Sins of the Flesh (13 page)

“Mami,”
she said, straining for more, and he helped her along.

“Your
mami
was Mexican. Did she cook food like this for you?”

She had, Caterina realized, only it had been a long time since she had eaten such food. Since she had seen her mother. With that realization, a wellspring of sorrow rose up, bringing tears to her eyes.

“My
mami
’s dead.”

Liliana squeezed her hand. “I’m so sorry.”

With the barest hint of sympathy Mick advised, “It happened a long time ago. When Cat was six.”

“If anything, that makes it harder,” his sister scolded.

Her dad was dead as well, she remembered, but that knowledge brought only a scintilla of the pain of her earlier enlightenment.

Mick motioned to the food on the plate. “Eat up. You need to build your strength.”

She dug into the meal with the plastic fork he had provided.

An enchilada, she recalled. The corn tortilla was filled with flavorful cheese and covered with a delicious chili
pepper sauce. Beside the enchilada rested refried pinto beans and yellow rice with vegetables.

With each forkful she ate, her hunger grew until the plate was clean.

“Still hungry?” Mick asked, arching a brow as she contemplated the empty plate.

“Sorry, but it was good. Can’t remember eating anything so good. Long time ago.”

Once again, Liliana reached out and offered a reassuring pat on her arm. “Don’t be sorry. My
mami
will be happy that you enjoyed the food.”

“Drink,” Mick commanded. She did, gulping down the sweet grape juice in the plastic cup he handed her.

When she was done, he tied her back up. She wanted to protest, but at her first chirp, Mick silenced her with a threatening glare.

“We’ll be back later,” Liliana said and grabbed hold of her brother’s arm, dragging him out of the room.

Caterina lay back against the sheets, the music from the iPod relaxing her once again. The fullness of her stomach was satisfying, until the tastes that lingered on her tongue elicited more memories of her mother.

She did something she knew she had not been able to do before.

She cried for her mother’s loss until the pain emptied from her body, leaving behind only the memories of precious times shared.

Then she waited for her captor to return.

I
n the kitchen, Mick placed the dirty dishes in the sink while asking his sister, “Can you fill me in while we eat?”

“Trying to get rid of me so quickly?” Liliana challenged. She set the table while Mick removed the aluminum take-out plates from the oven.

He paused, faced her, and leaned his hands on the edge of the counter. “Actually I was hoping you could stay the night in case I need help.”

His sister hesitated, then surprised him by saying, “To be honest, I was hoping you’d let me crash here for a little bit. Just until I can find somewhere else to live.”

He walked to her side and cupped her cheek, applying gentle pressure to raise her gaze upward.

“You’re doing the right thing. If you want me to take care of him—”

“I appreciate the offer, big bro, but I need to handle this on my own.”

He nodded. “Use my bedroom. It’s more comfortable and I need to keep a close eye on Cat anyway.”

“Caterina Shaw.” Liliana shook her head in disbelief.
“The famous cellist, and according to the local newscasts, a murderess.”

He remained silent, which prompted his sister to ask, “You’re not denying the latter?”

“Don’t have enough information to either deny or confirm.” Mick returned to the counter where the take-out containers rested.

“Lose the military speak,” Liliana chided.

“Yes, sir,” he teased as he placed the aluminum containers on the trivets his sister had laid out on the large oak kitchen table.

Liliana chuckled, sat down and quickly served them a sampling of the food their
mami
had prepared. It steamed on their plates and the aroma enticed. The first few minutes at the table were quiet as they took the edge off their hunger, but then Mick broke the silence. “When you called, you said you had more news.”

Liliana nodded and blew on a bite of tamale on her fork. “Surprising news. My friend wasn’t expecting any results for a day or so, but she was able to get an analysis earlier than she thought.”

“Some new test procedure?”

“Exceptionally fast DNA replication. So fast that she ran the analysis a second time to make sure it was right,” Liliana replied. She rose from her seat and pulled some papers from her medical bag, laying one on the table beside Mick.

He recognized it immediately as an electrophoresis gel result from a DNA test. A series of parallel columns contained a number of differing bands in each column. Someone had circled several of the bands on the paper.

Liliana ran her index finger along the test results.
“These bands here and here are what you would expect to see in a human DNA test.”

She jabbed at the circled sections. “But not these.”

She slipped another piece of paper, showing what looked like a graph, before him. “So my friend did an electropherogram using an automated sequencer for determining the DNA series. Same weird results.”

“ ‘Weird results.’ So you’re telling me we still don’t know what’s going on with her?” he said with frustration.

Liliana whipped out one last piece of paper: a page printed from a Web site showing a photo of a Petri dish with a number of phosphorescent colors in the shape of a palm tree and ocean.

“Look familiar?” she said and walked back to her chair, sat down and resumed eating.

Mick picked up the paper and read aloud the caption beneath the photo. “This scene shows the plethora of colors available in various mutations of fluorescent protein-producing bacteria.”

“The GFPs—the green fluorescent proteins—in the bacteria physically show how genes express themselves,” Liliana explained.

“So she’s contaminated by some kind of fluorescent bacteria?” he asked, putting down his fork. But then the answer came to him before Liliana could reply. “They used the fluorescent proteins, these GFPs, as trackers for the genes they implanted during her cancer therapy. That could explain what happened to her blood.”

Liliana nodded. “Some scientists have even produced transgenic rabbits and pigs that glow in the dark because of these proteins.”

A glow-in-the-dark animal, only the woman upstairs wasn’t
an animal. Although he still wasn’t quite sure what she was right now.

Or what she was going to become.

