Her Last Defense (11 page)

If she’d fallen down a flight of stairs, her head and her heart wouldn’t have tumbled one over the other in such rapid succession. She wanted to call him back. Explain, as if she had words to express what she was feeling. To hold him, let him hold her and finish what he’d started. To give back to him what he’d tried to give to her.

In the end, she simply said, “Yes,” and he walked out the door before she could tell him that she had to stay to talk to David about the monkey. She had to find out more about its immunity, the cure for ARFIS the animal might provide.

Not that his leaving without waiting for her explanation mattered. She doubted he would have believed it.

She wasn’t sure she believed it herself.

Freshly shaved and wearing the new clothes he’d picked up on his way out of Houston that morning, Clint walked into room 143 at the Lonesome Pines Motel, where the Rangers of Company G had set up shop. Too bad he hadn’t been able to purchase a new
mood as easily as he’d acquired the jeans, boots and Western shirt to replace the blue CDC jumpsuit he’d grown to hate. The best he could hope for was that somewhere along the two-hour drive through the Texas woods, he’d managed to shore up the veneer of his control enough that the others wouldn’t see he wasn’t himself.

Those hopes were dashed within seconds of walking into the room. Captain Matheson was on the phone, pacing as he talked. Kat Solomon, the junior Ranger on the team, frowned at the screen of a laptop computer.

His partner, Del, took one look at his face and saw trouble.

“Well, well. Look what the armadillo drug in,” Del said, sauntering across the room with his hand outstretched. “It’s about time you got back.”

“I wasn’t aware you were punching my time card for me.”

Del held his hands out innocently. “Just wondering if you’d decided you like the company better down at the hospital.”

Clint knew he was referring to Macy. He let it go. The last thing he wanted to do was talk about Macy to Del. “What company? I caught a couple of hours’ sleep in Houston—alone—then had to hitch a ride out here with a state trooper. Took a while to find one coming this way.” Clint shook his partner’s hand, but let the questions in his eyes go unanswered for now, opting to skip the personal small talk and get straight to work. “So what’s new? Bring me up to speed.”

Del walked with him over to the table where Kat was
sitting. “Malaysian government e-mailed us the background info on Ty Jeffries. He’s got quite a sheet—smuggling, black marketeering, fencing—but he’s never the main man. Always a middle guy, and the man who moved the goods. Never directly involved in whatever was going down.”

“Does he have any terrorist ties?”

“None documented. Seems he’s more interested in profit than idealism.”

Clint scraped a chair back from the table and sat heavily. His heart wasn’t in the conversation, but he tried to keep his mind focused. “So what was a man like that doing working for the CDC?”

Kat lifted her eyebrows in a speculative expression. “The ARFIS epidemic is a huge crisis over there. Lots of medical relief and goods coming into the country. People desperate enough to pay whatever it takes to get them, legally or otherwise. Seems like there’d be money to be made by someone who didn’t mind exploiting a little human misery.”

“If the local law knew about him, why didn’t they alert the CDC?”

Kat turned the computer screen so that he could see the official file, with CI stamped in big, red letters beneath Ty Jeffries’s picture.

Clint swore. “That lowlife was a confidential informant?”

Del grunted. “A good one, according to their local chief. Gave them some quality tips.”

“For which they paid him handsomely, I’m sure. If he couldn’t make money off the bad guys, Jeffries just
switched to the other team. Either way, he wins. Pretty sweet deal.”

Kat rose, stretched. Captain Matheson watched her stroll across the room and pick up her purse. It seemed to Clint that Bull watched his new recruit a lot, but it wasn’t his business, so he stayed out of it.

“I’m going to get something to drink from the machine. Anyone want anything?”

Del and Clint shook their heads no. She started to walk out, and Bull covered his phone with one hand.

“Wait,” he said.

She turned, smiled pleasantly, but there was no denying the bite in her words. “Did I forget to say ‘mother may I?’”

Bull started to say something, stopped himself, then pulled out his wallet. “No. Get me a cola, would you?”

Kat took the bill he offered and left. Bull went back to his phone call, this time standing at the window, from where he could see the sidewalk.

The sidewalk that led to the vending machine, Clint presumed.

