Книга - Beast in the Tower

Beast in the Tower
Julie Miller


Months ago, arsonists burned Dr. Damon Sinclair's laboratory. Now Damon is a recluse, shut in at the top of his unfinished Sinclair Tower. And at the very bottom is the affectionate Kit Snow and her down-home diner.After stopping a back-alley mugging, Kit earns the gratitude of the dark knight doctor. Only, she doesn't want his charity–just all of his most intimate secrets–putting her between her mysterious protector and the black marketers seeking to pillage the Sinclair pharmaceutical empire. But the only thing Damon guards more closely than his multimillion-dollar formulas is his heart.









What had she been thinking, chasing after Dr. Dangerous like that?


The man was probably nuts. He was most certainly eccentric and showed signs of agoraphobia. Yet she’d cornered him, argued—she’d touched him. All mistakes when it came to self-preservation. He was so far out of her league—professionally, socially, economically, intellectually—that it was laughable to think she’d had the nerve to confront him.

But it was the man who had her all mixed up inside, not the name.

Her reactions to him had been varied, unexpected, overpowering. There’d been an initial rush of sexual awareness that left her feverish. He was so tall, so hardened, so male. Trading words with him made the blood hum through her veins. He was such a complexity of words and actions and mysterious motivations that she was driven to puzzle him out.

And then she’d seen his face and touched his hand and felt…pity.




Beast in the Tower

Julie Miller





www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)


For Dr. Todd Pankratz and his staff.

Plus, to the surgical staff, admission specialists and 3rd floor nurses at Mary Lanning Memorial Hospital in Hastings, Nebraska:

I owe you more than words can say here.

I feel better.

Thanks.




ABOUT THE AUTHOR


Julie Miller attributes her passion for writing romance to all those fairy tales she read growing up, and to shyness. Encouragement from her family to write down all those feelings she couldn’t express became a love for the written word. She gets continued support from her fellow members of the Prairieland Romance Writers, where she serves as the resident grammar goddess. This award-winning author and teacher has published several paranormal romances. Inspired by the likes of Agatha Christie and Encyclopedia Brown, Julie believes the only thing better than a good mystery is a good romance.

Born and raised in Missouri, she now lives in Nebraska with her husband, son and smiling guard dog, Maxie. Write to Julie at P.O. Box 5162, Grand Island, NE 68802-5162.




CAST OF CHARACTERS


Dr. Damon Sinclair—Brilliant researcher or mad scientist? Rumors have surrounded the reclusive billionaire since tragedy disfigured him and drove his wife to suicide.

Kit Snow—She abandoned her dreams when her parents mysteriously died. Now she’s come home to reopen their downtown diner and take care of her makeshift family.

Matthew Snow—Kit’s brother is dealing with the changes in his life by making some bad choices.

Helen Hodges—More than a housekeeper. She loves the gifted boy she raised as though he were her own flesh and blood, and the feeling’s mutual.

Easting Davitz—Damon’s executive liaison and link to the outside world.

Ken Kenichi—A foreign businessman who’d like to acquire Sinclair Labs and all its patents.

Germane Knight—He holds the secret recipe for Snow’s Barbecue Sauce. What other secrets does he possess?

J. T. Kronemeyer—The current construction foreman on the Sinclair Tower.

Miranda Sinclair—Her death haunts the husband she left behind.

The Sinclair Tower—Madman’s folly or work of art? Rising above the Kansas City skyline, this architectural wonder hides many secrets. And a few dead bodies.




Contents


Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen




Prologue


Eighteen Months Ago

The dust settling from the tired old walls coated the warped, three-legged chair like a layer of gray velvet, undisturbed by the passage of time. Since it offered the only place to sit in this abandoned room, standing was the preferred option.

The room had made some banker’s assistant a nice, cozy office back in the building’s heyday. Now it was a decrepit eyesore, marred by peeling plaster and exposed studs in the crumbling walls, good for nothing more than meetings like this one.

Just another example of misused funds and misguided dreams. Dr. Damon Sinclair had been a sentimental fool to purchase this thirty-story high-rise and hire architects and historians to research its history so he could restore it to all its glory. He was an even bigger fool for trusting the wrong people.

But one man’s disadvantage was another—

“I’ve got them.”

Ah, yes, the hired help had arrived. A few minutes late, but carrying something that could make his tardiness forgivable. Anticipation cleared the sinuses and made the eyes sharply perceptive. “Let me see them.”

Electricity hadn’t run on this floor of the newly renamed Sinclair Tower for years, but the heavy flashlight provided all the illumination necessary to inspect the treasure the short, stocky workman handed over. He was breathing hard from the exertion of the past hour or so, and the grime hiding beneath his fingernails was as distasteful as the room surrounding them.

But a normal aversion to filthy things was momentarily forgotten as the culmination of so much planning was about to come to fruition. Retribution was only a fortunate by-product of the millions waiting to be made. Patience had allowed the plan to go forward, but tonight it was asking too much to wait for the privacy of a cleaner place before opening the leather-bound books.

The three binders were heavy with the weight of possibilities. Thumbing through the pages of scribbled notes and computer read-outs was like following a map to the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

Only, the little leprechaun sent to retrieve the map had forgotten one very important item.

Inhale deeply, exhale slowly. Patience. Patience.

“You’ve already rigged the explosion?”

The sweaty man hired for his alleged expertise nodded. “Yeah. The unstable base and volatile acid will accidentally meet in—” he paused to check his watch before raising a cocky grin “—fifteen minutes and twenty-two seconds. No one will be able to trace what we’ve done, or even that we’ve been there.”

“We?”

The incompetent fool had the audacity to laugh. “Yeah, right, I know. You were never even here in the building.”

“That’s not the only mistake you’ve made, you idiot.” The binders dropped like a gauntlet between them, sending up a billowing cloud of dust.

The little leprechaun frowned, perplexed by the displeasure. “What’s wrong? Shouldn’t we be leaving?”

Sheer willpower stifled the urge to sneeze. “Where are the codes? The difference between these binders—and binders with the codes—is ten million dollars. These formulas will take years to decipher without them.”

“I looked where you said. I looked everywhere I could think of. Your information was wrong. The codes weren’t in his lab.” He backed toward the door frame and glanced into the hallway, as if expecting to be discovered. Had the idiot been followed? Maybe he’d been stupid enough to use the freight elevator, the noise of which would certainly alert those do-gooders who ran the restaurant on the ground floor that there were trespassers on the upper floors of the building.

“You took the stairs, didn’t you? I warned you to use the stairs.”

The words fell on deaf ears. “Look, the blast won’t affect us down here, but the cops’ll question anybody on the premises. Those fifteen minutes will go by faster than you think. We need to get out of here.”

Inhale. Exhale.

“It will take months—maybe years—of research to recreate Dr. Sinclair’s formulas from these notes. My investors may not be as patient as I—”

The little man dared to point a finger. “I brought you the files you specified, replaced them with the fakes so no one would know they were stolen, just like you said. And hell, yeah, I took the stairs.”

“I told you we’d need the codes.”

“They weren’t there! I turned that place inside out. They must be hidden someplace else. I don’t know where else to look, what else to do.”

“Yes, your incompetence is staggering.” The gun slipped from its waistband holster as easily as the decision to use it was made. Damon Sinclair was a crafty bastard, but he could be beaten. Though not if there was someone on the team who couldn’t get the job done. “It’s cost me more than I anticipated already.”

His gaze narrowed and focused on the gun. “What are you gonna do?”

Aim between the eyes. Pull the trigger before you can run. The leprechaun’s head jerked back. He hit the wall and slumped to the floor. Dead. “Get better help.”




Chapter One


The Present

“My wife will be worried if I’m late getting home. I’ve been out of town on business this week.”

“Take him straight to the shelter.” Hiding her sad smile, Katherine Snow wrapped a ten-dollar bill around the disposable cup of coffee and passed it through the open window to the taxi driver on the late-night shift. She shivered, missing the warmth of the cup the instant it left her hands. “I owe you one, Tariq.”

But the cabbie shook his head and tried to return the cash. “If this is your good coffee, it is payment enough.”

Kit pulled her fingers inside the sleeves of her sweater and tucked them against her chest. “You know I always brew a fresh pot for night owls like us.”

“The shelter is just a couple of blocks away.” He pushed the ten-dollar bill her way again. “Save this for Matty’s college fund. You should make Old Henry walk.”

One, she had no clue whether or not her teenage brother would make it through his last semester of high school, much less go on to college; two, even with her limited profit margin she could spare ten dollars; and three, “Old Henry,” as Tariq had dubbed him, was in no shape to walk anywhere. Especially since he thought “home” included a wife who had passed away a decade ago.

Henry would never find his way through the minefield of construction equipment that lined the streets and surrounded the Sinclair Building where her diner was located. “Two weeks ago, one of Kronemeyer’s electricians touched a live wire upstairs and had a heart attack. And what about that old concrete cornice that fell off the side of the building? If Henry hadn’t come inside to get out of the cold, he would have had his brains bashed in. Or the masonry worker who supposedly just walked off the job—without collecting his paycheck or telling his boss to shove it—and hasn’t been seen since? Believe me, I’m happy to pay for Henry’s cab,” Kit insisted.

