Under the Microscope (11 page)

“What about Jeff?” Max asked.

Ike’s eyes sharpened. “Who?”

“No,” Raine said immediately. “It’s not him.” More accurately, she didn’t want it to be him.

“Your receptionist seemed to think otherwise,” Max countered. “Tori said he’d been hanging out with the FDA investigators and computer techs way more than he normally did.”

And there had been two bodies recovered from her office, not three. Raine grimaced.

“Let Max and me decide who is and isn’t a suspect,” Ike ordered. “That’s why you’re paying us. What is his full name? Stats?”

Raine sighed, but didn’t bother protesting anymore. “Jeffrey Wells. He graduated with degrees from both MIT and Harvard last year, with every
honor imaginable. I wouldn’t have been able to hire him, except he wanted a flexible schedule and had his heart set on a position at a start-up pharmaceutical company.”

Ike paused in her note-taking. “Why was the schedule important?”

“He’s got a younger brother with some medical problems. Jeff is—was?—putting Joey through school while they waited for a transplant.” Raine recalled the picture Jeff kept on his office desk and found herself wondering who had talked to his family. What had they said? Was Jeff dead or alive? She swallowed hard. “I still can’t believe—”

“I’ll check him out,” Ike interrupted. “Anyone else?” When Raine shook her head, Ike said, “Okay then, let’s look at our final option—corporate sabotage. Who would benefit from keeping Thriller off the market?”

“At least three other companies have comparable drugs in development,” Raine answered. “Pentium, TopCat and Pyramid. But the rumors say their versions aren’t nearly as effective as Thriller, and the nearest is at least a year away from being brought to the open market. I’m not sure what they’d gain from trying to—” She broke off and swallowed, struck anew by the sheer scope of what they were talking about. “God, can you even imagine it? Whoever it is, they’ve gone to a ton of trouble.
Product tampering to kill those women, breaking into my place to change the computer records, then setting it on fire. Blowing up the office…” She trailed off as nausea swam in her gut at the awfulness of the list. “Who would do something like this? Why?”

“That’s what we need to figure out.” Ike slid her chair back toward the computer. “I’ll start looking at those companies, along with Jeff Wells.” She glanced at Max. “Anything else?”

“Get me the names and addresses of the dead women’s next of kin,” Max said. He stood, scooping up one of the two pizza boxes. “We’ll need to conduct interviews and figure out what the women had in common. We need to identify the risk factor connecting them.”

Irritation flared through Raine. “I’m telling you,
Thriller is safe!
”

He lifted one shoulder. “Whether they were killed by the drug or murder, there has to be a reason those particular women died. There’s some connection there. It’s up to me and Ike to find it.”

Raine lifted her chin. “And what will I be doing?”

Ike snorted. “Staying the hell out of my way, hopefully.”

“We’ll talk about it tomorrow,” Max said. Pizza box in hand, he backed toward the connecting door. “Both of you be ready to roll at 6:00 a.m. We’re
registered under a safe name, but I don’t want to stay put any longer than necessary. Just in case.”

Raine stood and stalked past him into the other room. “Can I have a word with you?” When he followed, she shut the door. “What in the hell is going on here?”

He didn’t pretend to misunderstand. “I think it’s better this way, don’t you? Besides, with William busy on other cases, I need an info tech to do the computer stuff.”

She narrowed her eyes. “I don’t need a baby-sitter.”

“Maybe I do.” The energy between them shifted, gaining an unexpected edge.

“Oh.” Heat flared, pooling hot and hard in her midsection as he leaned toward her, eyes intent. “I—”

“Sorry to interrupt, but I think you should see something,” Ike’s voice said from the doorway. Max and Raine froze, then stepped apart as Ike held up a computer disk in a jewel-toned case and raised an eyebrow in Raine’s direction. “Care to explain this?”

The label read
Database Remote Access Software.

Chapter Seven

“Where did you find that?” Raine demanded, with an edge in her tone that set off all of Max’s warning buzzers.

“In the pocket of your blazer. You have anything else on you that we should know about?” Ike’s voice carried a similar edge.

Instincts humming on a faint twist of betrayal, Max crossed the room, took the disk from Ike and scowled at Raine. “This is the disk the computer tech handed you when we walked into your office. Why would he give you the access software?”

