Books by Maggie Shayne (2 page)

On top was an eight-by-ten color photo of an elderly man with snowy hair and coal chips for eyes.

Maggie $hayne "Alexander Holt," D.C. intoned. He was all business now.

"Until six months ago he was a research scientist in the employ of Uncle Sam.

Was working on Gulf War Syndrome, trying to find out what our boys were exposed to over there that's making so many of them sick. " D.C. cleared his throat.

"That's classified, by the way. According to the government, they were exposed to nada and their symptoms have nothing to do with their tours of duty."

"Hurray for the red, white and blue," Torch muttered. He flipped the photo over, then sucked in a breath. The next photo looked as if it ought to be autographed and sent to some drooling fan. Except for the white lab coat, the woman looked like a starlet or a model. Tall, slender. Perfectly straight jet hair that gleamed all the way to her hips, pulled back and 'held with a barrette. Huge brown eyes and full lips. But she looked at the camera as if half-afraid of it. As if she resented its invasion of her privacy, her life. She seemed almost to be drawing herself back from it, and her eyes were wary.

"Who is she?" His voice was a whisper, and even as he asked the question, he was thinking that eyes like those belonged on a wild thing, something untouched by the poison of society. A doe, hidden away in a virgin forest, never seen by man.

He blinked and gave his head a shake. Where the hell was all the fairy-tale crap coming from?

"Holt's daughter, Alexandra," D.C. supplied.

"She's an M.D. She works at a clinic for low-income types, sees lots of AIDS patients. Her father raked in decent money working for the government. She works for peanuts, sometimes for nothing. At least, she did until six months ago."

Torch nodded, listening, absorbing the information. "It's ironic, really. Here she is trying to help people survive the plague of the twentieth century, while dear o' Dad's busy developing a new and improved version."

"They don't get along?"

 
"That's the kicker. Sources say she worships the ground he walks on."

Torch felt his eyes narrow as he studied the photo. He searched the bottomless, velvet brown eyes for answers and found none. The only things he could detect in those eyes were wariness and hurt. A dull pain that had been there so long she didn't remember being without it.

He recognized' that look. He saw it every morning in the mirror.

For just a second he wondered what had put the pain in such a beautiful pair of eyes. It didn't belong there.

"Six months-ago, out of the blue, Alexander Holt turned in his resignation. His daughter gave notice at the clinic, and the two of them vanished without a trace.~ Since his work Was semitive, his disappearance set off plenty of alarm bells. When the research lab discovered every one of Alexander Holt's files missing, and all his work erased from the computer he used, every diskette gone, they got suspicious and started going over his work for a clue. The man is known for being brilliant, a freaking genius. But he wasn't so smart he didn't leave a clue behind. Seems the modern-day answer to Einstein was a little bit absentminded."

"A walking stereotype?"

"Nah," D.C. said.

"He isn't your likable, nutty professor, the way Jerry, Lewis was in the movie. The guy's cold as ice, from what we've learned. They say he refused to attend his daughter's graduation from medical school. One of his former colleagues told us he called her degree worthless because she hadn't attended an Ivy League university."

Torch flinched, glancing again at the brown eyes, thinking maybe he had an inkling now about where all that pain was coming from.

"Anyway, his few flaws paid off, because a page from one of his notebooks was found under his desk." D.C. nodded toward the stack Torch held.

Torch set the photo of Alexandra Holt aside, though he didn't want to.

For some reason, studying those brown eyes had become addictive.

He tore his gaze away and stared in stead at a photocopy of a sheet of ordinary notebook paper, and a few lines of the worst handwriting he'd ever seen in his life. He squinted, trying to make it out.

"... highly contagious during the incubation period, but noncommunicable after that, and so far, always fatal. Released, this synthetic virus could very well annihilate the population of a small country in a matter of weeks. And with the formula I've developed, anyone with access to a laboratory could produce the virus in quantity."

Torch felt a little sick to his stomach as he laid the paper on the desk.

"See that notation on t~e bottom?"

Torch glanced down at the row of letters, numbers and symbols, then up at D.C. again.

"Looks like it's written in some kind of code."

"We thought so, too. Ran it by the boys in Cryptography."

"And?"

"And they say it might be a coincidence... but apply the right key, and it reads "Sting of death, from desert sands." " Torch nodded.

