Buch lesen: «Red Alert»

They were completely and utterly alone.

Meg was conscious of the quick rise and fall of Erik’s broad chest as their spat of moments ago morphed into something hotter and more dangerous.

“This is stupid,” she said, as much to herself as to him. “I don’t like you. I don’t trust you. I shouldn’t be attracted to you.”

“Same goes,” he said, a flash of desire crossing his face. “Then again, that seems to be my usual M.O. What’s your excuse?”

But even though his words came out fairly mocking, he closed the distance between them until she could feel the warmth of him against the suddenly sensitized skin of her cheeks and lips. “Stupidity, maybe. The circumstances. Hell, even the danger. I don’t know.”

But she did. That last choice resonated a little too well, but the moment was lost when he closed the gap between them. Their lips touched. Their breaths mingled.

And their last shreds of rationality were lost.

Red Alert
Jessica Andersen

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Though she’s tried out professions ranging from cleaning sea lion cages to cloning glaucoma genes, from patent law to training horses, Jessica is happiest when she’s combining all these interests with her first love: writing romances. These days she’s delighted to be writing full-time on a farm in rural Connecticut that she shares with a small menagerie and a hero named Brian. She hopes you’ll visit her at www.JessicaAndersen.com for info on upcoming books, contests and to say hi!

CAST OF CHARACTERS

Megan Corning—Her medical research is poised to revolutionize prenatal genetic testing, but the technique has a darker side. When a series of “accidents” threaten Meg’s life, a handsome stranger protects her—but his motives are far from pure.

Erik Falco—Once a cop, now a hugely successful businessman, Erik has vowed to acquire the rights to the cutting-edge research. But how far will he go once he meets the lovely Dr. Corning?

Zachary Cage—The head administrator of Boston General Hospital must weigh the value of the new technology against the needs of the hospital and the safety of his employees.

Raine Montgomery—Erik’s second-in-command has something to hide.

Annette Foulke—She wants the tenured university position that Megan seems sure to win.

Luke Cannon—Is it a coincidence that the head of acquisitions at Pentium Pharmaceuticals is a member of Meg’s climbing gym?

Edward—The youth hides beneath the hood of a dark sweatshirt and listens to the voices that tell him he has only one chance to make things right.

Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Prologue

Edward slipped through the front door of the hospital unnoticed. Bodies thronged the main atrium, a lunchtime press of patients and personnel that made it easy for him to cross the lobby unnoticed in his jeans and dark hooded sweatshirt. From there, he walked to the brushed-steel elevators that led to the Reproductive Technology offices. Then he waited.

And watched.

He sneered at the men and women who passed his vantage point, some alone, some in couples, all united by hope. The desire to create a new life. A new beginning.

Garbage, he thought with a quiet snort. There was no such thing as a new beginning. You only got one life, and if you screwed it up, you were out of luck.

Then again, his mother used to say, You’ve got to make your own luck. Nobody else is going to make it for you.

That was what he was doing. Making his own luck.

“Are you sure about this?” a female voice asked nearby.

Edward turned to see a dark-haired woman clinging to the free arm of an even darker-haired man. Though the guy looked to be in his late thirties, he used a gray metal cane to hitch along on a leg that didn’t bend quite right.

“It’s just a blood test,” the guy said, voice sharp, as though he’d answered the question before. He glanced down and his expression softened a degree. “I wouldn’t endanger you or the baby.”

“Of course,” the woman murmured as the elevator doors whooshed open, inviting them in. She didn’t sound convinced, nor did she release the gimp’s arm as the two of them stepped into the elevator.

The doors hissed shut, leaving Edward staring after the couple. A faint smile touched his lips as he reached up and pulled his sweatshirt hood forward so he could see out but nobody could see in.

Today was going to be his lucky day.

Chapter One

Exhaustion thrummed through Megan Corning’s body, a combination of too many grant applications and too few days off in the past months.

Knowing she didn’t have time to be tired yet, Meg dug her fingers into her red-gold hair and told herself to focus on something else. Something positive, like the new office the Boston General Hospital administrators had given her just the week before.

She glanced around the room and grimaced.

The walls were painted a classy ice-blue and hung with a handful of diplomas and accolades. The front cover of last March’s Science magazine was smack in the center, announcing a “New Noninvasive Method for Prenatal Diagnosis.” If her desk were a bed, it would’ve been a California king, and the rolling chair was real leather.

It all looked very impressive. Hell, what she’d done was impressive. But the wall art, added to the stark white padded chairs opposite her black metal desk, gave the decor a chilly feeling.

The room was so not her.

At least, it wasn’t how she saw herself. She had a sneaking suspicion the austere furniture and harsh lighting were perfectly aligned with how too many of her co-workers saw her. Functional. Dependable. Lacking warmth.

And why is that?

She closed her eyes and rubbed her temples, knowing she’d created the image herself a decade earlier, on her father’s orders that she tone down her reputation when he got her the job at Boston General.

