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“Hannah?” he said once the call had been patched through. “Is that you?”
“Listen Marcus, listen to me very carefully—you’re in grave danger.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Something very strange is happening,” she whispered. “It’s about Virusall.”
“What’s the matter?”
“The drug is amazing. Much more effective than we guessed. It eradicates every virus I’ve tested it on. HIV, Ebola, hepatitis, influenza, even the common cold.”
“You’re kidding! That’s world-changing news.”
“I know, but wait, here’s the bad part. There are serious side effects. Everyone with type O blood that took the drug during the clinical trials eventually had psychotic breaks. They all became extremely violent.”
“But only people with type O blood?”
“As far as we know. The effects seem permanent.”
“My God, Hannah, that’s catastrophic.”
“It gets worse.”
“How much worse can it get?”
“I went to Daycon with my findings.”
“That unscrupulous bastard.” There was no love lost between Marcus and Daycon. “What did he do? Try and doctor the clinical trials?”
“He’s more unscrupulous than you ever dreamed.”
“Tell me.”
“I found out he was attempting to sell Virusall to overseas terrorists. He wants to create made-to-order assassins.” She gripped the receiver hard.
“Did you call the police?”
“I couldn’t.” She lowered her voice. Paranoia had her thinking Tyler’s phone was tapped, even though she knew it wasn’t possible. “He has a rogue CIA agent making the contacts for him.”
“Hannah!”
“I knew I had to destroy the drug but I also knew I had to find an antidote for those poor test subjects. I packed up a few samples, e-mailed an encrypted version of the formula to you and then I torched Daycon Laboratories to the ground. I’m surprised you didn’t hear about it. The fire was all over the news.”
“I don’t even have a television up here, Hannah, and I haven’t checked my e-mail in a few days.”
“That’s why you’re in danger. If Daycon even suspects I sent you the formula…” She let her words trail off. “You’ve got to download it, put it in a safe place and then eradicate that e-mail.”
“I’ll take care of it. In the meantime, where are you?”
The tender note of concern in his voice almost had her losing her control. She had to stay calm and not give herself away. While Tyler’s phone probably wasn’t bugged, Marcus’s definitely could be.
“I’m safe for now. It’s better if you don’t know where I am, but I’ll be headed in your direction as soon as I can.”
“You sound odd. Is there something else you’re not telling me?” he coaxed. Her old friend knew her too well. She was trying to be brave, but it was so tempting to let down her guard just a bit with someone she trusted.
“Daycon’s men found me.” She gulped, then briefly told him about the accident.
“My God, Hannah, are you okay?”
“Marcus, I’m really scared. Some very bizarre things have been happening to my body.” Gingerly, she reached down to rub the leg that had been fractured and then traced her fingers over the right-upper quadrant of her abdomen. “And I think it was because the vials of Virusall broke during the accident and burned my skin.”
“The drug is toxic?”
“Not exactly.”
“What exactly? Talk to me. I want to help.”
Deciding to tell him everything, Hannah took a deep breath and related her suspicions that absorbing Virusall through her skin had cured her injuries.
“That’s amazing,” he said.
“But how would it be possible?”
“You said the drug was very unstable and that it did have miraculous healing properties.”
“We’re talking spontaneous regeneration here, Marcus. It’s the stuff of science fiction. And nothing of this magnitude occurred during the clinical trials.”
“Did any of the test subjects have AB negative blood like you do?”
“No, but would my blood type actually make that big a difference?”
“Look what Virusall did to the people with type O.”
“I can’t believe it’s simply the drug and my blood type responsible for my healing. There’s got to be something more.”
Marcus’s tone dropped an octave. “I know what it is.”
Her heart thundered. She couldn’t even believe they were having this conversation. The discussion flew in the face of rational scientific evidence, but she could not deny what was happening to her.
“What?” she whispered, bracing herself for his theory.
“Remember when we were experimenting with radioisotopes last summer?” he said. “And there was a radiation leak at the lab? Daycon hadn’t installed the proper safety ventilation and we both got sick.”
