Red Alert (2 page)

Her assistant’s answer was a long, slow grin. “You’re thinking about it.”

“Just shut up and send in the patient, will you?”

But once Jemma was gone, Meg looked around the sterile-seeming room, then down at the edges of clothing visible beneath her lab coat. The green
pullover, tan suede skirt and tall brown boots had seemed smart and professional that morning.

Now they’re boring, she thought. Maybe Jemma had a point. Maybe it
was
time to do something different, time to—

“Mr. and Mrs. Phillips,” Jemma announced from the doorway.

Nope. It was time to get to work.

Meg stood and moved around the ginormous desk as the couple entered the room. “I’m Dr. Corning. Please call me Meg.” She focused her attention on Mrs. Phillips first, because it was the woman’s body they’d be discussing. Her child. Her blood sample.

The wife was a knockout. She wore expensive-looking navy wool pants and sensibly flat shoes, topped with an Empire-waisted tunic that flowed down past her hips, obscuring any evidence of the early term pregnancy she’d reported in her initial interview with Jemma. Her glossy brunette hair was swept into a soft French braid, and her brown eyes and full, dusky lips were accented with fashionable hints of purpley brown makeup that made her features pop.

But her eyes held a distinct flicker of nerves when she took Meg’s hand in a brief clasp. “I’m Raine, and this is my husband, Erik.”

The pause before the word
husband
was almost imperceptible, but Meg tucked it in her mental files before she turned and extended her hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Erik.”

Then she got a good look at him and had her own moment of hesitation.

The guy made a hell of a first impression.

His clothes matched Raine’s, not in color, but in the understated taste and quality of the fall-weight, steel-gray suit, dove-gray oxford shirt and gunmetal tie. The monochromatic scheme might have washed another man out, but it complemented this one, emphasizing both his angular face and the faint silver frost that touched the edges of his blue-black hair. He was tall, topping Meg by a good four inches or so, and his shoulders were broad beneath the tapered suit jacket.

His eyes were a deep, nearly sapphire-blue, and they narrowed when he took her hand and held it a beat too long. “The pleasure is mine.”

Meg dampened an instant shimmer of attraction—he was another woman’s husband, after all. She gestured toward the chairs opposite her desk. “Take a seat and tell me a little bit about yourselves.”

Raine sank into one of the chairs, but Erik remained standing. Then, as though realizing that Meg wouldn’t sit until he did, he grabbed his chair and pulled it a few inches away from his wife. It wasn’t until he braced himself to step forward that Meg realized he carried a gunmetal-gray cane nearly the color of his tie. He leaned on it with the ease of long practice as he lowered himself to the chair, right leg braced stiffly in front of his body.

He stared at her, eyes saying,
Don’t you dare pity me,
but out loud, he said, “What do you want to know?”

His wife frowned. “I thought we were here for a
blood test. We already filled out the questionnaire and your assistant took a preliminary sample.” She pushed up the bell sleeve of her tunic to show a small Band-Aid at the crook of her elbow. “Isn’t this just a formality?”

Meg smiled. “I need to make sure you understand the study structure and your privacy rights.” She paused, losing her place in the oft-repeated speech as Erik shifted uncomfortably in the upholstered chair.

He looked up and caught her staring. His eyes glinted with an expression she couldn’t interpret and wasn’t sure she liked. But he said, “Can you tell us a little bit about the test? My—Raine is a cautious woman.”

Another hesitation? Meg thought. Wonder what sort of marriage these two have.

Telling herself it was really none of her business, she pushed a glossy folder across the desk. “Here’s some information for you to take home and look over later. Most of it is also on our Web site.” She slid a brochure from the folder and tapped a color schematic cutaway of a pregnant woman. “We’re in the final stages of streamlining prenatal blood tests for a number of common genetic disorders. The technique is called Noninvasive Prenatal Testing, NPT for short. We’re enrolling pregnant women in their first or second trimester, and asking that you come in for biweekly blood draws.” Meg smiled at Raine’s indrawn breath. “It’s just one milliliter at a time, so we won’t drain you dry. We’re not vampires.”