Del sat in Kat’s vacant chair. “You look like hell.”

“I’ve had a tough week.”

“You’ve had a lot of tough weeks. Never rattled you before.”

“Who says I’m rattled?”

“Maybe the fact that your shirt isn’t buttoned right.” Del leaned back, eyed Clint with an amused smile while he fixed his shirt. “So how come you hitched a ride here with a trooper? I thought you were flying back with the lady doctor.”

Clint resisted the urge to squirm in his chair. “She had other plans.”

“She stayed with the fiancé?”

“Ex-fiancé.”

Del’s smile fell. “If she doesn’t have more sense than that, you don’t need her, pal.”

“She had her reasons.” At least he hoped she did. And why the hell was he defending her, anyway? “But I don’t need her either way.”

Del studied him. Judging by his expression, Clint would say his partner didn’t like what he saw. “Uh-huh.”

Time to change the topic. “I didn’t get a chance at the hospital to ask how Elisa is doing.”

That brought Del’s smile back. Nothing brought joy to his face like talking about his new wife. “Not happy about me being down here with the baby due in a month, but fine, otherwise. She’s feeling really good. I’ve never known a woman to actually enjoy being pregnant the way she does. It blows me away.”

Clint forced himself to return Del’s grin. He was truly happy for his partner. But today, seeing Del so content made him realize how much was missing from his own life.

Before he could brood about it, Kat came back with the drinks and he shoved the thought away. What did he need with a woman? He had his work to fill the lonely days and nights of his life.

And if the question of what he’d have in a few days, when he lost that, too, drifted through his mind, he refused to acknowledge it.

Macy had been up all night and through the next day, talking to David whenever he awoke. Making notes. Skimming genetics Web sites on a borrowed computer. Her eyes ached. Her back ached.

Her heart ached.

For David, for the mess his life was in right now. What would happen to him when this was over? It depended on the outcome, she supposed.

And for Clint, for the way she’d left things between them. For the fact that the first time she’d seen true emotion in his eyes, it had been hurt. Pain that she had put there.

He didn’t understand. How could he? She didn’t understand herself.

She didn’t love David. Not even a scrap of the old affection remained inside her.

But she couldn’t abandon him, either. She felt at least partly responsible for all that had happened, and for that, she would see him through whatever the future brought him.

But as a friend, not a lover.

Maybe someday Clint would see that, accept it, but not now. Right now, even if he did understand, she couldn’t be with him.

She’d left David because she’d wanted heat in her relationship with a man, but that didn’t mean she was ready to jump into the fire. With David, she might have felt cold, isolated. But with Clint, she was deathly afraid she was going to get burned.

He was too intense. Too overwhelming. Overpowering.

“Ma’am, are you ready?”

The security guard who had been sent to drive her through the forest back to base camp on an ATV interrupted her ruminating. She nodded at him. She needed to get back and check on her team. It was dark now, but first thing in the morning she wanted to go through the debris from the plane wreck, see if she could find any of David’s original notes on the macaque, study the data.

If she was lucky, work would keep her mind off her personal problems.

The guard keyed the radio microphone attached to the four-wheeler. “SG-four, leaving Checkpoint Delta for base with one passenger.”

The radio squawked in return. “Received. Leaving Delta for base with one.”

Trying not to wonder whether or not Clint would be in camp when she arrived, she climbed into the ATV and held on as she and her driver bumped and bounced over the rutted dirt trail.

They’d been traveling about ten minutes when the radio erupted with noise again, this time the voices sounding frantic. “Echo one, Echo one. We have target sighting. Repeat, we have target sighting in the tree line!”

Another disembodied voice asked, “Which target, Echo? Is it Jeffries?”

“No. It’s the monkey. We’re in pursuit. Repeat, we are in pursuit.”

Macy’s hand clenched on the roll bar. “Where is checkpoint Echo?” she asked her driver.

“About half mile east, ma’am.”

“Take me there.” She lurched to the side as he yanked the ATV around.

But it was already too late. She flinched with each firecracker pop that exploded over the radio, afraid she was hearing the death of the only living being that could stop the ARFIS epidemic.

“Step on it! And get on that radio. Tell them to hold their damned fire! I need that animal alive.”

