The Phantom of Black's Cove (11 page)

The nurse had just given Jack a megadose of the deadly liquid.

Olivia grabbed the IV tube where it was attached to the needle going into Jack’s arm and yanked it out.

The IV pump went into alarm mode.

High-pitched beeping raked over her nerves.

The annoying sound becoming louder as she pressed the call button.

Jack jolted awake and sat up. He stared down at the blood streaming from his arm where his IV had been attached.

A nurse stood at the end of his bed, her mouth agape in horror.

“Olivia?” He made eye contact with her, noting her look of relief.

“She just tried to kill you with potassium chloride.”

“I…I’d never do that.” The nurse shook her head violently. “That’s a strictly controlled drug. It wasn’t prescribed for Mr. Trayborne.”

The room filled with medical staff, all trying to assess the situation.

Doctor Perkins stepped into the room and the sea of nurses parted. “What’s going on?”

One of the nurses reached into her pocket and pulled out a packet of gauze.

Jack stretched out his right arm for her to clean and bandage the IV site.

He pulled in a deep breath and found peace in the chaos around him. Olivia stood to the left of his bed. He reached out, taking her hand. He squeezed and she squeezed back. She’d just saved his life. She’d been paying attention, been true to her vow to protect him. But what had caused the nurse to inject the lethal drug in the first place? Telepathic manipulation? No place felt safe.

“It was nothing, Doctor Perkins. A simple mistake.” Jack let loose of Olivia’s hand, pulled back the covers and climbed out of bed. “I’d like you to sign my release form.”

I can better defend myself at home,
was a more precise thought, but he kept that fact to himself. He suspected the man in the ski mask who’d put him here in the first place was behind the nurse’s mistake. She’d simply been his weapon of choice.

A jolt of caution burned through him as he stared at the individuals in the room. Any one of them could be utilized at anytime. A fact that left him little choice.

“I’d like to recover at home. Miss Morgan,” he met her eye to eye, “will take excellent care of me. Make sure I’m okay.”

Jack swallowed, looking at her just long enough to feel the rage of desire flare in his veins.

“If you don’t mind, I’d like to get dressed now.”

One by one, they left the cramped hospital room, but Jack could hear the nurse being redressed in the hallway outside by Doctor Perkins.

“It wasn’t her fault.” He took his clothes out of the closet while Olivia closed the door. “Her actions were manipulated telepathically.”

Olivia turned back around, stopped in her tracks by the sight of Jack standing next to the bed in his birthday suit, body all taut, hard muscle and smooth skin. Power and tenderness, intertwined.

An ache took hold inside of her, sending flames of desire sizzling along every nerve ending in her body, until she was sure she could hear the sound of blazing lust in her eardrums.

“We’re not safe here, or anywhere for that matter.” He pulled on his pants. “I want you to exercise extreme caution…” He stared back at her. “Olivia? Are you hearing me?”

“No.” She moved around the end of the bed and into his arms. What was happening between them? She needed to know. Needed to understand why being with him turned her insides to jelly. Gave her the sensation of being…cared for?

He stepped back from her, reached down and caught
her chin. Raising her face, he stared down at her, a half smile on his mouth. Did he feel it, too?

She gazed into his eyes. Their color deepened, before the smile faded.

His eyes narrowed. “I liked it, too. Hell, I more than liked it and I’d be happy to demonstrate the other techniques I have at my disposal, but you must snap out of it. Things are becoming progressively more dangerous and I don’t want to lose you. Where’s that savvy, smart-mouthed woman who puts frustration in my veins?”

“You’re right.”
He was right.
Her blood cooled and she stepped around the end of the bed, opening a mental and physical space between them, but anticipation lingered in her cells long after contact was broken.

Jack gritted his teeth and pulled on his shirt. Holding her in his arms had eroded more of his resistance to the mysterious emotion sluicing in his veins and making him fuzzy-headed. Before too much longer, holding her would be all he wanted to do, a fact that did little to ease the worry riding his thoughts. He needed Olivia to keep thinking, to be a participant in her own security. He could protect her, but not without her vigilance.

