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“You’re hurting.” He stepped away from the bed. “I’ll come back later.”
“No.” The terror had subsided somewhat with the piecemeal return of her memory. In its place was a sense of urgency. Despite what had happened at the office building, she’d set out that morning with a purpose. Now, she looked at Dr. Eballa and saw compassion in the other woman’s eyes. “Can we have a few minutes alone?”
The doctor hesitated a beat, then nodded. “You’re lucid, and it’s not unexpected for you to have blocked out the actual trauma. You may never remember that chunk of time, but everything else seems okay. I’ll take a walk. When you and Mr. Moore are finished, I’ll come back and run a few more tests, just to be on the safe side.”
When she was gone, Nic stared at her legs beneath the pale blue hospital blanket. “In case you were wondering, there’s no chance the baby could be anyone else’s.”
He nodded, though she didn’t know if that meant he believed her, or if that was what he’d expected her to say. Which just underscored how much she didn’t know about the father of her unborn child. She’d picked him up in a bar, for heaven’s sake, and though she’d like to think she wouldn’t have been attracted to a jerk, her track record said otherwise.
“Do you…” She faltered, but pushed through the awkwardness with a faint thread of optimism. “What do you think about being a father?”
“Being a sperm donor doesn’t make a man a father,” he said, voice nearly inflectionless, but he paced the length of the room, body language giving voice to the upset within.
When he stopped at the window and worked the mechanism to open the blinds and look out at the night, she thought she saw something sad in the reflection of his eyes, something that defused her quick anger and left the hurt behind.
“I’m sorry,” he said after a moment. “It’s not about you, or about what we did. It’s…” He turned toward her and spread his hands away from his long, lean body. “Let’s just say the world is better off if I’m in it by myself.”
A flare of disappointment warned Nic that no matter how many times she’d told herself not to think foolish thoughts, some piece of her had been hoping for the happy nuclear family she’d always dreamed of. But she forced her voice level when she said, “I didn’t come looking for a marriage proposal. Lucky for us, society has evolved past shotgun weddings.”
Though she had a feeling her professor father’s reaction wouldn’t be particularly evolved when he found out his first—and possibly only—grandchild would be born outside of wedlock.
Ethan repeated, “I’m sorry.”
“Me, too,” she said. “I wish…” She trailed off, not sure what exactly she wished. If she hadn’t gone into Hitchin’s that night, damned caution and hiked up onto a bar stool beside the hottest guy in the joint, she would’ve missed out on some pretty fabulous sex. And yes, she would’ve missed out on the life growing inside her. An unplanned life, perhaps, but one she already cherished.
“I’m okay with it, really,” she said, not sure whether she was saying it for his benefit or her own. “I’ve always planned on having kids. Even thought I’d found the right guy once.”
“Jonah,” he said, surprising her.
She nodded, remembering that she’d mentioned her ex in passing during their brief bar flirtation. “Good memory. But that—obviously—didn’t work out.”
Ethan looked over his shoulder at her. “Was that why you were at Hitchin’s that night? Because of him?”
“No,” she said quickly, then stopped herself and went with the truth. “Or, not really. It was my thirty-fourth birthday that day. I had all these plans with my friends from the school.” She glanced at him. “Did I tell you I’m a teacher?” When he shook his head, she said, “Science. Donner High School. Anyway, we were supposed to have a girls’ day out—a few hours at the spa, a movie, that sort of thing. Simple fun. But I got up that morning, looked in the mirror, and all I saw was someone I never expected to be. Thirty-four, unmarried, no kids.”
She shook her head. “That much I could’ve dealt with. I’d been dealing just fine. But then I checked my messages and found out that Toulouse Inc. was backing out of funding this biofuel project I’ve been working on with some of my students. We’ve built this great greenhouse.” She sketched the building with her hands. “Corn. Wheat. Soybeans. Easily renewable resources. And we’ve got a converter we designed…” She trailed off, aware that he was staring. “And I’m babbling. You don’t care about any of this. Sorry.”
Jonah had always hated when she’d interjected her “little project” into dinner-party conversation, even though it had been his idea that she leave grad school for the more family-friendly schedule of teaching high school. The way she figured it, if Jonah hadn’t cared about the biofuel project, then Ethan certainly wouldn’t.
