Beast in the Tower

by Julie Miller

  “And pull up your pants. There’s a dress code at school, remember? You’ve got a cute butt—you should show it off.” Even that teasing truth failed to get any more talk out of him. He was leaving without a backward glance. Flannel pajamas couldn’t keep the wintry breeze from blowing against her skin and raising goose bumps. “I love you.”

  But he was gone. Kit hugged her arms around her middle and shivered. Cold as she was, alone as she felt, there was an odd heat centered between her shoulder blades that caused her to turn around and peer into the empty expanse of the alley behind her.

  Maybe not so alone.

  Was someone watching her? Had one of the workmen come early? Right. Like flannel pj’s and fuzzy slippers would merit a whistle or two.

  She lifted her gaze to the parking garage on the opposite side. There weren’t even any cars moving there yet. There was no one else here. She was safe.

  Getting grabbed from behind twice in the same morning made her paranoid, that was all.

  Still, Kit hurried inside, unable to shake the eerie feeling of being watched until she locked the door behind her. Releasing the breath she didn’t know she’d been holding, she hustled her own butt to get showered and dressed and off to explore the building before visiting Helen.

  Helen Hodges hadn’t just formed out of the mist. There had to be a tangible clue somewhere in the Sinclair Tower that would let Kit know where the woman belonged. There had to be something to tell her more about the mystery man she seemed to belong to.

  WHAT WAS THAT WOMAN up to?

  Damon propped his feet on the desk and leaned back, sipping his coffee and watching his first-floor neighbor chatting up the construction crew on a row of monitors. She’d already walked the halls on three floors, peeked into unused offices and invited herself into one of the model apartments.

  She was certainly a curious specimen. Thorough and methodical in a way that Damon could relate to—friendly and outgoing in a way he was not. But what was she looking for? Though he couldn’t hear the words, he could read the nonverbal cues of posture and gestures, and tell she was asking questions.

  About what? The building? The remodel? The attack? Helen? Him?

  If he’d had half of this high-tech, personally enhanced security system installed throughout the building eighteen months ago, he’d have seen the enemy coming that night. He’d still have his original notes. He wouldn’t have had to build a new lab or play games with that hacker. He’d have the full use of two good hands and both eyes.

  His wife wouldn’t be dead.

  Damon inhaled deeply, carefully controlling his emotional response to all he had lost. He no longer allowed his thoughts to be clouded by sentimental attachments. Beyond Helen, of course.

  That was excuse enough to acquaint himself with his first-floor neighbor. Helen would want to thank her, want to do something kind and generous to repay her. But until his housekeeper regained consciousness, Damon would evaluate this would-be friend for her. Though his security cameras had caught the vicious, faceless attackers on tape, Damon had seen the danger too late. Caught up in the throes of his nightmares, he’d failed to protect Helen when she’d needed him most.

  He wouldn’t fail to protect her again.

  If his first-floor neighbor proved to be as straightforward and caring as she appeared to be, then Damon would personally write a check for whatever thank-you gift Helen wished to bestow on her. But if she’d discovered Helen’s connection to the wealthy SinPharm empire and intended to take advantage of her grateful nature, then he’d have his executive liaison, Easting Davitz, close the woman’s restaurant and kick her out of the building.

  But for now he was content to collect data and observe the subject in question. He’d organize the facts and determine his opinion of her later.

  He already knew everything about Katherine Elizabeth Snow that a piece of paper could tell him. He set his coffee mug down on the stack of information his security team had pulled for him this morning. The printout said she was twenty-six, never married, had one brother in high school, and was a partner in a restaurant business she’d inherited from her late parents. She stood five-six, weighed a healthy 130 pounds, and was a practicum short of earning a Masters in criminal justice studies to go with her chemistry degree from Central Missouri State University.

  As he watched her wave goodbye to the workers, he added a couple more facts to his list. Katherine Snow made people smile, and her worn blue jeans hugged a sweet, round bottom that was every bit as firm and sexy to look at as it had been to press against in the hospital lobby last night.