The man in the ski mask was growing stronger, becoming bolder with every attempt he made on their lives. But who was he and what did he want?

Buttoning the last button on his shirt, he put on his socks and shoes, snagged Olivia’s hand and headed for the exit. He needed time to think, time to dissect the circumstances surrounding them.

He pulled open the heavy door and they stepped into the hallway.

At the north end of the corridor was the nurse’s station. He needed to make sure the nurse who’d tried to inject him with potassium chloride, didn’t lose her job over an incident that was beyond her control. However, he didn’t plan to tell Doctor Perkins just how far beyond her control it had really been. Part of what made the Phantom work in Black’s Cove was his anonymity.

“Look, it’s Judy Bartholomew’s room.” Olivia took a hesitant right into room 360, spotting Judy’s husband holding baby Gracie.

Jack followed her in.

“Judy?” Olivia whispered, seeing the young mother sitting up in her hospital bed, looking as good as the day she’d first met her on Main Street and asked her about Jack Trayborne.

Olivia’s heart rebounded. She’d been so worried the young woman wouldn’t survive, wouldn’t be around to raise her sweet little girl.

“Yes.” She stared at Olivia, no sign of recognition on her face, but the moment she spotted Jack, a smile spread on her mouth. “Mr. Trayborne. It’s nice to see you again. What are you doing here?”

“I heard you were here. I happened to be here myself, so I thought I’d stop and see how you’re doing.”

“Much better, I believe, at least that’s what they tell me.” She glanced over at her husband and baby, then back at Jack. “Thank you for coming by.”

“You’re welcome.” Jack grasped Olivia’s hand and led her back out into the hallway. Judy’s husband followed.

“I’m sorry she doesn’t remember you, Miss Morgan. But the coma erased her short-term memory.”

“Do you know why she took those pills?”

Mr. Bartholomew shifted under the question, his dismay imprinted on his young face in the form of confusion that pulled his eyebrows together and grouped his features in a tight formation. “
She
can’t even remember taking them….” His voice broke and he looked down at Gracie. “I didn’t even know there was a problem.”

Olivia reached out and squeezed his arm. “I’m sorry. I wish there was something I could do.”

Grace pawed at her with one tiny hand and she caught the baby girl’s fingers. “It will work out. She has so much to live for.”

“You’re right.” Mr. Bartholomew nodded. “The psychologist has been in several times…. We’re going to get through this. Thank you both for your concern.”

Her heart ached for him as he turned back into the room and Jack took her hand.

“I’m so glad she pulled through.”

Jack laced his fingers in Olivia’s and steered her down the corridor, his suspicions little more than a niggling at the moment, but bound to take a track straight to the man in the ski mask who had the power to manipulate using telepathic suggestion. Was he behind Judy’s near-death experience?

Tension twisted the muscles tight between his shoulder blades. Judy had given up the information about where to find the estate. He’d always believed that Diana and Rick had something to do with Judy’s accident, but now he wasn’t so sure.

The double glass doors at the end of the corridor near the ER slid open.

A deputy raced into the hospital with his arm around the shoulder of another officer.

“Help! Can we get some help? My partner has cobra venom in his eyes. He can’t see.”

Jack’s heart rate shot up and he sprinted to where Officer Mel Roberts stood with his injured partner.

A nurse rushed forward and led the officer to an exam room.

“The missing cobra from Diana’s shop?” Jack asked, pausing next to the upset officer who leaned forward, putting his hands on his knees.

“Yeah. We cornered it in the alley behind the shop and called animal control, but the damn thing put up one hell of a fight.”

“Where is it now?”

“Not sure. It wiggled into a crack between the two buildings. I’m afraid we can’t get to it in there.” The officer straightened.

“You know Diana’s operation. Maybe you can wrangle him out?”

Jack hesitated, mostly because Olivia was squeezing his hand so hard it hurt.

He did know the operation, he’d set it up to help the
Foundation and Diana. He had an obligation to capture the dangerous cobra before anyone else got hurt.

