Heroes In Uniform (123 page)

His gaze tracked that motion too intently, but then he shuttered that gaze. His face turned stony and his lips thinned into a tight line as he reined himself in.

“I’m going to go get changed,” he said and hurried away from the kitchen.

She watched his retreating back, wondering about the kind of man he really was. If there was anything to him other than the warrior who lived only for his own gain and success.

A gain that had to be substantial
, she assumed, thinking that Edwards would be willing to pay a great deal to get her back. Would Mick tire of the challenge she seemed to be presenting and turn her over to Edwards for that bounty? Or was he a man of honor beneath the dangerous and hard persona he insisted on displaying to others?

As she stood there, considering it, she realized either scenario was risky for her. And she realized that just like she had refused to let her father determine where her life would go, she couldn’t just rely on him to get her life back for her.

She had to find a way to take care of it herself.

* * *

The scientist stared at the bloodied and dirtied face of Matthew Mad Dog Donnelly. Examined with annoyance and frustration the leaves and bits of twig glued to him by the drying mud.

“You assured me you could deal with Carrera,” he said and gestured to the cabinet on the wall. One shelf was completely empty. The shelf which had once held half a dozen vials of the inhibitor medication necessary for controlling the gene replication in their patients. It would take only a day to make more of the compound, but with the vials taken, Shaw could easily last another six months or more.

“I
can
take care of Carrera,” Mad Dog reassured, rubbing at his wrists which still bore the markings from the cable ties Mick had used to secure him.

The man inspected the paid mercenary, circling around him the way a guard might a prisoner, hands held behind his back. Assessing the dirt all along his body and the bruises and scrapes on his face.

“Carrera has Shaw,” he said.

Mad Dog denied it with a quick shake of his head. “Carrera said he was still looking for her.”

“
He has Shaw
,” he nearly shouted and jabbed at the tell-tale empty row in the cabinet. “He took the medicine necessary to treat her.”

Mad Dog’s gaze flickered to the empty space before he pulled his shoulders back and a steely glint came into his glacial ice-blue eyes. “If he has her, I’ll deal with both of them.”

“I won’t pay extra for Carrera,” he said, but a twisted gleam took hold in the mercenary’s eerie crystal-cold eyes.

“When the time is right, Carrera is a dead man,” Mad Dog said.

The scientist walked up to the hired man and peered at Mad Dog. “Do you know what Machiavelli said about enemies?”

At the mercenary’s hesitation, he said, “The injury that is to be done to a man ought to be of such a kind that one does not stand in fear of revenge.”

Poking a finger into the hard wall of Mad Dog’s chest, he warned, “Don’t play around with a man like Carrera. Eliminate him.”

Sins of the Flesh: Chapter Twenty-Two

Mick controlled his grimace as Liliana finished tying off the last stitch in his arm. Barely a flicker crossed his face and skirted across his skin thanks to his restraint.

He wished he had used such restraint earlier, still berating himself for what had happened with Caterina.

“You’ll need to keep this dry for twenty-four hours.”

“Damn, there goes that bubble bath I had planned on taking,” he teased, but it failed to bring a smile to his sister’s face.

“You okay?” he asked, worried at the troubled look in her deep emerald eyes. He was sorry that he might have placed it there.

“Okay? You want to know if I’m okay.”

With jerky motions she cleaned up the materials she had used for the sutures and stalked across the kitchen to toss them away. Rounding on him, she jammed her hands on her hips. “You’re hurt. Someone named Mad Dog is after you and Caterina. And speaking of Caterina, what are you going to do with her?”

“I got the inhibitor. Several vials of the medication are in my satchel.” He jerked his hand in the direction of the worn black bag resting on one of the kitchen chairs.

She walked to the chair, picked up the canvas bag, and removed a handful of the vials. Weighing them carefully in her hand, she said, “Based on the dosages indicated in her medical file, these should last for some time. Certainly long enough for you to figure out why someone wants her dead.”

