Duplicity--A Tale of Murder, Mystery and Romance

by H. D. Thomson

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  Feeling her gaze on his face, he looked down and brushed imaginary lint off his arm. Here on out, he needed to keep things as impersonal as possible.

  “Okay. I’ll accept that for now.”

  Clark caught her frustrated expression before he followed her down the hall and into the kitchen. After she switched on the light, she dug inside the drawer beneath the white ceramic tiled island and pulled out an envelope. When Katherine sat down at the bleached rattan, kitchen table, he picked the chair furthest away and directly across from her.

  She didn’t touch the envelope but reached across the table and glided her fingers across the back of his fingers and wrist. Clenching his jaw, Clark started to withdraw, but she caught his wrist and turned it until his palm faced outward. Then she used her other hand to draw a delicate pattern over the creases of his fingers and palm.

  “Okay,” he protested but didn’t pull away from her touch. “That’s enough.”

  “No, it isn’t.”

  He lifted a brow, acting unaffected, but in reality, her touch unnerved him. He both loved and dreaded it. Days before he’d used this same hand to caress her breast, her hip, the small of her back. He’d also smashed it into the wall, broken a stair railing, a bedroom door and...broken an innocent man’s arm.

  “So much power,” she whispered with a mixture of awe and fear. “You hate what you’re capable of, don’t you?”

  “I—” Clark sighed. “I hate how I can’t control it. It scares the hell out of me. I hurt Ethan enough to send him to the hospital. Next time I might kill someone.”

  “No,” she denied quickly. “You believed Ethan was dangerous. From the questions I heard you ask, I know you thought he was hiding a gun. That says right there you broke his arm because you thought he was going to shoot me. I know you’d never harm anyone. Not unless there was just cause.”

  “Are you sure about that?”

  “Absolutely.”

  He didn’t look away from the intensity of Katherine’s gaze as his fingers closed over her hand.

  “I could crush your bones so easily.”

  “But you’d never do it.”

  Clark closed his eyes against the conviction in her voice and face. Such belief. If only he had the same belief in himself.

  “Is that why you’ve avoided touching me? Because you’re afraid of hurting me?”

  “Yes,” he admitted.

  He glanced down at her hand engulfed in his. She had such a small, delicate bone structure. Nothing like Ethan’s. Even with Ethan being much bigger and stronger than Katherine, he’d managed to break the man’s arm without trying. He could do far worse to Katherine. One simple twist of his wrist and he’d cause her insurmountable pain.

  Clark didn’t dare touch her.

  Abruptly he pulled away and folded his arms across his chest. Hell. He didn’t dare touch anything—what with him being a walking disaster and inept at everything he put his hand on. Maybe he should get a sign and staple it to his chest. “Caution. Dangerous when moving.”

  “You didn’t hurt me the other night.”

  Her low and sexy whisper twisted his gut.

  “Then we were both damn lucky.”

  Clark stared down at the table, not daring a glance at Katherine’s huge, brown eyes. If he did, he’d chuck his willpower to keep away from her. Thankfully, he noticed the envelope, which diverted his mangled thoughts.

  “Are those the photos of the kids from The Morning Dove?”

  “Yes.” She pulled several from the envelope and slid one across the table. “Here’s a picture of Luke. It was taken by one of the girls. He’s the one on the left. Some of the kids used to call him Lucky.”

  He picked up the photo. Two boys stared back at the camera, but Clark focused on the one to the left. Sun glanced off Luke’s shoulder-length, brown hair. The boy’s lips lifted at the corner in a semblance of a smile, but his face lacked any humor. Shoulders slumped, thumbs hooked into the front pockets of his jeans, and a hip thrust to one side, Luke stared back at the camera. The kid looked harder than most, and even defiant the way he angled his chin upward. Other than that, Luke seemed like a typical teenage boy. Maybe with a bit more attitude than some, but nothing unusual.

  He recognized the teenager. Luke was the same boy as the one in the picture he’d pulled from the dead teenager.