Henry Phipps had come in for a free meal of leftovers and coffee to sober him up enough to allow him admission to the area shelter. And just like the other nights when he’d shown up at closing, Kit had refused to turn him away.

Tariq shook his head and argued, “You do too much.”

“I try to tell her the same thing. She doesn’t listen.”

Kit rolled her eyes up at the pepper-haired black man who’d helped her load their last customer into the cab’s backseat. “You’re not saying I’m pigheaded, are you, Germane?”

“I’m saying that once you set your mind to a thing…ah, hell.” He shrugged and surrendered to the inevitable. “You’re just like your daddy was.”

“A great cook?”

Germane snorted. “A sucker for every sad story that came through his front door. I wish you had more of your mama’s good sense. And who does most of the cookin’ around here?”

Kit grinned and linked one arm through his, bowing to the master short-order cook. Germane Knight had been a family friend for far too long to take any of his grousing seriously. Though they’d served together as combat medics in Vietnam, he was as big a softie as her father had been. “Fine. You run the kitchen, I run everything else. Like customer relations. It’s after midnight, below freezing and it’s snowing again. Good sense says it isn’t safe for anyone to be outside on his own.”

“I am giving in even if you are not, G.” Tariq raised his cup in a toast to Kit, then tossed the ten-dollar bill to a confused Henry in the backseat. “We will all freeze to death if we sit here and argue until she changes her mind.”

“Don’t I know it.” Germane had a surprisingly deep belly laugh for such a tall, slender man. He dodged Kit’s elbow to his ribs, reached out and thumped the roof of the cab, clearing Tariq to be on his way. “Be safe, my friend.”

With a wave, Tariq checked the light traffic, then whipped away from the curb in a U-turn to avoid construction in the lane ahead. Kit and Germane jumped back as sooty slush spun from beneath the tires up onto the sidewalk. Kit was still shaking the glop off her boots when Germane pulled her back toward the brightly lit windows of the Snow Family Barbecue Grill and Diner.

“C’mon, girl. We’d best get out of the cold air ourselves and get this place shut down for the night. I’m feelin’ the chill in my knees somethin’ fierce.”

“In a minute.” Giving his arm a reassuring pat, Kit pushed Germane toward the diner’s front door. “The dishes are already in the washer. Go ahead and turn off the neon signs and start cleaning the grill. I’ll be there in a sec to take care of the pans and count down the money.”

Kit huddled inside her cable-knit sweater and peered into the filmy shadows beyond the circles of lamplight dotting the street to the north and south. An older woman slowed her car and pulled into the parking garage next door. A pair of faceless figures buried their faces in their hoods and collars as they left the shelter of Hannity’s Bar and cut across the slickening street.

Could the young man in the red-and-gold Kansas City Chiefs parka be Matt? He wasn’t old enough to buy a drink, but that kid was rebelling with a vengeance against the forced parenting of his older sister. Kit had left graduate school and come home after their parents’ unexpected deaths, thinking he needed her. She knew she needed him. But they were each dealing with their grief in different ways. She thought Matt wanted a home, but apparently, her one-time Stanford-bound brother just wanted his space.

But a Chiefs parka was common enough this time of year in a football-crazed city like K.C. When the two bar patrons turned north away from the diner, Kit wondered anew where Matt could be at 12:00 a.m. on a Thursday night. She was going to have to do the tough-love thing and ground his tardy ass for being out so late on a school night.

Shivering at the pending sense of loss she couldn’t quite explain, Kit looked up and down the street one more time. She couldn’t see much else through the steel scaffolding and plastic sheeting that framed the building’s facade and curved into the side alley. Though the work on her own first-floor apartment and business had been completed three months ago, the construction team renovating the twenty-nine floors above her in the Depression-era Sinclair Building never seemed to run out of projects.

The workers were the diner’s best customers for lunch. But, along with the handful of tenants on the second and third floors who’d stuck it out through first one construction company, then another, she suspected she wasn’t the only one tired of her absent landlord’s penchant for historic perfection. Heavy equipment had blocked the sidewalk and torn up the street for more than a year now, turning three lanes of traffic into two, and giving petty thieves, gang-bangers and the homeless plenty of places to hide at night. She suspected some unwanted squatters had even found their way into a few of the unfinished apartments above her.

Though she could admire the unseen Sinclair heir for trying to make this block of downtown Kansas City the same tourist-and-young-professional draw that Wesport or the Plaza to the south were, Kit feared that the working-class locals would be forced to move before any new influx of business could save them.

Kit’s parents hadn’t owned any pharmaceutical empires like the Sinclairs did. They couldn’t pack up and go to a second home in the islands when the weather turned bitter and the construction got in the way. They’d toughed it out and had paid the ultimate price in the fire that had taken everything. This block of Kansas City had been their home. True, Kit had gone off to college to pursue her science degrees, and had dreamed of working in a criminology lab in New York City or Chicago. But she’d returned when she was needed. To find out why her parents had died. To rebuild their diner and maintain their dream.

This was her home now. And her brother’s. Along with the countless castoffs from society like Germane and the handful of loyal workers she employed. They all needed her to succeed. She didn’t have time to want or dream.

Kit tilted her face and squinted up into the falling snow. The ominous shadows of the Sinclair Building’s Art Deco carvings and dark rows of high-tech replacement windows towered above her. The far-removed penthouse apartments on the top floors were completely swallowed up by the raw night sky. If the construction delays didn’t end, and the troubling rise in neighborhood crime didn’t—

“Watchin ’isn’t gonna make that boy come home any sooner.” Germane’s sympathetic warning stirred Kit from her thoughts. “This is the second night this week Matty’s missed his curfew.”

At eighteen, six years her junior, Kit’s brother looked more man than boy. And legally, she supposed she didn’t have any right to set boundaries and expectations for him. But even if he wouldn’t accept her hugs, she intended to protect him. From gangs, drinking, crime—from himself. He could hate her guts if he wanted, but Matthew Snow Jr. was going to make it to adulthood and make something of himself. She’d sworn that promise at her parents’ graves.

She couldn’t quite raise a smile. “You noticed, huh?”

“He’s giving you worry lines beside those pretty gray eyes.”

“He’ll be here.” She hoped. The worry that was never far from her thoughts cut through her like the bite of the winter wind. Doing had become a lot easier than feeling lately. That was how she dealt with the loss. She pushed Germane through the diner’s front door and locked it behind her. She’d wait until Matt showed up before pulling down the cage that shielded the front windows. “C’mon. We’ve got work to do.”



TEN MINUTES LATER Kit jumped at the scream from the alley. Elbow-deep in hot, sudsy water, she chilled at the words she heard through the kitchen’s back door.

“You?”

“Shut up and let go, you hag!”

“Take it. Please, just take—”

She preferred screams to the muffled thud and sudden, eerie silence.

“Germane!” He was mopping out by the tables. But she was just a few feet away from the shouts and scuffle in the alley. Kit tightened her grip around the iron skillet she’d been washing and ran to the exit. “Call 911!”

“Kit! Don’t you—”

But she was already out the door at the top of the loading dock. Not Matt. Please don’t let it be Matt. The crunching of snow drew her attention to the steel scaffolding beyond the light over her back door. She spotted the groceries scattered across the ground and hurried down the concrete steps toward the torn sack they belonged to.

“Next time, old lady, you’ll shut up when I tell you to.”

Kit’s eyes adjusted to the sight of two young men in saggy jeans and hooded parkas—one bearing the distinctive arrowhead of the Chiefs—squatting beside a woman’s still form in the slush near the garbage cans. “Matty?”

The bigger of the two stopped digging through the woman’s purse and swung around. Black hair and little else was visible above the scarf he’d tied over his face. Not Matt.

Blood boiled in Kit’s veins, overriding both relief and fear. “Get away from her. Get away!”

Kit charged before the startled man could rise. She smacked him in the shoulder, sending both purse and attacker flying. Unfazed by his fluent foreign curses, she jumped over the woman’s skinned-up legs and raised the skillet to go after the smaller man.

But a third pair of arms grabbed her from behind and slung her against the building. The skillet banged against the wall, stinging her fingers and popping her grip. It clattered to the ground as the man she’d struck lurched forward, wanting his own retribution. “Nobody hits me, bitch!”

He shoved her before she had a chance to react. She smacked into solid limestone. The air whooshed from her lungs and her head spun from the dizzying contact.

“Get out of here! Now!” Blurry hands pulled the man in the Chiefs parka back and urged him to run.

Kit sank to her knees as the three men scattered. By the time she could fill her lungs with cold air and clear her head, they were gone. Along with the woman’s purse.

Kit didn’t waste time pursuing them. The older woman, groaning but not moving, was a greater concern. Kit crawled over and knelt beside her, quickly assessing that her unfocused eyes were open and her pulse was beating. Recognizing the snowy cap of hair and slight build beneath the thick wool coat and knitted scarf, she asked, “Helen?”

