Forbidden Lover

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He pulled into a space in the faculty parking lot near the George Augustine Building of Natural Sciences. The FAHIL lab and offices were in a new wing, a little over a year old, which jutted out from the original structure, giving it an ungainly look that was at odds with the quaint setting of the campus.

Nick and Erin got out of the car and walked up the steps to the front entrance. Erin removed her keys from her briefcase, but the door was unlocked. She glanced up at Nick, who was scowling.

“I thought you said this place was always kept locked.”

“The lab is, unless I’m inside working. But the cleaning crew has to have access to the main building, plus, the faculty offices are in here, as well as some classrooms.”

She led him down the deserted corridor, their footsteps echoing hollowly against the tile floor. The hallways in the original portion of the building were like a maze, and it had taken Erin several days to get her bearings when she first came here. She headed unfailingly now, however, to the door that would grant them access to the new wing.

It was unlocked, too, and before Erin could step inside, Nick moved in front of her.

Erin said quickly. “Someone’s probably working late. One of the staff—”

He silenced her with a look as he glided, ghostlike, along the dim corridor. Erin, shivering by this time, didn’t know what else to do but follow. The hair at the back of her neck rose as they crept along the hallway, Nick pausing now and then to check locked doors.

“How can we get to the lab from here?” he asked softly.

“We can’t. We have to take the elevator up to the third floor, where the FAHIL offices are located. There’s another elevator there that leads straight to the basement.”

He gave her a sharp look. “There’s no outside door to the lab?”

“There’s an emergency exit that’s kept locked,” she said. “It can be opened from the inside, and that’s where deliveries are handled. But someone has to be in the lab to disengage the lock.”

“There’s an alarm on the door, I assume.”

“Of course. The other entrance to the lab is from the hallway.”

“Who has a key?”

“I told you. Only the FAHIL staff.”

“What about Gloria Maynard?”

“Gloria?” For some reason, the fact that he remembered her secretary’s name annoyed Erin. So he hadn’t been quite as immune to the woman’s charms as he’d let on. “She doesn’t have a key to the lab, but I’ve let her use mine from time to time.”

He gave her a look, but Erin merely shrugged. “I’ve occasionally sent her down there to fetch something I needed for a class or consultation,” she explained. “She doesn’t particularly like going down there, so it doesn’t happen all that often.”

They were at the elevators now, and Erin pressed the button. As the car descended toward them, Nick pulled her back, shielding her with his body as the doors slid open.

“Look, I don’t think there’s anything to worry about,” she said as she moved around him and entered the elevator. “Obviously, someone is still here working.”

Nick didn’t say anything as he stepped into the elevator beside her. But his profile was rigidly set as he faced forward, and she wondered suddenly if he had a gun underneath his jacket.

Erin pushed the button for the third floor and the doors slid closed. The car gave a little lurch, scrambling her stomach, then slowly ascended.

When they got off on the third floor, Erin glanced around, uneasy in spite of herself. She’d never before noticed how dark the hallway was. There was one light at the far end, near the stairwell, but from the elevator down to her office, the corridor was dim and shadowy.

She’d worked late a lot of nights and never minded the poor lighting before. So why now, with a rugged police detective by her side, did gooseflesh prickle along her arms and neck as she and Nick walked down the hallway to her office?

Gloria’s office was directly past the elevator, in an open lobby area that serviced the entire FAHIL staff. Erin’s office was at the far end of the hallway, and as they approached her door, she became more and more apprehensive. What if her office had been broken into? What if sensitive files had been taken, cases compromised?

But when she tried her door, it was locked tight, and she let out a breath of relief. Inserting the key, she opened the door and reached inside to turn on the light, her gaze automatically scanning the interior.

Nothing was amiss. Her file cabinets were all secured, as were her desk drawers. She’d cleaned off the surface of her desk earlier, years of practice making her meticulous in putting away her work before she left for the day.

“Everything seems okay in here,” Nick said, gazing around. He turned back around to face her. “Let’s go have a look in the lab.”

She nodded. “I have to get my equipment together anyway, but I’m sure we’ll find it locked up tight, just like my office.”

He cut her another look, one that said, so far, he wasn’t all that impressed with Hillsboro’s security.