"Scorpion."

"Right. And the chances of that being coincidental are slim to none.

So we have to assume Scorpion knows about Alexander Holt's little discovery. "

"And we both know he's either on someone's payroll already, or planning to auction it off to the highest bidder," Torch added.

"Scares the crap outta me, too," D.C. said.

"That's why you have to get it first."

Torch swallowed hard, then he nodded. Alexander Holt might have run, but there would be no place he could hide. That modern-day Dr.

Frankenstein better hope to-God Torch found him before Scorpion did.

The bastard would make Mary Shelley's mob scene look like a walk in the park.

But it would be the last thing Scorpion ever did. Because even though finding the formula for this virus was probably the most important mission Torch had ever under taken, he was making it priority number two. His foremost objective here was vengeance. He was going to find that bastard, and when he did, Scorpion was going to pay for murdering the three most important people in Toreh's life. He was going to pay with everything in him.

The wind outside moaned a little louder than before. It wasn't like Alexandra to be afraid of the wind. Then again, it wasn't like her to he this desperately lonely. . Father had been gone for five months now. And she should he used to the loneliness. She told herself that she hadn't really been any less alone when he was alive than she was right now. He'd barely spoken to her, and never talked.

But she'd loved him. Adoredhim, really. He'd been all she'd had.

Except, of course, for Max. His furry body pressed against her shin as she stood staring out the window into the night. The darkness was different here. Star-spangled and natural. Alive and real. Nothing like night had been in the city. The night here spoke in whispers, but at least it spoke. That was more than her beloved father had done.

The fact that her father had never shown any signs of loving her back didn't bother her, though, she reminded herself. She was good at reminding herself of it. She'd had a lot of practice. Father had been a genius, a special, one-of a-kind man. Brilliant. It wasn't his fault his mind was too busy seeking solutions to the world's problems to allow time for emotional nonsense like love.

At least, that's what he'd been too busy with for most of her life.

Those last few weeks. she'd begun to wonder whether he'd had any mind left at all. It was as if he'd gone completely insane all in the space of twenty-four hours.

She'd never forget her shock when he'd walked into her shoebox apmha~ent--he hadn't bothered visiting since she'd moved in--and announced that he was leaving his job and going into isolation. She'd almost choked.

"You can come along with me, Alexandra, if you want to. And if you don't, that's fine, too. Just know that once I leave this city, you'll never see me or hear from me again. No one will."

She'd blinked in utter shock.

"Dad, what are you talking about Why am you" -- "Don't ask foolish questions," he'd snapped. And she remembered searching his eyes, wondering if he was in the middle of a stroke or something.

"I can't answer them anyway. You know my work is sensitive."

Sensitive. As in classified. But as far as she knew, he'd been doing nothing more than researching Gulf War Syndrome. And yes, that was supposed to be classified, but he hadn't seemed concerned about that when he'd told her . months ago, over dinner, when she'd been all but begging him to make some effort at dialogue. He'd talked about his work, of course. For Alexander Holt, there was nothing else.

"Are you coming, or not?"

She'd been worried about him, thinking maybe he needed to cheek into a,hospital for some tests. And half-convinced she'd be able to talk some sense into him before they spent more than a night or two away.

One thing was for sure, she wasn't going to let him go off on his own.

It had seemed to Alexandra that for the first time in her entire life, her father needed her. She'd waited so long to feel that she was more than just an inconvenience and a constant source of disappointment in this great man's life. She wouldn't have wished it to happen like this, of course, but the fact remained, he needed her.

She wouldn't let him down. Not this time.

"Well, of course I'm coming with you," she'd told him. "Then pack."

"What? Now?"

"Right now," he'd barked.

"Call those do-gooders you work with and tell them you need a leave. But don't say why or where you're going."

"Where am I going?" She'd been getting more and more afraid for her father, more and more certain he was in the grips of some sudden onset of senility or a blood clot in the brain.

"Dad, maybe you ought to see a doctor."

"You are a doctor. You've got your two-bit degree from your two-bit school to prove it, don't you?"

She remembered those harsh words, the pain they'd caused. It truly had devastated him when she'd been turned down by eve~j Ivy League school on his list. But her grades just hadn't been good enough.

She'd swallowed the sting his words inflicted and cleared her throat.