Recognize was a generous term. The woman came into the diner for an occasional cup of tea, but usually just nodded and smiled when they passed each other on the sidewalk or in the parking garage. She seemed friendly enough, but very private. She’d probably been a resident around here for years, and was being cautious about the alarming changes in her environment.

Any wonder? The dangerous proof was the fresh tracks in the snow, exiting the alley between the parking garage and the Sinclair Building’s side entrances.

“Helen? That’s your name, right?” The woman gasped as Kit peeled the wool scarf away from the bloody wound at her temple. She’d had enough training in her forensic classes to identify the long, round indentation of the wound. Those greedy bastards had hit this fly-weight woman with a pipe, or maybe shoved her into one of the scaffolding bars. But this wasn’t the time for Kit’s innate curiosity to kick in. The woman was going into shock.

“Germane!”

Where was he?

Kit didn’t want to leave the woman’s side. Briefly peeling off her sweater and baring her flanks and back to the chapping cold, Kit removed her cotton turtleneck and pressed it against Helen’s wound while she redressed. “Where do you live? What’s your last name?”

Though she moaned at the contact, Helen was fading.

“Hang on.” She shouted over her shoulder, “Germane!”

“Right behind you, girl.” Germane limped through the back door, carrying a blanket beneath his arm and a cell phone against his ear. He relayed information to the dispatcher as he hurried down the stairs. “That’s right. The Sinclair Building at Ninth and Walnut. Looks like an elderly woman in the alley on the north side.” He paused and frowned. “I didn’t see nothin’. But if you don’t get that ambulance here soon, the cops’ll be investigating a murder, not a mugging.”

“Germane?” Kit took the blanket from him as he shut his phone and braced a hand on her shoulder to kneel on the opposite side of the woman. Kit winced at the bruise that must already be swelling on her shoulder blade.

His sharp eyes didn’t miss a trick. “How bad are you hurt?”

“I had a run-in with the wall, but it’s nothing serious.” Kit skipped the details and unfolded the blanket to tuck it around Helen’s slight figure. Germane was already listening to the older woman’s breathing and checking for pupil response. “How is she?”

“She’s got a concussion for sure. Hell, they could’ve cracked her skull, as deep as that wound goes.”

Kit turned toward the end of the alley where the footprints disappeared. “The muggers took her purse, and she hasn’t given me her name. I think it’s Helen, but I don’t who to contact or what to tell the paramedics. Do you know her?”

“Keep talking to her,” Germane advised, measuring the woman’s pulse. “All I know is, she lives upstairs. She’s been in a few times, pesterin’ me for my barbecue sauce recipe. Says she used to make as good. She’s always by herself, though, so maybe there isn’t anybody to cook for anymore.”

Or anyone to call. Kit smoothed away the droplets of melting snow from the woman’s cool cheek. “Helen? Can you hear me? Look at me, Helen.”

The rheumy blue eyes blinked. Her pale lips slurred a question. “Are you dead?”

“What?” Kit panicked when Helen’s eyes drifted shut. “No. I’m very much alive. And so are you. Stay with me, Helen.” She pulled the woman’s bony hand between her own and tried to rub some warmth back into it. “Helen? You’re not alone. Stay with me.”

Her cold hand went limp in Kit’s grasp as she murmured, “We’re all dead.”




Chapter Two


The fire was all around him, climbing up the walls and leaping across the ceiling.

Dr. Damon Sinclair crawled toward the emergency exit at the back of his lab. The door where he’d entered minutes earlier to pick up his notes for tomorrow’s board meeting was no longer an escape route. The glass entryway had shattered and the fire was now licking its way into the hallway on the opposite side.

Beakers exploded from the heat and rained glass on his back. Their contents fed the flames. The few sprinklers that had survived the explosion were doing little more than creating steam as they spat out water at irregular intervals.

If he hadn’t smelled the chemicals—if he hadn’t reacted to the searing stench of the volatile combination and dived beneath his desk to avoid the initial blast—he’d already be dead. The milliseconds of warning had left him with a head wound, an armful of research documentation and a chance at survival. But that chance was slim if he couldn’t find a way out.

Blinded by the blood seeping into his left eye, feverish from the blazing heat, he moved forward by instinct alone. When he hit a wall instead of the exit, he knew he had to make a choice. He set the binders on the floor with a reverence for the miracles contained inside. His work could save lives—it had saved lives. And now he’d set it aside to save his own life.

The answers were all inside his head, anyway. Given enough time, he could recreate them if he had to. If he ever got out of this hellfire, he’d have all the time in the world to…

A farewell look at his work elicited a choice curse.

“What the hell is this garbage?” These weren’t his notes. Just pages and pages of numbers and equations that didn’t make sense. He hurled the worthless counterfeits into the growing flames.

Was that what this was about? This treacherous, purposeful destruction, just to hide a theft?

Whoever was responsible… Whoever had planted that damned incendiary… Reams of notes and calculations—gone. Successful equations and rejected experiments he could learn from—gone. State-of-the-art technology designed by his own hands…

His hands…

“Son of a bitch!”

They were on fire.

Damon reengaged his brain and fought off the groggy disorientation that consumed him.

Whoever was responsible for this betrayal would not go unpunished. There were means a man of his intellect and bank account could use to make the bastard who’d sabotaged his life’s work pay.

He let the rage suffuse him. Give him strength. He clutched his arms to his stomach and doubled over to stifle the flames with his own body. “You’ll pay.” The heat from his own hands seared his flesh. “You’ll pay.”

“Help! Damon! Help me!”

“Miranda?” A pain far more cruel than any physical torture twisted in the pit of his stomach. Oh, no. God, no. “Miranda!”

His wife’s screams hurt worse than the scorching agony of the skin blistering on his fingers. Her terror cut deeper than the shrapnel in his forehead. He’d gladly give up any medical secret he could devise, but please, please, spare his wife.

“Miranda!” He shouldered aside burning tables, melting plastic and shattered glass, desperately searching through the roiling smoke. “Miranda! Ans—” He choked on the toxic gases coating his lungs and crumpled to the floor. A hoarse cough racked his body and ravaged his throat before he could summon the strength to push to his knees. “Answer me!”

“Damon!”

Her screech of desperation drove him on. He crawled through corrosive puddles and ruined work and unknown treachery to find the only thing that truly mattered. “Miranda? Please. Keep talking. I’ll find—” Coughing cut like broken glass through his raw throat. The spasms drained his strength and he collapsed again. But he pulled himself toward her ragged sobs. “I’m coming.” His administrative assistant. His love. His life. Work be damned. “I’m coming.”

“Damon…”

A chunk of ceiling gave way and crashed to the floor, shooting up a snarling roar of white heat and orange flame. Damon rolled to the side, sucking in the last breath of oxygen hovering above the floor. The firefighters and paramedics were on their way. But even if they were already in the building, they had twenty-eight stories to climb. Damon was his wife’s last—her only—hope for survival.

“Miranda!”

He found her curled into a ball in the corner of a storage closet. Her clothes and hair had caught fire, and though she’d managed to douse the flames, she’d already suffered serious burns.

If she was still breathing, Damon couldn’t tell. He could only cradle her in his arms while he carried her to safety. Outside the burning lab, he collapsed and lay her on the floor. His damaged hands couldn’t detect a pulse, but he put his lips against hers and breathed. “Come on, baby,” he rasped. “Live, Miranda. Live.”

The old images faded as Damon twisted in his sleep. But the nightmare wouldn’t end. It merely transformed—into something hideous and ugly. Like him.

They were at the asylum now. Months later. Miranda’s willowy figure was lost beneath the green hospital gown. And she was crying. At least, her shoulders moved with the sounds of sobbing. The tear ducts beneath the bandages that wrapped her face could no longer cry.

“Why won’t you help me?” Her blue eyes pierced him straight to the core, adding to the weight of well-deserved guilt he carried. “How can you make yourself right and not help me?”

She should never have been a part of this. Miranda was an innocent pawn, caught and trampled by someone’s jealous greed. If only he’d been an ordinary man. Less rich. Less powerful. Less of a visionary brainiac. None of this would have happened. His work wouldn’t have been stolen. His lab wouldn’t have been destroyed. She wouldn’t have been hurt.

Damon Sinclair loved like an ordinary man, but he was cursed with being anything but.

“We nearly lost you in the E. R. when you reacted to the treatments. I won’t risk that again until I run more experiments. For some reason the tissue regeneration formula doesn’t work on you. I haven’t figured out why. Yet. But I will. I promise.” He joined her at the window. It was the last time he remembered feeling the heat of sunshine on his skin. “In the meantime, there’s reconstructive surgery—”

“That takes too long. I’ll never be the same.”

He gently stroked her arm. “Money is no object. Whatever it takes. Whatever experts we need—”

“I thought you were the expert.” She shrugged off his touch. “Your hands have healed. But my face…?”

Damon reached for her again, but she slid away, crossing to the far side of the small room whose posh amenities couldn’t completely mask its clinical purpose. “Miranda, you are beautiful to me. Inside. Where it counts. I love you. I will always love you, no matter what.”

“But I’m not beautiful outside anymore, am I?” She faced him then, the bandages masking everything but the accusation in her eyes. “You can’t look at me and say I’m beautiful on the outside, can you?”

