Red Alert (14 page)

“Dripped water into the dish,” she finished for him, raising her voice so she could hear herself over the rising buzz in her head. “Water plus phosphorous pentachloride equals hydrogen chloride gas. Vaporized hydrochloric acid.”

Yes, she realized in hindsight. That had been the smell. Like the faint vapors that occasionally escaped from the fume hood during experiments involving liquid hydrochloric acid, only a hundred thousand times more deadly.

Erik must have seen the sudden knowledge in her eyes, because he nodded, seeming satisfied that she was good and scared now. “Exposure to the gas can lead to everything from burning eyes, throat and lungs to pulmonary edema, heart failure and death.” He glanced at her and a flash of concern supplanted the coolness in his expression. “You sure you should be out of bed?”

His husky voice brought a flash of sensory memory, a wash of heat and the image of him standing beside her if-you-buy-it-he-will-come bed.

She shook her head and willed the thought away. “I’m fine. Do we know how he got in?”

Peters lifted one shoulder in a half shrug. “You don’t have the best locks and there’s no security system. It wouldn’t have been difficult for a savvy amateur lock pick to pop your front door.”

“The security company is coming tomorrow,” she said, resisting the urge to rub at the gooseflesh that had risen at the thought of someone picking her locks and waltzing into her home. Into her bedroom. “They said they couldn’t fit me in earlier than that.”

“The locks have already been changed out and the security system will be in by this evening,” Erik said, eyes holding a faint challenge as though he expected her to toss the gesture back at him.

But while she might be the stubborn mule her father had once called her, she wasn’t stupid. She nodded. “Thank you.”

There wasn’t much more to the meeting after that beyond a bunch of negatives. No fingerprints. No discernable evidence of the break-in beyond the device under the bed, which had been made from very standard materials—ice, flowerpot, petri dish and chemicals.

“Except that the petri dish and phosphorous pentachloride would argue for someone with access to scientific reagents,” Meg said. “Maybe in a drug company.”

“Or research,” Erik said, but she knew he was just trying to yank her chain. Nobody in academia would commit murder over a licensing agreement. There was enough grant money that most anything could get funded, and the whole point of academia was that it wasn’t about the money. It was about the discovery.

Peters shifted in his chair, frustration etching his features. “We’ve gone over the lists you both provided, and we’ve got nothing so far. We’ve got too
many suspects with plausible motives, and too few man-hours available to check out each one. We need to narrow things down.”

“I have an idea about that,” Meg said, but Erik’s steely-eyed glare cut her off.

“You weren’t included in that ‘we,’ Dr. Corning.” He shifted his attention to the detectives. “I have a few ideas. Nothing solid yet, but some strings to pull, at least. Can you get an officer to run Meg to my place and keep her there until I get back?”

“Wait a minute!” She surged to her feet. “You’re not keeping me anywhere. I’m an adult and I’m free to do whatever I want to—”

“Keep yourself safe,” he interrupted, standing and facing her as he had done the night before.

And, as it had the night before, tension crackled in the air between them.

When she didn’t back down, he sighed. “Please,” he said finally. “I’m asking you nicely, as a favor to me, let an officer take you to my place. Lock yourself in. Take a nap. Order food. Order a movie. I don’t care what you do as long as you do it somewhere safe.”

“Why can’t I go back to my place?” she challenged, knowing that wasn’t the point but not quite sure what the point was anymore.

“Because the security system won’t be finished until later,” he said, “and because I’d feel better if I knew you were staying at my place. It’s better protected.”

She wavered, knowing she could use a few hours’
sleep. “You’re awfully worried about my safety for someone who just admitted his life would be easier if I were out of it.” She’d meant the words to come out as a challenge. Instead they sounded faintly wistful.

He shot her an unreadable look. “I changed my mind. I decided it’s in my best interest to keep you alive until the deal’s done, just in case you’ve conveniently ‘forgotten’ any little details in the notes you’re going to pass over.”

Knee-jerk indignation was followed by a surge of hurt, but she fought to show neither. “Thanks for clearing that up. Jerk.” She rounded on Peters, who was trying to hide an expression that hovered somewhere between amusement and disgust. “Find me a driver and make sure they know where the jerk lives, because I don’t know and I don’t care. I won’t be going back after this is over.”