Erin frowned, feeling defensive but trying to subdue it. No use getting off on more of an adversarial footing with him than she already had. Still, if there was one area of her life where she felt secure, it was her work. She knew what she was doing, and she didn’t much care for someone challenging her competence.

After locking her office, they got in the service elevator, which took them directly to the basement level. The hallway there was dim and shadowy, too, and as Erin disengaged the alarm and motion detectors, she silently vowed to have maintenance install better lighting as soon as possible.

She unlocked the door to the lab, and both she and Nick walked inside. Hesitating for one split second before turning on the lights, she gave him time to absorb the ambiance of the lab in darkness. The safety lights did little more than cast shadows and highlight the shelves of skulls, and Erin had heard Gloria Maynard declare more than once that you would not catch her dead in this place after dark. Erin always got a silent chuckle out of the irony.

She glanced up at Nick, sensing more than seeing his tension in the murky light. She heard him mutter something beneath his breath, and she said quite casually, “Excuse me?”

“Unless you want to tell ghost stories, you can turn on the light now.”

Erin flipped the switch, giving him an amused glance. “Not spooked, are you, detective?”

He flinched slightly when the overhead lights came on, then cut her a dry look. “Let me guess. Halloween is your favorite holiday. What do you do—decorate the skulls?”

Erin’s amusement vanished. “I wouldn’t do that,” she said simply. “I respect the remains that I work on, and I never lose sight of the fact that they were once someone’s brother or daughter or mother.”

Nick’s gaze on her was intense. He seemed to understand exactly what she meant, and for the longest moment, he remained silent. Then he glanced away and said in a subdued tone, “I think I’ve come to the right place.”

NICK EXAMINED the outside door. “This can only be opened from in here, you say?”

Erin walked over to join him. “Yes. It was originally intended for an emergency exit, but we also use it for deliveries. It opens up into an alley.”

“How about if I go out this way and have a look around?”

Erin shrugged. “Sure. You may as well bring your car around, and we can load the equipment from here.” She entered the code, then gave him the all-clear signal. He shoved open the heavy door almost reluctantly, glancing back as it closed between them. He didn’t like leaving her inside the lab alone, even though he knew she was comfortable with her surroundings and probably safer inside those walls than most any other place in Chicago. Still, he’d seen another side of Dr. Erin Casey tonight, and it was hard to dispel the image of all that flowing hair, that clingy outfit. It was hard to think of her as anything other than a woman now.

He shook his head, as if to clear his mind, and climbed the steps to street level. The alley was a dead end, bordered on one side by the FAHIL building and on the other by an eight-foot concrete wall. There was only one way in and one way out, and depending on the size of the delivery vehicle, he could imagine a driver having a hard time reversing all the way to the end.

The lab, by the very nature of the work performed there, was a little creepy, and Nick had been unsettled by the thought of bringing the skeletal remains of someone he’d known—someone he’d loved—here to be coldly and clinically examined by a stranger.

Erin had set his mind to rest. She was the right person for the job. Passionate, discreet, thoroughly professional, there was nothing about her with which he could quarrel. He hoped a judge and jury would feel the same way, because depending on her findings, Nick would try his damnedest to build an ironclad case against Daniel O’Roarke for the murder of Sean Gallagher, Nick’s father.

Eight years ago, O’Roarke had been arrested for the brutal slaying of Ashley Dallas, the beautiful, young stepdaughter of Police Superintendent Ed Dawson, and the woman Nick’s younger brother, Tony, had been in love with. Nick’s father had been the lead detective on the case, assigned by Dawson himself because Sean Gallagher had been the best on the force. Sean had made the arrest, then a few weeks later, he disappeared. His body was never found, but there’d never been any doubt in Nick’s mind that Daniel O’Roarke, out on bail awaiting trial, had killed Sean for revenge.

The MO was typical of the O’Roarkes, who had been mortal enemies of the Gallaghers ever since William Gallagher, Nick’s grandfather, and James O’Roarke had emigrated from Ireland together over seventy years ago. William had become a cop, James a criminal, but they’d had one thing in common—their love for Nick’s grandmother, Colleen. She’d been engaged to James, but had married William when she’d learned of James’s illicit activities. The rivalry between the two men had become even more fierce after that, and the bitterness had been passed down through the generations.