His medical breakthroughs weren’t infallible. “I can’t fix my eye, either, and the nerve repair is still incom—”

“But you fixed the skin on your hands. What about the skin on my face? It’s not vanity. It’s humanity. I have no face left. No lips, no nose. Just…scars.”

She hated him. So much. Where once he’d seen love, he saw nothing but blame and contempt. Hell, he hated himself. He’d worked miracles for so many patients. “Miranda—”

“Fix me, Damon. Fix me!”

“I don’t know how.” The admission twisted cruelly through a brain that had always had the answers. Always. Until now. “I don’t know how.”

“I don’t know how,” he muttered, finding no peace in slumber. “I don’t know how!”

Damon lashed out at himself in his nightmare and awoke to the crash of glass.

He blinked his good eye into the glaring brightness of lights reflecting off stainless steel. Even as he pushed himself away from the lab table where he’d fallen asleep, the frustration and guilt that haunted his nightmares were still with him. He had a shattered petrie dish and contaminated solution on the floor by his feet, to boot. “Damn.”

Another experiment gone to waste. Not that he’d expected this one to work better than any of the others he’d run in the last month. He didn’t know if his equations were off, or if the sample had been tainted. But as he rolled the kinks from his neck and adjusted the black strap that crossed his forehead and held the patch over the empty socket where his left eye had been, he knew the answers would continue to elude him tonight.

A glance out the window of his twenty-eighth-floor lab told him it was well past midnight, even before he noted the time on the clock above the door. Time would forever be his enemy. No formula or device his clever mind could conjure would ever grant him the time he needed. The time he’d lost with Miranda.

Their marriage hadn’t been perfect. He’d worked too much in the lab; she had loved to travel. But she’d given him a beautiful home life and a trusted voice in the Sinclair Pharmaceuticals office; he’d given her everything she’d asked for.

Except her humanity.

He hadn’t found the answer to heal her in time. He hadn’t made her feel whole again. He couldn’t save her from her injuries—or the resulting depression. His skills weren’t enough. His money wasn’t enough.

His love wasn’t enough.

Wide awake, as he searched for a broom and dustpan, he saw the vision—as clearly as he’d seen it that morning at the asylum.

Miranda. Dead.

An empty bottle of pills beside her on the bed.

No stomach pump, no science, no miracle could bring his wife back to him.

The note she’d left him had been brief.

D—

I can’t do this anymore.

M.

Some lousy chromosome in her genetic makeup kept the miracle drugs that had earned his company millions from working. He’d even tested the tissue-regeneration formula on himself. The prototypes might be scarred and ugly, but he’d regained the use of his hands. The fingerprints hadn’t all come back, but he had sensation in almost every nerve, and most of his dexterity had returned. He could do his work. He could type his notes and mix his chemicals and write his equations. He could feel heat and cold and pain.

God, yes. He was a pro at that now. Through and through. Some days, pain was all he could feel.

Damon paused in the center of his new lab. He pulled back the front of his white coat, propped his hands at his hips, tipped his head back and roared at the soundproof ceiling.

It wasn’t fair that he should be alive while Miranda was dead. It wasn’t fair that he should have more money than some small countries and not know happiness anymore. It wasn’t fair that he couldn’t find the solution to Miranda’s Formula—the tissue-regenerating miracle intended to save patients who shared the same genetic predisposition she’d had.

He couldn’t even honor her memory with that.

“So what are you going to do about it, Doc?” he asked aloud, breathing deeply and talking to himself in a way that had always cleared his thoughts and enabled him to concentrate. “For starters, I’m going to see if that persistent bastard has made any progress breaking into SinPharm’s restricted files.”

With something new to engage his brain, Damon was a happier man. He rolled a stool over to his computer and logged in to his company’s database. In just a few keystrokes, he located the illegal activity and grinned. The nosy SOB was back. “Welcome, Mr. Black Hole of the Universe.” Catchy online name. Appropriate since the hacker had tried a dozen different ways to download his research codes. In the middle of the night, when SinPharm’s corporate offices were closed and the satellite labs and production facilities had been secured, someone was trying to hack into Damon’s private files.

It had been another restless night a couple weeks back when he’d first detected the unknown computer geek trying to access his research through online channels. The hacker had broken in three different times to download codes that were misdirecting fakes to begin with. Once the false codes were applied to the data that had been stolen from his lab eighteen months ago, the thieves would realize that they’d been duped. Again. They’d wind up with cotton candy or a laxative—not any of his patented medicines or experimental drugs.

Though he’d had no luck tracing either the location or the identity of Black Hole yet, Damon had led the intruder on a merry chase. He sat and watched the screen as his opponent peeled away layer after layer of security protocols, getting closer to the translation codes that could turn Damon’s equations from gibberish into millions of dollars.

And just when the perp was about to reach the innermost level, Damon pushed a button and scrambled the codes all over again.

His laughter was rare, a rusty sound that stretched the scarred muscles of his throat. SinPharm’s security firm had their way of preventing industrial espionage, and Damon had his.

“That should keep you busy for a few more days.” Hell, if the enemy wanted to reproduce his formulas and market competitive medical treatments without doing their own research, then they were damn well gonna have to get past him. Unless he tracked them down first and introduced them to the FDA, the FCC and any other government organization whose laws they’d violated.

And if Damon discovered the hacker was in any way responsible for the theft and fire that led to Miranda’s suicide, then he would personally put him out of business.

Permanently.

While he relished the image of the unknown spy throwing up his hands and cursing at the computer screen, Damon knew he had problems closer to home he needed to deal with. He glanced at the broken glass and dissipating chemical on the floor. “Like you.”

Damon rolled his stool over to another desk, where two rows of monitors helped him keep an eye on the Sinclair Tower through adjustable interior and exterior security cameras. He typed in a command and brought up a view of the main rooms in the penthouse upstairs. Good. All was quiet. His housekeeper’s seemingly intuitive ability to know when he’d screwed up and needed a little extra help hadn’t awakened her from her sleep.

But by morning, if he didn’t clean it up tonight, then she’d somehow know. She’d be down here at first light, cleaning and tutting herself into a worried state until she verified for herself that he hadn’t been cut or injured in any way.

Corporate spies he could handle. But it was funny how such a tiny little woman, who’d once changed his diapers and sent him to his room, could transform six feet, three inches of brains and testosterone into a guilty little boy, as eager to please as he was to cover his tracks and stay out of trouble with her.

But the bonded cleaning crew he hired to sterilize the lab once a week brought their own supplies, and if there was a broom to be had, he wasn’t finding it.

Mental note: buy cleaning supplies for the lab.

In the meantime, he could raid his housekeeper’s private stash. Damon draped his lab coat over a hook beside the rear exit, swiped his key card through the lock and hurried up the back stairs to the penthouse where they lived on the top two floors.

His plan was simple: sneak into her unguarded kitchen to borrow a broom and dustpan, then dispose of the evidence and hide the fact that he’d spent yet another sleep-deprived night working in his lab.

Yet as he tiptoed past the darkened hallway that led to her quarters, something made Damon stop. Everything was as neat and tidy as it had appeared on the monitor downstairs. But something was off. Perhaps it was the absence of any familiar sound that pricked his senses and put him on alert. There was no humidifier running, no television chattering on after his housekeeper had fallen asleep. He heard no soft, denasal snore. Damon leaned the broom and dustpan against the wall, turned the corner and gently knocked on her door.

There was no answer. The woman had raised him after his mother’s death, had stayed on after his marriage. She’d been there through his father’s passing. Had remained with him past her own retirement, the accident and Miranda’s suicide. They were as close to being a family as two people who shared no bloodline could be. Squashing a flare of panic beneath cold, rational purpose, Damon opened the bedroom door to check on her.

“Helen?”



“MISS SNOW?” A nurse joined Kit at the ICU window, looking through the criss-crossed steel filaments inside the glass to the fragile, wan woman in the hospital bed on the other side.

“There’s no change, is there.” Kit had stayed as close as the hospital staff would allow while surgical and neurological teams stitched up the elderly woman’s head wound, monitored cranial pressure and vital signs, and tucked her into the sterile room for observation. Until she regained consciousness, there was no way for the doctors to completely assess how much damage the three attackers had done. No way for the police to get any more information on the mugging beyond Kit’s concise—but all too incomplete—statement.

“We’re doing everything we can.” The plump nurse shrugged. “The rest is up to her.”

The mysterious Helen didn’t look strong enough to fight off a pesky fly, much less fight for her life. We’re all dead?

Where was the hope in that? Was that going to be Helen’s last, despairing thought? Kit splayed her fingers at the edge of the cool glass, wishing she could hold Helen’s thin, bony hand again, and share whatever warmth and encouragement the woman needed to survive. Truman Medical Center was already a dim, ominously quiet tomb at three in the morning. Walking away and leaving the elderly woman in the care of staff who knew even less about her than Kit did felt like abandonment.