“But he assured us the exposure was minimal. We were even tested for chromosomal changes and we came up clean.”
“And you believed him? You’ve already learned how ruthless he is. The man would lie about anything to serve his own nefarious purposes.”
Hannah sucked in air as the reality of the situation hit her. Inexplicable as it seemed, with the triple combination of her rare blood type, the topical absorption of Virusall and her recent exposure to radiation, she’d become her own human guinea pig. While the womanly part of her was horrified at the realization, the clinician in her recognized what an amazing opportunity she’d been given.
“But, Marcus, what does it all mean?” she cried.
And that was when the line went dead.
Chapter 4
Tyler couldn’t sleep.
No matter how hard he tried to quiet his turbulent thoughts, his mind stayed hitched on that fascinating woman sleeping in his guest bedroom right down the hall. It had been an eternity since anyone had entranced him, much less set his soul ablaze.
And he was scared spitless.
He recalled the way her skin had felt beneath his fingers when he had examined her—smooth, cool, creamy. He remembered the way her chest rose and fell with rapid breaths as he had placed his stethoscope above her breasts. He recollected the manner in which she had peeped surreptitiously up at him from behind those long, pale eyelashes.
He thought of the way she’d looked swaddled in his T-shirt that was five sizes too big for her. Her eyes wide and round as she’d studied him. Her blond hair floated softly about her slender shoulders. Her feet were bare, her toes appearing childishly innocent in their unpainted state. She’d looked china-doll fragile, except for the hard set of her determined chin.
Who was this mysterious Jane Doe? More important, why was he so drawn to her? And most interesting of all, how could he explain her instantaneous recovery from life-threatening injuries? Concern for her welled up in him from as far south as his feet and throbbed through his chest.
How had she managed to resurrect his emotions so completely in such a short time? How did he fight these dangerous feelings while at the same time help her?
He felt confused, baffled by both his attraction and her extraordinary afflictions. He found himself caught up in backwash he did not understand, unable to solve his dilemma but equally unable to retreat. Like it or not, he was caught up like a fish in a net. He was involved.
High time you got truly involved with something again, his conscience gloated.
But he feared he was not up to the challenge. It had been a long time since he’d put himself out for another human being and he wasn’t so sure he could handle the implications. What had he gotten himself into?
She was an enigma, a riddle, a paradox that compelled him despite his reservations. If only she could remember something about herself. If only he knew what chemicals she had been carrying with her and for what purpose. If only he could explain this inexplicable pull toward her.
Every time he closed his eyes, he saw her face—those vulnerable lips, those wide blue eyes, that mass of golden hair.
After wrestling with the covers for over an hour, Tyler switched on a small bedside lamp, slung his legs over the side and browsed through the books mounted on the shelf over the headboard.
There weren’t many medical books here. Yvette had been loath for him to work at the beach, so most of the volumes were either basic textbooks or short paperbacks on first aid. Nothing about chemicals and certainly nothing about spontaneous healings. Then one title jumped out at him, squeezing off his airway.
Healing Your Cancer From Within.
After all these years, any reminder of Yvette still had the power to knock the wind from his lungs. She had been so young, so pretty and full of life, looking forward to conceiving their first baby. It had been during a routine visit to the ob-gyn, in preparation for getting pregnant, that the doctor had discovered she had leukemia. But it had been over four months before she had broken the bad news to him.
Tyler fisted his hand as the familiar anger rocked back into his life. His wife had cheated him of precious moments, all because she hadn’t wanted to worry him while he was finishing his surgical residency.
The memory of that awful day when she finally told him the truth was burned into his subconscious. Metastasis. To her lungs and liver. Prognosis poor. Six months to live. With chemo. Four months had already passed and she had decided on her own not to have chemotherapy. Single-handedly she had made the choice without him.
There would be no babies. They would not grow old together.