The relief on his sister’s face was incomplete. “Something else is bothering you.”

She placed the vials on the table, and then removed the rest from the satchel. As she did so, he noticed the bare spot on her ring finger.

“You broke it off with Harrison.”

Nodding, she replied, “He didn’t take it well.”

He rose from the chair, flinching at the ache in his ribs as he stood. Mad Dog hadn’t broken them, but it still hurt like hell. He closed the distance between them and laid his hands on his sister’s shoulders. “I’ll make sure he doesn’t hurt you.”

She shrugged off his hands. “You’ll protect me. And Caterina.”

She whirled on him and laid a hand on the middle of his chest. “Mom and dad. Tony. You’ll take care of all of us.”

She shoved his chest hard enough to make him recoil, tender as the area was thanks to the blows from Mad Dog.

“Who will take care of you, big bro?”

Apparently recognizing that her question had no answer, she grabbed one of the vials and her medical bag, and stormed out of the kitchen. He heard the heavy thump of her footsteps on the stairs, a testament to her anger.

He could have followed to try and reassure her he had things under control, but opted to give her time to cool down. Since Liliana had once again brought home food from the family restaurant, he placed the take-out dishes in the oven. While he welcomed the food, he worried it came with a very large price tag – a visit from their mother.

She was bound to be wondering about what was happening with him and why Liliana was involved in it.

When the food was in the oven and the kitchen table was set, he took a steadying breath and headed upstairs.

Caterina was sitting on the edge of the bed. Liliana was perched across from her in the recliner. His sister had a syringe in her hand which she had plunged into the vial he had taken from Wardwell’s lab. As he walked in Liliana said, “I’m using the dosage indicated in the file.”

Liliana pulled the syringe from the vial and in a fluid move, swapped the vial for the rubber hose sitting on the nightstand. She wrapped the hose around Caterina’s bicep, tapped her arm for a vein, and then injected her with the medication.

Caterina jerked as she did so, prompting Liliana to say, “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

Caterina shook her head. “It’s not you. It’s burning.”

“That happens with some medications,” he explained and walked into the room.

As he did so, Caterina looked up at him and offered a brave smile. “Thank you for getting the medicine.”

“Hopefully it’ll keep things under control until we can find out what really happened to Wells.”

Liliana withdrew the syringe, placed a band aid over the injection site, and urged Caterina to bend her arm to apply pressure.

Once she did so, Caterina said, “I can help you with the investigations now.”

“Maybe if the meds work, but first it would help if you could try to remember more about what happened that night,” Mick said.

Caterina nodded. “I’ll try. Only every time I do . . . ” She shrugged and wrapped her free arm around her waist. “There’s always blood. Lots of it. All over Dr. Wells and me.”

He nodded and sat down on the edge of the bed beside her. She averted her gaze, looking away, but he tucked his thumb and forefinger beneath her chin and urged her gaze back to his.

“You need to get past that to try and remember what happened before. To get to the moment when Wells was killed.”

Caterina nodded. “I’ll try.”

He brushed away some stray unruly locks from her face, resisting the temptation to stroke the soft, thick hair. “You can try later. Liliana was kind enough to bring dinner again and I suspect you’re hungry.”

Caterina smiled and it caused a funny hitch in the middle of his chest. “I thought I smelled something tasty.”

“Let’s go get some eats then,” Liliana said and rose from the chair, but as she did so, his sister shot him a bemused look, clearly aware that something had happened between them.

Despite that, Liliana said nothing, only led the way down to the kitchen and the food she had brought.

* * *

With dinner over and the two women sharing an easy conversation as they cleaned up, Mick had felt driven from the kitchen, unable to stand the way the two chatted about everyday things, seemingly without a care to the danger which existed. He had not wanted to burst their fragile bubble with the reality that so far he had nothing to prove that Caterina wasn’t a murderess. But worse, he also couldn’t abide the sense of homecoming he felt sitting at the table with them.

