Covert M.D. (8 page)

So she and Rathe were thinking along similar lines. Nia smiled and whispered. “Speaking of which, I had a chat with Logan.”

The air between them chilled. Rathe drew back an inch, his face blank. “Logan?”

“Assistant Director Hart.” She frowned, stung by Rathe’s sudden withdrawal, and by the unstated implication that she was being unprofessional by using the man’s first name. “You know—young thirty-something, handsome.” High up in the Boston General food chain.

“I know who he is, and I’ll thank you to remember that I’m the senior investigator. When I want the administration to know something, I’ll put it in my report.” Rathe turned away, shoulders stiff. “Come on. As long as you’re here, you can help me search. I have a feeling Cadaver Man was down here today for a reason, and I’d sure as hell like to know what it was.”

Perplexed and oddly disappointed that he hadn’t wanted to hear her theory, Nia stood in the damp, dim
hallway and watched him walk away. What had just happened? For a moment there, he had seemed almost…

Jealous?

Ridiculous. She scoffed at herself. Hadn’t she gotten over romanticizing the man a long time ago?

Apparently not.

Then he turned the corner to an intersecting corridor, leaving her alone in the noisy quiet. Nerves prickled to life on the back of her neck, and she rubbed her left eye when the skin around it tingled.

Resisting the urge to call him back, she strode toward the second hallway. She didn’t run, but she didn’t dawdle, either. Rathe seemed certain that Cadaver Man wasn’t down there in one of the mazelike hallways.

But Nia wasn’t so sure.

THEY SEARCHED the laundry subbasement for several hours and found exactly nothing. There was no sign of Cadaver Man or Short Whiny Guy, and no convenient stash of pilfered supplies awaiting transport out of the hospital to destinations unknown.

Even Nia’s left eyelid had been quiet, which was both good and bad news. Good because that fleeting feeling of being watched had faded the moment she rejoined Rathe. Bad because it meant they were on the wrong track.

In uneasy accord they turned down yet another dimly lit corridor flanked with yet another phalanx of nondescript metal doors.

“You take that side.” He gestured her to the left.

Nia nodded without a word. They hadn’t spoken much. It seemed they’d said everything that needed to be said to each other. And if the thought was accompanied by a thump of disappointment, it was only because of her foolish fantasies from years ago, when she’d imagined she and Rathe would one day work side by side as partners. Lovers.

The reality was nothing like those dreams had been. The fantasy had been a silly amalgam of fleeting touches and hot, whispered promises. Of partnership and communication. The reality was damp, echoing hallways and strained silence.

And why was she thinking of this at all? He’d pushed her away. Worse, he’d pushed her father away when it counted most.

That was something Nia shouldn’t forgive.

Repeating that thought in her mind, though it didn’t echo as loudly as it had two days earlier, she pushed open the first door to begin the search. Rathe moved off down the hall while she checked her small room for anything suspicious—like a pile of the missing items from Talbot’s list. But no such luck. The small space was a storage area of sorts, with row upon row of empty metal shelves. She sighed, locked the door and moved on to the next, preternaturally aware of Rathe’s exact position relative to hers.

With her previous partners, Nia had consciously kept tabs on them in case they needed her help or she needed theirs. But with Rathe…she knew where he was at every moment. It was as though special McKay receptors had
prickled to life on her skin, alerting her to his every motion, his every expression. Though she had her back to him, she could swear he was pensive.

Her left eyelid twitched.

“Hey!” Nia jerked a hand to her eye.

“What?” He was at her side in an instant. “What have you got?”

“I…I’m not sure. What were you looking at?” She prowled slowly up the corridor to where he’d been standing. He trailed her too close, and she almost asked him to back off. To give her room.

“I was checking out the end of the hallway. Something bothers me about it, but I can’t quite figure out what.” He moved past her and touched the wall with gentle, questing fingers.

Suddenly a long-suppressed sensory image of those fingers moving over her body swamped Nia. She pressed a hand to her jittery stomach and inhaled sharply.

A tendril of scent invaded her nostrils, sweet and tangy. Horribly familiar.

Blood. Death.

“Rathe, do you smell it?” She was almost unaware of him as she followed the scent to the third-to-last door.