  Damon jerked as if an unseen hand had slapped him in the face. Damn. Where had that thought come from?

  “What are you thinking, Doc?” He warned himself away from the random memory that snuck in from his subconscious mind. Last night’s tussle had been about communication and maintaining his anonymity—not whether or not a thirty-nine-year-old man could still get his rocks off with a woman after more than a year of mourning and celibacy.

  But before Damon could get his focus back around the fact that he was spying on Katherine Snow for Helen’s sake, and not his own baser interests, she disappeared into the stairwell, capturing his curiosity in a different way. “Now what?” He drifted closer to the monitor. “Where are you going?”

  Mental note: add security cameras to stairwell.

  He didn’t like being at a disadvantage, but instead of standing there like some adolescent fool, damning his left hand for having just enough functional nerve endings to remember what the swell of her breast had felt like in his unintended grasp, Damon turned his attention to a more familiar purpose. He crossed the lab and shut off the Bunsen burner beneath the variable ingredient of this morning’s test formula. The liquid was hot enough to destabilize the molecules and recombine them with the regeneration mixture he’d already synthesized. When the new formula cooled, he’d add it to a petri dish along with a few skin cells from a volunteer subject who shared the same allergic predisposition Miranda had exhibited, and see if normal, viable tissue would grow.

  This time Miranda’s Formula would work.

  “That’s right, Doc. Jinx it.” Inhaling deeply, Damon buried that twinge of emotion and turned his back on his work. He didn’t believe much in the power of positive thinking anymore. He believed in cold, hard facts. Either the formula would work or it wouldn’t. But he refused to hope.

  Time to return to the security monitors and the less formal experiment at hand—his observational study of Katherine Snow. This time, he swore to remain purely objective.

  But there was still no sign of her on any of the screens.

  “Where are you?” An educated guess would indicate she’d continue her previous pattern and climb the stairs to the fifth floor. But unless she’d twisted an ankle, she should have shown up by now. “Unpredictable, hmm?”

  Odd for a scientist. Maybe she was following some logical pattern of her own design. Unexpected. But far more engaging than waiting for a mixture to cool.

  With a few quick keystrokes on the computer, he pulled up the cameras for the sixth and seventh floors. With no movement detected on either level, Damon switched to views of the lower floors. There was plenty of activity to observe in the lobby, where his current contractor, J. T. Kronemeyer, was arguing on the phone wedged between his shoulder and ear, and handing out assignments to his foremen.

  But no Katherine Snow.

  Damon typed in more commands. He accepted the challenge she unknowingly presented. “I’ll find you.”

  Eighth floor, ninth floor. Where had she gone?

  He absently massaged his brow bone, easing the phantom eye strain that settled behind the patch masking the left side of his face. “Come out, come out, wherever you…” Damon smiled and blew up the image on screen three. “Gotcha.”

  Breathing deeply after what must have been a quick, steady climb, his subject stepped out into the hallway on the thirteenth floor.

  Feeling something
akin to victory coursing through his veins, Damon raised his mug to his unwitting opponent and drained the last of his coffee. As he watched Katherine Snow squat down to study something on the tile floor, her quizzical expression piqued his own curiosity.

  What was she doing on a cordoned-off floor, anyway? One that Kronemeyer’s renovation crews hadn’t even gotten to yet? The previous company Easting had hired, and subsequently fired for too many delays and “misplaced” supplies, had replaced the exterior windows, stripped the doors and added structural reinforcements to bring the settling walls up to code. But the thirteenth floor belonged to a different phase of the remodeling project. It wouldn’t see any finishing work for several months. Miss Snow had no business being there.

  Yet there was something beyond his camera angle that caught her eye. She stood and made the odd choice to walk along the edge of the tiled hallway. Why not take the middle path others had used?

  Others?

  “Curious.” Damon typed as he sank onto the stool in front of the monitors. Was that…? He squinted his good eye and blew up the image on the screen. Footprints. In the thick layer of plaster dust that coated the floor. Fresh prints. Recent.

  And Katherine Snow was following them.