Kit’s parents had been found holding hands when their bodies were discovered after the fire, with debris from the explosion blocking their escape. According to the arson team who’d combed through the diner afterward, Matthew and Phyllis Snow had most likely succumbed to the toxic smoke long before they’d been burned or crushed by the collapsing ceiling. But they’d had each other—they’d known love and a hopeful connection to something outside themselves—right until the end of their lives.

Kit curled her fingers into a fist. Someone should be in there, holding Helen’s hand, giving her hope. “She shouldn’t be alone.”

But the nurse hadn’t come to give a medical report, and she had no clue about Kit’s frustrated sense of justice for all. “It’s long past visiting hours. And since you’re not family, well…I’m sorry.” Her apologetic frown didn’t ease the sting of dismissal. “Our Jane Doe needs her rest.”

“She’s not a Jane Doe,” Kit insisted, fighting for her neighbor the only way she could. “Her name’s Helen. She lives in the Sinclair Building. You put Helen on her charts, didn’t you? I can’t imagine how disoriented she’d feel if she woke up and you started calling her by someone else’s name.”

“Yes. We have her listed as Helen Doe. Sorry to alarm you. We passed along all the information you gave us to the police. I’m sure they’re checking their missing persons files right now.” The nurse’s rueful sigh recaptured Kit’s attention. “Go home. It’s late. You’ve already done more for her than most Good Samaritans would.”

“Someone had to be here to answer questions.” That was the practical excuse she’d given for climbing into the ambulance while the paramedics worked on Helen.

“I heard you chased away her attackers. It’s all over the hospital. She might be dead if it wasn’t for you.”

“That’s not why I’m here.” Kit had left Germane back at the diner to wait until Matt showed up. She intended to call him before she left, to see if her brother had gotten home safely. In the meantime, Helen’s needs had been more pressing. Kit had held the older woman’s chilly hand until the staff chased her away. Now all she could do was keep her distance and watch and wait. “People shouldn’t be alone. Especially when they’re hurting or afraid. Someone needs to be here for her.”

Her brother might not appreciate her vigilance. The neighborhood might think her more busybody than philanthropist. But the unconscious Helen couldn’t stop her from caring.

The nurse nudged her toward the lobby. “One of the staff will check her regularly throughout the night. But until we get word from her family, or visiting hours resume at 9:00 a.m. tomorrow, I’m afraid you’ll have to wait someplace else.”

Kit exhaled a deep breath and finally acknowledged the aches and fatigue of her own banged-up body. “I should have lied and said I was her granddaughter, shouldn’t I?”

The nurse offered a sympathetic smile. “Come back in the morning. You need your rest as much as she does.”

Without further argument, Kit nodded and dragged her feet toward the deserted lobby. Since she hadn’t paused to grab her purse before climbing into the ambulance, Kit’s cell phone was still back at the diner. Posted signs warned her she wasn’t allowed to use her cell on the ICU floor, anyway, but out here she could access a bank of landline telephones to call Germane and Matt.

Maybe she should phone for a cab instead, and head on home as the nurse had suggested. After a few hours’ sleep, she could search out which apartments above her were occupied, and start knocking on doors. Other than the model apartments, the rooms above the fifth floor weren’t finished. But someone had to know Helen. Maybe one of the construction workers had met her and could provide some information. Kit would ask them when they came in for lunch the next day.

But the cops were probably already going through the building tonight. Hopefully, they’d have better luck getting hold of her landlord at Sinclair Pharmaceuticals than she’d ever had, as well. Though she’d never had any contact with the man beyond letters and leases and rent checks, Easting Davitz, Esq., had her entire financial history on file. Chances were he’d have files on the other tenants, as well.

And, if the cops and Mr. Davitz couldn’t find out anything more about Helen, Kit would still have plenty of time to come back to the hospital to visit in the morning. She could spend a couple of hours holding the woman’s hand—maybe read a book or just talk—before she had to get the ovens fired up and the diner opened for lunch at eleven.

With that much of a plan giving her legs a reason to move, Kit picked up the receiver on the first wall phone and deposited fifty cents. When Germane’s cell number kicked her over to his voice mail, she hung up and called Matt directly. When his voice mail answered, Kit spoke the familiar words. “Matt? It’s way past curfew. If you’re there, pick up. I just need to know you’re okay. I’ll see you at work tomorrow. Right?” If she was lucky. “I just need you to answer me and let me know you’re safe.”

Of course no one answered. Matt didn’t seem to answer to anyone these days. When the recorder beeped, Kit hung up.

Maybe Matt had gotten home and Germane was hanging out with him at the apartment until she returned. Maybe he hadn’t shown up at all and Germane had gone out to look for him. Matt was her brother. She should be the one out searching—not her sixty-year-old Dutch uncle with arthritic knees.

Buzzing her lips to dispel a gathering tension, Kit dipped into her jeans pockets to find more change. She pulled out several folded dollar bills from the tips she’d jammed inside. But change for a single phone call? She found one quarter.

“Come on.” Fatigue made her easily frustrated. All she wanted was to ensure Matt was okay and that Germane wasn’t doing anything foolish. Kit set the coin on the counter and dug for more. A measly dime. A movie ticket stub that had gone through the laundry. A penny. “I thought you were supposed to be lucky.”

Kit swallowed hard, squelching the sarcastic thought. The Snows made their own luck. They took care of what needed to be taken care of without some random flip of a coin to make their lives easier or not. But she was getting a little tired of being stuck in the “or not” category. She glanced toward the nurses’ station, wondering if they could make some change for her. But the desk had been deserted by the skeleton staff out making their rounds.

With her pockets practically empty and her patience wearing thin, Kit decided she was just going to have to hike downstairs to the main lobby. If she couldn’t make a call there, then she’d hail a cab. Of course, the pitiful sum lying on the counter beneath the phone wouldn’t get her two city blocks, much less back to the heart of downtown. And without the coat she’d left back at the diner, it would be a mighty cold walk home. Maybe Tariq would do her a favor and let her ride for free. But she couldn’t even make that call without another quarter for the phone.

Her shoulders stiffened with an unconscious bracing that was almost as second nature as breathing. This wouldn’t be the first time she’d had to find her way home at night. Alone. On foot. She’d spent too many nights out looking for a brother who just couldn’t seem to forgive the world and grow up. “Be there, Matty,” she prayed, scraping the cash back into her pocket and pulling the receiver from her ear. “Please be there.”

“Operator. May I help you?”

“What?” Hallelujah! Kit quickly drew the friendly voice back to her ear. “Yes. I have an emergency. Of sorts. I’m at Truman Medical Center, and I need to call home to make sure everyone’s all right. At the very least, I need to call for a ride, but I don’t have the right change. I know it’s late…”

The operator didn’t need to hear any more excuses. “In the event of an emergency, you can reach the phone company by dialing zero. No charge for a limited call. What number are you trying to reach?”

Kit recited the number for her apartment, thanked the operator and tapped an anxious foot in time with the ringing of the phone. It was hard to block the unsettling images that were half memory, half imagination. Her waiting at the police station to post bail. Matt turning his back on her and walking away when she wanted to hug him in her arms and keep him close. The three muggers returning to the scene of the crime and breaking into the diner. Meeting Matt on the street. Forcing him to join their little crime spree. Or worse—making him their next victim.

Kit shifted on her feet, hating how easy it had become to imagine the worst. “C’mon, guys. Pick up.”

Her home number rang three times. Four.

A crackle of static buzzed in her ear, and the line went dead.

“Limited call, my ass.” Kit jiggled the disconnect button, trying to get a dial tone again. “Operator? Op—?”

Every light on the floor went out, plunging her into darkness. Kit grabbed the edge of the counter, anchoring herself in the sudden, disorienting abyss. “What the heck?”

Almost instantly, a hum of disembodied voices and quick movement rolled down the hallways from the patients’ rooms. But they sounded far away from the bubble of black silence that engulfed her in the lobby.

An uneasy fear quickly replaced her frustration. “Hello?”

She’d welcome any answer from the phone or the nurses’ station. But, blinded by the instant night, Kit didn’t know where to turn. Which distant voice to call to.

“Where’s that backup?”

“Ten-second delay.”

“Check every patient.”

“Why does this always happen at night?”

“Critical systems are still online.”

Kit curled her toes into her boots, staying put out of the staff’s way. She clutched the dead receiver to her chest and held on, counting off an eternity until those ten seconds passed and the backup generators kicked on.

…two one-thousand, three one-thousand…

A breeze swept across the back of her neck, raising goose bumps beneath her ponytail. Someone was right here.

Before she could turn around, a gloved hand clamped over her mouth. In the same instant a strong arm looped around her waist and dragged her back against an unyielding chest. Kit screamed behind the muzzle and twisted in her assailant’s grasp.

“Shh. Be still,” a deep voice grated against her ear.

Still? Like hell.

Kit threw down the phone and clawed at the glove. The leather was soft, supple, warm. But the hand inside wouldn’t budge. Protests rang inside her ears but found no outlet. Had the mugger in the Chiefs parka followed her to the hospital? Was this surprise attack his way of keeping her from saying anything to the police?

Man, had he picked the wrong cookie to mess with.

