by Julie Miller
She couldn’t quite raise a smile. “You noticed, huh?”
“He’s giving you worry lines beside those pretty gray eyes.”
“He’ll be here.” She hoped. The worry that was never far from her thoughts cut through her like the bite of the winter wind. Doing had become a lot easier than feeling lately. That was how she dealt with the loss. She pushed Germane through the diner’s front door and locked it behind her. She’d wait until Matt showed up before pulling down the cage that shielded the front windows. “C’mon. We’ve got work to do.”
TEN MINUTES LATER Kit jumped at the scream from the alley. Elbow-deep in hot, sudsy water, she chilled at the words she heard through the kitchen’s back door.
“You?”
“Shut up and let go, you hag!”
“Take it. Please, just take—”
She preferred screams to the muffled thud and sudden, eerie silence.
“Germane!” He was mopping out by the tables. But she was just a few feet away from the shouts and scuffle in the alley. Kit tightened her grip around the iron skillet she’d been washing and ran to the exit. “Call 911!”
“Kit! Don’t you—”
But she was already out the door at the top of the loading dock. Not Matt. Please don’t let it be Matt. The crunching of snow drew her attention to the steel scaffolding beyond the light over her back door. She spotted the groceries scattered across the ground and hurried down the concrete steps toward the torn sack they belonged to.
“Next time, old lady, you’ll shut up when I tell you to.”
Kit’s eyes adjusted to the sight of two young men in saggy jeans and hooded parkas—one bearing the distinctive arrowhead of the Chiefs—squatting beside a woman’s still form in the slush near the garbage cans. “Matty?”
The bigger of the two stopped digging through the woman’s purse and swung around. Black hair and little else was visible above the scarf he’d tied over his face. Not Matt.
Blood boiled in Kit’s veins, overriding both relief and fear. “Get away from her. Get away!”
Kit charged before the startled man could rise. She smacked him in the shoulder, sending both purse and attacker flying. Unfazed by his fluent foreign curses, she jumped over the woman’s skinned-up legs and raised the skillet to go after the smaller man.
But a third pair of arms grabbed her from behind and slung her against the building. The skillet banged against the wall, stinging her fingers and popping her grip. It clattered to the ground as the man she’d struck lurched forward, wanting his own retribution. “Nobody hits me, bitch!”
He shoved her before she had a chance to react. She smacked into solid limestone. The air whooshed from her lungs and her head spun from the dizzying contact.
“Get out of here! Now!” Blurry hands pulled the man in the Chiefs parka back and urged him to run.
Kit sank to her knees as the three men scattered. By the time she could fill her lungs with cold air and clear her head, they were gone. Along with the woman’s purse.
Kit didn’t waste time pursuing them. The older woman, groaning but not moving, was a greater concern. Kit crawled over and knelt beside her, quickly assessing that her unfocused eyes were open and her pulse was beating. Recognizing the snowy cap of hair and slight build beneath the thick wool coat and knitted scarf, she asked, “Helen?”
Recognize was a generous term. The woman came into the diner for an occasional cup of tea, but usually just nodded and smiled when they passed each other on the sidewalk or in the parking garage. She seemed friendly enough, but very private. She’d probably been a resident around here for years, and was being cautious about the alarming changes in her environment.
Any wonder? The dangerous proof was the fresh tracks in the snow, exiting the alley between the parking garage and the Sinclair Building’s side entrances.
“Helen? That’s your name, right?” The woman gasped as Kit peeled the wool scarf away from the bloody wound at her temple. She’d had enough training in her forensic classes to identify the long, round indentation of the wound. Those greedy bastards had hit this fly-weight woman with a pipe, or maybe shoved her into one of the scaffolding bars. But this wasn’t the time for Kit’s innate curiosity to kick in. The woman was going into shock.
“Germane!”
Where was he?
Kit didn’t want to leave the woman’s side. Briefly peeling off her sweater and baring her flanks and back to the chapping cold, Kit removed her cotton turtleneck and pressed it against Helen’s wound while she redressed. “Where do you live? What’s your last name?”