C
lint braced against the dashboard as Del skidded his four-wheel drive pickup to a stop in the mud at Checkpoint Echo. They’d been on their way to the CDC base camp near the wreckage to interview Macy’s team, see what more they could learn about Ty Jeffries, when they’d heard the frantic radio calls from the Echo commander.

“What the hell?” Del breathed.

The place was deserted, the sawhorse barricades toppled into the dirt. Beams of light winked in the trees to the right. The sounds of shouts and people crashing through the underbrush disrupted the quiet of the forest.

“Over here! I think I saw him over here!”

“No! This way!”

Clint groaned heavily. “It’s a freaking snipe hunt. With guns.”

“Didn’t they get word the monkey wasn’t contagious?” Del asked incredulously.

By unspoken agreement, Clint and Del shoved open the doors to the pickup and made for the tree line, their weapons drawn. They pinned down the first camouflaged soldier wannabe they came to and barked out questions. “What agency are you with?”

“Texas State Guard, First Brigade, Second Platoon. Called up yesterday by the governor to help with security.”

Great, Clint thought. Weekend warriors. The governor might as well have sent a troop of Boy Scouts to monitor the logging roads through the woods.

“Who’s in charge?” Del asked.

“Corporal Terrence. He’s over there.” The man’s head swiveled left. Then right. “Or maybe over there. I sorta lost track of which way he went. That monkey came at us and everybody broke ranks on account of it’s got ARFIS and all. We woulda had him, if that lady doctor hadn’t gone and knocked Jones’s arm when he was fixin’ to shoot.”

Clint grabbed the man by the collar. Clint’s pulse skipped a beat. “Doctor Attois? She’s out here in this mess?”

“Don’t know her name. Just know it’s a lady doctor from the CDC,” the soldier said.

Clint shoved the man away. “Get back to the checkpoint and stay there.” He gave Del a furious look. “We’ve got to get her out of there.”

Del laid a hand on his arm to slow him as he turned. “Easy, partner. We got a lot of trigger-happy desk jockeys running around in the dark playing at being soldiers. Wading into the middle of it isn’t likely to do anything but get us dead.”

Clint shook off Del’s touch. “You got a better idea?”

Maybe the direct approach? Del turned toward the black depths of the woods and shouted, “This is Texas Ranger Sergeants Del Cooper and Clint Hayes. You are ordered to stand down. Do you hear me? Stand down! Return to your posts immediately.”

“Who are you?” someone queried.

“Texas Rangers. Stand down and return to your posts,” Clint repeated Del’s orders in the same authoritarian voice his partner had used.

It seemed to be working. Most of the stomping through the woods had quieted. The yelling diminished. A couple of beefy young guys in combat gear, breathing hard, threw the Rangers sideways looks as they double-timed it by.

Clint squinted into the darkness under the trees, straining to make out a smaller figure amongst the shadows drifting out of the woods, back toward the road. He bit his tongue to keep from calling out, sure everyone in two counties would hear the worry in his voice that went beyond professional concern. Far beyond.

“All right,” Del said, holstering his weapon and planting his hands on his hips. “Let’s go help these guys to count heads. Make sure they didn’t lose anyone out there.”

Clint opened his mouth to argue that they couldn’t
go back. That they should go deeper into the woods, look for Macy. But he couldn’t think of a single logical argument for doing so, so he shut his trap before he stuck his foot in it. For all he knew, Macy was already back at the checkpoint.

Which only made him want to walk off into the woods even more, so he wouldn’t have to face her.

Coward.

His old man would have laughed his ass off—right before he slapped him upside the head. Clint Hayes, afraid to face one little woman.

Clint Hayes, shaking in his boots because he was afraid some stray bullet meant for a monkey had found her in the dark. The image of her lying face down in the dead leaves somewhere had his chest heaving, his jaw locking.

With one last look over his shoulder, he turned to follow Del back the way they’d come.

Maybe she was back at the checkpoint, like Del said.

Clint hoped so. Besides being worried about her, he had a lot weighing on his mind. Things he needed to say to her, starting with an apology for practically attacking her in the doctor’s lounge and ending with goodbye, have a nice life.