Raine shook her head. “I don’t know. He told me it was a backup copy of the clinical trial database. I didn’t look to make sure. Maybe he just reused the case?”

“There’s one way to find out.” Ike plucked the disk from Max’s fingers and retreated to the other
room, where she clucked over her computer, talking to it like a trusted friend.

Max moved to follow. As he passed Raine, she snapped, “I’m not lying, damn it. What do I have to do to make you take me at my word?”

He stopped and looked down at her, noticing the purplish smudges beneath her eyes and damning himself for caring that she was exhausted and nearly at the end of her reserves. “To be honest, I’m not sure. But I know it’s going to take more than you telling the easy truth a few times.”

“Well, this is one of those times,” Ike said from the other room. “She’s right. It’s the clinical trial database.” Moments later, her voice climbed a notch. “Wait a minute. It’s time-stamped this morning.”

Max was at Ike’s side in an instant, leaning over her shoulder so he could see the laptop screen. “As in, after the data ghosts were uploaded last night, but before the explosion kiboshed the entire system?”

“If we’re going on the theory that Ms. Montgomery’s home invader inputted the files, then yes.” Ike nodded without looking at him. “And before you ask, yes, I might be able to find the ghosts and backtrack them to their source. Maybe.” She frowned and tapped a few keys before glancing up at him. “What’re my priorities?”

Max muttered under his breath, knowing he only had Ike’s undivided attention for forty-eight
hours. She’d gotten the time off from Boston General easily enough—the head administrator, Zachary Cage, had benefited from her information enough times that he was pretty lenient with her schedule. But she was booked for the weekend, starting Friday. Max would’ve used someone else, but she was the best.

And, he acknowledged, Ike was the antithesis of Raine. That might have had something to do with how hard he’d leaned on his old friend to drive down from Boston on short notice. He’d needed someone he trusted to buy him some space and remind him not to be an idiot.

Ike had been the originator of the term DIDS. If anyone could keep him from falling prey to a damsel with an agenda, it would be her.

“Hey.” Ike elbowed him. “Sometime today would be nice.”

“Sorry. Get me the info on the next of kin first, then see what you can dig up on Jeff Wells and the three drug companies Raine mentioned. Leave the database stuff for last, because it could be a hell of a lot of work.”

She nodded. “Will do, sexy pants.”

Max snorted at the reminder of a particularly embarrassing lab incident, and shook his head. “I’ll see you two first thing in the morning.”

He headed through the connecting door, then
stopped and turned back to Raine. “Promise me that you’ll stay here with Ike until tomorrow.”

Raine narrowed her eyes. “Where are you going?”

One of the things he’d liked most about her in Boston was the combination of quiet reserve and a razor-sharp mind. Now that the quiet reserve was all but gone, the quick wit was almost irritating. Or so Max tried to tell himself.

“You’re not invited,” he said. “Stay with Ike. I want your word.”

Raine lifted her chin as though leading for a punch. Her brown eyes were worried and defiant at the same time as she nodded. “I’ll stay here. I promise. But only if you tell me where you’re going.”

“To meet an informant. Don’t wait up.”

WHEN THE DOOR CLOSED BEHIND Max, the two women traded stares. Raine broke first, turning away and grabbing her shopping bag from that morning. “I’m going to take a shower and change.”

“Do I need to check the rest of your pockets?”

“No,” Raine said between gritted teeth. “What you see is what you get.”

Ike gave her another long look, and sniffed, making it clear she didn’t think much of what she was seeing.

Raine’s temper spiked. “Look, if you’ve got a problem with me, just come out and say it, will you?”
When that earned her nothing more than a raised eyebrow, she said, “Fine. I’ll be in the shower.”

But just as she was about to shut the bathroom door harder than necessary, Ike said, “I don’t like what you did to Max.”

Raine turned back, confused. “Just now?”

“No. Back in Boston.” The other woman kept her attention on the computer screen, her fingers kept tapping on the keyboard, but her voice held the weight of condemnation when she said, “He’s a good man. He deserved better. He
deserves
better.”

Raine winced inwardly, but tried not to let the sting show. “What happened is between Max and me. It doesn’t have anything to do with you.”