She kicked at an instep, braced her foot against the wall and tried to shove him off balance. His arm slipped, then grabbed again, hooking beneath the swell of her breasts. When he fought to regain his hold on her, he palmed one feminine mound and squeezed. Even through layers of a sweater and glove, Kit lurched at the contact, alarmed as heat bloomed beneath his way too personal grasp. The man cursed and jerked his hand away. A surer grip tightened around her jaw, stifling any cry for help. Then, just as she thought she might wiggle her way free, the vise of hard arm and harder body lifted her clear off the floor. He carried her forward a step, pinning her between the counter and the wall of his chest.

“I said be still.” The lips that brushed the warning against her neck startled her into silence as much as the man’s alarming strength did. His hips cupped her bottom, his thighs pressed into hers. His moist breath burned a path behind the shell of her ear. Kit held her breath. Oh, God. What did he want from her? What did he— “I won’t hurt you,” the gravelly voice promised. “I just need you to listen.”

Understanding the unspoken bargain that cooperation was her best deterrent against more unwanted gropes and her only chance at freedom, Kit nodded.

Suspended in the darkness, deprived of sight, Kit could do little but absorb the impressions of heat and masculinity that bombarded her senses. He wasn’t the same man who’d attacked Helen. There was no trace of an accent in his unusual voice. He wore a tailored leather coat, not a parka. He was too tall to be the mugger’s sidekick. And while he could have been the third man who’d thrown her up against the wall, she was beginning to think this guy had a different purpose beyond intimidation. The men in the alley had been more than willing to hurt her. And though there was something disturbingly intimate about being pressed shoulder-to-thigh against a stranger in the darkness, this man made no effort to take advantage of her vulnerable position.

That wasn’t the only detail she noticed.

With every deepening breath, Kit inhaled medicinal soap and leather, along with the odd scent of roses. Though shadowy in form, there was no mistaking the reality and substance of this man. He was lanky. Long-limbed. Solid. The crisp chill of winter clung to his coat, but his mouth radiated a heat against her skin that was dangerously enticing. The beeps of distant monitors chirped in the distance, but it was the gravelly husk of his low-pitched whisper that commanded her attention.

“Thank you for taking care of Helen.”

Helen? He knew Helen? Kit mumbled the question against his hand.

“I will repay my debt to you.”

Her toes touched the floor as he released his grip on her. Kit sucked in a deep breath and worked the stiffness from her jaw. “What debt? Who—”

“No. Don’t turn around.” A large palm at the center of her back seared her to the bone. The heat of that firm, commanding touch was enough to hold her in place. “Don’t.”

Kit pressed her lips together and peered straight ahead into the darkness. A chill swept in and raised goose bumps beneath her sweater as his hand left her. Hadn’t ten seconds passed yet? Or had she lost all track of time the instant her vision had failed her?

“I don’t want your money. Who are you?” The heat was gone. He was gone. “Wait.” Ignoring his order, Kit whirled around.

Ten.

Emergency lights flickered on, bathing the lobby and hallways with a greenish glow. Kit blinked until her eyes adjusted to the eerie twilight. “Hey.” What happened to Tall, Dark and Creepy? “Mister?”

She thought she caught a glimpse of black stealing around the corner. The sweep of movement was longer and more flowing than the white coats and colorful uniforms of the nurses and staff. Kit hurried after it. “Wait. Tell me about Helen. The hospital needs to know her last name and address.”

By the time she skirted the corner, the shadowy figure had vanished. “No way.”

The dead-end hallway was empty. The door to a utility closet stood ajar and Kit peeked inside. Nothing.

Almost nothing.

She squinted as a small box on the closet’s back wall caught her eye. Kit touched it with her fingertips, then flinched from its ticking pulse. It was some sort of timer linked to an electrical conduit. Was it just an unlikely coincidence that this door stood open? Was that box part of the backup generator system? Or had the man with the ruined voice done something to the power grid? Why? Surely not just to cop a free feel and thank her for being a good neighbor to Helen.

Helen.

With suspicion thumping her heart against her chest, Kit ran back the opposite direction, past the warning call of the attending nurse, back to the ICU rooms. “Helen?”

The white-haired woman still lay in her bed, unmoved, unconscious. But there was something different, something out of place. Kit zeroed in on the unexpected spot of color on the white blanket.

“What is going on?” Kit’s whisper fogged the viewing window.

Instead of wiping it clear, she pushed open the door and went inside the chilled room for a closer look. A single pink long-stemmed rose lay next to Helen’s hand. The familiar scent and suspicious timing told Kit that he had brought the flower, and that the dark, powerful scrawl on the card tied to the rose was his.

Kit leaned in closer to decipher the handwriting in the dim light. “Helen Hodges. Age: 72. Allergies: Penicillin.” The back side of the card listed medications for asthma and arthritis, as well as an insurance number.

“Not much of a romantic, is he.” But definitely someone who cared enough to ensure that Helen Hodges received the proper treatment. Someone who cared, period. Kit wrapped her fingers around the woman’s fragile hand. “Who was he, Helen?”

Who was the secretive man with the warm lips and ruined voice?

A son who had an aversion to hospitals, perhaps? A grandson who preferred the darkness? A lawyer or accountant who was afraid he’d get stuck with the hospital bill if he was seen?

“Is he a criminal? Ex-husband?” No. His body had been too young and strong to be a contemporary of Helen’s. “Is he part owl or bat?”

But Kit’s tired attempt at humor couldn’t even elicit her own smile. “Do you even know he was here?”

The pale, expressionless face gave no answer.

A sweep of warmer air told Kit the door had opened behind her. She stiffened for a moment, then relaxed, quickly ascertaining that he hadn’t returned.

“You need to leave, Miss Snow.” Judging by the sharp tone, any sympathy the nurse had felt for Kit’s persistent vigil had worn off. “We can’t have anyone extra in the way when the main power’s off-line like this.”

“The monitors never stopped working, did they?” Kit was thinking out loud as much as asking a question. “He didn’t jeopardize the patients. He just wanted to remain anonymous.”

But why?

Why?

“He?” the nurse asked.

“You didn’t see anyone besides me come into this room, did you?” But Kit already knew the answer was no.

“Good night, Miss Snow.”

Kit acknowledged the dismissal with a nod. “Her name is Helen Hodges. There’s health information on the card here. I’d double check everything, of course, but I have a feeling it’s accurate.”

“Now.”

Pulling the rose’s soft bud into Helen’s palm, Kit closed her slender fingers around it. “He must care about you an awful lot to go to all this trouble.” The nurse cleared her throat and Kit raised her hands in surrender. “I’m going. I’m going.”

As soon as Kit stepped outside the door, every light on the floor flashed back on. She reached for a wall and braced herself while her eyes readjusted to the harsh intrusion of brightness. First the darkness had blinded her, and now the sudden glare rendered her just as helpless.

A perfect diversion.

“Damn.”

Curious to know more about the man who’d grabbed her like an attacker while insisting he meant her no harm, Kit hurried to the lobby. Empty. No one but uniformed staff prowled the hallways. She went back to the utility closet to inspect her only clue to the man’s appearance and mysterious vanishing act.

But the timing device had disappeared now, as well.

She could almost chalk up the entire incident as a fantasy of her weary imagination. The blackout had lasted a matter of seconds. The backup lights had run just a minute or two longer. Everything was back to normal. Back to quiet. Back to her being alone in the middle of the night without the change to call home.

Then she detected it. The lingering scents of leather and soap stirred her pulse. That man—Helen’s unseen friend—had been in here. He had caused that precise, patient-friendly power outage.

Kit strolled back to the phones, trying to organize her observations into a pattern that made sense. The man in the leather coat and gloves had sought her out in the darkness for a reason. He’d come to see Helen. But he’d come for Kit, too.

She caught her breath and froze, knowing for certain that their meeting hadn’t been accidental.

I will repay my debt.

And Kit had a funny feeling he wasn’t talking about the stack of quarters scattered across the telephone counter in the lobby.




Chapter Three


“Where were you last night?” Kit looked up from her bowl of soggy cereal and glared at the eighteen-year-old with the spiked golden-brown hair and the annoyingly alert blue gaze, so unlike her own sleep-deprived eyes. Man, the kid had gall.

As relieved as she’d been to find Matt asleep in his bed when Tariq had finally dropped her off at four this morning, Kit suspected her brother’s loud snore had been a ruse to keep her from asking any questions. Granting them both a couple hours of peace, she’d turned off the bedside lamp, planted a kiss on his cheek and silently promised that once she got a little rest and felt slightly more human, a conversation was going to happen.

Welcome to slightly more human.

“I was at the hospital.” Needing something with a little more crunch to sustain her, Kit carried her bowl to the sink and reached for an apple from the basket of fruit on the counter. Kit hissed at the pain that stabbed through her shoulder, and quickly pulled her arm back to her side. “Wow.”

“Kit? You okay?” Was that concern she heard in Matt’s voice? When she turned around, she caught a glimpse of the sweet baby brother she’d once been so close to. But his I-don’t-give-a-damn mask slipped back into place before she could relish the connection. He stuffed a spoonful of cereal into his mouth and chewed around the matter-of-fact question. “Did you get hurt?”

