“You’re late.” Max shoved his hands in his jacket pockets. On the right side, he felt the comforting weight of his old revolver, which he’d brought just in case. “And why the hell’d we have to meet out here? It’s bloody cold.”
Charlie stepped closer and dropped his voice. “I wanted to keep this on the QT.” He paused. “Besides, old retrievers catch young chicks.”
Max sighed, but obliged with the countersign Charlie had given him earlier in the day. “And young chicks like old dogs.” He didn’t want to know what that said about the lawyer’s love life. “What’ve you got for me?”
“How’s the ex-girlfriend?”
The good news about Charlie was that he knew things, often things too deeply hidden for Ike to find with her borderline legal methods. That was also the bad news.
Charlie knew things.
Max looked out over the sparse traffic below. “Raine isn’t my girlfriend. Never was, never will be. And there isn’t a soul alive—except maybe my mother—who’d pay you money for that info.”
“Your love life’s that good, huh?” Charlie smirked. “Sorry to hear it.”
“I’m waiting.” Max held out a legal-sized envelope. Inside rested ten crisp new fifties. “It better be good. I’m freezing my—”
“I promise,” Charlie interrupted. “It’s better than good.” He leaned even closer and dropped his voice to a whisper. “What do you know about The Nine?”
Max nearly laughed aloud. In a normal voice, he said, “You’re joking, right? Please tell me you’re joking.” When Charlie didn’t respond, Max scowled, pretty sure he’d been had. He pulled the envelope back and dropped it close to his side. “The Nine is nothing but an urban legend.”
“Some urban legends are based in fact.”
“You’re serious?” Max couldn’t believe his ears. “You don’t actually believe there’s a powerful group working behind the scenes to control the entirety of
worldwide scientific progress, do you? Come on, that’s
Wizard of Oz
stuff, not real life.”
“Life. Fiction.” Charlie shrugged. “Both strange. I’m serious. The Nine are real.”
Coming from anyone else, Max would’ve dismissed the foolishness at once. Coming from Charlie—who was weird but almost always accurate—the possibility tweaked his curiosity. “Based on what evidence? And why tell me here? Now?”
Charlie looked away. “I don’t have anything concrete. That’s why the group is a damn urban legend. Besides, it’s not in my best interest to look too closely. But I think it might be in yours.”
A sliver of ice formed in Max’s gut. “You’re telling me The Nine is involved in what’s happening with Thriller and Raine Montgomery?”
That was utterly impossible. The Nine didn’t exist. The group was an easy excuse, an inside joke among scientists.
When an important paper was rejected for no good reason, the authors often said it was The Nine at work. When that last big experiment—the one required to prove an important hypothesis once and for all—failed repeatedly, the lab techs would say it’d been sabotaged by The Nine. And when a promising grad student, who’d seemed well on his or her way to Nobel-level work, faded into obscu
rity or left the field, it was whispered that The Nine had gotten to them.
It was all fantasy, of course. A way for researchers to explain the inexplicable that was all too common in science.
The group wasn’t real.
Was it?
Max thought for a moment, then tried to tell himself it was just a coincidence that the plot against Raine seemed too big, too complex for a single enemy to have organized.
Still… He took a breath. “Let’s say for the sake of argument that I believed this crap. Why Raine?”
“I don’t know.” Charlie peered into the shadows, agitation building. “And I’ve already said too much. I’ve got to get out of here.” He held out his hand for the money.
Max tightened his grip on the envelope. “Not a chance. You haven’t given me jack except—”
Charlie lunged at him and grabbed the money. Max nearly went for his gun, but stopped himself when Charlie pressed a hard plastic object into his hand and whispered, “Take them down. They suppressed a drug that would’ve saved my wife, just because they owned a competing drug. I can’t do it—I have to think of our children. But you can. You and William Caine.
Please.
”
Breathing so fast he was nearly panting, Charlie
pulled away from Max. He took two running steps, jumped aboard the idling motorbike, kicked it into gear and accelerated across the overpass.
A shot rang out from the opposite side of the road. Charlie shouted and swerved, and the bike hit the edge of the railing. The momentum carried it up and over, taking Charlie with it.