ERIK LEFT THE STATION with Meg’s anger buzzing just beneath his skin. He could’ve handled that better, but what was he supposed to say?
Stay safe because this morning I thought you were dead and I can’t go through that again
sounded weird and clingy, and probably had more to do with Jimmy’s death than anything. It had seemed more natural to blame it on the NPT deal, on the distrust he was having trouble sustaining.

Or so he’d told himself. But her inadvertent flinch of hurt hadn’t felt good.

Then again, what
had
made him feel good lately?
The job had started to lose its luster. Each acquisition had to outstrip the last until now they were so huge he had nothing tangible to hold on to. His family didn’t know what to make of him, his cop friends had drifted back to their own kind and it wasn’t as though he made friends with the owners of the companies he snapped up.

No, he realized as he turned away from the heart of Chinatown and gimped his way up the street, headed toward Boston General, he hadn’t made many friends in his current life. And of the few he’d made, the one he’d believed in the most, the one he’d depended on…he’d let her down.

Raine had been his conscience and his confidante, helping him remember that the purest of scientific motives would do him no good if he forgot about the individuals working for the companies he acquired. He’d leaned on her, depended on her, liked her. Even trusted her.

Part of him wished he could have loved her. That would have made things much simpler.

“Simple’s never been your strong suit,” he said out loud. If he’d been into simple, he would’ve followed eight generations of Falcos into the family business. He would’ve married one of the five debutantes his mother and aunt had picked for him, to “make sure he had a choice, of course.” He wouldn’t have become a cop, wouldn’t have worked with a snitch named Celia, wouldn’t have believed her when she’d said that she loved him, that she wanted to go straight so she’d be worthy of him.

If he’d been into simple, he wouldn’t be standing on the sidewalk, propped up on one and a half legs and a titanium cane, staring at the door to one of the last places he wanted to be right then.

But because he’d never done things the simple way, he cursed and pushed through the door into Otto’s Climbing Emporium.

Luke Cannon was waiting for him, leaning on the registration desk with a casualness that belied his handicap.

Sure, Cannon would probably call it a “challenge,” or maybe a “slight inconvenience.” But Erik called it like he saw it. Cannon was handicapped. So was he.

But they weren’t there to bond over limps and war stories. Cannon worked for Pentium Pharmaceuticals, the last big company vying for the NPT deal.

Erik crossed to him, more conscious of his gimp than he should have been. “Cannon. Thanks for meeting me. You want to get a drink? Maybe a bite to eat?” Erik’s stomach chose that moment to growl, reminding him that his last meal had been a long time ago.

But Cannon shook his head. “No food. Let’s climb.”

Erik shook his head. “Let’s not.”
Hell, no!
“I’m here for information about the Pentium bid on Meg’s technology, and to figure out what it’s going to take to get your people to drop out.” He’d decided to go with full-frontal honesty rather than the sort of sneak attack Cannon probably expected.

The sneak attack would come later.

Cannon merely grinned and held up a collection of nylon straps and heavy carabiners. “If you want me to talk, then you’re going to have to climb.” His grin widened. “Don’t worry. I’ll—ahem—walk you through it.”

It was a dare, a bribe and a threat all rolled into one.

Despite the faint clutch of unease—at the thought of falling, of embarrassing himself, of looking more crippled than he really was—Erik considered his options, which boiled down to the fact that he didn’t have an option.

He nodded shortly. “Let’s climb.”

Chapter Ten

Twenty minutes later Erik wasn’t sure which was worse—the fact that he was barely ten feet above floor level on the basic climbing wall, or the fact that he was almost scared. Not of falling onto the padded floor below—he was strapped in, attached to securely set pitons and had Otto on the belay.

No, he was afraid of looking like an idiot.

Since when did he worry about appearances? Since when was he afraid to take a risk for fear of looking silly?

“Since now,” he said, realizing that for the first time since he’d fired the annoying physical therapist who’d leaned way too hard on the “therapy” side of things, he was doing something outside his physical comfort zone.