He had long ago given up on the possibility of having a real home of his own.

Locking himself away in his office, he spent the night perusing the Internet for information on Edwards and Wardwell Biotech and discovered more than he had expected.

News from various science sites had confirmed that Wardwell was a leader in developing a number of different fluorescent proteins for use in various applications as well as an innovator in the field of gene therapies. Much had been made of one of their early experiments where they had successfully regenerated nerve tissue using genes spliced from an amphibian.

That would explain Liliana’s comments at dinner about the test results reported by her pathologist friend.

As he sat back, he realized that advances from that simple success might account for the restoration of Caterina’s sight, but confusion remained about the strange halo sight and skin camo she was displaying.

Why implant even more genes to create a human chimera
? he thought. Especially one half out of her mind from a powerful combo of dissociative drugs unless . . .

MK Ultra
, he thought once again, returning to the CIA experiments with mind control. If Edwards thought he could create chimeras with useful traits and under his power, those altered beings could be quite useful and profitable.

Only nothing in any of the news articles supported such a crazy hypothesis
, he thought, leaned over the keyboard, and continued searching.

By the end of the night, Liliana had been called back to the hospital for an emergency and he had unearthed a small article off a financial news site.

Edwards had recently met with the head of Gates Genengineering, a larger biotech company whose new drug application had suffered a rejection from the FDA. The NDA was for a therapy similar to the Wardwell process used on Caterina. The article mentioned possible discussions of a merger. Given the size of the other company, a merger might be worth tens of millions to the Wardwell owners.

Of course if anyone got wind of what Edwards and his researchers had done to people like Caterina and those unfortunates with the “Terminated” stickers, no one would touch the company. In fact, they would be lucky not to end up in jail for the rest of their lives.

If Wells had somehow developed a conscience and had been about to blow the whistle on the entire experiment, it made perfect sense as to why Edwards would want him dead.

It also made sense why Edwards would hire not one but three mercenaries to go after Caterina. He couldn’t take the risk that she would expose what had happened and ruin the multi-million dollar merger.

To prove motive, however, he had to confirm that the merger was actually proceeding. Opening his e-mail program, he right-clicked on one of the e-mails from Edwards and checked the message header. Buried in the header was the IP address for Wardwell’s system. Launching a hacking program a friend had provided years ago, the system started searching for open ports and found several of them in the firewall.

He used one of the open ports, accessed the Wardwell system, and hoped that someone in IT had been lazy and left at least one of the servers with the default settings. Sure enough, one server still had the no password default. Shortly after, he entered the Wardwell servers. He didn’t want to linger long, afraid that someone might eventually catch on to his break-in.

He started a search of “Gates” and within just a few short minutes had located a Word document on the server. Better yet, it was in a directory that appeared to belong to Edwards. He quickly downloaded the document and exited.

When he opened the document, it confirmed the merger had progressed substantially.

Gates Genenigeering had made an offer of 100 million dollars to acquire Wardwell. With that much money at stake, there was no doubt about the motive for Wells’ murder.

He had to warn Franklin.

He dialed his friend who immediately answered.

“I’ve got some information and you’re not going to like it,” he said and explained about the merger.

“I’m liking this less and less every day, Mick. I’ve got a family now,” Franklin said and for the first time ever, Mick heard something in his friend’s tone that he had never expected to hear.

Real fear. The kind that grabbed hold of your gut and made you doubt. Even a scintilla of doubt on a mission was not good.

“I understand, Franklin. So here’s what I want you to do.”

Sins of the Flesh: Chapter Twenty-Three

Mick provided his friend with the basic details about the merger and asked him to try and track down more information as to when it might be occurring. Then he gave him the names and addresses of the two “Terminated” patients whose files he had stolen. He needed to know more about what their families had been told about their progress and deaths.

“What about Donnelly?” Franklin asked, concern resonating in the tones of his voice.