Damned If You Don't (14 page)

“Did I interrupt something?”

Sam’s heart sped up. “As a matter of fact, you did.”

“I’m sure you’ll find this much more important,” the voice replied with haughty eagerness and a touch of, jeez, what sounded like someone being really interested in his sex life. Sam stared at his phone for a moment before placing the thing back against his ear.
The client is always right.

“I’m sure I will too. What did you find out?”

“Dr. Lee, Dr. Mackenzie’s graduate advisor. You’ll find him at Emory University in Atlanta.”

Sam frowned. His client had taken him at his word. Interesting. “What about him?”

“Dr. Mackenzie seems to have continued corresponding with him since she left school. In a recent e-mail she sent him, she hinted at needing his help on a problem she was having.”

“How’d you find that out?”

“She copied her boss on the e-mail.”

“When?”

“About three weeks ago. Before she ran away.”

“Did she send him the data?”

“From what I can tell, no. She was very vague. But he may be the one you’ve been talking about, the one she might be running to for help.”

Very interesting. “Thanks. I’ll put some men on him right away.”

“Glad I could do your job for you.”

That pissed him off, and Sam felt the burn rise inside again. Only this time, his stomach didn’t hurt. He was seriously getting tired of people pulling his strings.

“You’re welcome.”

He snapped his phone shut.
Not.

Sam walked down the apartment building hallway deep in thought. He punched the Down button several times with impatience. Could Jack really be slipping this bad? Or maybe his partner didn’t know.

Neither answer fit the man he knew like his own brother. That meant Jack knew about this Dr. Lee. But if he were Jack, he wouldn’t go within ten thousand miles of the man, thinking that it would be too obvious. Damn it. Now there were more players in this mess.

Sam stepped through the doors, catching a whiff of the woman’s perfume lingering on his clothes. He frowned. It was time to take control of the situation. Before all hell broke loose. Before the hell that was certain to break loose got someone else killed.

Time to end this fiasco once and for all.

* * * *

Morgan stretched, wondering if her neck would ever straighten again. She listened to the bones crack with a rueful grin. Eleven hours in a car with an hour for pit stops and a burger off the dollar menu left her tired and cranky and more than a little carsick.

“How are you feeling?” she asked Jack as they got out of the car.

“Tired. How about you?”

“You don’t want to know. But probably better than you. I told you I would drive.”

He gave her a halfhearted grin. “And I told you I was fine.”

“Control freak.”

“And that makes you—”

He reached out and captured her hand in his as they began walking toward the front entrance of an apartment-type hotel, which Jack had chosen in case of budget constraints. She couldn’t get over how his caring made her feel. In her other hand swung a bag holding a couple of sweatshirts and tees from the rest stop they hit in New Jersey and some essentials they purchased from a pharmacy chain once they’d reached Massachusetts.

They checked in, and Jack fell on the bed as soon as Morgan shut the door. She helped him peel off his shirt and told him to lie down on his stomach while she rubbed a thousand miles of driving out of his knotted muscles.

Morgan grinned when he purred. Then she eased off the bed and sat in a chair by the window, watching him fall asleep. He really was beautiful, too beautiful for her. But for now he was hers, and she was going to enjoy every moment they were together.

As soon as he woke up.

Morgan sat next to the window and watched the trees sway outside the hotel. A lingering essence of warmth from the sun brushed her face. She could hear traffic whizzing by in the distance, even though the hotel was located on a side road off the main highway.

Morgan started out thinking about her number-one subject: Jack. He made her feel so alive, so secure within herself, that as she took a deep breath, Morgan felt invincible. He wanted her. He made her want him right back. And that was dangerous. Almost as dangerous as the predicament she was in.

At every turn, Jack had given her no choice but to trust him. And so far, he’d proven every word he’d said to her in the limo. Did she dare trust him with the rest?

Think. Deduct. Reason.

Being on the run had taught Morgan to look at as many sides of a decision as she could find. Morgan had every reason to believe that BioClin was being watched. On the one hand, there was only one true way to begin a murder investigation. And that was at the scene of the crime.

All right, that was the best-case scenario. Worst case. She would get caught. But neither Sam Ormond nor BioClin would know what she knew about the murder. Only that she’d stolen her data.

