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“Maybe.”
“Tell me what you know about my dad’s status reports.”
What was he getting at? He must already know this information. “Your father told me I was part of a study group made up of children with similar backgrounds and key genetic markers. He monitored potential and achievement, which was why he helped me get scholarships.”
“Take a right at the next light.”
She could feel his scrutiny as he studied her. Though she wasn’t sure that she even liked this guy, she responded to him with an unwanted excitement that set her heart racing. Her brain fumbled for something to break the silence. “There was a good turnout for the funeral.”
“Did you recognize anybody?”
“Not a soul. I kind of expected to see Dr. Prentice.”
“How do you know Prentice?”
“He was the other half of the study your father worked on,” she said. “As I’m sure you already know.”
“Tell me, anyway.”
“Your dad correlated the psychiatric data. And Prentice did medical examinations every few years or so. He contacted me about six weeks ago.”
“The date?”
She pulled up her mental calendar. “It was April sixteenth, the day after tax day. Prentice said he needed to see me right away. There was an issue about possible exposure to radiation when I was a child.”
“And you were scared.”
“Terrified.” There had been a similar scare five years ago that Dr. Prentice treated with a brief course of mediation. “Radiation poisoning isn’t something to mess around with. Turns out that I’m fine. Prentice gave me a clean bill of health.”
“What do you remember about the testing?”
“It was a thorough physical.” She wasn’t about to go into details about the pelvic exam or the part where she’d been under anesthetic. “I went to a clinic after work on a Friday, and I didn’t get home until after ten o’clock. Dr. Prentice’s assistant drove me and made sure I got into bed.”
“Any ill effects?”
Come to think of it she hadn’t been feeling like herself lately. Her stomach had been queasy. A couple of times, she’d vomited. “Do you know anything about the testing?”
“Yes,” he said curtly.
Her fear returned with a vengeance. What did Blake know? Had he pulled her aside because he had bad news? She might have been poisoned by a childhood exposure, might have some awful disease. Her cells could be turning against her at this very moment. “Why did you say that you needed to talk to me?”
“Pull over.”
This had to be bad news. “Why?”
He touched her arm, and she recoiled as if he’d poked her with a cattle prod. She wanted nothing more to do with Mr. Perfect. He was toying with her, asking inane questions and hinting at dire circumstances.
She yanked the steering wheel and made a hard right onto a side street with wood-frame houses, skimpy trees and sidewalks that blended into the curb. Halfway down the block, she parked and turned off the engine. Eve preferred facts to innuendo. She wanted the truth, no matter how horrible.
“All right, Blake, I’m parked. If you have something to tell me, get on with it.”
His eyes flicked as if he was searching her face, trying to gauge her reaction. “It might be better if I gave you more information. Set the framework.”
“Just spit it out.” She braced herself. “Am I dying?”
He cleared his throat. “Eve, I have reason to believe that you’re pregnant.”
“That’s impossible.”
She was a virgin.
Chapter Two
Blake watched her reaction, looking for a sign that Eve Weathers had been complicit in Prentice’s scheme. He saw nothing of the kind.
His information had shocked her. She gasped, loudly and repeatedly. Her eyes opened wide. Pupils dilated. She was on the verge of hyperventilation. Her chest heaved against the seat belt. “I can’t be pregnant.”
“I said it was a possibility.”
“Why would you say such a thing? And how the hell would you know?”
“Before he was murdered, my father sent me an e-mail.” At the moment the e-mail was sent, Blake had been in a debriefing meeting at the Pentagon. He didn’t read the message until two hours later. By then, it was too late. His father was dead.
“What did it say?”
Too much for him to explain right now. Blake cut to the pertinent facts. “My father received information that Dr. Prentice had implanted you with an embryo.”
“During the examination? While I was unconscious?” She dragged her fingers through her pale blond hair. “That’s sickening. Disgusting.”
When she grasped the key in the ignition, he stayed her hand. Gently, he said, “Maybe you should let me drive.”
She yanked away from him. “My car. I drive.”
“You don’t look so good,” he said.
“Thanks so much.”
“Not an insult.” He liked her looks. “I meant that you appear to be in shock. I don’t want you to pass out.”
“Oh, I’m way too angry to faint.” She started the car. “You want out?”
“No.” He couldn’t let her drive off by herself. In his e-mail, Dad had told Blake to take care of Eve Weathers. That last request could not be ignored.
She punched the accelerator and squealed away from the curb. Halfway down the street, she whipped a U-turn, barely missing a van parked at the curb.
His right foot pushed down on an invisible brake on the passenger-side floorboard. “If you let me drive, we can be at my father’s house in ten minutes.”
“That’s not where we’re going.”
At the corner, she made an aggressive merge into traffic. Her tension showed in her white-knuckle grip on the steering wheel, but she wasn’t reckless. She checked her mirrors before changing lanes and stayed within the speed limit. With a sudden swerve, she drove into the parking lot outside a convenience store.
Without a word, she threw off her seat belt and left the car. He trailed behind her. Inside the store, he asked, “You mind telling me what we’re doing here?”
“Maybe I wanted a donut.”
Her sarcasm was preferable to the moment of shock when he’d mentioned pregnancy. He should have been more careful, should have expected her reaction, but he wasn’t operating at peak efficiency. Eve’s problems weren’t his primary concern.