The fist-size bruise that had turned her right collar bone and shoulder joint an ugly shade of purple was apparently going to limit her flexibility for the next few days. But, like the other bumps and aches on her body, it wasn’t going to stop her from looking out for her brother and taking care of the business that needed to be handled today.

“I wasn’t the patient.” She purposefully gritted her teeth and picked up an apple before pulling out a paring knife and returning to the table. She offered Matt the first wedge of fruit. “Want some?”

“I’m good.”

Fine. Don’t even let me feed you. Kit popped the apple slice into her mouth and continued carving. “Actually, I was there for a neighbor of ours. Helen Hodges?”

Matt downed the last of his milk. “The old lady who lives upstairs?”

Surprise, surprise. “You know her?”

“Not really.” When he started to leave the kitchen, Kit reminded him to rinse his dishes and put them in the dishwasher. With a grunt of acquiescence he went to the sink and did as she asked. “I bussed her table a couple of times when she was in the diner. She slipped me a tip because she said the waitresses don’t always share with the guys who clear the tables.”

“She gave you money?”

“Yeah. Twenty bucks one time. I guess she had it to spare. She said to use it for school or to put gas in my car.” Matt turned and rolled his eyes, reminding Kit what a touchy subject that was. “If I had one.”

“I’m sorry that putting off buying a car is a sacrifice we had to make. I figured it was more important to keep a roof over your head. You know you can borrow mine if something important comes up. In the meantime, I’m saving, you’re saving—”

“When, Kit?”

“It’s not that big a hardship to be without a car right now. You work right here, you take the bus to school—”

“What about when I go to college? I’m not taking the bus to California.”

Kit counted off a couple of beats so she wouldn’t jump at the topic. “Are you still planning to go?” She counted off two more before pointing out, “If you don’t get your grades back up this semester, you’ll probably lose your scholarship. And you can’t raise those grades if you’re out all hours of the night and missing classes and not getting your work done. You’ve got a real gift, Matt, as smart as you are. I hate to see you throwing it all away.”

No comment.

She stuck the knife into the core of the apple to keep it safely away from her tense fingers. She had to ask. “Where were you last night? Say, after midnight? Two hours past when I asked you to be home?”

Matt’s to-hell-with-it grin warned her she wasn’t going to get any useful answers. “With friends.”

“What friends?”

“You wouldn’t know them.”

“I should. Invite them over sometime.”

“To do what? Wash dishes?”

“They could eat. I’d be happy to feed them.” Kit rose and joined him at the sink. “I thought you liked doing those fix-it projects around the apartment and diner. Do any of your friends enjoy tearing things apart and rebuilding them the way you do?”

He rolled his eyes. “Right. I’m gonna invite someone over to fix the toaster.”

She had to give him that one. “Okay, so that wouldn’t be my first choice for a fun night out, either. What sorts of things do you do with these friends I don’t know?”

“Play games, mostly.”

“Where?”

He slammed the door of the dishwasher shut. “Dammit, Kit, Mom and Dad never grilled me like this!”

She flinched at his burst of temper, but swallowed hard to keep her cool. That was pain she saw in the tight press of his mouth. The angry glare in his eyes was just the mask that couldn’t quite hide the truth. She wanted to reach up and touch his scruffy cheek. But somehow she had become the enemy and she wasn’t sure her comfort would be welcomed, so she stuck her fists down into the pockets of her robe instead. “They had seventeen years’ experience taking care of you—I’m new at this. I’m doing my best. I wish you’d help me, not work against me. You never acted like this when Mom and Dad were around.”

“Yeah, well, they’re not here, are they?” He scowled down at her.

“The diner is our home—”

“This place killed them!” He raked his fingers through his permanently unruly hair and stalked across the room. “You don’t know what it was like. You weren’t here to see them…like that. They were trapped. All the exits were blocked. There was nothing they could do but die.”

“Matt.” Enemy or not, Kit hurried across the room and wrapped her arms around his waist. He stiffly refused to respond, but when he didn’t pull away, Kit held on. “It was a terrible loss, a tragic accident. But it wasn’t anybody’s fault. I promise you, those smoke alarms and CO2 detectors you installed will give us all the warning we need. And Mr. Kronemeyer’s crew is putting sprinkler systems throughout the building. We’ll be perfectly safe.”

With a scoffing laugh, he pulled away. “A few gadgets won’t make things right. Haven’t you noticed things have changed since we were kids? You were gone for six years, sis. This isn’t the same place you left behind.”

“I know the neighborhood has gone downhill. But there are still good people here. You have to believe in that.” She wanted him to believe in her, in them. “It will never be the same without Mom and Dad. But you and I are still a family. We have to talk to each other. We need to be able to trust each other.”

“I need to get to school.”

Cinching the pink chenille tie tighter around her waist, Kit followed him to the back door where he shrugged into a sheepskin coat with frayed sleeves that were too short for his arms. “Where’s your new coat? The Chiefs jacket I gave you for Christmas?”

“Don’t know.”

“You don’t know? I spent a small fortune on that thing. It was what you wanted.” I know, I know. “Besides a car. So what happened to it?”

He hauled his book bag up onto his shoulder. “I’ll get it back.”

“That’s not what I asked.” She pulled the knit scarf he’d left behind off its hook and looped it around his neck. “Matt, last night Helen Hodges was attacked in the alley. The man who hurt her was wearing a red-and-gold Chiefs parka.”

He shooed her hands away. “So now you think I’m beating up old ladies in the alley?”

She hated to admit that, for a split second, the possibility had crossed her mind last night. She prayed she knew her brother better than that. “Of course it wasn’t you. But if she was handing out large chunks of cash, you might have told someone. Maybe the same someone you loaned your coat to?”

“No, he wouldn’t do that.”

“Who, Matt?” She retreated from the blast of cold air that hit her when he opened the back door. “I’m not accusing you of anything. I’m trying to understand why someone would hurt that woman. And why no one but…” She shook her head to dispel the vivid tactile memories that flooded her body with heat. I will repay my debt to you. She wasn’t ready to mention the tall, gruff-voiced mystery man at the hospital, or else she’d sound like the crazy, irresponsible sibling. “I’m trying to understand why no one seems to know her or where she lives. Why your coat may have been worn by one of the men who attacked her. Who attacked me! If you have answers, I want to hear them.”

“So you can report me to the police? I didn’t do anything wrong last night.”

“But you won’t say what you were doing. Or who you were doing it with.” Kit grabbed on to the door and asked again. “What happened to your coat?”

“I have to get to school. Before you jump my case about that, too.”

“Matt.” He was out the door. Kit stepped out onto the concrete stoop to keep his long, lazy stride in sight. “I need you at work at four-thirty. And tomorrow morning you meet with your counselor. I expect you to keep the appointment this week.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he muttered, ducking beneath the steel scaffolding and heading toward the street.

“And pull up your pants. There’s a dress code at school, remember? You’ve got a cute butt—you should show it off.” Even that teasing truth failed to get any more talk out of him. He was leaving without a backward glance. Flannel pajamas couldn’t keep the wintry breeze from blowing against her skin and raising goose bumps. “I love you.”

But he was gone. Kit hugged her arms around her middle and shivered. Cold as she was, alone as she felt, there was an odd heat centered between her shoulder blades that caused her to turn around and peer into the empty expanse of the alley behind her.

Maybe not so alone.

Was someone watching her? Had one of the workmen come early? Right. Like flannel pj’s and fuzzy slippers would merit a whistle or two.

She lifted her gaze to the parking garage on the opposite side. There weren’t even any cars moving there yet. There was no one else here. She was safe.

Getting grabbed from behind twice in the same morning made her paranoid, that was all.

Still, Kit hurried inside, unable to shake the eerie feeling of being watched until she locked the door behind her. Releasing the breath she didn’t know she’d been holding, she hustled her own butt to get showered and dressed and off to explore the building before visiting Helen.

Helen Hodges hadn’t just formed out of the mist. There had to be a tangible clue somewhere in the Sinclair Tower that would let Kit know where the woman belonged. There had to be something to tell her more about the mystery man she seemed to belong to.



WHAT WAS THAT WOMAN up to?

Damon propped his feet on the desk and leaned back, sipping his coffee and watching his first-floor neighbor chatting up the construction crew on a row of monitors. She’d already walked the halls on three floors, peeked into unused offices and invited herself into one of the model apartments.

She was certainly a curious specimen. Thorough and methodical in a way that Damon could relate to—friendly and outgoing in a way he was not. But what was she looking for? Though he couldn’t hear the words, he could read the nonverbal cues of posture and gestures, and tell she was asking questions.

About what? The building? The remodel? The attack? Helen? Him?

If he’d had half of this high-tech, personally enhanced security system installed throughout the building eighteen months ago, he’d have seen the enemy coming that night. He’d still have his original notes. He wouldn’t have had to build a new lab or play games with that hacker. He’d have the full use of two good hands and both eyes.

His wife wouldn’t be dead.

Damon inhaled deeply, carefully controlling his emotional response to all he had lost. He no longer allowed his thoughts to be clouded by sentimental attachments. Beyond Helen, of course.