Though she moaned at the contact, Helen was fading.
“Hang on.” She shouted over her shoulder, “Germane!”
“Right behind you, girl.” Germane limped through the back door, carrying a blanket beneath his arm and a cell phone against his ear. He relayed information to the dispatcher as he hurried down the stairs. “That’s right. The Sinclair Building at Ninth and Walnut. Looks like an elderly woman in the alley on the north side.” He paused and frowned. “I didn’t see nothin’. But if you don’t get that ambulance here soon, the cops’ll be investigating a murder, not a mugging.”
“Germane?” Kit took the blanket from him as he shut his phone and braced a hand on her shoulder to kneel on the opposite side of the woman. Kit winced at the bruise that must already be swelling on her shoulder blade.
His sharp eyes didn’t miss a trick. “How bad are you hurt?”
“I had a run-in with the wall, but it’s nothing serious.” Kit skipped the details and unfolded the blanket to tuck it around Helen’s slight figure. Germane was already listening to the older woman’s breathing and checking for pupil response. “How is she?”
“She’s got a concussion for sure. Hell, they could’ve cracked her skull, as deep as that wound goes.”
Kit turned toward the end of the alley where the footprints disappeared. “The muggers took her purse, and she hasn’t given me her name. I think it’s Helen, but I don’t who to contact or what to tell the paramedics. Do you know her?”
“Keep talking to her,” Germane advised, measuring the woman’s pulse. “All I know is, she lives upstairs. She’s been in a few times, pesterin’ me for my barbecue sauce recipe. Says she used to make as good. She’s always by herself, though, so maybe there isn’t anybody to cook for anymore.”
Or anyone to call. Kit smoothed away the droplets of melting snow from the woman’s cool cheek. “Helen? Can you hear me? Look at me, Helen.”
The rheumy blue eyes blinked. Her pale lips slurred a question. “Are you dead?”
“What?” Kit panicked when Helen’s eyes drifted shut. “No. I’m very much alive. And so are you. Stay with me, Helen.” She pulled the woman’s bony hand between her own and tried to rub some warmth back into it. “Helen? You’re not alone. Stay with me.”
Her cold hand went limp in Kit’s grasp as she murmured, “We’re all dead.”
Chapter Two
The fire was all around him, climbing up the walls and leaping across the ceiling.
Dr. Damon Sinclair crawled toward the emergency exit at the back of his lab. The door where he’d entered minutes earlier to pick up his notes for tomorrow’s board meeting was no longer an escape route. The glass entryway had shattered and the fire was now licking its way into the hallway on the opposite side.
Beakers exploded from the heat and rained glass on his back. Their contents fed the flames. The few sprinklers that had survived the explosion were doing little more than creating steam as they spat out water at irregular intervals.
If he hadn’t smelled the chemicals—if he hadn’t reacted to the searing stench of the volatile combination and dived beneath his desk to avoid the initial blast—he’d already be dead. The milliseconds of warning had left him with a head wound, an armful of research documentation and a chance at survival. But that chance was slim if he couldn’t find a way out.
Blinded by the blood seeping into his left eye, feverish fro
m the blazing heat, he moved forward by instinct alone. When he hit a wall instead of the exit, he knew he had to make a choice. He set the binders on the floor with a reverence for the miracles contained inside. His work could save lives—it had saved lives. And now he’d set it aside to save his own life.
The answers were all inside his head, anyway. Given enough time, he could recreate them if he had to. If he ever got out of this hellfire, he’d have all the time in the world to…
A farewell look at his work elicited a choice curse.
“What the hell is this garbage?” These weren’t his notes. Just pages and pages of numbers and equations that didn’t make sense. He hurled the worthless counterfeits into the growing flames.
Was that what this was about? This treacherous, purposeful destruction, just to hide a theft?