"Maybe you'd better tell me why you feel you have to go into hiding?"

"Someone migh come after me, Alexandra. And that's all I can say."

He'd refused to tell her more. Caught up in her cone eva for her father, Alexandra had accompanied him to this massive tumor on the face of 'the Adirondacks. Aunt Sophie's Gothic mansion fit into the wilderness of this place like a square peg in a round hole. But here they'd come and here they'd remained. Father had made some veiled comment that no one was likely to trace them there, since it had been left to Mother before she'd married him, and the deed was still filed under Mother's maiden name.

Alexandra hadn't severed all ties, though. She hadn't cleaned out her bank accounts the way her father had ordered her to do. And she hadn't canceled her credit cards,"

 
though she had tucked them away in the back of her wallet, promising herself she wouldn't use them until he was himself again. She imagined he would have badgered her into canceling them eventually, but the fact was. He'd died. He'd died in his sleep one night, just three weeks after they'd arrived here. And Alexandra had been surprised to find that he'd made a will and left it with an attorney in the one-horse town of Pine Lake, at the base of this mountain. He'd had the will drawn up the day after they'd arrived here. Almost as if he'd known. But he couldn't have known. Other than his ibited no symptoms whatsoever.

Alexandra had suggested an autopsy . but both her father's lawyer and the county coroner had objected to the idea so vehemently that she'd backed down. The letter with her father's will stated that he detested the idea of his body being autopsied, and with the lack of any real symptoms, Alexandra had been hesitant to go against his wishes. The coroner's report stated "natural causes" had killed her father. And despite her nagging misgivings, she'd concurred. It was, she'd decided, what her father would have wanted. He'd made that clear.

Again. almost as if he'd known. But he would have told her if he'd known, wouldn't he?

No. Probably not. Her father never told her much of anything. Except for his constant reminders of what a huge disappointment she was to him.

One disappointment after another. All beginning the day her mother had died giving birth to her.

She'd thought, in the end, that maybe by coming out here with him, caring for him through whatever crisis, real or imagined, he was having, she would finally earn his respect. But there hadn't been time.

After he'd died, after she'd carried out the instructions in his will to the letter, having his body cremated and the ashes sealed in a vault at the cemete~, she'd stayed here in these mountains.

 
Despite his attitude toward her, her father had left her a wealthy woman. Mainly, Alexandra assumed, because he had no one else to name as his heir. So there'd been no need to go back. To face daily failures, to feel inadequate, to wish she could be more than she was.

There was simply no need. She'd been feeling the effects of burnout even before she'd left the city. So much death. so much hopelessness facing her every day. She'd been handling it all well enough, until her recent physical exam. The results had been one more blow to her self-esteem. A staggering one.

She liked it here. Isolated and alone. No expectations to fulfill, no demands to be met--or to fall short of meeting.

The house tended to creak in response to the wind outside. It was as if the wind moaned a question and then the house creaked an answer.

What were they saying to each other? she wondered. What secrets were they sharing?

But that Was just her imagination working overtime again. Too much time out here alone, she supposed. Gave her mind too much time to think.

Gave her heart too much time to regret that she'd never been able to live up to the greatness of her father. And to mourn the fact that she'd never known a mother's love . and she'd never know a chlld's.

She paced away from the window, letting the sheer silvery curtain fall back into place, bending to stroke Max's head. There was nothing out there. Nothing. Just tree. covered mountains and lakes and a speck-on-the-map town a few miles away where old men still sat around a checkerboard in the general store, chewing and spitting.

She ought to try to go back to sleep, she supposed. She turned toward the' curving staircase and started up it.

Then she stopped dead in her tracks and listened to what sounded absurdly lilce an upstairs window scraping open.

A heartbeat later, the doorbell chimed, and her stomach turned queasy.

Licking her lips, she tried to decide which to investigate first. She turned toward the door, wondering who could be way up here in the middle of nowhere, so late at night. She never had visitors.

A hunter who'd gotten lost, she told herself. Or maybe one of the locals needed something. Still, the hairs on her nape stood erect, and her sweat-dampened hand on the doorknob trembled a little as she turned it and pulled the door open.

The door opened slowly, without so much as a "who is it?" first. And Torch found himself face-to-face with the woman whose photo he'd studied, memorized.