It wasn’t like he had a claim on her. One night of sex in a fire tower, when they were both under extreme duress, didn’t mean she belonged to him. She was a grown woman, free to be with whomever she wanted to be with. He could be adult about their relationship—or lack thereof. He could show her the respect she deserved. As long as it wasn’t too late.

Please, let her be at the checkpoint.

He’d picked up his pace, in a hurry to find her, see for himself that he’d nearly had an anxiety attack for nothing, when another yell from the woods stopped him cold.

“There it is! Right there! I see it!”

Then Macy’s voice. “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot him!”

And the stampede started anew. Limbs snapped and leaves rustled. Heavy boots clumped along the clay ground.

Del turned back the soldiers from the checkpoint, ordered them to stay put, but there were others still in the woods behind them, yelling, running.

Del left his partner and ran toward the voices. Ahead he saw flashlight beams bouncing and blinking, cutting through the foliage.

“He’s comin’ your way, Tom.”

“You flush him, I’ll bag him,” the second voice shouted.

“Flushing.”

Morons. Did they think they were out hunting quail?

Clint sprinted ten more yards through the woods, tripping on roots and pushing vines out of his face. Thorns dug into his hands, his neck, but he ignored the pain.

“Macy,” he bellowed, no longer caring what anyone heard in his voice. His cop instincts had kicked in. He could feel disaster creeping in like mist over a meadow on a fall morning. Silently. Stealthily.

His feet tangled in a bramble as he tried to climb a mound of thicket. On the other side, he could make out
the silhouette of a soldier, his rifle raised to his shoulder, finger on the trigger.

“Lower that weapon!” he ordered.

Another voice, the flusher, hissed in a loud whisper, “He’s coming your way.”

Clint saw it then. The nervous little primate skittered along the trunk of a fallen tree, pausing to look back over its shoulder every foot or two.

The barrel of the rifle tracked his movement. The soldier’s shoulders lifted, a sure sign he was about to fire.

“No!” Off to the left, Macy screamed. She ran toward the monkey.

Right in front of the soldier’s rifle.

Clint yanked his foot free and leaped, hitting the man in the back just as a shot exploded out the muzzle. He saw the ground rushing up to meet him, felt the impact, but his gaze never left Macy.

She hit the ground with a soft thud. God, was she shot? He couldn’t tell.

But she didn’t stop when she landed. She rolled, lifting a weapon of her own, a handgun, and fired, but instead of a flash of fire and a bang Clint expected, her gun popped loudly and a dart ejected from the business end.

The tranquilizer hit the monkey square in the butt, dropping him in less than five seconds.

In less than three, Clint was at Macy’s side, holding his breath as he turned her over, ran his hands over her legs, her arms, her body, checking for blood. Finding none.

She got up and brushed off her jeans, picked leaves
from the fuzz of her sweater. When he tried to grab her again, she spun away, marched toward the fallen monkey. “What is wrong with you?”

“Are you hit?”

She looked surprised, stopped for a second and appeared to do a quick inventory of herself. “No,” she pronounced a long second later.

Clint’s chest finally unclenched long enough for him to drag in some air. The oxygen that flooded his system was like gasoline poured on a fire. It ignited his temper. “What the hell did you think you were doing?”

“I was trying to keep those goons from killing the future cure for ARFIS before we have a chance to study it.”

“You could’ve gotten yourself killed.”

She knelt by the monkey, held his tiny arm between her thumb and forefinger, presumably checking for a pulse. “I didn’t.”

Clint’s heart was pumping so hard it felt as if it might explode. She had no idea. She saw nothing wrong with what she’d done. Thought she was perfectly justified.

He reached down, pulled her up by her elbow. “Come with me.”

“José,” she argued as he dragged her away.

A few of the soldiers had found them. Clint pointed at one of them. “You. Stay with the monkey—I mean right with him. Do not let anyone touch him. Do not let anyone move him until the CDC team gets here with a cage. And for God’s sake, do not let anyone shoot him, or your ass is mine. You hear me—” Clint leaned forward to read the man’s nametag. “Cleburg?”

“Yes, sir.”

He pulled Macy out of the woods without another word. On the road, he tapped Del on the shoulder then held out his right hand, Macy still caught in his left. “Keys,” he said simply, and Del handed them over, frowning but silent.