Seconds later, as he bolted for his truck, Max heard a squeal of brakes and the sound of an impact from below.
He heard a second shot, but either it missed or he wasn’t the target, because there was no burn of impact. He couldn’t see the shooter. It was so dark he couldn’t see much of anything until he opened the truck door and the interior light popped on.
Three shots came in rapid fire. Two hit the door and one spiderwebbed the driver’s side window, leaving little question that he was the target.
“Damn it!” Max scrambled inside and shut the door, cursing when the dome light took a few precious seconds to shut off. He’d left the keys in the ignition, and muttered to himself in the half second before the engine turned over and roared to life.
There was no use returning fire. It was dark on dark. He was the visible target. Better to get the hell out of there and live to fight another day.
Live to see what was on the disk Charlie had given him.
The disk someone was willing to kill for.
Max stomped on the gas, twisted the wheel and sent the SUV hurtling across the overpass, slaloming in a crazy path that would hopefully foil his attacker’s aim.
Maybe there were more bullets, he didn’t know. He passed the place where Charlie had gone over, and accelerated when he hit the on-ramp that dumped him onto I-84 headed south.
Heart pounding, he turned on his headlights. The road was clear, with traffic snarled behind him where Charlie’s bike and body had landed.
He kept his eyes on the rearview mirror, but no car followed him down the ramp.
The speedometer edged toward eighty miles per hour. “Damn it, Charlie. What the hell did you get yourself into?”
What did
I
get you into?
And how would he get the rest of them out unscathed?
Chapter Eight
Raine dozed lightly in the hotel room, kept awake by the chatter of Ike’s computer keyboard as the other woman typed a few lines, paused to stare at the screen, then typed again. Sometimes she talked to the machine, low crooning words interspersed with the occasional mild curse and the click of her cordless mouse.
She didn’t talk to Raine, but that was just fine. Raine didn’t want to talk to her, either. Their earlier conversation lay too heavy on her heart.
Though she wasn’t responsible for Max’s actions, she was responsible for her own. She’d been selfish when she’d left Boston, and she was starting to realize a simple apology wasn’t sufficient. She’d done damage on her way out.
How could she fix it?
“Your friend Jeff has a heck of a checkered past,” Ike announced unexpectedly.
Raine opened her eyes and found the other woman staring at her. “Are you talking to me or your computer this time?”
“Ha, ha. That line and five bucks’ll get you a spot at the nearest comedy hour.” But Ike’s words lacked venom, as though she was content to call a truce after their earlier conversation. She turned back to the computer and said, “He did a little time in juvie for petty theft and what looks like racketeering, though they don’t call it that when you’re thirteen.”
Raine levered herself up on the bed, surprised that the bedside clock read 4:00 a.m. Apparently she’d dozed longer than she’d thought. She yawned and rolled her neck to ease the kinks. “I thought juvie records were supposed to be sealed?”
“Please.” Ike cracked her knuckles. “Piece of cake. He was nearly kicked out of both colleges three months before graduation on suspicion of cheating and hacking test scores, but the charges mysteriously disappeared right about the time you contacted him about working for Rainey Days.”
A chill sneaked through Raine’s lingering sleep warmth. “I didn’t contact Jeff. He came looking for me. Said he was interested in Thriller, and he wanted to get in on the ground floor of a major breakthrough.” She’d been flattered, and more than a little relieved to hand daily operations over to a genius with a hell of a head for business.
“Of course he did.” Ike rolled her eyes. “And you know that sick brother of his? He’s all better.”
Raine hated where this was going.
Not Jeff,
she thought.
Please not Jeff.
“That’s impossible. Joey needs a transplant, and he’s got some sort of wonky HLA factor that’s almost impossible to match.”
“They matched it. The surgery was done in Maryland last month. Private benefactor.”
“Oh.” Oh, Jeff. Raine swallowed hard against the betrayal, trying not to show how much it hurt. “Any idea who paid?”
That earned her a raised eyebrow. “Hmm. Quicker than you look, aren’t you?” Ike pulled up two new windows on the computer screen, tapped a few keystrokes and frowned. “Nothing yet. It’s buried pretty good, but I’ll keep at it.”