“Nia, don’t. Let me.” His low, urgent words were lost to the tic of her eyelid and a feeling of impending panic. She shook off his restraining hand, opened the door, flicked on the light—

And screamed.

Chapter Five

Nia staggered back, away from the corpse. The man’s throat was slashed from ear to ear. His clothes were soaked with blood, though the room was clean. And his eyes…his eyes had been cut from his head.

“Oh, God! It’s Short Whiny Guy.” Without thinking, without caring about what he thought of her, Nia grabbed on to Rathe and buried her face in his shirt, barely noticing when his arms came up and held her hard.

He cursed and toed the door shut with his boot before he bundled her toward the center of the building, half dragging her to the service elevators. “Come on. Let’s get you out of here.”

Nia let herself be shepherded for a moment. Then she dug in her heels and pulled away, stomach roiling. “Like hell. We need to stay down here and secure the scene. We have to call the cops so they can look at…at…” She held the back of her hand against her mouth, hoping the pressure could keep the nausea in.

She’d seen dead men before—the bodies of sick patients, victims of natural disasters, even soldiers killed
by enemy fire. But this was different. This was cold. The throat wound was a single clean slice. The cuts that had removed Short Whiny Guy’s eyes had been neat and precise. Almost surgical. Twin trickles of blood had run from the stark dark holes in his head and dried on his cheeks.

Like tears.

“Nia.” Rathe’s voice was quiet. Gentle. “You don’t have to be here. I’ll take you upstairs. We can call the others from there.”

She stepped away and breathed through her mouth so she wouldn’t smell the death. But it lingered, coating the insides of her nostrils and throat like bile. “I’ll go up and call. You stay here with the body. If we leave and the killer comes back…”

They could lose the evidence that proved this was more than a few missing drugs and a cluster of transplant rejections. Something was going on at Boston General. Something deadly.

But Rathe shook his head. “He knows who we are, Nia. I don’t want you going anywhere alone. Not now.”

She didn’t bother to argue, merely lifted her chin. “Then we both stay.”

He held her eyes for a moment, then nodded. “Fine. We both stay.”

When he turned away and punched a string of numbers into his phone, Nia let out the breath she’d been holding. She glanced down the hall, toward the room where they’d found Short Whiny Guy. She closed her eyes against the memory of the gaping bloody smile be
neath his chin and the holes where his eyes should have been. He’d been left there for them to find, she was sure of it. But why? As a message?

Or a warning.

A FEW HOURS LATER Rathe and Nia met with the administrators and the cops in Director Talbot’s office.

“I think we should turn the entire investigation over to the police,” Logan said. “No offense to HFH,” he nodded at Rathe and didn’t meet his eyes, “but this is already beyond what we had envisioned.”

The clock said 6:00 a.m. Rathe was bone tired, and if he was feeling it, Nia must be close to dropping. But being Nia, she’d refused to show her fatigue. She’d led the detectives to the dead man and watched as the corpse was photographed, bagged and wheeled out onto the loading dock for the body wagon.

Now, hours later, she was repeating the whole story once again for Director Talbot, the two Chinatown detectives and Assistant Director Hart—who had slid his chair closer to hers when he thought nobody was looking.

“And what had you envisioned?” She glared at Talbot. “That we’d come in, poke around for a few days and find nothing? Maybe the bad guys would get nervous? The supplies would stop disappearing and your survival percentages would miraculously increase?”

Though Rathe’s gut still twisted at the memory of Nia’s face when she’d run to him and clung, his lips twitched when Talbot frowned.

Score one for HFH. That’s exactly what the director had thought.

“Listen here, Dr. French,” Talbot began, only to be neatly interrupted by the younger of the two detectives.

“You can rest assured, gentlemen,” Detective Peters’s eyes flickered to Nia, “and lady, that we will actively pursue the murder of Arnold Grimsby.” That had been the name finally attached to Short Whiny Guy. He’d had his license on him, but no ID. His name hadn’t popped up in the hospital databases, which meant he didn’t work at Boston General.

Yet he’d carried a hospital master key.