“I’ll head over there right now.”

“When did you become a deadly snake wrangler?”

“When I set Diana up with her milking operation five years ago, so she could supply the Trayborne Foundation Research Labs in Atlanta and Los Angeles with the venom.”

Olivia’s muscles tensed. Venomous snakes, laboratory research, they were diametrically opposed to one another.

“The research is promising, Olivia. It could one day annihilate the world’s most deadly viruses.”

“Please avoid my thoughts, Jack. You know no matter what you say, I hate snakes.”

“Yes, I do know that.” He took her hand, maneuvering her out the back door of the pet shop and into the dark alley.

Jack heightened his senses. “Grab that trash can and put it down over there,” he motioned to a spot next to the door, “and go back inside if you like.”

He listened to her heart rate slow, heard her pull
several tentative breaths deep into her lungs. He was glad she was going to stay. He couldn’t lose sight of her, not even for a moment.

Combing the darkness with his vision, he closed in on the snakes’ location, nestled in the three-inch crack separating the ancient brick buildings from each other.

“I found him.”

She mentally shuddered, probably physically too, but he wiped the image of her smooth skin excited with a chill from his mind and trained his focus on his prey.

He’d soothe her later, after the cobra was back in its cage where it couldn’t endanger the residents of Black’s Cove again.

How had the snake gotten past Diana’s defenses? he wondered as he stepped closer, picking up the reptile’s scent trail. He must be close, no more than six feet away.

Was it possible she’d been a victim of the same man who wanted both of them dead?

Caution rode his nerves, saddled by the knowledge that something Diana understood fully had killed her completely.

Another bait situation? A way to draw him out, like he’d drawn Olivia out, using Diana, and right into the path of an oncoming train?

Movement near the head of the alley distracted Jack’s attention.

The cobra streaked from the narrow crack and became airborne.

Instinct took over. Jack trained a beam of energy on the snake, coming in contact with the beam guiding it.

The snake disintegrated in midair.

Jack refocused, surrounding Olivia in a protective shield.

He turned to find the masked man standing in the alley less than a hundred feet away.

“You can’t save her every time, Jack.” He stepped forward. “You can do only one thing at a time.” He reached out and raised the Dumpster twenty feet in the air.

Caution hissed through Jack as he watched the one-ton bin move to within ten feet of where he stood.

“What’s it going to be, Jack? Self-preservation or her life? You can’t have both.”

Anger ignited in his veins, rage and hostility, tempered by his sense of right. He could do only one thing at a time, a fact that was becoming abundantly clear to their tormenter. His Achilles’ heel.

If he released Olivia to protect himself, the thug would snatch her before he had the chance to recover.

He reached for the man’s thoughts and found a wall.

“You can’t get in!”

“What do you want?”

“You know what I want. Think, Jack.”

He lunged left, released the energy bubble surrounding Olivia and sent a burst out, catching the masked thug off guard.

The pulse hit him full on, knocking him backward and into the street.

Jack dodged the Dumpster as it hit the ground inches from his head and folded up like a tin can.

A car horn blared.

He jumped to his feet and raced to the head of the alley, but the man in the mask was nowhere to be seen.

Turning, he found Olivia standing next to him, her face stark white in the glare of the street lamp overhead.

Reaching for her, he pulled her into his arms. “It’s okay. He’s gone.”

“It’s not okay. It’ll never be okay until we know who he is and what he wants.”

Holding her against him, he knew she was right, and he knew where they had to start.

O
LIVIA SHOVED
the last medical file across the table to Jack and leaned back in her chair. They’d been at it for hours, sifting through the files on the test subjects in Doctor Trayborne’s experiment. She now officially knew every detail about the program.

“I give up. There’s nothing that indicates any of you developed the ability for telepathic manipulation, but some of the other stuff is, well…out there.”

Jack smiled and leaned forward, putting his elbows on the table. “You should have witnessed my early years, learning to control and grow my abilities.”

“You mean they weren’t finite after the initial treatment?”

“No. Each one of us developed at different rates. My powers didn’t become fixed until I was in my late teens.”