His recent efforts to keep Meg alive didn’t count. Nobody worried about looking stupid under life and death circumstances.

“Concentrate on the wall, Falco. Get out of your head,” Cannon’s voice ordered. He swung near,
moving smoothly from foam blob to artificial crevice, seeming not to notice or care that the titanium shaft of his artificial climbing leg made him look like Arnold in the first
Terminator
movie, at the end when he’d started losing flesh.

Erik was immediately shamed by the thought. Besides, what did that make him? He wasn’t bionic. He was merely broken.

“This is stupid,” he said, clinging grimly to the wall. “My arms hurt and this harness is chafing my ass. How about we call it quits and find that drink?”

“That’s not the answer and you know it.” Cannon’s eyes reflected a sympathy that chafed worse than the nylon harness. “The straps are rubbing because you were too stubborn to borrow gym shorts and your arms are hurting because you’ve let yourself get soft. You going to add quitter to that list?”

Anger flared. “Why don’t you take your climbing harness and—”

“You want to know where Pentium stands on the NPT sale? Then meet me at the top.” And with that, Cannon was gone, climbing easily on one leg of flesh, one of alloy metal.

Erik leaned back and looked up. Way up. Probably another fifty or sixty feet up.

“Oh, hell.” His stomach tightened on a mix of ego and fear. This could be a trap. Cannon could be in league with the bastard trying to force him to ditch the NPT sale. Hell, he could
be
the bastard. Once they were at the top of the wall, one “faulty” carabi
ner and a quick shove, and the Falco takeover bid would be finished.

Erik looked down at the padded floor, where Otto stood in his musclebound glory. The gym owner held Erik’s belay rope in both hands, nominally ready to take up the slack or to brace against a fall, but his attention was focused on a trio of coeds wearing midriff-baring shirts and butt-hugging shorts.

As though sensing his new climber’s gaze, Otto turned and looked at Erik. The gym owner raised one eyebrow and glanced up the wall, to where Cannon was nearly halfway along. Then he returned his gaze to Erik and raised the other eyebrow.

The challenge was clear.
You going or not?

Erik told himself it had nothing to do with the lilt in Meg’s laughter when she’d joked with Otto, nothing to do with the coeds down below or the other climbers, or even the faint pity in Cannon’s eyes. It had everything to do with the case and the danger to Raine and Meg.

But even as he told himself that and began to climb, he knew it wasn’t quite the truth. It was about the case, yes, but it was also about him.

He was no quitter.

Muttering under his breath, he let go of the foam blobs one at a time and wiped his damp palms on his tan cotton pants, which probably did look ridiculous beneath the climbing harness, but were better than showing off the scarred mess of his leg. Grip restored, he ran through Cannon’s basic instructions in his mind.
Keep your center of gravity close to the wall. Plan ahead. Test your hand-and footholds. Check your pitons. Don’t foul your belay.

“Oh, is that all?” He glowered, then craned his neck, looking for the next highest blob. Once he had that, he lifted his bad leg and used the toe of his borrowed climbing shoes to feel for purchase, either a blob or a crack. He was so used to thinking of that leg as deadwood, as a brace akin to his cane, that it took concentrated effort to think about his foot as anything but a prop. It was nearly a full minute before his toe caught on something and held.

Test your foothold.
He dug around until it felt secure, then looked up at his chosen handhold, about three feet above him and to the right. This was where it got tricky, regardless of what Cannon said about trusting his body and the laws of inertia. He needed to push off his bad leg and get enough height to snag that handhold.

Which would explain how he’d stalled ten feet up in the first place. There were only two options now—leap or quit.

Erik bit off a curse, pushed off his bad leg and leaped.

THE COP Peters had tagged to escort Meg to her supposed safe hiding spot must’ve talked to Erik. Or else he was the naturally suspicious type. Either way, he kept a sharp eye on her during the entirety of the hour-long trip.

Not that she was looking for a chance to slip away or anything.

When they finally reached Erik’s place in one of the chichi suburbs west of Boston, Meg was surprised to find a modest two-level saltbox on a nicely landscaped lot in a family oriented neighborhood. The pressed-brick driveway and the stonework of the front entrance spoke of money, but the effect was far from ostentatious.