“Twice a week is a substantial time commitment
for me.” Raine glanced at her husband, whose attention was focused elsewhere. She touched his knee. “Erik, don’t you think twice a week is too much for me to be out of the office?”

He diverted his gaze from the wall art and glanced at her. “I’m sure your boss will give you the time.” His lips twitched. “He’s not all that bad, you know.”

The two traded a look that excluded Meg. The sense of connection sent a slice of harmless envy through her chest.

Maybe Jemma was right. Maybe she
had
been neglecting her social life for too long. Maybe it was time to meet a man, someone she could hike and bike and climb with, someone who loved all the things she used to love.

As soon as the licensing went through and tenure was announced, she promised herself. Then she’d focus on moving from ice-blue walls to something more interesting.

Maybe teal. Hot pink.

Sapphire blue.

Focus, Meg!
She gave herself a mental shake and continued her explanation. “We’re testing whether the different phases of pregnancy affect our results. In addition, we’ll be able to examine your baby for most known genetic diseases. We can—”

“Some people say that’s impossible,” Erik interrupted. His attention wasn’t on the wall art anymore. Now it was focused on Meg. “Plenty of experts in the field say your results are nothing but false positives and hopeful interpretation.”

Normally, Meg would have taken the challenge and explained the strength of her science. But now she paused as her instincts jangled a warning.

Something told her that this guy wasn’t quite what he seemed.

She forced a smile. “I see you’ve done your homework, Mr. Phillips.”

“Call me Erik.” He leaned forward, hitching his weight to the left to ease his bad leg. “And yes, I’ve done some background reading. Three of the top experts in the field of prenatal testing have publicly denounced your discovery.”

“Only because I beat them to it.”

“They say it’s impossible to isolate a baby’s cells from maternal blood.”

“Not impossible,” Meg countered. “Even dinosaurs like Lafitte in Paris and Heinz Kramer in Dusseldorf admit that fetal cells and DNA are carried in the maternal bloodstream for years, sometimes even decades after the pregnancy. They simply don’t believe that it’s possible to isolate the one-in-a-million fetal cell and use it for testing.”

“And you believe it’s possible?”

“I’ve done it,” she said simply, and with a bone-deep sense of pride for the work that would help so many. No more pregnancies would be lost due to a misdirected amniocentesis needle or a nick during chorionic villus sampling, two of the most common—and invasive—procedures used for prenatal genetic testing.

“How does it work?” he asked, eyes revealing nothing.

She tapped the brochure. “The process is summarized here.”

He dismissed the schematic with a wave. “I’ve read what’s posted on the Web site, but how does it really work? How exactly do you isolate the fetal cells? Is it true that the baby’s cells can sometimes heal the mother if she’s injured?”

“That hasn’t been proven to my satisfaction,” Meg said, a chill chasing through her bloodstream, because she had no intention of pursuing the question. Not now. Not ever. Not with the risks involved. “I’m sorry, but I’m not at liberty to discuss the specifics of the process.”

Especially not until next month, when the last of the patents would finally be filed.

A handful of university glitches had delayed the applications, leaving her in a legal gray area. If another researcher—or worse, one of the big drug companies—tried to scoop her work, she was in trouble. Though she had her lab notes, patent battles were notoriously long and messy, and neither Boston General nor Thrace University could stand up to one of the big companies if it came down to lawyers and money.

Be careful,
her father had cautioned when he’d been in town the week before.
Your work is at its most vulnerable right now. They know you’ve done it, but not how, and they’ll be itching for that one detail, the one trick that lets you do what everyone said couldn’t be done.

With that caution ringing in her ears, Meg narrowed her eyes. “Why do you ask?”

“No reason, really.” Raine touched her husband’s arm, urging him to relax. “Ever since I found out about the pregnancy, Erik’s been fascinated by the technology.”

He shot her an unreadable look, but shrugged with a half smile that did little to lighten the intensity of his face. “Sorry. Occupational hazard.”

“You’re an engineer?” Meg asked. She glanced quickly at Raine’s questionnaire.