Excitement buzzed along her nerves and she sat forward. “So any one of you could have developed the ability to telepathically manipulate well after your grandfather stopped monitoring each subject?”

“Yes, but the terms of the trust are explicit. Any and all abilities or changes are to be disclosed in order for the money to be released.”

“And you believed they’d step forward and reveal everything?”

Jack’s face was so serious that she couldn’t hold in the laugh that rattled up her throat.

“They’re not to be trusted, Jack. Just because they denied developing new abilities doesn’t mean they didn’t. Did your grandfather physically examine any of them?”

“Yes, but only up until the age of 18. After that they filled out a yearly profile. There’s another problem, Olivia. Four of them are dead.” He slid a red folder across the table to her.

“How?”

“Joseph Sabato died in a fire two years ago. His autopsy and death certificate are in there. We know firsthand that Diana is dead. Sam Campbell flew his airplane into the Pacific sunset. They found the wreckage floating in the ocean, but no body. The authorities suspected suicide, but he didn’t leave a note. That was five years ago.” Jack rubbed his hands up and down his face several times, and leaned across the table.

“I think it’s weird,” Olivia said, reaching for the file and flipping it open, “considering what happened to Judy Bartholomew, and that nurse trying to inject you with potassium chloride. Maybe someone used telepathic manipulation on them. What happened to the last one?”

“She drove her car off a cliff.” Jack stared at her,
letting her observation sink in. Why hadn’t he seen it before? Had the other test subjects been picked off one by one, drawing a path straight back to Black’s Cove? Dread crept through his body, coating his nerves in mind-numbing caution. Who was next?

Olivia grabbed two of the files and shoved them toward him. “There are only two who have a chance of being behind this. Rick Dowdy and my brother. But we both know Ross is stuck in a wheelchair in a Phoenix care center a thousand miles from here. That leaves Mr. Dowdy.”

“What are the chances someone else got hold of the formula?”

“Doubtful. It’s been entombed in the vault since my grandfather realized how dangerous it could be if it fell into the wrong hands.”

“Does anyone else have access?”

“No. I’m the only one.”

Jack glanced at the two files, then back up at her. “I’ve had enough of this for one night.”

Olivia smiled, her soft full lips turning up at the corners and driving his mind in several wild directions at the same time. Desire flared, burning unchecked in his veins. He pushed back his chair and stood up. Wanting her. Needing her. Those were emotions foreign to him only a month ago, but now he found himself drawn to the language they spoke inside of him. Answering in the only way he knew how. By touching her.

He reached out and took her hand, pulling her to her
feet. “In the morning, we’ll drive into Black’s Cove and talk to Rick Dowdy.”

Olivia leaned into him, feeling safe as he wrapped his arms around her and held her close. Was there even a chance that Ross was somehow involved? She doubted it, considering the extent of his brain damage. He was forever chained to a wheelchair, of that she was certain.

“What do you say we take it upstairs?” he asked, holding her away from him, but not too far.

She instantly missed the contact of his body pressed to hers. Its warmth, the way it made pleasant sensations dance over her skin wherever he touched her.

“I’d like that.”

O
LIVIA DRAGGED HER EYES
open and found her bearings in the dark room. She glanced at the clock on the nightstand—3:00 a.m. Sliding her foot across the silky sheet, she searched for Jack beside her, but he wasn’t there.

She rolled over, catching sight of him standing at the massive window on the south side of the room, his naked body silhouetted against the filmy sheers he held open.

“Jack,” she whispered.

He didn’t move.

“What is it?” Caution caught her nerves in its grasp and she climbed out of bed, moving toward him, her feet silent on the thick carpet.

He reached for her and pulled her against him. “Do you see that?”

Straining to see something in the far-reaching landscape outside, she finally focused in the direction of the clinic.

“There’s a tiny light on, in the northeast corner. Do you see it?”

The faintest flicker caught and held her attention, like a small star in the sky, there and not there. “Sort of. What is it? The power is off because of the fire isn’t it? Is there a backup generator?”