“Sorry,” she said again when he just stared at her. She felt a hot flush climb her cheeks. “That’s not what you’re here to talk about, is it? You want to settle things, make sure I’m okay. Well, I am.” She took a deep breath to quell the taint of nausea at the back of her throat. “I didn’t go looking for you because I wanted a proposal, or money or anything like that. I’m fully prepared to have this baby and raise it on my own. Heck, I’m looking forward to it. If I’m lucky, I’ll meet a man and fall in love with him, and the three of us can make a family, make more babies, have the white picket fence, the Labrador and the whole nine yards.” She paused, then continued, “But that doesn’t change the fact that this baby is half yours, so I needed to tell you about him or her. What you do with the information is pretty much up to you.”
She was babbling again, she realized. Or maybe she was speaking normally and it just felt like babbling because Ethan was so reserved, so remote.
Still standing by the window, silhouetted against the darkness, he inclined his head in a brief nod. “Thanks for telling me. And I’m sorry you got caught up in what happened back at PPS. I just need… I need to take a walk.” He glanced from her to the door and back. “Don’t go anywhere until I get back.”
“Where am I going to go?” she said, but he was already gone, the door swinging shut at his back, leaving her alone in silence broken by the faint hum of fluorescent lights and ventilation, the sense of movement and activity just beyond the door.
Nic sat for a second, not sure how she felt other than sore everywhere, and unbelievably tired.
Well, that was over. She wasn’t sure if she was more relieved or disappointed. She felt hollow, drained of just about everything. Her headache had even subsided, leaving her vaguely restless.
She glanced down, making sure she wasn’t hooked to any machines before she sat up in the hospital bed. When that earned her only a long, lazy spin of the room and a thump of the headache, she decided to try using the bathroom. If she could make it there and back under her own steam, she was doing okay. Maybe even okay enough to go home.
Suddenly, she couldn’t think of anything more appealing than her four-room apartment with the soft Navajo blanket on the bed.
“Bathroom first,” she said aloud. Suiting action to word, she threw back the blankets and swung her legs over the side of the bed. Her feet were numb and her whole body felt disconnected, as though her head was floating along under its own power as she made it across the room, nearly to the bathroom door.
Out of the corner of her eyes, she saw a dark shadow through the window of the hallway door. The shadow paused, then pushed through.
Nic turned, expecting a lecture from Dr. Eballa. “I was just—” She broke off because it wasn’t her doctor. It was an unshaven, heavyset man wearing a white lab coat over a T-shirt, jeans and heavy boots.
He grabbed her before she could react, and covered her mouth with his hand.
Panic spurted as Nic screamed against his palm. She struggled, kicking him with her bare feet and scratching at him with her fingernails. He didn’t react, just held on as she felt a prick in her upper arm, then a fiery sizzle in her veins that quickly faded to cool numbness.
Aware of her surroundings but unable to stay upright, she slumped to the floor and hit hard. He pushed through the door for a moment, then returned, pulling a gurney behind him. He grabbed her around the waist, heaved her up onto the gurney and covered her most of the way with the blanket from her bed.
Then he wheeled her out of the room.
Chapter Three
Ethan walked the hospital corridors with no real destination in mind. He simply thought better when he was moving. He always had.
Nicole’s child might have half his DNA, but he knew as well as anyone that biology didn’t make a father. Character made a man a father. Honesty did, and integrity. Wholeness.
And though Ethan considered himself a logical, honest man, he was anything but whole.
Seeing a knot of people in the hallway up ahead, he detoured down the next offshoot corridor. If he’d still believed in the religion his mother had tried to instill in him, he might’ve thought it no accident that the hallway dead-ended at the hospital chapel. Since he’d long ago renounced faith in a higher power, he thought only that it was a quiet, empty space with padded benches.
He sprawled in one, let his head fall back with a thump and closed his eyes.
Just that morning, everything had been normal. True, the TCM investigation was way beyond PPS’s usual cases, but that was work, not personal. Over the past five years he’d done his best to insulate himself against letting things get personal. If he wasn’t involved, he couldn’t be hurt.
More importantly, he couldn’t hurt anyone else.
“Ethan?” Evangeline’s voice said from nearby. “Is everything okay?”
Though he normally enjoyed her company, his first thought now was oh, hell.