Rathe shifted in his chair. This was turning into a bigger case than he’d expected. At this point he’d be glad to hand the whole mess over to the cops.

But Nia pounced. “You said you’d investigate the murder. What about the missing supplies? The transplant rejections? It’s all connected.”

The detective frowned. “We can’t be sure the murder is connected. Disappearing supplies are small potatoes, and a slight bump in transplant deaths isn’t going to ring the chimes of our superiors. Though we’ll keep your problems in mind, we’re going to have to focus on the murder.” He glanced at his partner, Sturgeon, who had remained in the back of the room, quietly sucking on a peppermint and observing the proceedings like a character from an Agatha Christie novel.

Sturgeon nodded and shifted the candy to his cheek. “Between budget cuts and man hours, we can’t promise much.”

“But Grimsby’s
eyes were cut out!
” Nia slashed a finger at the older detective. “Doesn’t that worry you?”

“Murder always worries me, Dr. French.” Sturgeon’s tired eyes were kind. “And, yeah, it’s important. Maybe he saw something he shouldn’t have. Maybe the killer wanted a souvenir.” He pushed away from the wall. “Leave that investigating to us. And watch each other’s backs. The guy who jumped Dr. French yesterday isn’t talking—and he has himself a
very
expensive lawyer.”

A junkie with a hotshot attorney. A dead man with a hospital master key. Rathe didn’t like the connections his gut was drawing.

“I’m confused,” Logan said, glancing between Nia and Rathe. “I thought the guy yesterday wanted money.”

Peters inclined his head. “Dr. French’s attacker is in custody, but he’s not talking. It was probably just a mugging.”

But when Peters glanced over, Rathe could see that neither of them believed that. He relaxed slightly, sensing an ally in the young detective. The young
married
detective.

“What if the attack was staged to keep me from seeing something?” Nia glanced from Talbot to Hart and back. “I was supposed to observe a rare-tissue-type transplant. What if the attack was meant to keep me away from the operating theater?”

Talbot half rose from behind his enormous desk. His eyes hardened. “Dr. French,
I
performed that surgery, and I resent the implication.” The director of transplant medicine shot a fulminating glance at Rathe and the detectives.

Nia waited a beat, then quietly replied, “I meant no disrespect. But I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t ask the questions.”

Talbot harrumphed and sat back. “Yes, well. I know how much this investigation must mean to you, Dr. French, after what your father went through.” He glanced at his watch. “Now, if you’ll all excuse me, I’m presenting early rounds.”

And just that quickly the meeting was over. When the others filed out, Rathe paused in the office, his mind locked on Talbot’s comment about Nia’s father. Tony had died of a heart attack.

Hadn’t he?

Rathe caught the transplant director as he tried to slip out the back door of his office. “What does Nia’s father have to do with this investigation?”

Brief irritation flashed in the older man’s eyes, a strange-seeming response from an administrator whose department was linked to a murder. But just as quickly Talbot’s expression shifted to harried worry. “There isn’t a direct connection.” He glanced at his watch again, making it clear he was late. “And my knowledge of her history is bound by doctor-patient confidentiality.” He opened the door but paused before escaping through it. “However, you might want to ask yourself why Dr. French is on this case. And why she won’t give it up.”

Then he was gone, leaving Rathe wondering that very thing. He had assumed it was her innate drive, or perhaps her desire to show him up. But what if it was more? What if it was personal?

Then she’d be even more likely to endanger herself in pursuit of the truth.

On a curse, he spun and headed down the hallway after her. Damn it, he wasn’t going to stand by and watch another partner die on a personal crusade.

He found her deep in conversation with Logan Hart. The doctor’s tawny elegance countered her petite darkness nicely. He was young, steady and had a job that would bring him home for dinner safely every night.

He was everything Tony had once wanted for his daughter.

Rathe clenched his jaw when Nia nodded, smiled and parted from Hart with a half wave. Her voice carried when she said, “See you tonight, then.”

Edgy irritation spiked through Rathe when she joined him, and they walked down the hall shoulder to shoulder. “Great. That’s just what I need.” They stopped outside her new office, and he cursed, not caring that they were attracting attention. “Did it occur to you that the middle of your first official investigation is
not
the time to start a romance?”