Then Clint put Macy in the passenger seat, buckled her in and drove off with no idea whatsoever where he was going. Just knowing he needed to drive.

Macy folded her arms over her chest and stared belligerently out the front windshield. She had no idea where they were going and wasn’t about to ask. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.

Besides, from the look on his face, if she so much as opened her mouth, he was going to spontaneously combust.

They drove in silence for twenty minutes, maybe more, maybe less. It was hard to tell how much time had passed. Probably less than she thought, since every second in the tension-filled super cab felt like an hour, and she was determined not to lift her wrist to check her watch. She wouldn’t give him that satisfaction, either.

Finally the truck jounced so hard on the two tire tracks she presumed to be some sort of road that she had to reach for the hand grip above the side door to keep from hitting her head on the roof.

His gaze flickered her way, just a quick glance, but enough for her to tell herself she hadn’t lost their little war of resolve. He’d blinked, too.

A moment later, the walls of trees on either side of
the lane broke. Macy heard gravel beneath the tires of the truck and a pretty little cabin came into view on the shore of a glistening black lake.

Clint slammed the pickup into Park, turned off the engine and climbed out. The half moon lit him up like a statue as he walked toward the water.

Just out of curiosity, she checked the ignition. He’d taken the keys with him.

So much for a getaway.

As if she could have walked—or driven—away from him at that moment. The sight of him leaning against a rickety old pier rail, looking out over the water with an infinite field of stars shining overhead and little silver-crested waves slapping at the pilings underneath him mesmerized her. He looked so…desolate.

So alone.

She’d never been the kind of person who could turn away from a man in pain. That was why she became a doctor.

Somewhere along the way she’d forgotten that, she realized. Medicine had become about microscopes and single-celled anaerobic organisms instead of the living, breathing, multi-faceted, oh-so-complex species commonly called man.

She’d have to thank him for reminding her. One of these days.

Tonight, she’d settle for just being able to talk to him without causing him—or herself—more pain.

Slowly she climbed out of the truck and walked to him. “Your grandfather’s cabin?” she asked after letting a silent moment pass at his side.

He nodded, still looking across the lake.

“It’s nice.”

He shrugged. “Haven’t spent much time here the last few years. Kind of let it go.”

“It looks like a sturdy enough place. Won’t take much to fix it up again.” A cool breeze flitted through the loose hair around her face. She rubbed her arms to ward off a chill. “Is there a particular reason we’re here?”

He cut her a hard look. “I’m not going to jump you like last night, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

Patting the tranquilizer gun in her pocket, she smiled and said, “I’m not worried. This time I’m armed.”

She’d hoped he would laugh. Instead he only seemed to grow more sad.

“I had it all planned out. What I was going to say to you when I saw you again. How reasonable I was going to sound, how adult.” He took a deep breath and tightened his fingers on the railing. “Then you stepped in front of that soldier’s gun, and everything I’d planned flew right out of my head. All I wanted to do was scream.”

“The world needs that monkey. He’s the key to finding a cure for ARFIS before the disease sweeps through a dozen more countries.”

He flexed his fingers, and some of the color returned to his knuckles, she noted. “In cop lingo it’s called ‘crossing the tube’ when you move in front of the barrel of a gun like that. It’s stupid, it’s incompetent and it’s a real quick way to get yourself dead. Who would cure ARFIS then?
David?
”

“Knowing what I know, you’d have done the same thing. I’m sure you would have. So this is really about David, isn’t it?”

“You tell me. You’re the one who couldn’t drag herself away from his hospital bed.”

“I stayed to question him! I needed to know more about his research and what tests he’d run on the monkey.”

He started to say something, then cut himself off with a sharp jerk of his head. “It doesn’t matter. You made your choice perfectly clear last night.”

Her jaw went slack. “I didn’t choose David over you.”

Clint scowled and turned his head. She moved into his line of sight, where he couldn’t avoid meeting her gaze.

“I chose
me!
I needed some distance. Some time to think.” Oh, how could she explain the maelstrom of emotions that had her so caught up she’d been afraid she’d be ripped to pieces, and lose some part of herself forever. “I needed to get my head together, and I couldn’t do that with you—”