  “No, no,” he admonished the monitor, wishing he could transmit some sort of telepathic warning to her. “You don’t belong there.”

  Neither did the footprints.

  “Be smart. Go back.” Damon was already shrugging out of his lab coat. Had she heard a sound earlier? Was she following someone? Before any definitive answers could form, she turned a corner and disappeared from sight. “Damn.” He tossed the coat and pulled up the next camera to find a shot of her. “Come back to me.” He was searching. Searching. “C’mon.”

  Was that a door? Two? Three, hanging back in place? As Damon panned down the hallway, he discovered that some unsanctioned work had taken place. Floors thirteen through twenty-five should have been stripped down to bare bones. No way had Kronemeyer’s crew gotten ahead of schedule. Since that electrician’s unfortunate death, the missing crew member and the superstitious rumblings about the curse of landing a job at the Sinclair Tower, Kronemeyer’s men couldn’t even catch up. So who’d authorized replacing the doors?

  “Where are you? Yes!” Damon shook a triumphant fist when her fresh-scrubbed face reappeared.

  She was trailing her fingers along the wall, slowing her step as she reached the second door. Damon’s pulse quickened to a bolder beat, feeling the same edgy anticipation reflected on her face.

  “Don’t do it.” But his fingers were turning in the air, right along with hers, as she reached for the doorknob. He was just as curious as she to know what lay on the other side.

  The instant the door swung open, two arms snaked out and latched on to her wrist.

  Damon jumped. “What the hell?”

  Man’s hands. Suit-coat sleeves. Dragging her into the room out of the camera shot.

  Damon cursed and ran from the lab. He swiped his key card through the security lock that accessed his private elevator and typed in the activation code. Once in, he pressed thirteen over and over until the doors slid shut.

  Objectivity be damned. Katherine Snow was in trouble.

  And he owed it to Helen to keep her safe.

  Chapter Four

  Grubby hands closed over her wrist and Kit screamed.

  “Shh! Get in here,” a strident voice whispered.

  “Let go of me!” The door slammed. The hands dragged Kit to the center of the room. She stumbled over a bunched-up rug. The foul odor of sweat and booze stung her nose, granting her recognition an instant before her assailant released the hard pinch on her bones. “Henry!”

  “Shh.” The old man with the grizzled face and bulbous nose urged her aside with a placating hand. He blinked his watery eyes, trying to decide which one to spy through the peephole with. “I’m planning a surprise.”

  She’d certainly gotten one.

  Relief surged through Kit, replacing panic with confusion and concern. This was definitely not what she’d expected to find in her search for Helen Hodges’s apartment. Rubbing the chafe marks on her wrist, she assessed Henry Phipps’s frayed, wrinkled suit and distant expression, and wondered how an addled old man could have such a painful grip. “You can’t just grab someone like that. I thought I was being abducted.”

  Now that she knew she was in no real danger, Kit took a closer look at her surroundings. The apartment walls had been stripped down to its two-by-fours, revealing hanging wires and rusted switch boxes that looked as though they hadn’t been functional for years. And though the window overlooking the parking garage still bore its factory sticker, there was nothing else new or clean about the rooms. A trio of well-worn area rugs covered the stained hardwood floor, while a motley assortment of freight boxes and a metal folding chair passed for furniture. Kit cringed at the sad clues around her. “Do you live here?”

  “Shh.” Henry pressed a finger to his lips and smiled. “She’ll be home soon. It’s a surprise.”

  “So you said.” Kit frowned as Henry puttered about the room, straightening what little there was. “Didn’t you spend last night at the shelter?”

  He tossed her a ratty pillow that he’d probably fished out of a Dumpster. “Have a seat.” She’d pass. “Can I get you a drink?”

  “Henry!” The old man’s life flashed before her eyes when she saw what he was using for a cabinet. He’d stuck his hand inside a cubbyhole in the wall—right next to a metal conduit that ran from ceiling to floor. Unlike the loose wires protruding from the bare wall frames, this tube looked shiny and new, and probably carried a live current from the lower levels of the building up to the penthouse area at the top. It reminded her of that contraption she’d found in the utility closet at the hospital last night. It reminded her that one man—a supposed expert—had already been killed by a jolt of electricity here at the Sinclair. “Careful. That could be dangerous.”