Shocked, Tyler had slumped into denial. He simply could not bring himself to accept the cruel diagnosis. The doctors had to be wrong. This could not be happening. Not to his young, beautiful, vibrant wife. She could beat it. She would live.
Yvette had handled the news with her usual quiet calm. She had always been spiritual and she turned deeper into her religion. Buying books such as this one that promised if you just prayed hard enough God would heal you.
Rubbish. Tyler jerked the book from the shelf and flung it across the room. It struck the wall with a resounding whack.
He’d lost whatever naive beliefs he’d ever held about miracles.
He was still angry, still very guilty. He should have detected her cancer himself. But no, he had been as useless as a third thumb, and even after the diagnosis he had been unable to do anything but sit idly by and watch her die. There was no greater torture for a physician. Because of his denial, he had never said the things that needed to be said, but he had brought her to the beach in the end, as she had wished.
It was hard for Tyler to come back here. He associated the beach house with her death and could not say why he hadn’t sold the place years ago.
It had been too late to save his wife. Maybe he wasn’t too late to save Jane Doe. Perhaps that was why fate had deposited her in his emergency room. He was a doctor, dammit. He should be able to save someone.
It frustrated him that the hospital laboratory had been unable to identify the toxic chemicals in Jane Doe’s car. Running his hands through his hair, Tyler paced. Over and over he tried to rationalize what he had seen this past evening. How one minute Jane had been broken and bleeding, hovering on the verge of death and later that night she had been in his car wolfing down a hamburger, her battered body completely healed.
There had to be a logical, rational explanation, and he would find it if he just looked long enough.
Then he remembered the symptoms she’d suffered when they were walking on the beach. Obviously, she wasn’t completely healed. And what about those lab reports? The ones that indicated she might have cancer?
The conundrum intrigued him almost as much as the lady herself. He had the strangest feeling she was faking her amnesia. But why? What was she hiding from him? Was she in trouble with the law? And how could he get her to trust him enough to give him the answer? She was a very private person and by her own admission, distrustful. Her remoteness evident in the way she held herself aloof, a little shy, as if she wasn’t quite sure how to react to people.
What was he going to do with her? What if her amnesia was real? He should report her case to the police but Tyler knew he wasn’t going to do that.
An odd excitement raced through him. A sensation of aliveness he hadn’t felt since Yvette’s death. If he could find out how Jane Doe had been healed, he might be able to heal others in the same manner. The possibilities were mind-boggling and flew in the face of all rational thought, but Tyler knew something miraculous had happened and he intended to find out exactly what it was.
Fingers trembling, Hannah called an operator and had her re-dial Marcus’ telephone number. She held her breath. It rang.
Once. Twice. Thrice. Four times.
“I’m sorry, ma’am,” the operator interrupted, “no one seems to be answering.”
“Please, could you let it ring longer? My friend was just there. We were cut off.”
The operator sighed as if Hannah had asked for the key to Fort Knox. “All right.”
More empty rings.
“Your party is simply not picking up.”
“Thank you.” Hannah cradled the receiver and sank against the wall.
What had happened to Marcus? Why had the line gone suddenly dead and why hadn’t he answered when she called back? Her imagination ran rampant as she imagined Daycon or one of his hired henchmen standing in Marcus’s bedroom with a gun pressed to his temple, making all kinds of awful threats. She shuddered. By calling him, had she inadvertently placed Marcus in mortal danger?
“What’s going on?”
Hannah jumped and clutched a hand to her chest. She had been so concerned about Marcus’s welfare that she hadn’t heard Tyler come into the room.
His dark eyes were disconcertingly intense, as if he knew exactly what she was hiding. Her stomach churned and for a moment she thought she might be sick.
“I…er…” she stammered, and gestured helplessly. She couldn’t explain anything to him without drawing him deeper into her problems. He was a nice man and didn’t deserve to be mixed up in this mess. “Did I wake you? I’m sorry.”
“Is there something you need to tell me?”
“No,” she whispered softly, surprised by the strange look in his deep chocolate eyes.