He cracked his lids and watched her sit in the pew across the aisle from him. She was wearing the top half of a set of scrubs, along with her own pants and shoes. Her right arm was bandaged from shoulder to elbow, and a Band-Aid above her left eyebrow was several shades darker than her pale skin. But she looked steady enough as she said, “What’s wrong?”
“Where’s Robert?”
“Why, because you and he are both Neanderthal enough to think it’s his job to keep me under control?” She sent him her trademark give-me-a-break look. “For your information I’ve been treated and released. No hospital room, no observation period. I’m fit and ready to get back into the fight.” She flexed her good arm, showing a decent muscle, but he noticed that she didn’t try it with the bandaged arm. “And to answer your other question, Robert is on the phone with one of his police contacts, trying to get an update on what the crime scene analysts and the bomb squad think about the office.”
“Still, you shouldn’t be walking around alone,” Ethan said.
She sent him a sharp look. “I ran PPS by myself for more than two years, during which time, I might add, I hired you. Just because Robert rose from the dead doesn’t make me incapable of defending myself.”
He shook his head. “I didn’t say you were, but your name is on the hit list and your office took the brunt of the attack. You have to be careful. We can’t afford to lose you.”
If Robert had begun to reemerge as the leader of PPS, Evangeline was the glue that held them together. She had drawn Ethan into the organization, giving him the base of support he’d so badly needed, along with the freedom to take short-term protection assignments that suited his short-term attention span.
“I can take care of myself,” Evangeline repeated. “I’m not going to do anything stupid, though. And don’t think I didn’t notice you changing the subject. So give. Why’re you sitting in here alone?”
“I like being alone.” But the question brought his mind circling back to Nicole.
She was going to have a baby. His baby.
What the hell was he supposed to do about that? Nothing, he knew. It would be better for everyone involved if he did nothing. His own father had been a sperm donor, his stepfather a savior. Nicole and the baby would be far better off finding a man to complete their family without living the hell his own mother had suffered through to find her Prince Charming.
Besides, a family meant commitment and emotion, neither of which were rational choices for someone like him.
Evangeline waited for him to continue. When he didn’t, she said, “It’s an open-ended offer with no statue of limitations. So if you need a friend to talk to, come find me, okay?”
Ethan dipped his chin in a nod. “Thanks.”
She stood, mostly covering her wince. “Robert and I are headed over to the Vault.” Her eyes glinted with determination, along with rising anger. “PPS will be run from there until this thing is finished.”
“The Vault?” Intrigued despite himself, Ethan climbed to his feet and followed her out of the chapel. “I thought that was an in-house urban legend.” Rumor had it that PPS maintained a secret underground location, and had spy ware in place to duplicate every piece of information that came and went from the PPS offices, sending it to the Vault.
“It’s real,” Evangeline said with a small smile. “It’s located in an old Cold War bunker outside the city. With the main office destroyed, we’re going to move operations there. A couple of the guys are organizing the support staff, figuring out who we absolutely can’t do without, and getting them set up underground.” Her lips thinned. “It’s coming down to the wire, Ethan. Either we take out whoever is behind that list or they take us out.”
She pushed through the door leading to the hallway, with Ethan right behind her. Just then, heavy footsteps rang out around the corner, the sound of a big man, moving fast.
Ethan stepped in front of Evangeline, tensing for battle, then relaxing when Robert appeared.
The other man’s expression was tight. “Is Miss Benedict with you two?”
“She’s in her room,” Ethan said. “Second floor, 201A.”
Robert shook his head. “Her bed’s empty. And it wasn’t a bomb that took out the office. It was a surface-to-air missile, only it wasn’t fired from ground level—it was an aerial attack from a dark helicopter with no markings. None of the witnesses were close enough to catch any details. With the way the windows are set up, Miss Benedict is the only person who might’ve seen the chopper.”
Blood roared through Ethan’s veins, and he turned and sprinted up the hallway with Robert and Evangeline at his heels, spurred by the knowledge that the TCM conspirators didn’t leave witnesses alive.
NICOLE FLICKERED in and out of awareness, sometimes able to process her surroundings, sometimes not.
At first she saw hospital corridors rolling past as her captor wheeled her along. Then she was in an elevator. Another hallway. Then a plain room with gray-green walls and a palpable chill in the air.