“Not as quick as you’d like us to believe, are you?” Raine snapped back.
“I’d be quicker if you told us everything you know.”
“I have, damn it!” Raine’s voice bounced off the walls, loud in the night-quiet hotel. “And what’s your problem, you—”
“Get down!” Ike erupted from her chair and yanked a gun seemingly from nowhere. She crossed to the bed, grabbed a fistful of Raine’s shirt and shoved her to the floor between the beds. She mouthed, “Stay down and shut up.”
For a heart-pounding second, Raine thought the other woman was going to shoot her. Then she heard it.
The sound of a footstep outside their door. At four in the morning.
It might be Max, returning from his meeting.
But what if it wasn’t?
Raine peered around the edge of the bed and watched as Ike positioned herself beside the door, weapon at the ready. She checked the peephole, contorting her body so it wasn’t directly in the line of fire.
Then she cursed and holstered her weapon. “Vasek, you idiot.” Muttering under her breath, she unlatched the security chain and bolt, and yanked open the door. “Next time, call first. I almost put a hole in you.”
As Ike relocked the door behind him, Raine got a good look at Max’s expression, which was dark and brooding, and lined with tension.
She stood. “What’s wrong?”
He took a step toward her and lifted a hand, then let it fall to his side. “Grab your stuff and let’s go. We’ve got to get out of here. They killed my informant.”
Killed?
Raine stood frozen for a second, unable to believe that this was happening. That it was still happening. She kept waiting for the violence to stop.
Instead, it seemed to be accelerating.
“Get your stuff or you’re leaving without it,” Max snapped as he passed her on his way to the adjoining room.
Broken from her paralysis, Raine loaded the shopping bag with her few items of clothing while Ike packed her computer with practiced efficiency.
Voice calm, as though she dealt with murder every day, Ike said, “Where are we headed?”
Max reappeared in the doorway, duffel slung over his shoulder. “You’re going back to Boston, and you’re going to pretend you were never here.”
“Like hell I am. Try again, Vasek.” Then Ike stopped, faint humor draining from her face. “You’re serious.”
“Deadly.” He looked down at her and his expression softened a hint. “I know you’re tough, Ike. I know you can take care of yourself. Do this for me, please. Just go home and forget you know me.”
Ike reached up and touched his cheek. “Poor Max. Still trying to protect me, aren’t you? It never worked before and it won’t work this time. I’ll go home, but I’m not off the case. Call me when you can, and I’ll update you on the database and Jeff Wells.” Ike jerked her head in Raine’s direction. “That one can brief you on what I’ve found so far.”
Max stood for a moment, staring down at her, indecision written on his face. Then he muttered a curse, reached into his pocket and produced a
mini-disk. “Charlie gave me this just before they shot him. He said it’d help me get the guy who’s masterminding this. Call me when you have something.”
Then he leaned down and kissed Ike on the cheek before he turned and headed out the door without a backward glance.
Raine seethed with a jealousy she had no right to feel. When Ike passed her on the way to retrieve her computer bags, Raine said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize earlier that you and Max were an item.”
Ike snorted. “Max and I are friends. Equals.” She shrugged. “I’d go there for fun, but I’m not his type. He only likes women he can save, and that’s not me. Never will be.” She narrowed her eyes. “I’d tell you to stay away from him, but I can see that’d be a waste. You already proved you’ll think about yourself before you think about him. So consider this instead—even if he wants you now, it’s only because you’re a damsel in distress. Once you don’t need saving anymore, he’ll lose interest. That’s the way it works. That’s the way it
always
works.”
MAX WAITED IMPATIENTLY in the hallway. He’d thought the women were right behind him. Didn’t they understand how much danger they were in?
Of course not,
he thought.
You haven’t told them everything.
But how could he explain Charlie’s wild
accusation when he wasn’t sure he understood it—or believed it—himself?
The door opened and Ike joined him, eyes sober.
He frowned. “Where’s Raine?”
“She’s coming. A few of her things fell behind the desk.” She touched his arm. “Don’t try to save the world, Max. If there’s a body, the cops will listen to you. Hell, they’re already listening. And the FDA’s involved. Take it to them. This isn’t your fight.”