample,” Sky said as she walked around the counter.

  “True. So maybe what we need to talk about is what your professor had to say.”

  “I’ve got the file from our meeting in my briefcase. Hold this for a minute,” she said, handing him her glass. “I brought back tons of scientific data.”

  “Great,” he said dryly. “I’ve been wanting something totally incomprehensible to read.”

  She sent a smirk across her shoulder. “Relax, Pierce. While I was in the professor’s office, I wrote up notes in layman’s language. I figured that would help explain things to a judge when we ask for a warrant.”

  Grant raised an eyebrow. “Not to mention certain thick-headed cops?”

  “You said that, not me.” The locks on the briefcase snicked open beneath her hands. “I couldn’t believe Professor Linley had…”

  Grant frowned when her voice drifted off. “Something wrong?”

  “I’m not sure.” She lifted a file folder from the briefcase and met his gaze. “This is the file on Whitebear, but I know I filed it alphabetically.”

  He angled his chin. “You keep the files you carry around in your briefcase alphabetized?”

  “Of course. Don’t you?”

  He ran his palm down the length of her ponytail. “Get real, Milano.”

  “Being unorganized makes me crazy.” Reaching into the briefcase, she shuffled through a pile of folders. “Every file is in order, except Whitebear’s.” A frown marred her expression, narrowing her blue eyes. “I could have sworn I put it back in its right spot before I left the professor’s office.”

  “You know you put the file back in order, or you think you did?”

  “I think.” She shook her head while reclaiming her glass. “I must be getting paranoid. On the drive home I imagined a car was following me.”

  Gripping her upper arm, Grant turned her to face him. “What car?”

  “A black sedan. It stayed a few car lengths behind me, changed lanes each time I did, then took the same exit off the interstate. I didn’t see it after that. I know for sure it didn’t follow me into the parking lot here, so it was nothing.”

  “I don’t like the sound of that.” Scowling, Grant rested a hand on his waist beside his holstered Glock. He shot a look across his shoulder at the alarm panel beside the front door before shifting his gaze back to Sky’s. “Is anything missing from the file?”

  She flipped through the pages. “Nothing.” She looked up. “Everything’s just like I left it. I was in a hurry to leave the professor’s office so I could get back and tell you about the study. I must have just thought I slid the file into its right place.”

  Grant nodded. “We’ll go with that for now. Tell me what the professor had to say.”

  “I told him about the changes in Ellis Whitebear’s DNA and the aplastic anemia he contracted before he was arrested,” she began as they walked into the living room.

  “Okay, let’s see if I have this right.” Settling on the sofa beside her, Grant narrowed his eyes, repeating the information the doctor at the prison had related. “Aplastic anemia means Ellis’s bone marrow stopped producing blood cells.”

  “You’re a quick study, Pierce.” Leaning forward, Sky set her glass on a coaster on the wooden coffee table in front of the couch, then opened the file folder, fanning out papers. “During the marrow transplant, Ellis received blood cells from a donor.”

  “Which, going with our assumption, could have changed Ellis’s DNA.”

  “Not could have. Did. This is no longer just a theory, Grant. We now have evidence it can happen.” As she spoke, Sky retrieved a slick-covered magazine from the file folder. “Professor Linley once wrote a research paper on aplastic anemia, so he has an interest in the subject. That’s why he remembered an article in this scientific journal. It details an obscure study conducted on a group of people—a control group—who suffered from the disease. The doctor who did the study contends that, for a short window of eight, maybe ten weeks, a person who receives a bone marrow transplant will produce blood DNA identical to his donor’s.”

  Letting out a low whistle, Grant rubbed a hand over his jaw while he analyzed the information. “At least two months,” he said finally. “For at least two months, Ellis’s body could have manufactured the same DNA as the guy who donated bone marrow to him.”

  “That’s right. And it’s strictly Ellis’s blood DNA that the transplant would have affected. If they’d been tested during that same period, his brain, spleen and sperm cells would have carried his own unique DNA.”

  “But it was Ellis’s blood you drew after Mavis Benjamin’s murder. And when you got an identical match to the blood stain on her dress, Sam and I stopped looking for the killer, because we figured we had him. Problem is, we didn’t. And two years down the road, the bastard who killed Mavis Benjamin slit Carmen Peña’s throat.” He lifted a palm, let it drop back to his thigh. “We’d have never known he killed both women if he hadn’t left that small bandage underneath the Peña woman’s body.”

  Sky nodded. “I’m still having a hard time believing I drew a killer’s DNA out of an innocent man’s arm two years ago. Probably by the time Ellis went on trial, his body had recovered from the disease and began functioning normally. It still is. That’s why what I drew out of his vein a week ago was his own unique DNA.” She settled back against the earth-tone throw pillows nested in one corner of the sofa. “It makes sense, Grant. It’s the only logical way Ellis’s blood DNA could have changed.”