His focus was on his father’s murder. The cops were satisfied with the lame explanation that a burglar did the crime. Like hell. This killing wasn’t a random act of violence. Blake was determined to find the son of a bitch who pulled the trigger and the men who sent him.
He stood behind Eve as she stared at shelves packed with an array of over-the-counter medicines. When she spied the pregnancy tests, she grabbed three of them. “Damn, I left my purse in the car.”
“I’ll pay,” he said.
At the counter, the clerk gave them a knowing smirk as he rang up the purchase.
Eve added a pack of gum. “And two jerky sticks and one of these pecan things.”
“There’s food at the house,” he said.
“I have a craving. Isn’t that what pregnant women do?”
When she plucked a magazine off the rack below the counter, she set down her car keys. He snatched them. “I’m driving. It’s easier than giving you directions.”
“Fine,” she growled. “You drive.”
Back in the car, he adjusted the driver’s seat for his long legs and headed toward his father’s house while Eve tore open the packaging on the pregnancy tests and read the instructions. “When we get to the house,” she said, “I’d appreciate being shown to the nearest bathroom.”
He nodded.
“I won’t make a scene,” she assured him. “I respect your father’s memory.”
Several other vehicles were already parked on the street outside the long ranch-style house that his mother had loved so much. When they had first moved here fifteen years ago, there had been few other houses in the area. Development had crept closer, but his father’s house still commanded an outstanding view. To the south, Pikes Peak was visible on a clear day like today.
No matter where in the world he was stationed, he treasured the memory of home—of translucent, Colorado skies and distant, snowcapped peaks. This vision was his solace and the basis for his daily meditation.
As they went up the sidewalk to the house, he pocketed her keys, not wanting her to have easy access to an escape until she calmed down.
Inside, he skirted the living room where people had gathered and escorted her down a long hallway that bisected the left half of the house. At the end of the hall, he opened the door to his dad’s office. Unlike the rest of this well-maintained residence, this room looked like the aftermath of a tornado. In addition to the papers and magazines, a fine coating of fingerprint dust from the police investigation covered many of the surfaces. The supposedly secret safe in the bookshelves hung open in its hinges. His father’s blood stained the Persian carpet behind the desk.
When he closed the door, Eve stood very still. “Is this where it happened?”
“Yes.”
“You haven’t cleaned up.”
“Not yet.” Valuable information could be hidden somewhere in this room. He’d already searched, but he would search again and again and again, until he found the killer.
IN THE PRIVACY OF THE bathroom, Eve almost yielded to the overwhelming pressure of anger and fear. If ever there had been a time in her life when she wanted to curl up in a ball and cry, this was it. She didn’t want to be pregnant. Not now, possibly not ever. Having a baby wasn’t on her agenda.
She knew that she’d skipped her last period but hadn’t worried because Dr. Prentice told her she might be irregular after her testing. Prentice, that bastard. Why had she believed him? With good reason, damn it. She had twenty-five years of good faith; Prentice and Dr. Ray had been part of her life since birth.
Setting her purse on the counter, she took out the kits from the convenience store: three different brands. Two of the kits had two tests inside the box, and she set the extras aside.
She followed the simple instructions and arrayed the three test sticks on the counter beside the sink. Then, she waited, counting the seconds.
Each test had a different indicator. One showed a plus sign in the window to indicate a positive. Another showed a pink line. The third would turn blue.
Though counting didn’t make time go faster, reciting numerical progressions had always soothed her. As a child, she learned to count prime numbers all the way up to 3,571—the first five hundred primes. Five hundred unique numbers, divisible only by themselves and one.
The last time she had seen Dr. Ray over dinner, she’d talked about prime. He had suggested—in his kindly way—that she might want to pursue deeper interpersonal relationships. Make friends, join groups, go on dates, blah, blah, blah.
She had told him that she was happy just as she was. Some people needed others to make them complete, but she was unique. Like a prime number, she was divisible only by herself. Singular.
If she was pregnant, she’d never be alone again.
One of the tests required only one minute to show results. She could look down right now and see. But the others needed five minutes, and she didn’t want to peek until all the results were in and could be verified against each other.
But she couldn’t wait. She looked down. The first test showed a positive.
Could she trust a kit from a convenience store? It hardly seemed scientific in spite of the claim on the box of ninety-nine percent accuracy in detecting a pregnancy hormone, hCG, released into the body by the placenta.
The second test repeated the positive. And the third.
She was pregnant, pregnant and pregnant.
Tentatively, she touched her lower abdomen. Hello, in there. Can you hear me? An absurd question. At this point in development, the fetus wouldn’t have ears. But they shared the same body, the same blood. The food she ate nurtured the tiny being that grew within her. The miracle of life. Amazing. Infuriating.
Damn it, this couldn’t be happening! She dug into her purse and found her cell phone. Dr. Prentice’s private cell phone number was in the memory.
He answered after the fourth ring. “I’ve been expecting to hear from you, Eve.”
“How could you do this to me?”
“I assume you’re aware of—”
“I’m aware, damn you. I just took a pregnancy test.”
“You’re upset.”
A mild description of her outrage. “You might as well have raped me.”
“Not at all the same thing. Rape is an act of violence. You received the highest quality medical care. My intentions were for your own good. I could have hired a surrogate, you know.”
“A what?”
“A surrogate mother. Some women rent out their wombs like cheap motels.”
“I know what a surrogate is.”