The next time she surfaced, she was still in the gray-green room, still strapped to the gurney, but the man in the white lab coat was gone and the room was seriously cold. She shivered, realizing that the room wasn’t just somebody-turned-up-the-AC-too-high cold, it was all-the-way-to-igloo freezing.
Like a meat locker, she thought, panic kindling as she twisted her head, trying to get a good look around. She didn’t see any dead bodies—she wasn’t in the morgue, thank God—but she didn’t see much else. The insulated walls of the bare room were painted gray-green, and the shiny white door bore a freezer handle and a small, fogged window. A refrigerator unit bolted to the ceiling above her hummed, blowing cold air.
“Hello?” she said, her words emerging on a puff of vapor as her breath met the chilly air. She raised her voice. “Can anyone hear me?”
The echoes bounced off the walls and door, faint beneath the refrigerator’s hum.
Breath clogging in her lungs, she tugged frantically at the straps securing her to the gurney, but succeeded only in pressing her body into the thin mattress beneath her. She felt very small and weak and scared. Worse, she realized she’d stopped shivering, and when she exhaled, the vapor was faint, warning that her core temperature was falling. She was probably only minutes away from hypothermia, maybe an hour away from death.
She sucked in a breath and screamed, “I’m in here! Somebody! Anybody, get me out of here!”
Her only response was the hum of the cooling unit.
ETHAN STOOD at the main admittance desk, cold anger pounding in his veins. “She’s not in the hospital. The bastards took her.”
Robert clasped his shoulder briefly. “We’ll find her.”
But they both knew that by then it could be too late.
Around them, the admitting area bustled with normal hospital activity, plus the tension of an organized search. All free personnel were on the lookout, and security officers had spread throughout the complex. If she’d been transported somewhere else, though, the effort was useless.
“Call the cops,” Ethan said, possibilities flickering through his mind in a gruesome slide show. “You’ve got friends there. They’ll look if you push them.”
“Already done,” Robert said. “Given that she’s the only witness who might have seen—”
“Mr. Moore, Mr. Prescott!” A woman’s hail interrupted and Ethan turned to see Dr. Eballa rushing toward them, followed closely by a tall teenager wearing blue scrubs and a volunteer’s badge. “I may have something.” When she reached the men, she urged the teen forward. “Tell them.”
The dark-haired youth looked at a nearby uniformed security officer, flushed and stared at his feet. “There was a guy in the back stairwell.”
When he fell silent, Ethan was tempted to grab him and shake the story loose. Instead, he stepped closer and lowered his voice. When he caught the faint scent of pot, he said, “Look, kid. Nobody cares what you were doing or where. Just tell me what you saw.”
The teen glanced from Ethan to the guard and back, then mumbled, “Promise?”
“You won’t get in trouble for smoking in the stairwell,” Ethan said. “At least not this time. After that, you’re on your own.”
“’Kay.” The kid nodded. “So listen, I was in the back stairwell, okay? And this guy came up from the basement wearing a white coat, okay? Only he wasn’t a doctor—his clothes were all wrong and he didn’t have a badge. Besides, why would a doctor be coming up from the basement? Ain’t nothing down there but empty rooms. And he was using a phone, and that’s not allowed in here, right?”
Robert interjected, “What did he say?”
“Something like, ‘Make up your goddamn mind already.’ I didn’t hear the rest because I took off before he saw me.”
“Are you sure he didn’t see you?”
The kid bobbed his head. “Positive.”
Ethan turned to Dr. Eballa. “Where are these stairs?”
“I’ll take you.” As they hurried through the hospital corridors, she said, “He’s right, there’s not much down there. Mostly empty storage rooms we use as overflow during disasters.”
Something chilled inside Ethan. If the white-coated guy in the stairwell had taken Nicole, he might have hidden her down there.
Or he might have dumped her corpse.
He swallowed hard. “What sort of overflow?”
Dr. Eballa pushed through a doorway marked Stairs, then glanced back. “Bodies. Two of the rooms are set up as temporary morgues. We only run the refrigerators when we need the space, though.”
They reached the bottom of the stairs and pushed through a set of heavy doors. The corridor was dimly lit. The cement walls were painted a muted green and the floor was white laminate, like much of the rest of the building. But down in the basement, the color scheme didn’t seem soothing. It felt swampy. Ominous.