Whoever was responsible… Whoever had planted that damned incendiary… Reams of notes and calculations—gone. Successful equations and rejected experiments he could learn from—gone. State-of-the-art technology designed by his own hands…
His hands…
“Son of a bitch!”
They were on fire.
Damon reengaged his brain and fought off the groggy disorientation that consumed him.
Whoever was responsible for this betrayal would not go unpunished. There were means a man of his intellect and bank account could use to make the bastard who’d sabotaged his life’s work pay.
He let the rage suffuse him. Give him strength. He clutched his arms to his stomach and doubled over to stifle the flames with his own body. “You’ll pay.” The heat from his own hands seared his flesh. “You’ll pay.”
“Help! Damon! Help me!”
“Miranda?” A pain far more cruel than any physical torture twisted in the pit of his stomach. Oh, no. God, no. “Miranda!”
His wife’s screams hurt worse than the scorching agony of the skin blistering on his fingers. Her terror cut deeper than the shrapnel in his forehead. He’d gladly give up any medical secret he could devise, but please, please, spare his wife.
“Miranda!” He shouldered aside burning tables, melting plastic and shattered glass, desperately searching through the roiling smoke. “Miranda! Ans—” He choked on the toxic gases coating his lungs and crumpled to the floor. A hoarse cough racked his body and ravaged his throat before he could summon the strength to push to his knees. “Answer me!”
“Damon!”
Her screech of desperation drove him on. He crawled through corrosive puddles and ruined work and unknown treachery to find the only thing that truly mattered. “Miranda? Please. Keep talking. I’ll find—” Coughing cut like broken glass through his raw throat. The spasms drained his strength and he collapsed again. But he pulled himself toward her ragged sobs. “I’m coming.” His administrative assistant. His love. His life. Work be damned. “I’m coming.”
“Damon…”
A chunk of ceiling gave way and crashed to the floor, shooting up a snarling roar of white heat and orange flame. Damon rolled to the side, sucking in the last breath of oxygen hovering above the floor. The firefighters and paramedics were on their way. But even if they were already in the building, they had twenty-eight stories to climb. Damon was his wife’s last—her only—hope for survival.
“Miranda!”
He found her curled into a ball in the corner of a storage closet. Her clothes and hair had caught fire, and though she’d managed to douse the flames, she’d already suffered serious burns.
If she was still breathing, Damon couldn’t tell. He could only cradle her in his arms while he carried her to safety. Outside the burning lab, he collapsed and lay her on the floor. His damaged hands couldn’t detect a pulse, but he put his lips against hers and breathed. “Come on, baby,” he rasped. “Live, Miranda. Live.”
The old images faded as Damon twisted in his sleep. But the nightmare wouldn’t end. It merely transformed—into something hideous and ugly. Like him.
They were at the asylum now. Months later. Miranda’s willowy figure was lost beneath the green hospital gown. And she was crying. At least, her shoulders moved with the sounds of sobbing. The tear ducts beneath the bandages that wrapped her face could no longer cry.
“Why won’t you help me?” Her blue eyes pierced him straight to the core, adding to the weight of well-deserved guilt he carried. “How can you make yourself right and not help me?”
She should never have been a part of this. Miranda was an innocent pawn, caught and trampled by someone’s jealous greed. If only he’d been an ordinary man. Less rich. Less powerful. Less of a visionary brainiac. None of this would have happened. His work wouldn’t have been stolen. His lab wouldn’t have been destroyed. She wouldn’t have been hurt.
Damon Sinclair loved like an ordinary man, but he was cursed with being anything but.
“We nearly lost you in the E. R. when you reacted to the treatments. I won’t risk that again until I run more experiments. For some reason the tissue regeneration formula doesn’t work on you. I haven’t figured out why. Yet. But I will. I promise.” He joined her at the window. It was the last time he remembered feeling the heat of sunshine on his skin. “In the meantime, there’s reconstructive surgery—”
“That takes too long. I’ll never be the same.”