Well, not orders, precisely. Call it a strong suggestion from Dad. Who also happened to be a Nobel Prize–winning scientist.

Tone down the dangerous stuff, Meg, Robert Corning had said in his resonant lecturer’s voice. They already doubt your science, why give them an excuse to criticize your sense?

As much as she’d hated to admit it, he’d had a point. Her insistence on proving that a baby’s cells could be found in the mother’s bloodstream had already raised too many eyebrows. Her grades hadn’t been the best, and her Ph.D. thesis had been long on theory, short on results.

Of necessity, she’d grown out the streaks in her hair, put her skis, parachutes and other toys into storage, and focused on figuring out how to test a baby’s genetic makeup from a sample of the mother’s blood.

They said it couldn’t be done, but she’d managed it. She’d developed a blood test that was poised to revolutionize prenatal genetic analysis. Boston General Hospital and her cosponsor, Thrace University, would reap the rewards and Meg would be assured tenure. She’d be set for life—she’d have a job, a good salary, a whopping pension and a corner office.

“And it won’t be black and white!” she said out loud.

A head popped around the open office door. “You need me, boss?”

“Um, no. I was talking to myself, actually.” Meg grimaced when Jemma Smoltz, her patient coordinator and sometimes lab assistant, stepped into the room.

Short, dark hair framed Jemma’s pixie-perfect face, and she wore flirty capri pants that showed off her slim ankles, one of which was tattooed with a pink rose.

She was twenty-six, tiny and feminine, and she made thirty-four-year-old, five-foot-ten Meg feel like a human water buffalo in comparison.

Less so these days, though, because Meg had been working out. She’d lost fifteen pounds since winter, and had her sights set on another ten.

Jemma grinned. “Daydreaming about that stud rock climbing instructor at your new gym?”

Meg rolled her eyes. “I never should have told you about Otto.” But there was no harm in it, really. She was just window shopping, admiring the kind of active, muscle-bound hunk she’d always found attractive.

“You should ask him out.”

“Not on your life. He’s too young for me. And besides—” Meg waved at the diplomas, the glossy magazine cover and the cool blue walls “—that’s not my lifestyle anymore. I can’t take off on a moment’s notice to free climb God only knows where.” Though there were sure days she wished she could. “I’ve got a lab. Responsibilities.”

Jemma wrinkled her nose. “That doesn’t mean you have to be boring.”

“I’m not boring, I’m focused. There’s a difference.” Although some days, she worried that there wasn’t any difference at all. That she wasn’t pretending to be boring anymore—she’d actually become boring.

Hell, even her recent return to free climbing was on an indoor wall with landing pads on the floor.

Unusually annoyed with her office, with herself, Meg reached across her desk and flipped open the next folder on a stack of twenty, hoping Jemma would get the hint.

“Aw, come on,” the younger woman wheedled. “You owe it to yourself to ask Otto—”

“I owe it to the hospital to collect another fifty beta test subjects before the end of the week,” Meg snapped. “Is the next patient here?”

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.

She lunged across the last few feet separating them and grabbed his sleeve. “Erik!”

He turned and his face blanked with surprise. “Dr. Corning. What are you—”

Someone pushed her from behind and she tumbled against him. She felt hard muscle through the elegant suit, then another blow slammed into her, knocking her aside.

She shrieked and stumbled back, arms windmilling. Her hip banged into a railing and wood splintered. The heel of one of her tall boots snagged on something.

She screamed. Overbalanced.

And plunged into the construction pit.

The fall was short, but when she hit, the impact drove the breath from her lungs. Her landing pad was cold and wet. Too heavy to be water, too gritty to be mud.

She’d fallen into the cement form.

And she was sinking.

Over the growing hubbub of screams and shouts from above, she heard a man’s voice shout, “Meg!”

She looked up and saw Erik leaning over the lip of the cement form. He stretched his arm down and sunlight glinted off his cane. “Grab on!”

Gasping and choking as the wet, heavy weight pressed on every fiber of her being, she reached up. She could just touch the cane with the edge of her fingertips. She stretched farther and heard a rushing roar, and a man’s shout.

Above her, the cement truck sluiceway opened up and dumped heavy, clinging cement on top of her.

“Help me!” she screamed. The cascade of wet cement filled the space quickly, covering her shoulders in seconds, then working its way up her neck.

Why hadn’t they turned off the sluice? Couldn’t the cement truck operator tell there was a problem?

Even as the thought formed in Meg’s brain, it was too late. The liquefied silt poured down around her, covering her neck and ears. She screamed, though she knew it would do no good.

She was being buried alive.

Safety was no more than ten feet away. Rescue had to be on its way. But it would be too late.

She screamed again and arched her back against the sluggish give of the setting cement. She looked up to the edge of the cement form, toward the sidewalk, where the protective railing hung askew. Though she could hear nothing over the splatter of cement that continued to fall from above and her eyes were blurred with clinging clumps of grit, she saw the silhouette of a broad-shouldered man in an expensive suit.

The image of blue eyes stayed with her when she sucked in her last breath.