“No.”

He brushed his hand down her bare back, exciting every nerve ending in her body. She moaned in delight. Making love with him had taken her beyond ecstacy, to a level she’d never experienced in her life. She wasn’t sure she could ever go back. She didn’t want to.

“I have to investigate, Olivia.”

Fear intertwined with caution inside of her and she grasped his forearm, hanging on to him. “I’m going with you.”

Jack could feel her shaking, the message telegraphed through her hand where it locked onto his arm. He’d give anything to pick her up, carry her back to his bed and make love to her until dawn, but he couldn’t let the light go this time. He’d seen it once before, two weeks ago, and put it off as an emergency lamp running on a battery source until he found all the batteries were dead.

Someone haunted the clinic. He was determined to find out who. Tonight. With Olivia in tow? He cared more about her than he’d ever imagined was possible,
but would she be safe here, unprotected from a madman with skills that rivaled his own?

“Get dressed, wear your tennis shoes. We’re going cross-country.”

O
LIVIA TRIED TO RELAX
as Jack maneuvered them along a narrow path through the woods. The chill of the October night air wreaked havoc on her body’s thermostat. But she couldn’t blame it all on the temperature. Her stomach was in knots, her nerves as frayed as the bottom hem on a pair of cutoff jeans. Jack was the only thing holding her together.

Staring past him, she focused on the light to keep from turning tail. The man who wanted them dead was cunning. He’d somehow managed to almost get past Jack’s defenses time and again and if anything happened to Jack…well, she’d…she couldn’t live with the thought. She was falling for him. Hard.

Jack slowed and pulled her with him into a stand of aspens. “It’s still on.” His voice was whisper quiet and she watched him straighten and pull in a deep breath of air.

“What are you doing?”

“I have heightened senses whenever I employ them. I see clearly in the dark. Sometimes I can smell the enemy, depending on the direction of the wind. And I can hear the slightest sound of movement. That’s how I detected the bomb in your car.”

“And what about touch.”

He trailed his fingertips along her jawline and lowered his mouth to hers.

The kiss took her breath away and left her winded when he pulled back.

“All-consuming,” he whispered against her ear.

Olivia heated in sync with the primal need exploding between them, forcing them together like magnets.

She was in over-the-top, howl-at-the-moon, got-to-have-him lust, with Jack Trayborne.

Damn.
She pulled the thought back, praying he hadn’t entered her head space and tagged it.

“Are we going in the front?” she asked, fixing her stare on the light shining through the window of the room in the corner of the clinic where she’d climbed the fire escape both times she’d broken in.

“There’s a service entrance on the northwest corner. We’ll enter there and work our way upstairs.”

Dread washed over her and she couldn’t paddle her way out of it. The thought of entering the building, where she’d almost been cooked, made her jittery.

“It’ll be okay, Olivia. I won’t let anything happen to you.” He squeezed her hand and some of her worry evaporated.

Jack stepped from behind the trees holding on to her. So far, he hadn’t detected anything out of the ordinary and apart from the light, there was no indication that anyone lurked nearby. Still, agitation rubbed over his nerves and put his senses on alert.

They reached the service door. Jack dug the key out of his pocket and used it to open the door. He paused, pulling information from their surroundings.

The night was still, calm, the first wisps of mist were
just beginning to creep up from the earth and spread out over the grounds. A preamble to dawn at Black’s Cove that had been transpiring for centuries.

He focused his attention on the interior of the building, picking up the sound of a low hum coming from somewhere inside.

Caution bit and held on to his nerves. He stepped through the entrance and took hold of Olivia’s hand.

The strong smell of smoke hung in the air, a result of the charred walls they brushed past as they moved down a narrow corridor and out into the massive dining hall.

Jack scanned the darkness and came up empty.

He pulled Olivia to the stairs, scanning the length of them before they started up. At the landing, he paused again.

The hum was growing louder. Whatever it was, it was on this floor.

Scanning left, he saw a narrow beam of light shining from underneath the door at the end of the hallway, but the hum was coming from the opposite end.