Risk vs. reward.

If Jack had taught her anything, he’d shown her that great risk equaled great reward. He’d convinced her to stay with him when every cell in her brain screamed at her to run. He’d done everything in his power to make her believe him and believe in him after realizing he was being used. And as a woman? Good Lord. What could make a human being more vulnerable than making love to someone?

Hmm.

As much as she didn’t want to put Jack at risk, she still needed his help. She had no idea how to start investigating a murder, although investigating a scientific hypothesis had to work the same way. Sometimes an experiment began with an idea, sometimes it began with a result. No matter what, forward or backward, she needed him.

Time to tell Jack the truth.

* * * *

Jack woke up expecting to find a wonderfully warm, hopefully naked, body beside him. Instead, he got a pitch-black room and a pillow. He sat bolt upright, wondering where the hell Morgan was.

Rubbing his face with his hands, Jack wondered what time it was. His gaze flew to the clock. He’d been out for a couple of hours. His first thought was that Morgan had decided not to sit around and wait while he slept. His second thought was that she’d gone down to use the gym or take a walk. Perhaps she’d gone to get them something to eat. His last thought had his stomach puddling somewhere down between his knees. She’d flown the coop.

With his heart pounding, Jack jumped out of the bed. He threw on his shirt and shrugged into a sweatshirt. Each layer insulated him a little more, allowed him to detach and become the tracker he was. But not before he acknowledged what he was going to do to her when he caught up with her.

Just as he was reaching for the door, it opened. “Where the hell were you?” he bit out, his tone tight.

He listened to her sigh and refused to let it reach inside him. “I went downstairs to find a place to eat. There’s a decent restaurant within walking distance, so I went to check it out. I didn’t think you’d wake up so soon.”

“Didn’t it occur to you that maybe you should wait for me? Sam could have someone watching this hotel.”

She raised a brow. “Interesting. Especially when we walked right in through the front door a couple of hours ago. You weren’t exactly being super-careful now, were you?”

“No,” he conceded, hating that she was so damned smart.

Jack’s temper ignited. All of the fear for her safety, the anger at his own stupidity, and the bewilderment from feelings he’d never felt before congealed into a knot inside his stomach. Without an outlet, he wrapped his hand around the back of her neck and pulled her face to his. He ground his mouth against hers, showing her what he was feeling. Their tongues twisted and turned. They didn’t just fence; they went to war with each other. Then nature took over. Their kiss softened, and Jack let her glimpse the feelings she’d created. When he let go, he leaned his forehead against hers and gasped for breath.

“Do you know how scared I was?”

“No.”

Her lips grazed his cheek, and his eyes closed. He savored the feel of her against his skin. God, he was in so much trouble.

“You can’t protect me all the time,” she told him.

He nipped at her lips. “I can try.”

He leaned back with a soft chuckle and wrapped his arms around her. “Don’t ever do anything like that to me again. You understand?”

“No promises.”

He grinned. “All right. Just as long as you remember that there are no promises back on your punishment.”

“Hmm. Kinky. I might like that, you know.”

With a shake of his head, Jack let go of her. “As tempted as I am with you right now, I need some food and a drink.”

“All right.” She let go of him and started pacing. “But before we do, we need to go down to the business center.”

“The business center?”

“Yeah. There’s something else I have to show you.”

All of a sudden, a chill entered the room. “Show me?” he echoed.

“We can’t do this alone anymore, Jack.”

He frowned. “I don’t know what you mean.”

* * * *

They walked into the business center, and Morgan booted up the computer. “The data stick contains my files and my work. Everything I’ve done for the past two years. But when BioClin threatened to pull the plug on me, I downloaded every file on the project into my home computer and then onto this data stick. Every file. Files from marketing, files from finance, all of them. I wanted to see what kind of profit-and-loss statements they’d come up with. And the research marketing performed in order to get approval for the project to begin.”

“Go on.”

His face shuttered, and Morgan wondered at his tone. She sighed. He was going to be even more offended when she showed him everything. She hadn’t trusted him either.