  “I’ll be damned.” Leaning forward, Grant shoved a hand through his hair. “I don’t exactly like knowing that Sam and I put an innocent man on death row.”

  “And I don’t like knowing I helped, but we presented the evidence we had and it all fit. Everything made sense at the time.”

  “I’ll call Lieutenant Ryan and run this down to him,” Grant said. “Then you and I will head to my office and dig through the case files. We need to draw up a time line that shows
the date of Ellis’s transplant, the window when his body produced the donor’s DNA, the Benjamin murder and when you first drew Ellis’s blood. That, along with the study you got from the professor, is enough for a judge to give us a warrant.”

  “I was hoping you’d say that,” Sky said, then paused. “Grant, think about it. If Spider is the donor, we’ve got a case where a son donated bone marrow to save his father’s life, then later watched while his father was sent to death row for a crime the son committed.”

  “Spider has to be the donor. Ellis isn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer, but he knew enough to clam up when we started telling him his blood had changed and asking him about transfusions. He knows he didn’t kill Mavis Benjamin, so it must have clicked in Ellis’s brain that the person who gave him bone marrow—Junior—slit her throat and let him take the fall.”

  “A father sacrifices his life for his child’s,” Sky said softly. “Ellis would rather die than see Spider pay the price.”

  “Some types of love are hard to understand.”

  “In this case, that’s one of them.”

  “Yeah.” In his mind, Grant went over the steps they needed to take. “Why don’t you get cleaned up while I call Ryan and lay things out to him? If we get the time line on Whitebear’s transplant and the Benjamin homicide done fast, we can track down whatever judge is on call this month for warrants and get him to issue one tonight. By this time tomorrow, we might have our killer in jail.”

  “And be on the way to getting an innocent man off death row,” she added, her mouth curving in an easy smile that made his heart clench.

  He wanted her smiles. For the rest of his life, he wanted the warmth he saw there.

  Watching her shuffle papers back into the folder, he realized his body was as tense as an unshot arrow. He wasn’t going to try to kid himself that the unsteadiness he felt had anything to do with the investigation.

  Sky—everything centered around Sky. She had told him about the most terrorizing moments of her life, trusted him with her feelings. She hadn’t asked for some vigilante cop, obsessed with dealing direct punishment to the scum who’d put his filthy hands on her. But that was what she’d gotten.

  It wasn’t right, this need for revenge that burned inside him. Grant knew that. Knew if he didn’t find a way to douse the fire, he would lose her.

  Frustration, vicious and pulsing, pushed him to his feet. “Before I call Ryan, there’s something you and I need to settle.”

  Her fingers stilled on the papers as her gaze rose slowly to meet his. “What?”

  The instant wariness in her eyes had him balling his hands into fists as he moved across the room to the fireplace. He ignored the pain that slashed through his swollen knuckles.

  “What happened this morning between us didn’t change some things. Like the fact someone tried to burn you alive. I’m not leaving you alone at night—”

  “It’s not a good idea—”

  “Making sure you’re safe is an extremely good idea, Milano. I can do that by sleeping on your couch.” He leaned his shoulder against the mantel and took a deep breath. “You’ve made your feelings clear. If I touch a hair on Adams’s head, you and I have no future.”

  She swallowed hard. “That’s right.”

  The determined edge in her voice started fingers of dread clawing at his gut. “I won’t lie to you, Sky. I’m trying to get a handle on this. So far, no amount of cognitive reasoning has made me back off from wanting to rip out the bastard’s lungs with my bare hands.”

  “He’s not worth it.” Shifting on the couch, she pulled one of the throw pillows against her stomach as if a pain had settled there, then wrapped her arms around it. “He’s not worth anything.”

  “Yeah, I hear what you’re saying.” He closed his eyes for a brief instant. “I respect you, Sky. And what we could have together. I won’t ask to share your bed until I can look you in the eye and tell you how I’m going to handle things where Adams is concerned.”

  “Let it go, Grant.” She hugged the pillow closer. “You have to let it go.”

  Her somber eyes and pale cheeks tightened the knots in his stomach. “That’s a lot easier said than done,” he reminded her quietly.

  “I know.” She looked away, her hands balling into fists against the pillow. “I’m done with the past, Grant,” she said finally, her gaze shifting back to meet his. “I can’t go back. No matter how I feel about you, I can’t go back.”

  How the hell did she feel about him? Suddenly he wanted her to admit that she was as hopelessly in love with him as he was with her. His jaw tightened when he felt reason slipping against the need to draw her out, force the truth, even.