  Though he froze at her warning and let her gently pull him back to the center of the room, she hadn’t stopped him from retrieving the whiskey.

  She could well imagine that that bottle was where her ten-dollar cab fare from last night had gone. She waved aside the offer of a drink and grimaced as he poured himself a hefty serving in a dirty glass she recognized from the diner. “Henry, I thought Tariq took you to the shelter last night.”

  “I’ve been out of town on business.” Was that a yes? Whether it was age or the drink talking, the man made no sense. “But I’ve got the place all fixed up for Janice now.”

  “Your wife?” The one who’d passed away more than a decade ago?

  “Have you seen her? Here.” He pulled a cracked black-and-white photograph from his otherwise empty wallet and showed it to her. “Isn’t she pretty?”

  It was almost impossible to recognize Henry from the old photo that must have been taken on his wedding day. But there was no mistaking the love he had for the woman in the picture. Her image had been touched or caressed so many times over the years that her face had nearly disappeared. Still, Kit handed back the picture and agreed. “She’s lovely.”

  He drained half his glass, wiped the dribble off his chin, then licked his hand. “We lived here when we were first married. She’ll be so pleased to know I found us a place here again.”

  Did she tell him this was an unoccupiable apartment or that his wife was dead? “I thought the Sinclair Tower used to be a bank building.”

  “Sinclair?” That confused him for a moment. His eyes focused on some distant point in the past. He swallowed the last of his whiskey, but that didn’t seem to help. He glanced at Kit as though seeing her for the first time. “Would you care for a drink? Janice wouldn’t like it if I didn’t offer.”

  Kit blinked back the tears that burned her eyes. “Henry. It’s me, Kit Snow.” She pried the bottle from his unresisting fingers and set it out of sight behind a box. “From the diner?” She caught his outstretched fingers in a gentl
e grip. “You can’t stay here. It isn’t safe.”

  “But I told Janice to meet me…”

  Kit gave a gentle tug toward the door. “I fixed you coffee and a sandwich for dinner last night. Right downstairs. Remember? Then Tariq drove you to the shelter. You didn’t leave town.”

  Henry followed a couple of steps. “I need a drink.” He halted and shook his head. “We’ll spoil the surprise.”

  “Henry.” Kit coaxed him forward another step. “You don’t live here. You can’t stay—”

  “No.” His gentle features transformed. “No!”

  He jerked his hand away, wrenching her sore shoulder. “Ow!”

  “Leave before you ruin everything!”

  “Henry!” Kit caught her heel on the edge of a rug and tripped as she dodged his flailing arms.

  But she never hit the floor. The door swung open behind her. Two hands caught her—one at her elbow, the other at her waist—and set her on her feet. Before the rush of air and strength of hands clearly registered, she was whisked behind a wall of black sweater and broad shoulders.

  “Get out.”

  She knew that growl. The stranger from the hospital. “Where did you come from?”

  But his terse command left no room for acknowledgment or greeting. Mr. Mysterious was already advancing on poor Henry. “There are laws against trespassing.”

  Kit tried to circle around him. “I can explain.”

  But she hit the blockade of his black-clad forearm, and he tucked her behind him again. In the same sweep of motion, he wrapped his hand around Henry’s tricep and dragged him out the door. “You need to leave, old-timer.”

  Henry tucked his chin to his chest and cowered away. He was no match for the taller, bigger man. “Janice will be looking for me.”

  “You’re expecting company?”

  “His late wife.” Kit raced down the hall behind them. “What are you, some kind of vigilante? Let him go.”

  “I don’t know how you got past Kronemeyer’s men.” Even without the cloak of night or the leather coat flowing out like a cape behind him, there was something dark and menacing about this man. The length of his stride. The intensity of his purpose. The ragged, seen-it-all rasp in his voice.