She was tall, slender. Her long, jet hair hung loosely, all the way to the waist of the sensible white flannel nightgown she wore. Her feet were long and narrow, and bare right now, beneath the hem.

He'd saved her eyes for last deliberately, knowing they would be a letdown. There was no way they could be as arresting in their mystery as they'd been in that photo. He looked up . and saw that they were.

No. More arresting. Stunning. V~lde and dark brown, filled with questions and a nameless fear. The wariness he'd seen in the photo still haunted her big eyes. She reminded him of a wild deer backed into a corner. And beyond the skittish fear, he saw the pain. More intense, more real, more clearly branded in the brown velvet than he could have imagined.

Her skin looked softer, smoother, up close than it had in the photo.

And when her scent reached him, he flinched at its sub fie allure.

He forcefully tore his gaze from her, reminding himself of his mission, and looked past her, scanning the dim interior of the house and seeing no one else. Still, he hadn't liked the looks of that black van parked at the end of the dirt path that passed for a road.

He'd only managed to track the Holts down today. Today, Alexandra Holt had made a mistake. She'd used her credit card. first time since she and her father had disappeared over six months ago, according to the company. She'd bought some supplies at a general store in the nearby town. According to the clerk, she usually paid in cash but had apparently left her billfold at home. She'd reluctantly used the plastic rather than make another trip. ~ Torch had been to that general store, but when he'd asked the old proprietor where he could find Alexandra Holt, the man had replied, "Looks like Ms. Holt is in for some company tonight, then. You're the second one to stop and ask for directions up there."

Scorpion's resources would be the same as Torch's. He'd know enough to keep tabs on those credit cards. And he had enough people on his payroll to help him pull it off.

"Is there something I can do for you?" she asked. Torch blinked again.

Her voice was like smoke, dark and deep and soft. She didn't look like a doctor. She looked like an angel. A frightened angel.

She stared up at him, waiting, and he had to jerk his gaze forcefully away from those eyes. Damn, they ought to be certified as lethal weapons, "I'm looking for Prof. ess~r Alexander Holt."

There was a quick widening of her doe eyes. A jolt in the tall, flannel-ensconced body. But she recovered' fast and tilted her head to one side. 'Never heard of him. Sorry. "

He narrowed his gaze at the reaction he'd seen in her when he'd said the name. Fear. No. doubt about that. A new fear. of him, He had to remind him. lf that the. angelic look of the woman, the innocent brown eyes, were only the surface. A diversion, though an effective one.

She knew all about her father's formula. She must, or she wouldn't be up here in the middle of nowhere with him.

"You'll find" ' he said slowly, "that it's not a real good idea to lie to me... Alexandra."

She blinked rapidly, drew in a shallow breath.

"Who are you? How do you know... ?" She glanced over her shoulder again. Third time she'd done that. Was the professor standing behind her, coaching her? Or someone else? She cleared her throat.

"My father isn't here," she said at last, as one hand gripped the door, pushing it shut.

"Sorry, honI'm not buying it." He moved her aside without much effort and shouldered his way into the house. Then he blinked again, and did a double take. The place was dark, lit only by candlelight, and the candles were sc~nted. The aroma and the flickering shadows made him think of slow, soul-stirring sex. There was a fire crackling from the huge marble fireplace on one wall. A big plush rug in front of it added to the pictures swirling in his mind. Her legs, under that nightgown, were long. Endless, he imagined. Slender, in keeping with the do image.

He blinked, erasing the erotic thoughts ~ from his mind. What was she, some kind of witch or something? Were thos candles laced with a mind-altering drug? Or maybe an aphrodisiac?

Or maybe, he admitted silently, his libido was just picking a lousy time to come back to life after its long slumber. He didn't think that was ve~ likely, but he supposed it was as likely as drugged candles.

He focused once more on the task at hand and continued scanning the house, from a more objective point of view. The one thing he didn't see was the professor.

"So, where is he?" As he said it, he took a deliberate step toward her.

She shook her head rapidly, backing away from him, brown eyes wider than ever.

"I'm--I'm calling the police. And then I'm going to turn my dogs loose, and" -- "You're not calling anyone, because there's no phone up here.

And I can tell you that I'll be a lot easier to deal with than whoever comes through that door next." When he said it, her eyes jerked toward the darkened archway and the base of a broad, curving staircase beyond it, but came right back to him.