  “You said Lucky?” Clark asked.

  “He got the nickname because he always seemed to land on his feet.”

  “Lucky ...” Clark whispered the name, feeling a tightness build inside his body.

  Suddenly, a vision of the car accident from Arizona flashed in his mind. The shattered glass, the boy slumped in the passenger seat. The blood dripping from the bullet hole in his head. The face, unlined and young, the hair, caked with blood but intermixed with brown strands. Revulsion welled from Clark’s stomach. He swallowed, but it clung to the back of his throat.

  Clark restudied the face in the photo. The jaw, the length of hair, the thin frame. Luke or Lucky to some.

  But why? Why had they been in Arizona, just the two of them? What had they been doing? Had Clark kidnapped the boy? Were they friends? Or did they have some dark, deeper relationship Clark didn’t want to remember?

  No. He didn’t want to remember. Because if he remembered, then that would mean—

  No.

  Suddenly, Clark pushed away from the kitchen table, scraping the chair’s legs against the white tile floor. He stood on rubbery legs and grabbed onto the table’s edge as a wave of dizziness assaulted him.

  “He’s dead,” he said. “That’s him. The dead boy in the car.”

  “What?”

  “I said he’s dead. Killed in a car accident.”

  “How? I don’t understand?”

  Katherine’s voice, hollow and tin like, sounded from a great distance away. Pictures flashed in Clark’s head. His childhood, college, Miltronics, his co-workers and—Spalding.

  The teenagers.

  Clark gulped in air. His memory, and every agonizing detail of it, hit him. So many images, so many emotions. Gray, and then black edged across his peripheral vision and thickened until Clark thought he’d black out.

  Hell. He was in hell.

  Pain and panic pressed against his chest. Bending at the waist, Clark grappled for control. Slowly, his vision cleared, but his heart still crashed against his ribs.

  “My, God. I dragged Luke away from Boston to save him.” With his hands still latched to the side of the table, Clark dragged in a ragged breath, lifted his head and stared back at Katherine in horror. “But instead, I killed him.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Not just Luke, but the others. All the missing boys at the shelter. I killed them.”

  Chapter 27

  Katherine stared back at Clark in matching horror. “That’s impossible!”

  Clark had to be lying. He didn’t have it in him to hurt anyone. All she had to do was remember the car crash in front of the Morning Dove and how he’d risked his own life to save the woman trapped inside.

  But seeing the naked emotion glittering from his eyes and etched across every hard line of his face, Katherine realized Clark believed every word.

  It didn’t make sense.

  “You couldn’t have killed Luke. You said yourself that it was a car accident.”

  “Yes, but he counted on me to get him away from Miltronics. I knew Luke was the latest victim. They started working on him, lying and bating him with money. I warned him that he’d end up dead if he continued associating with Spalding. I offered a way out, someplace where he could hide. At first, he didn’t believe me, but he must have realized he was in way over his head when he finally came to me.”

  Katherine stilled. Her breathing grew labored, while the pounding of her pulse thudded over the hum of the refrigerator. The initial shock of Clark’s words had blinded her to the real t
ruth. Now she completely understood the ramifications.

  “You remember, don’t you?”

  He shoved his fingers through his hair, thrusting several strands on end. “Hell, yes. Every damn, sick detail.”

  She’d prayed for Clark’s memory to return, but not like this. “I don’t understand your connection. What would you know of Luke and my uncle?”

  “I worked as a scientist for Miltronics. I was one of several in a classified department on genetic engineering.”

  “My goodness, Clark.”

  He closed his eyes as if in deep, physical pain. “My name isn’t Clark.”

  “Then who?”

  This was too much to take in.

  “John Davenport.”

  “This is crazy.”

  She rubbed at her face, vainly trying to comprehend the magnitude of the situation. So many questions, so many frightening scenarios. But one question rose amongst all the others.

  “What do the teenage boys at the shelter have to do with Miltronics?”

  “They were being experimented on.”

