Sins of the Flesh (2 page)

The bruises visible on Wells’s body in the photos would likely yield prints of some kind, and with the battle that probably went on between Wells and his assailant, a treasure trove of DNA, fibers, and other evidence had likely been transferred to the dead scientist or left behind in the lab.

As he finished reviewing the last of the photos, he risked a quick glance at Edwards to study his reaction. The other man’s lips had stiffened with displeasure, but there was nothing else to give away what Edwards was thinking.

“This is the problem you wouldn’t discuss last night on the phone? Aren’t the police already investigating this murder?” With a quick flip of his wrist, he tossed the file back onto Edwards’s desk.

The clear grey of the other man’s eyes chilled at Mick’s dismissal. Tight lines bracketed Edwards’s thin lips before he said, “If the police get wind of what actually happened here, everything we do could be in jeopardy. That’s why we need a man of your caliber for this assignment.”

Mick motioned to the file. “Let me get this straight. You don’t want the police to solve this crime—”

“There’s nothing to solve.”

Edwards finally handed him the second, thicker file. “We know who the murderer is—Caterina Shaw. One of our patients.”

As he opened the file, Caterina Shaw’s engaging smile and intense blue-eyed gaze peered at him from the photo within the folder. A beautiful woman, he thought. A
wealth of midnight-black hair contrasted nicely with her perfect, creamy skin and surrounded a delicate face with a pouty pair of lips.

The photo was clearly intended for business purposes, as Ms. Shaw was dressed in what looked like a sedate black gown. A motherly string of pearls lay at the long elegant line of her throat. Mick couldn’t help but notice that the low cut of her gown provided a delicious glimpse of her other endowments as well.

It took all his willpower to battle the very visceral response that the photo created. He definitely had been without a woman for too long, and with good reason.

Women seemed to find him physically attractive, but he always felt it was the aura of danger surrounding him which really drew them. Either reason did not generally lead to anything of lasting value, since relationships based on such shallow motives lacked the kind of trust necessary for permanence.

Reviewing the short bio on Caterina Shaw, Mick realized that permanence was something to which she was accustomed. Caterina had been born in the Philadelphia area and had stayed there for most of her life. The only breaks from the city had been for schooling, but each time she had returned home to Philly. Even her employment record screamed of stability. She had been with the local orchestra for several years.

He gazed at her picture one last time before turning his attention to the final entry in what appeared to be a lengthy medical history.

Patient has recently developed uncontrollable seizures leading to episodes of memory loss and rage combined with full expression of the implanted gene sequence
.

Medical mumbo jumbo, Mick thought, for
she’s a raving psycho
.

As Mick flipped back to the photograph of the woman, he was struck again by her beauty—not that beauty wasn’t capable of the kind of violence perpetrated on Dr. Wells.

“Why is Ms. Shaw one of your patients?” he asked as he closed the file and returned it with greater care than he had the previous folder.

Edwards flipped open the file and removed the photo, glancing at it almost wistfully before he said, “She was beautiful, wasn’t she?”

“Why is she here, Dr. Edwards?” Mick pressed, annoyed by the man’s almost staged theatrics and his use of the past tense for a woman who was still very much alive, as far as Mick knew.

“Sad, sad story,” the physician said with a
tsk
and dramatic shake of his head. “About three years ago, Ms. Shaw was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor. Slow-growing at first, but then some switch flipped and the tumor became more aggressive.”

“So she came to you?” he asked, wondering just what state the young woman had been in when she arrived at Edwards’s facility.

“Not at first. The only patients we are allowed to admit are those with no other recourse.”

“Which means?”

“Ms. Shaw went blind when the tumor invaded her optic nerve, but she managed to deal with that. Some laser treatments kept the growth confined for about another year, but then—”

“It spread and she came to you for help.” A note of
disdain escaped with the comment, obviously irritating the man across from him.

Edwards jerked Caterina Shaw’s photo into Mick’s line of sight. He jabbed at the image of the woman. “Just twenty-eight and already at the height of her career. Her brain was rapidly being destroyed. Even if our treatments were untried, Ms. Shaw understood the possible reward. Wouldn’t you do the same?”

Mick thought he would have probably put a gun in his mouth and blown what little brains remained out the back of his skull, but suspected the doctor sitting across from him wouldn’t appreciate hearing that solution.

“What do you want from me?”

Edwards picked up both files and thrust them across the width of the desk. “After killing my partner, Caterina escaped the confines of our facility. Find her. If you can, bring her back so that we can get her under control before we turn her over to the authorities.”

Something about the tone of Edwards’s voice didn’t ring true.

As Mick met the other man’s icy stare, he got the sense that the seemingly proper physician was much like he was.

Determined.

Ruthless.

And possibly not above breaking a few rules to accomplish his goals.

“What if I can’t bring her back? What if—”

“Caterina resists? Chances are she will. She’s quite dangerous in her current state. My partner found that out the hard way.”

Mick glanced at the files in his hands, debating if he
would take the assignment. As if sensing his hesitation, Edwards leaned forward once again and passed him a check with too many zeroes to refuse.

He examined the check for only a second before slipping it into the pocket of his black leather jacket. As he rose, Edwards held out his hand to seal the deal.

Mick ignored the man and walked to the door, certain of one thing as he exited.

If Edwards wasn’t telling the truth, what happened to his buddy Wells would seem like a cakewalk compared to what Mick would do to him.