  He turned, stared into the dark fireplace while he battled control back in place. This war of emotion raging inside him wasn’t Sky’s problem, it was his. What he needed was time and space to deal with his feelings. Right now, with the demands of the investigation, he had neither. So he would back off, keep things between them strictly business.

  And while he was at it, go slowly and quietly out of his mind with the need to touch her.

  Chapter 13

  At half past seven the following morning, Sky rode an elevator to University Hospital’s tenth floor. When the door slid open, she stepped into a dim hallway that smelled of disinfectant and fresh floor wax. Her low-heeled shoes clicked sharply along the empty hallway as she sipped the coffee she’d bought from the lobby vending machine. Wrinkling her nose, she wondered how a hospital could get away with serving such a deadly-tasting brew.

  “Must need more patients.” She dropped the foam cup into a rolling trash bin sitting outside the door displaying a stenciled Medical Records on its glass insert.

  Stifling a yawn, she glanced idly around for the janitor who’d left the trash bin sitting in the middle of the hallway, but he or she was nowhere in sight.

  Sky briefly considered taking a seat on one of the plastic visitor’s chairs positioned on either side of a low metal table, then decided if she had any hope of staying awake, she’d best remain on her feet. She settled for leaning a shoulder against the wall while she thought back over the blur that was the past ten hours.

  Last night, she and Grant had taken up residence in the Homicide squad room where they’d dug through case reports and developed the time line on Ellis Whitebear’s bone marrow transplant in relation to the Benjamin homicide. With the time line in hand, they tracked down the chief presiding judge on call for warrants, who was attending a banquet. After cooling their heels while His Honor delivered the keynote address, she and Grant huddled with the judge. She’d answered the justice’s technical questions; Grant, the ones concerning the Benjamin/Peña homicides. It was nearly midnight when the judge signed the warrant.

  She hadn’t had to worry about Grant sleeping on her couch.

  Minutes after the judge signed the warrant, both her and Grant’s pagers had sounded a strident duet. They’d wound up working through the night at a double homicide crime scene.

  With fatigue pressing down on her, Sky rested her head against the wall and closed her eyes.

  She’d finished her work at the crime scene before Grant, stopped off at the lab to log in the evidence she’d collected, then driven here to the hospital. Grant had paged her from the scene to let her know he was wrapping things up and would meet her outside the medical records office. Glancing at her watch, Sky estimated he’d get there in less than fifteen minutes.

  And then what? she wondered. After they served the warrant, checked the records and knew the name of the donor whose DNA had put Ellis Whitebear on death row, what then? Would she and Grant go their separate ways, just as they’d done six months ago when the repercussions of her rape tore them apart? Just as it was tearing them apart now.

  Emotion welled up her throat, settled into a hard knot. All she’d wanted for so long was to reconstruct her life. Now it felt as if everything was slowly crumbling around her.

  The light snick of a lock twisting ope
n sounded on the still air, pulling Sky’s attention toward the medical records office. Seconds later, the door swung open. A man dressed in jeans and a navy shirt with a janitorial company logo over one breast pocket stepped into the hallway. The handler, Sky thought idly, of the abandoned rolling trash bin.

  In the swift, fleeting seconds that followed, her gaze caught on the corner of a file folder sticking from the vee in the man’s shirt. Her gaze rose. Awareness crashed through her fatigue when her eyes locked with Spider Whitebear’s.

  The man suspected of murdering two women and trying to burn her alive regarded Sky with unnerving, naked malice. “Well, well, the lady chemist.”

  “What…?”

  “…am I doing here?” His mouth curved. “I had a nice visit to your apartment last night. While I was there, I read your notes.” He tapped an index finger against his chest. “Had to get this file and delete my name from the computer before you and the cop got here, didn’t I?”

  Icy fear had Sky jolting away from the wall toward the elevator. Her arms flailed when her feet nearly went out from under her on the fresh-waxed tiles.

  “We’ve got business, bitch!” Spider shouted, his vicious voice echoing off the walls.

  A heartbeat later, the rolling trash bin plowed into the back of Sky’s legs, pitching her sideways. She crashed onto one of the plastic chairs, her forehead slamming against the edge of the metal table.

  The pain that screamed through her head had stars bursting before her eyes. Nausea rose in her stomach, swirling like flood water. Robbed of equilibrium, she rolled off the chair, one side of her body taking the brunt of the impact against the hard tile.

  Get up! her brain screamed. Get up! Whenever she instructed a self-defense class, that was the first rule she taught. You’re a goner if you stay down.

  Her head spun sickeningly as she fought to rise to her knees. Battling to stay conscious, she barely jolted when Spider’s hand locked around her throat and shoved her down.