  “Lab rats,” Katherine whispered. A part of her had already guessed, but the idea had been too ludicrous, too evil and perverted to contemplate.

  Rising to her feet, she stumbled away from the table and hit her hip against the kitchen counter. She turned and leaned over the sink, struggling to hold down the contents of her stomach. She glanced at the white, tiled counter top, and instead saw red.

  The blood of so many innocent boys.

  Luke, Brian, Carl—too many. All snuffed out for the sake of some sick scientific experiment.

  “And the others? What of them?” Katherine hugged herself. She was so very cold.

  “Dead.”

  Katherine lifted a trembling chin, straightened, and fought against the grief grinding down on her shoulders. In front of the sink, a window revealed her small-enclosed yard. Light from the nearby street lamp partially illuminated the snow-covered ground. At the back corner of the fence, an apple tree, barren of fruit, stood alone. Its limbs, twisted and shriveled from the frigid cold, reminded her of an old, used up woman, with nothing to give and nothing to hope for.

  Right this moment, Katherine felt just as aged and useless, and so darn brittle inside.

  Some might consider the teenage boys at the shelter throwaways, but no one deserved the way they’d died, alone, their lives snuffed out so young, without one soul to mourn or vindicate their senseless deaths.

  It wasn’t fair.

  Sudden anger eased the crushing grief from her shoulders. Katherine wasn’t going allow their deaths to be dismissed. She’d never been one to let things slide, and she wasn’t going to stop just because she felt like giving up.

  And what of Clark—or John? She didn’t want to believe the worse. But what was she supposed to think when he already admitted to murdering the teenagers at the shelter?

  Her whole body recoiled at the idea of Clark—no John—killing anyone—because, well because Katherine knew he didn’t do any such thing. She’d seen too many tricks from the kids at Morning Dove. John couldn’t hide that much of his character from her.

  But what of his guilt?

  “And you let it happen?” she asked, staring blindly out the window, her back to Clark as she clutched the counter’s edge.

  “I didn’t know.”

  She turned. Clark, his hands balled into fists at his sides, stared back at her with an unfathomable expression. But the way he held his body, the tilt of his chin and pale complexion told her something far more. Pain.

  “I suspected, but by the time I realized the truth, several boys had already died.”

  She believed him. Why would he lie now? She didn’t see any reason.

  “I want to know everything. The beginning. The end. And don’t gloss over anything just because my uncle’s involved.”

  “Are you sure?” He searched her face. “You’re not going to like what you hear.”

  “I think I deserve to know it all, don’t you?”

  “Yeah.” John sighed. “I need a drink to get through this. Something with a kick if you have it.”

  “Beer okay?”

  He nodded.

  Having a good idea she’d need one for herself, she grabbed two beers from the refrigerator. She didn’t bother with glasses but popped the caps off both bottles and set them on the kitchen table.

  She sat down and watched Clark—no John—she had to start thinking of him that way—sink down in the chair opposite from her and take a long swallow. A pulse throbbed along his jawline while his face still lacked any hint of color.

  John wiped the back of his mouth. “I guess I’ll start with Miltronics. The company’s far larger in scope than’s publicly known, particularly when it comes to their genetic research. I don’t know if you knew that from your uncle.”

  “I’m completely clueless as to what he does or what type of people work for him. I guess I’ve been too darn self-absorbed with my own problems.” Katherine didn’t attempt to keep the bitterness or self-disgust from her voice. “But you worked for my uncle as a scientist?”

  He rolled his bottle between both palms and nodded. “I was one of several researching immortality by way of the human growth hormone. After several years I was getting very frustrated at how little advancement I’d made. You see, I’d been so fixated on investigating the tie between muscle and adipose-tissue mass and thinning of skin to the human growth hormone—IGF-I axis, that I realized that I might be eliminating something of vital importance. So I refocused my efforts in another direction and decided to manipulate the genetic model. And bingo! That’s when I stumbled on something so startling and profound—a way to accelerate and magnify the capabilities of the human animal.”