“I’ve got her supposed medical history up in my office, but I also managed to steal her real file today.”

Liliana placed her fork on her nearly empty plate. Only a bit of beans and rice remained. “You think the scientists at Wardwell doctored the one they had given you?”

“Possibly. I’m going to review the files tonight. Compare them and see what I can discover.” Mick rose from the table. He was heading out of the kitchen when his sister stopped him. “Not so fast,
hermano
. I brought the food, so you’re going to clean up before you go to work.”

“You’re a hard taskmaster, Lil,” he said, but returned to the table, wrapped her in a bear hug and dropped a kiss on the top of her head.

She returned his embrace, burying her head in his chest. “Tell me this will all work out, Miguelito.”

“It’ll work out, Liliana. I promise.”

Softly murmured words, spoken in Spanish, awakened old comforting memories.

Caterina fought the urge to rouse, wanting to bask in the newly recovered recollections of her mother. The gentle touch of her mother’s hand as she brushed her unruly locks at night, rousing the scent of the orange blossom bathwater she had dribbled onto her freshly washed hair; the passion in that same touch as her mother’s hands alternately caressed and struck the keys of the upright piano they had owned, playing a difficult symphony or
concerto. Playful as she morphed the song into some ragtime or a variation on a mariachi tune.

Her father had said that she had inherited her mother’s ear, but hidden behind the compliment had been censure. Caterina had realized that even as a child.

He might have loved her mother at one time, but he had grown to disapprove of her, and the love, if there ever had been any, had died beneath his controlling ways.

When her father had gazed at her, she saw the reflection of her mother in his eyes. A passionate and carefree woman who had made the mistake of marrying a formidably powerful and unyielding man. One who had chipped away at her mother’s spirit with his demands.

As Caterina half-opened her eyes, wanting to return to the good memories in her head, she saw them—brother and sister—heads bent close together as they spoke softly in Spanish. Was it to avoid her understanding them? Her Spanish was rusty from years of disuse. Maybe they were assuming that, or maybe she was just being paranoid.

Liliana was crouching down, eye level with her brother, who sat in the chair beside the bed. He had been in that same spot for the last few hours, as far as Caterina could tell. She had awakened a couple of times from a fitful rest to find him there. Mick had urged her back to sleep with a consoling touch and a comfortably issued command to rest.

Now his sister was back, and seeing that Caterina had roused, she reached out and gently touched her arm. The gesture was familiar—like a mother’s touch.

Liliana even looked like Caterina’s mother. Petite. Slender. Olive-skinned with cocoa brown hair and dark eyes, only now as she met Liliana’s gaze, she realized the other woman’s eyes were a deep green, almost emerald.

“You’re awake?” Liliana asked as she leaned forward.

Mick rose from the chair. Dressed in black from head to toe, he possessed a dangerous aura that awoke conflicting emotions within Caterina.

Fear.

Attraction.

Caterina suspected it would be hard for any female not to respond to his blatant masculinity. And as she came to that realization, another tagged along with it.

Her brain actually seemed to be working with more clarity than it had in a long time.

“I’m awake,” she confirmed and for good measure added, “And I’m remembering things. My mother and father.”

“The drugs must be wearing off,” he said, the tone of his voice flat. Offering no comfort, but no condemnation, either.

Caterina had expected the latter, although her mind wasn’t processing thoughts clearly enough yet to comprehend the
why
of that expectation.

“I don’t understand what’s happened to me,” she said.

Mick blew out a rough sigh and jammed his hands into the pockets of his jeans. He rocked back on his heels. “That makes three of us.”

With a reassuring pat of her hand as she sat down on the chair, Liliana began to fill Caterina in on what she and Mick had been doing. “Mick’s managed to get your real medical file. We’ve been going through it tonight to find out what’s been done to you.”

What’s been done to me
? Caterina thought and closed her eyes, attempting to drag forth some kind of recollection of what had happened to her. She was sorry that she
did so when the memories came, lashing out at her with their violence.

The scent of blood, earthy and metallic, filled her nose and mouth. Wet and sticky, it covered her hands and arms.

A face emerged from all the blood.

“Dr. Wells is dead,” she said aloud. “Someone killed him.”

“
You
killed him,” Mick replied callously.

Caterina shook her head emphatically. “No. He was my friend. I wouldn’t hurt him.”

Mick seemed inclined to argue with her, but Liliana reached out to stop him.

“
I
know you wouldn’t hurt him, or anyone else.”

Liliana’s message was clear, but Caterina didn’t have any way of convincing the taciturn Mick, who reminded her a little too much of what she had remembered about her father.

For that matter, she might not even be able to prove to herself that she’d had nothing to do with Dr. Wells’s death.

She was tired, more tired than she had ever been at any time in her life. Not even the days she had undergone chemo could compare to how she now felt.

This kind of tired was soul deep.

Whispering, she said, “I want to rest.”

Mick controlled the urge to shake her as Shaw closed her eyes and sank back onto the pillows. As he glanced at his sister, she inclined her head in the direction of the hall and he walked out. Liliana followed.

“You’ve got to be patient,” she counseled.

He couldn’t argue, although he was finding it difficult
to contain his frustration. Ducking his head down, he said, “You’re right, only…”

Liliana eased right before him, making it impossible for him to avoid her. “Only what, Mick? I mean, you got her to safety. She’s starting to remember. That’s all good, right?”

It was all good for Shaw, but she wasn’t his client.

“I was hired to bring her in, Lil. I’m surprised my client hasn’t already called to find out what I’m doing to earn my money. It’s been several days already.”

“Does it matter? Caterina’s safe. Isn’t that what—”