That was excuse enough to acquaint himself with his first-floor neighbor. Helen would want to thank her, want to do something kind and generous to repay her. But until his housekeeper regained consciousness, Damon would evaluate this would-be friend for her. Though his security cameras had caught the vicious, faceless attackers on tape, Damon had seen the danger too late. Caught up in the throes of his nightmares, he’d failed to protect Helen when she’d needed him most.

He wouldn’t fail to protect her again.

If his first-floor neighbor proved to be as straightforward and caring as she appeared to be, then Damon would personally write a check for whatever thank-you gift Helen wished to bestow on her. But if she’d discovered Helen’s connection to the wealthy SinPharm empire and intended to take advantage of her grateful nature, then he’d have his executive liaison, Easting Davitz, close the woman’s restaurant and kick her out of the building.

But for now he was content to collect data and observe the subject in question. He’d organize the facts and determine his opinion of her later.

He already knew everything about Katherine Elizabeth Snow that a piece of paper could tell him. He set his coffee mug down on the stack of information his security team had pulled for him this morning. The printout said she was twenty-six, never married, had one brother in high school, and was a partner in a restaurant business she’d inherited from her late parents. She stood five-six, weighed a healthy 130 pounds, and was a practicum short of earning a Masters in criminal justice studies to go with her chemistry degree from Central Missouri State University.

As he watched her wave goodbye to the workers, he added a couple more facts to his list. Katherine Snow made people smile, and her worn blue jeans hugged a sweet, round bottom that was every bit as firm and sexy to look at as it had been to press against in the hospital lobby last night.

Damon jerked as if an unseen hand had slapped him in the face. Damn. Where had that thought come from?

“What are you thinking, Doc?” He warned himself away from the random memory that snuck in from his subconscious mind. Last night’s tussle had been about communication and maintaining his anonymity—not whether or not a thirty-nine-year-old man could still get his rocks off with a woman after more than a year of mourning and celibacy.

But before Damon could get his focus back around the fact that he was spying on Katherine Snow for Helen’s sake, and not his own baser interests, she disappeared into the stairwell, capturing his curiosity in a different way. “Now what?” He drifted closer to the monitor. “Where are you going?”

Mental note: add security cameras to stairwell.

He didn’t like being at a disadvantage, but instead of standing there like some adolescent fool, damning his left hand for having just enough functional nerve endings to remember what the swell of her breast had felt like in his unintended grasp, Damon turned his attention to a more familiar purpose. He crossed the lab and shut off the Bunsen burner beneath the variable ingredient of this morning’s test formula. The liquid was hot enough to destabilize the molecules and recombine them with the regeneration mixture he’d already synthesized. When the new formula cooled, he’d add it to a petri dish along with a few skin cells from a volunteer subject who shared the same allergic predisposition Miranda had exhibited, and see if normal, viable tissue would grow.

This time Miranda’s Formula would work.

“That’s right, Doc. Jinx it.” Inhaling deeply, Damon buried that twinge of emotion and turned his back on his work. He didn’t believe much in the power of positive thinking anymore. He believed in cold, hard facts. Either the formula would work or it wouldn’t. But he refused to hope.

Time to return to the security monitors and the less formal experiment at hand—his observational study of Katherine Snow. This time, he swore to remain purely objective.

But there was still no sign of her on any of the screens.

“Where are you?” An educated guess would indicate she’d continue her previous pattern and climb the stairs to the fifth floor. But unless she’d twisted an ankle, she should have shown up by now. “Unpredictable, hmm?”

Odd for a scientist. Maybe she was following some logical pattern of her own design. Unexpected. But far more engaging than waiting for a mixture to cool.

With a few quick keystrokes on the computer, he pulled up the cameras for the sixth and seventh floors. With no movement detected on either level, Damon switched to views of the lower floors. There was plenty of activity to observe in the lobby, where his current contractor, J. T. Kronemeyer, was arguing on the phone wedged between his shoulder and ear, and handing out assignments to his foremen.

But no Katherine Snow.

Damon typed in more commands. He accepted the challenge she unknowingly presented. “I’ll find you.”

Eighth floor, ninth floor. Where had she gone?

He absently massaged his brow bone, easing the phantom eye strain that settled behind the patch masking the left side of his face. “Come out, come out, wherever you…” Damon smiled and blew up the image on screen three. “Gotcha.”

Breathing deeply after what must have been a quick, steady climb, his subject stepped out into the hallway on the thirteenth floor.

Feeling something akin to victory coursing through his veins, Damon raised his mug to his unwitting opponent and drained the last of his coffee. As he watched Katherine Snow squat down to study something on the tile floor, her quizzical expression piqued his own curiosity.

What was she doing on a cordoned-off floor, anyway? One that Kronemeyer’s renovation crews hadn’t even gotten to yet? The previous company Easting had hired, and subsequently fired for too many delays and “misplaced” supplies, had replaced the exterior windows, stripped the doors and added structural reinforcements to bring the settling walls up to code. But the thirteenth floor belonged to a different phase of the remodeling project. It wouldn’t see any finishing work for several months. Miss Snow had no business being there.

Yet there was something beyond his camera angle that caught her eye. She stood and made the odd choice to walk along the edge of the tiled hallway. Why not take the middle path others had used?

Others?

“Curious.” Damon typed as he sank onto the stool in front of the monitors. Was that…? He squinted his good eye and blew up the image on the screen. Footprints. In the thick layer of plaster dust that coated the floor. Fresh prints. Recent.

And Katherine Snow was following them.

“No, no,” he admonished the monitor, wishing he could transmit some sort of telepathic warning to her. “You don’t belong there.”

Neither did the footprints.

“Be smart. Go back.” Damon was already shrugging out of his lab coat. Had she heard a sound earlier? Was she following someone? Before any definitive answers could form, she turned a corner and disappeared from sight. “Damn.” He tossed the coat and pulled up the next camera to find a shot of her. “Come back to me.” He was searching. Searching. “C’mon.”

Was that a door? Two? Three, hanging back in place? As Damon panned down the hallway, he discovered that some unsanctioned work had taken place. Floors thirteen through twenty-five should have been stripped down to bare bones. No way had Kronemeyer’s crew gotten ahead of schedule. Since that electrician’s unfortunate death, the missing crew member and the superstitious rumblings about the curse of landing a job at the Sinclair Tower, Kronemeyer’s men couldn’t even catch up. So who’d authorized replacing the doors?

“Where are you? Yes!” Damon shook a triumphant fist when her fresh-scrubbed face reappeared.

She was trailing her fingers along the wall, slowing her step as she reached the second door. Damon’s pulse quickened to a bolder beat, feeling the same edgy anticipation reflected on her face.

“Don’t do it.” But his fingers were turning in the air, right along with hers, as she reached for the doorknob. He was just as curious as she to know what lay on the other side.

The instant the door swung open, two arms snaked out and latched on to her wrist.

Damon jumped. “What the hell?”

Man’s hands. Suit-coat sleeves. Dragging her into the room out of the camera shot.

Damon cursed and ran from the lab. He swiped his key card through the security lock that accessed his private elevator and typed in the activation code. Once in, he pressed thirteen over and over until the doors slid shut.

Objectivity be damned. Katherine Snow was in trouble.

And he owed it to Helen to keep her safe.




Chapter Four


Grubby hands closed over her wrist and Kit screamed.

“Shh! Get in here,” a strident voice whispered.

“Let go of me!” The door slammed. The hands dragged Kit to the center of the room. She stumbled over a bunched-up rug. The foul odor of sweat and booze stung her nose, granting her recognition an instant before her assailant released the hard pinch on her bones. “Henry!”

“Shh.” The old man with the grizzled face and bulbous nose urged her aside with a placating hand. He blinked his watery eyes, trying to decide which one to spy through the peephole with. “I’m planning a surprise.”

She’d certainly gotten one.

Relief surged through Kit, replacing panic with confusion and concern. This was definitely not what she’d expected to find in her search for Helen Hodges’s apartment. Rubbing the chafe marks on her wrist, she assessed Henry Phipps’s frayed, wrinkled suit and distant expression, and wondered how an addled old man could have such a painful grip. “You can’t just grab someone like that. I thought I was being abducted.”

Now that she knew she was in no real danger, Kit took a closer look at her surroundings. The apartment walls had been stripped down to its two-by-fours, revealing hanging wires and rusted switch boxes that looked as though they hadn’t been functional for years. And though the window overlooking the parking garage still bore its factory sticker, there was nothing else new or clean about the rooms. A trio of well-worn area rugs covered the stained hardwood floor, while a motley assortment of freight boxes and a metal folding chair passed for furniture. Kit cringed at the sad clues around her. “Do you live here?”

“Shh.” Henry pressed a finger to his lips and smiled. “She’ll be home soon. It’s a surprise.”

“So you said.” Kit frowned as Henry puttered about the room, straightening what little there was. “Didn’t you spend last night at the shelter?”

He tossed her a ratty pillow that he’d probably fished out of a Dumpster. “Have a seat.” She’d pass. “Can I get you a drink?”





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