“You mess with my friends, you mess with me.” Ike glanced at Raine, the light from the laptop monitor glinting off the three stones in her ear. “And whether you meant to or not, you messed with him when you left. He did some stupid things afterward.”

“Like what?”

“Like taking up with Charlotte. She was pretty and needy, just like you. Only unlike you, she stuck around long enough to nearly bleed him dry before she took off with a moving van full of his stuff.”

Raine thought of the empty apartment in Manhattan. This time, she couldn’t hide the wince. “Oh, hell.”

Ike sneered. “You’ll have to do better than that.”

But Raine shook her head. “No, I don’t. What I can do is tell you that I’m not interested in him that way anymore.” Or rather, she was determined not to be. “I don’t want a man who puts women on pedestals and wants to keep them there.”

That got Ike’s full attention. “He told you about his DIDS?”

“His what?”

“Damsel In Distress Syndrome. That’s what we called it back at Boston General. Max has a near pathological need to save women, and isn’t attracted to normal, healthy females who don’t need saving.” Ike shrugged. “He was losing interest in Charlotte even before she took off. Once she didn’t need him anymore, she just wasn’t that much fun for him anymore. He needs to be needed.”

Though Ike’s words confirmed Raine’s instincts, they stung her a little with the knowledge that she couldn’t win. If Max was attracted to her, that meant he still saw her as a victim. If she were able to prove her strength to him, he’d lose interest. She was better off staying far away.

Too bad she couldn’t convince her libido of that. Her dreams. Hell, even her waking fantasies had begun to star Max Vasek in lurid hi-def color.

Trying to make a measure of peace with her un
wanted roommate, Raine said, “Look, I didn’t handle it well—I won’t argue that. But it doesn’t make me responsible for Max’s choices after he left.”

“You are in my book.”

Raine stared down at her hands. “I knew how I felt—confused and scared and needing some time alone to figure it all out. But I didn’t know how he felt. How could I? It’s not like he came looking for me after I left.”

A small, sad part of her had hoped he would, even as the larger part of her had known they were better off apart. She hadn’t been good for herself for the half year following the miscarriage. She wouldn’t have been good for him.

Ike’s eyes glinted. “I tracked you down about a month later and gave him your address in New Bridge.”

Raine froze, remembering the crummy apartment in a slightly less crummy neighborhood, where she’d hit rock bottom and started the climb back to functionality. “He saw me there?”

“I don’t know.” Ike returned her attention to the computer as though she’d made her point. “You should ask him yourself.”

“I will,” Raine said.
I shouldn’t,
she thought. It was too late to go back there.

Wasn’t it?

“I’m going to take that shower now,” she said
to nobody in particular, mind reeling. Max had known how to find her. Instead, he’d ended up with someone named Charlotte, who’d left him with an empty apartment.

And though Raine told herself that Charlotte wasn’t her fault, guilt beat at her as she undressed and climbed into the shower. Remorse drummed through her as the water sluiced away the grime of the day.

And a wish to go back and do things differently hammered inside her as the tears began to fall.

MAX WAITED ON THE CONNECTICUT Interstate 84 overpass, hoping Charlie would show, hoping this wasn’t some sort of runaround.

It was odd that his informant wanted to meet so far from their normal places, but then again, Charlie was a strange guy. He pulled down a hefty six figures as an attorney in downtown Boston, yet he sold information on the side for a few hundred a pop, and made his clients visit out-of-the-way places and use dumb passwords.

“Weird-ass James Bond wannabe,” Max muttered under his breath. “Couldn’t have picked someplace warmer, could you?” He turned up his coat collar and shivered in the rising wind. Below him, the occasional car zipped by, going from white high beams to red taillights.

He’d been there twenty minutes and he had yet to see another car besides his own on the overpass road.

“I swear, Charlie, if you blow me off, I’ll—”

“No need for threats, Vasek. I’m here.” Charles Lavone appeared out of the shadows, wearing dark colors that blended into the night. His salt-and-pepper hair was hidden beneath a black skullcap, and he wore tight black gloves on his hands.

For a crazy moment, Max thought the nutty son of a gun had climbed up from the road below. Then the other man swung a leg over, and Max realized he’d ridden in on some sort of motorcycle—black of course, running without lights and so quiet the engine noise was lost beneath that of the passing cars.