  “What are you saying? You can make someone stronger and more intelligent?” Katherine pushed her beer away. She didn’t need alcohol clouding up her mind.

  “Intelligence doesn’t come into play. It’s all physical. But it’s nothing like VEGF or erythropoietin, which increases red blood cell count and enhances an athletes’ aerobic performance. Both blood boosters don’t compare to this new way of gene modification.”

  Katherine changed her mind, grabbed her beer and took a huge swallow. The malt flavor hit the back of her throat and tongue but didn’t do a thing to take the edge off her fear.

  “So we’re talking steroids.”

  “It’s far more than that.”

  “But in essence, you’ve come up with a bionic man without the bionics. And you just happen to be carrying this in your system. That’s why you can do what you do.”

  “Yes.” Pain darkened John’s eyes to a gray that matched the shores off of Boston on a dark, overcast day. “Spalding started experimenting on humans behind my back, knowing damn well how I’d balk at such unethical practices. These were unsuspecting teenagers at your shelter who were hungry for money either to rebuild a life off the street or to use for illegal drugs. I later learned the first few died by the formula. But then later as the imperfections of the serum diminished, Paul killed them to ensure Miltronic’s secret.”

  “You’re right. I can’t stomach what I’m hearing. Brian and Carl and the others—they came to me for shelter. I should have done something. I should have known—”

  “How could you know? Who would think of something so obscene?” The pulse along his jaw throbbed anew. “But I knew, Katherine. I had the chance to go to the authorities, but I didn’t. I was terrified. No. I was a damn coward. Don’t you see? I selfishly kept silent, because I knew I looked just as dirty as Spalding. All I could think of was my reputation, my career before anything else.”

  As John paused and grabbed for his drink, Katherine rubbed at her brow with the heel of her hand and glanced at her own beer. At the thought of taking another drink, she felt her stomach twist in protest.

  “But even so,” she argued, “when you found out what was going on, you didn’t sit back and let those kids get murdered.”

&nb
sp; John downed half his beer. This time he avoided looking at her when he said, “After I finally figured out that the kids were being tested on, I secretly replaced the serum with a harmless glucose. Then I started working around the clock, leading the team in another direction while I worked toward perfecting the formula. I needed answers, and I used myself as a test subject to get to those answer.”

  Katherine stared back in alarm. “You risked your life by injecting yourself with a possibly deadly formula—all because of science?”

  “Not because of science. Because of the kids. And anyway, most of the imperfections had already been corrected. You also have to understand—I wasn’t thinking clearly. I was terrified at being found out.”

  “But my uncle found out. And Luke. What of him?”

  John inhaled, and then exhaled in one loud rush. “When I learned about Luke, it took a while to make him see he was in over his head. The money—the same as in the duffle bag—blinded him to the danger. When he finally figured it out, he became irate. He bought himself a gun and planned on taking off with the cash. But more importantly, he wanted to avenge the murder of a friend he’d known from the shelter.”

  “But you talked him out of it?”

  “Barely. I convinced him we needed to get out of Boston until we formatted a plan, and I had the perfect place in the mountains in Arizona for him to hide out. But we didn’t make it. I never knew we were being followed. I remember the windshield popping and Luke slumping in his seat. When I finally figured out that someone was shooting at us, they’d put another bullet in one of the tires. I lost complete control and smashed over the side railing. I murdered him. If I’d known we were being watched and followed, I might—”

  “Don’t!” Katherine clutched at his hand on the table. She hated the tortured look etched across his face. “Remember a while back, you told me I had no control of Miranda’s decisions or actions? Well, the same goes with you Clark—I mean John. You had no control of the outcome. Not really. You had Luke’s best interests at heart. Do you think he would have lived if you’d left him under my uncle’s care?”

  She didn’t wait for his reply. “No. Of course not. And anyway, how could you know what was to happen? Yes, maybe you didn’t do anything at first, but, when it comes down to it, you did try to help. You can’t say that about the others, can you? And there have to be others. Just how many know?”