“No, I’m—” A muted buzz cut him off midsentence. He frowned, reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a seriously high-tech communications device—a little handheld that combined a phone, computer, fax and probably a food processor into one unit. He read the display and frowned. “We’ve got to go.”

He didn’t show his wife the message and she didn’t argue. They rose as one and, despite his bad leg, showed an almost military precision in their actions.

Meg rounded the desk and held the door for them. “Please look over the material and call me if you have any questions. We’ll be in touch once the preliminary blood screening is complete.” Though she already knew what it would show. “If the blood work looks good, you can decide whether you’re willing to make the necessary time commitment in return for free genetic screening for the baby and a small stipend.”

She ushered them out and closed the door behind them, knowing damn well she wouldn’t see either of them again.

Moments later there was a brisk knock on the door. Jemma opened the panel without waiting for an invite, and raised her eyebrows when she saw that Meg was alone. “Where did Mrs. Phillips go?”

“Let me guess. She’s not pregnant.” Meg scowled toward the elevators. “It was a setup. A fishing expedition. Who were they working for? TRL? Genticor?”

Jemma shook her head, eyes worried. “I don’t know about that, but she’s definitely pregnant, and there’s a problem. You’ve got to get her back here, right now.”

“You’ve already got results back on the baby?” Meg asked, confused. Impossible. Her technique was fast, but not
that
fast.

“No, we haven’t even started separating out the cells. But Max needed an unknown sample for one of his test runs, so I gave him a small subsample of Raine Phillips’s blood.”

Max Vasek was Meg’s second in command. With two degrees and a decade in research, he could easily have his own lab, but preferred the freedom of working for Meg. He kept the lab running smoothly and followed his own investigative directions on the side. These days, he was working on a panel of accelerated genetic tests for expecting mothers. So new he hadn’t yet reported it to the hospital or the university, Max’s technique could identify the presence of twenty-plus genetic abnormalities that could endanger the life of mother or child—all in the space of less than fifteen minutes.

A sick pit opened up in Meg’s stomach. “Max’s technique hasn’t been fully validated, and I’m not ready to go public. If we know something, I can’t tell them how or why we know it.”

He shouldn’t have performed the test on an unenrolled patient’s DNA. Though they had signed consent for Raine’s preliminary sample, the initial forms didn’t include blanket consent for all tests. They’d stumbled over into an ethical gray area.

Damn it, Max.

Jemma handed her the printout. “I don’t care how you do it, but get her back here. She’s heterozygous for both the Factor V Leiden and prothrombin 20210 mutations.”

“Oh, hell.” Meg was out the door in an instant, headed for the elevators. Halfway there, she called, “Phone down to the front desk and see if they can grab her. She needs to be on supportive therapy, pronto!”

The mutations were ticking time bombs. Separately, they increased the risk of blood clot disorders including strokes, heart attacks and pulmonary embolisms during pregnancy.

Together, they virtually guaranteed a problem. Perhaps even a fatal one.

Suspicions tabled for now, Meg hurried out of the elevator the moment the doors whooshed open on the ground floor. When the security guard shook his grizzled head, she jogged across the lobby and pushed through the revolving doors out onto Kneeland Street.

Boston General perched at the intersection between the swanky theater district and the more eclectic environs of Chinatown. The busy street dividing the two teemed with vehicles and pedestrians, making Meg fear that she might have lost the couple.

Worry flowed through her. If they’d been sent by one of the big companies, they’d probably given false names and contact information. She might be unable to find them, unable to warn Raine that—

There!
The pedestrian flow ebbed for a moment and Meg saw a man leaning on a cane as he walked a woman to a taxi.

“Erik!” Meg called. A cement truck—part of the endless construction of Boston General’s new wing—revved its engine nearby, drowning out her next shout.

She gritted her teeth and dodged into the sea of bodies on the sidewalk. Some of the pedestrians gave way at the sight of her white coat. Others glared and jostled her as she fought her way to the street.

“Erik, Raine, wait!”

But he didn’t climb into the cab with the pregnant woman. Instead he handed her in, shut the door and awkwardly stepped back onto the edge of the sidewalk near the construction zone. Nearby, construction workers directed a heavy stream of cement into a deeply excavated foundation form.