“In clinical research, one validation can have hundreds and hundreds of files attached to it. Everything has to be documented so that the FDA knows what you did, how you did it, and how what you did will be beneficial, not harmful.”

“I see.”

Morgan put the data stick in the drive, and the screen filled with file folders. Most of them she knew by heart. But she was bound and determined to go through with this even if he hated her.

Morgan searched the screen until she found the file folder with the notebook data. She’d stumbled upon it one evening because it had a name that made no sense. She’d found it because it was stuck in a file folder with a bunch of profit projections based on current market trends where it didn’t belong.

Morgan remembered how odd it had looked as she’d clicked on the first file. It was an Excel spreadsheet with two columns of graphs. She’d scanned it but without knowing what she was looking at, numbers were simply numbers. She had guessed that they were sales projections, but that was about it.

Then she’d clicked on a second file in the folder. This file also had a subset of folders. Her stomach churned with the same horror as the day of her discovery. Swallowing hard, she clicked on the first subfolder and started to read out loud.

“‘Day one. Subject female. Weight 398 pounds. Blood pressure now 189 over 95 without medication. Glucose without medication 312 mg/dL. Cholesterol 325 mg/dL. Enzymes slightly elevated. Subject in excellent spirits. Excited to be accepted into program.’”

Morgan looked up from the screen to see Jack’s face go stark white. More than a little alarmed, she wondered why. So she exited out of the file and clicked on the second file.

“So you understand, these are journal entries. A cybernotebook of an experiment,” she explained.

“‘Day eight. Weight 370 pounds. Blood pressure slightly lower now, 180 over 90. Glucose down to 275 mg/dL, a marked improvement. Cholesterol not changing as rapidly. At 300 mg/dL. Enzymes still slightly elevated. Puzzling. Subject feeling much better. Very happy with results.’”

She looked over her shoulder again to see his reaction and found he’d turned into a statue. A marble statue.
What the hell is going on? Is he that angry with me?

“‘Day fifteen. Weight 350 pounds. Blood pressure not changing. Still at 180 over 90. Blood chemistries not changing, but this is to be expected as the body needs to catch up with itself in regards to the rapid weight loss.’”

He didn’t say anything, just backed up from her chair so they no longer touched. Morgan’s insides chilled as she skipped a couple of file folders and went to the one marked a month later.

“‘Day thirty-two. Weight dropping too quickly. Patient now at 300 lbs. Blood pressure spiking again at 198/100. Began administering beta-blockers again as a precaution. Glucose at 225 mg/dL which is good to see, but Cholesterol level still same at 300 mg/dL. Enzyme levels still elevated. CRP level very high at 47.5 mg/L indicating inflammation within the body. Patient has begun to run a low-grade fever and exhibits general malaise. Advised this might be a reaction to the extremely rapid weight loss.’”

Morgan’s heart began to pound. Her stomach dropped to her knees. He hated her. He thought she was the murderer. So she kept on reading. She kept on punishing herself.

“‘Day fifty. Subject deteriorating rapidly even though all therapy halted fifteen days ago. Weight at 250 lbs. Skin folds becoming a problem because of bacterial infections. Blood pressure still spiking even with beta-blockers. Blood chemistries normal except cholesterol levels have remained high at 300 mg/dL in spite of the statin therapy, and liver enzymes have climbed to near-critical levels. CRP levels extreme. Muscle and skeletal mass decreasing at an alarming rate. Debating hospitalization at this point. Patient exhibiting bodily stress akin to acute starvation. Patient on constant nutrient drip. Hypothesis: the more nutrients consumed, the more the body is burning. Considering halting all nutrients to see if metabolism slows down.’”

Morgan couldn’t read any more. She’d taken the same steps with Pinky and Louie. Once the metabolic rate reached a certain stage, it couldn’t be turned off, even if the subject starved.

Morgan tried to swallow and found she couldn’t. A hollow pit had formed inside, and she felt like she stepped outside her body.

“I’m sorry, Jack. I couldn’t tell you. For your own safety.” She closed the folder and sat staring at the computer screen for what seemed an eternity. “I’ve just made you an accessory after the fact. I didn’t want to, but you just wouldn’t listen. Instead of listening to me and taking me to Atlanta, you brought me home. Back to Boston.”