He gently stroked her arm. “Money is no object. Whatever it takes. Whatever experts we need—”
“I thought you were the expert.” She shrugged off his touch. “Your hands have healed. But my face…?”
Damon reached for her again, but she slid away, crossing to the far side of the small room whose posh amenities couldn’t completely mask its clinical purpose. “Miranda, you are beautiful to me. Inside. Where it counts. I love you. I will always love you, no matter what.”
“But I’m not beautiful outside anymore, am I?” She faced him then, the bandages masking everything but the accusation in her eyes. “You can’t look at me and say I’m beautiful on the outside, can you?”
His medical breakthroughs weren’t infallible. “I can’t fix my eye, either, and the nerve repair is still incom—”
“But you fixed the skin on your hands. What about the skin on my face? It’s not vanity. It’s humanity. I have no face left. No lips, no nose. Just…scars.”
She hated him. So much. Where once he’d seen love, he saw nothing but blame and contempt. Hell, he hated himself. He’d worked miracles for so many patients. “Miranda—”
“Fix me, Damon. Fix me!”
“I don’t know how.” The admission twisted cruelly through a brain that had always had the answers. Always. Until now. “I don’t know how.”
“I don’t know how,” he muttered, finding no peace in slumber. “I don’t know how!”
Damon lashed out at himself in his nightmare and awoke to the crash of glass.
He blinked his good eye into the glaring brightness of lights reflecting off stainless steel. Even as he pushed himself away from the lab table where he’d fallen asleep, the frustration and guilt that haunted his nightmares were still with him. He had a shattered petrie dish and contaminated solution on the floor by his feet, to boot. “Damn.”
Another experiment gone to waste. Not that he’d expected this one to work better than any of the others he’d run in the last month. He didn’t know if his equations were off, or if the sample had been tainted. But as he rolled the kinks from his neck and adjusted the black strap that crossed his forehead and held the patch over the empty socket where his left eye had been, he knew the answers would continue to elude him tonight.
A glance out the window of his twenty-eighth-floor lab told him it was well past midnight, even before he noted the time on the clock above the door. Time would forever be his enemy. No formula or device his clever mind could conjure would ever grant him the time he needed. The time he’d lost with Miranda.
Their marriage hadn’t been perfect. He’d worked too much in the lab; she had loved to travel. But she’d given him a beautiful home life and a trus
ted voice in the Sinclair Pharmaceuticals office; he’d given her everything she’d asked for.
Except her humanity.
He hadn’t found the answer to heal her in time. He hadn’t made her feel whole again. He couldn’t save her from her injuries—or the resulting depression. His skills weren’t enough. His money wasn’t enough.
His love wasn’t enough.
Wide awake, as he searched for a broom and dustpan, he saw the vision—as clearly as he’d seen it that morning at the asylum.
Miranda. Dead.
An empty bottle of pills beside her on the bed.
No stomach pump, no science, no miracle could bring his wife back to him.
The note she’d left him had been brief.
D—
I can’t do this anymore.
M.
Some lousy chromosome in her genetic makeup kept the miracle drugs that had earned his company millions from working. He’d even tested the tissue-regeneration formula on himself. The prototypes might be scarred and ugly, but he’d regained the use of his hands. The fingerprints hadn’t all come back, but he had sensation in almost every nerve, and most of his dexterity had returned. He could do his work. He could type his notes and mix his chemicals and write his equations. He could feel heat and cold and pain.
God, yes. He was a pro at that now. Through and through. Some days, pain was all he could feel.
Damon paused in the center of his new lab. He pulled back the front of his white coat, propped his hands at his hips, tipped his head back and roared at the soundproof ceiling.
It wasn’t fair that he should be alive while Miranda was dead. It wasn’t fair that he should have more money than some small countries and not know happiness anymore. It wasn’t fair that he couldn’t find the solution to Miranda’s Formula—the tissue-regenerating miracle intended to save patients who shared the same genetic predisposition she’d had.