C
aterina struggled to contain the thoughts rampaging through her brain. Scattered ideas and images collided there, creating a convoluted maze which kept her a prisoner of her own mind. The images surprised her, prompting other vague memories of unending darkness.

Unwelcome darkness that had lasted for too long. That had been accompanied by pain only…

Little pain remained anymore and the darkness was gone, replaced by bright images swirling around in her brain, a weird melding of colors reminiscent of a Peter Max painting.

Peter Max.

She forced herself to focus, remembering other pictures and artists. Lots and lots of paintings and artists while people milled about.

Had she been an artist as well? she wondered, confused about who and what she was as she gazed around again at the multihued shapes surrounding her. As unnatural as the colors were, she was grateful she could see, suddenly aware that she hadn’t been able to do so in some time.

Trees.

Bushes.

Birds twittered overhead. A tiny flash of brown and white scurried into the underbrush.

She was outdoors, which meant…

She was free.

She had escaped.

Escaped
, she realized, honing in on that idea as she tried to make sense of the thoughts and memories creating havoc in her brain. Finally a picture formed in her mind of a hospital.

No, not a hospital. An office maybe? Or a lab? Yes, a lab.

At some point she had escaped from one of the cells in the lab. The day before or maybe the day before that. She couldn’t remember. And now she was in the woods, she realized as she skirted the edge of a stand of scraggly pines, their fragrant needles soft beneath her feet.

A step later, Caterina stubbed her toe on an exposed root.

Fearful of discovery, she contained her cry of pain and examined her foot. Like everything around her, the colors were off.

Bright yellow-green blood at the tip of her stubbed toe glowed against the darker browns of dirt and leaves along the rest of her foot.

Caterina forced herself to focus on that appendage, gathering her thoughts. Reality momentarily returned, restoring with it the peachy hues of her healthy human skin, although something else was odd.

The nasty stub at the end of her toe was already healing.

The only thing that remained from the injury was a bit of phosphorescent yellow-green on the ragged wood of the root where she had stubbed her toe.

Yellow-green blood?

Impossibly wrong. Her toe should still hurt. And her blood should be red.

Try as she might to connect her thoughts to understand, whatever was happening to her—within her—made no sense.

A sudden loud thumping noise came at her, like the insistent beat of a timpani drum. At first it beat at a regular pace but soon became a rapid roll as the sound came closer.

Wump, wump, wump
, quickly and persistently. Over and over as the sound approached, battering the air viciously. The noise was strong enough to become a physical pulse against her body.

She had to avoid the noise.

Caterina hunkered down beneath the lower branches of one of the more thickly needled evergreens in the Pine Barrens. The sound intensified as did the wind, which whirled fallen leaves and needles around and around the base of the tree. The helicopter making the din paused overhead and the branches of the pine whipped wildly against her naked body. Caterina remained immobile, hugging the trunk of the tree, digging her fingers into the wood to hold on.

The tree trunk gave easily beneath her fingers, surprising her, but providing her with a firm grasp as she tried to blend in beneath the branches of the evergreen.

Danger was near.

Danger from the helicopter kicking up the air and foliage around her.

Closing her eyes and letting out a soft mewl of fear, she burrowed deeper against the thick trunk of the pine, hoping she wouldn’t be seen.

She couldn’t go back to the lab.

After long minutes, the helicopter moved on with a loud screaming whir, but Caterina remained in her protective squat, waiting. Her fingers dug as deep as her knuckles into the tree trunk until she extracted them, sticky with sap.

It would be night again soon, she realized as she looked around.

She glanced at her fingers—tacky from pine sap, with an odd cast to the skin. She tried to make sense of her actions and the strange color but couldn’t.

Immediately after came the vision of those fingers rapidly shifting against strings. Pressing against smoothly shaped wood, producing sensually rich sound.

Producing music.

Her music.

She grabbed hold of those ideas, hoping the fragmented ideas would finally come together to make sense. She didn’t know how long she remained there, rooted to the spot, trying to collect her thoughts, but the strain in her legs grew steadily until her muscles screamed in agony.

Caterina finally gave into the call of her body, rose, and stepped away from the protective embrace of the evergreen. But even as she did so, the deep green of the pine needles remained wrapped around her skin as she stepped out into the open.

She studied her hands and feet. Her skin had assumed the color of the verdant woods around her.

I’m human, but my skin isn’t normal
, she thought as the full impact of her condition hit her.

Shaking her head to clear the illogical vision, she then noticed something familiar, despite the odd colors that
had returned to her vision, creating almost a kaleidoscopic blur. As she locked her gaze on one spot in the distance, the images sharpened.

Lights.

Those were lights up ahead. And lights meant something good. Something better than the woods around her.

That recollection triggered a string of other ideas which finally coalesced into a more complex understanding about herself.

She had been at the lab because she was sick, but had escaped to be safe.

With that realization immediately came another.

She was naked.

Or at least she thought she was, gazing down at herself.

Her skin had that odd cast to it. When she touched her stomach, the sap-sticky pads of her fingers met the softer skin of her midsection. The deep green of the pine tree covered most of her body, but near her ankles the tone of her skin blended to the color of the earth at her feet.

Impossibly wrong, she thought again.

As wrong as the now fully healed stub of her toe and the way she had been able to shove her fingers into the trunk of the evergreen.

She had to hide until reason returned and provided some answers as to what was happening, but she couldn’t walk around naked.