The O’Roarkes, with their shady alliances and illegal dealings, were an anathema to everything the Gallaghers stood for, and after Sean disappeared, Nick had begun his own personal crusade against them.

Daniel O’Roarke had eventually been convicted of Ashley Dallas’s murder and given the death penalty. Over the years, an army of powerful lawyers, hired by Daniel’s father, Richard, had tried one appeal after another. Nothing had worked until a few months ago, when new information had come to light which suggested that both Sean Gallagher and Ed Dawson had suppressed evidence in the case that might have, if not cleared Daniel, at least created reasonable doubt.

Armed with this potentially explosive information, the O’Roarke attorneys had petitioned the court to overturn Daniel’s conviction, in which case, Daniel would walk out of prison a free man. And because of the O’Roarkes’ money and influence, not to mention their willingness to use extortion when necessary, Daniel’s freedom appeared to not only be a possibility but a probability.

For weeks now Nick had had to live with the image of his father’s murderer plastered across the news broadcasts. He’d had to listen to the impassioned pleas of starlets and zealots, begging the courts to set Daniel O’Roarke free. O’Roarke even had a web site in his honor, created and maintained by one of his most ardent admirers, a young woman who claimed she and O’Roarke were in love.

Not once did any of these people stop to consider the victims’ families, Nick thought bitterly. Not once did they stop to think what it would be like to have your father’s murderer roaming free, willing and able to kill again. Not once did they stop to contemplate that even if information had been withheld from the official police report, the evidence against O’Roarke had still been sufficiently overwhelming to convince a jury of his guilt.

Never before had Nick felt so enraged by the judicial system, nor so helpless. But then, like divine intervention, Roy Glass, the sheriff in Webber County, Wisconsin, had called and told him about the discovery of a skeleton in the woods near the fishing cabin from which Nick’s father had disappeared. If the remains turned out to be Sean’s and if Nick could prove his father had been murdered, then he would begin very systematically to build another case against Daniel O’Roarke.

After eight long years of waiting, there would finally be justice for Sean Gallagher. And for Nick.

UNLIKE VISITORS to the lab, Erin was never frightened by her surroundings. She usually became so absorbed in her work that she never stopped to think about the potential “chill” factor, but ever since her conversation with Nick earlier that day, she’d felt an unprecedented sense of unease she couldn’t seem to shake.

Tonight, after finding the building unlocked, the feeling had deepened, and as Erin stood in the deserted lab, a shiver skimmed along her arms.

Probably served her right, she decided, for trying to scare poor Detective Gallagher earlier. Not that he appeared to be a man who frightened easily, but he had been uncomfortable with the lights off and he hadn’t tried to pretend otherwise. Erin liked that about him. He didn’t exhibit any of the forced machismo she’d seen so often in police officers. But then, he didn’t have to. He exuded an innate strength and sense of self that needed no false bolstering. He was one of the most interesting men she’d ever met.

Telling herself she didn’t have time to stand around all night analyzing Detective Gallagher’s manly qualities, she set about gathering up the equipment she would need for the excavation, including her Marshall-town trowel.

Busy with her work, the noise that came from somewhere behind her barely registered at first, but then, like a midday shadow, the realization that she wasn’t alone came creeping over her, and the hair on the back of her neck rose in warning.

She didn’t immediately turn, but stood for a moment, trying to analyze the noise—what it had been, where it had come from. The walls and doors in the lab where thick, but every once in a while, when everything was dead silent, like now, noises from the outside would filter in. Erin could sometimes even hear the faint, telltale clang of the elevator as it descended from the third floor.

Initially, she’d chalked those sounds up to imagination, but then almost inevitably someone would appear at the lab door—one of the staff, Gloria, a visitor. Erin had gotten used to this early warning system, and had decided that she had either been blessed with exceptional hearing, which she’d never appreciated before, or the vents in the lab were situated in such a way as to magnify sound from the hallway. If the latter was the case, no one else seemed to notice, but that was probably because she was the one most often alone in the lab—