Читать книгу Red Alert - Jessica Andersen - Страница 9

“Get that crane down here! And kill the flow, now!” Erik’s ears rang from the equipment noise and the force of his own shouts. “What is wrong with you people? There’s a woman in there!”

He gripped the edge of the cement form so hard his fingers ached. He cursed the construction crew for being incompetent, and cursed himself for being worse than useless. Eight years ago, he could have jumped in and saved her.

If he jumped in now, there would be two of them stuck, drowning.

The flowing cement cut out with a rattle. The last few blobs plopped into the foundation form and were immediately absorbed by the smooth gray surface.

There was no sign of Meg Corning. No sign of movement.

Panic spiked through Erik. “Damn it! Where’s that crane?”

“Here!” a man’s voice shouted, and a weighted ball with a large, dangling hook swung down into the foundation pit.

Erik was aware of the shouting, gesturing pedestrians cramming close to the disaster site, aware of the rising throb of sirens in the near distance. The local cops would be here any moment, but the trapped woman couldn’t wait that long.

The thought brought an image of her, a flash of red-gold curls and intelligent hazel eyes, a stacked body hidden beneath a starched white lab coat.

He’d gone to the meeting in person because he’d needed to put a face to the reams of reports he’d amassed on Meg Corning. He’d told himself it was groundwork, but it had been more than that.

It had been a compulsion. He’d needed to see her.

Now he might be the last person to ever see her.

The crane operator finally swung the line toward Erik, who caught the cable. Cursing, he pulled himself onto the swinging weight, braced his good foot on the hook and let the other leg dangle free. Damn thing wasn’t good for much else.

“Lower me into the pit,” he shouted, waving at the crane operator. “Stop when I give the signal!”

He hung on tight as the crane operator swung him out over the slick gray surface and lowered him toward the cement. Please let it still be liquid, he thought. Please let her be holding her breath.

But that seemed a thin hope. The average person would be struggling. Thrashing. Fighting to get free, only to drive themselves deeper into the muck. The very stillness of the slurry was a problem. Either Meg Corning had professional-level survival skills or she’d lost consciousness.

Having met the pretty lady doctor, he feared the latter. She didn’t seem like the survivalist type.

“Okay, stop!” He waved when the hook was barely skimming the surface of the cement, not wanting to drop the heavy weight on top of her. Then he took two quick breaths, aimed off to the side of the form, away from where she’d fallen—

And jumped.

The impact was like slamming into a solid floor that became liquid the moment he passed through. His bad leg folded, sending agony up his hip. He ignored the pain and fought through the clinging gray grit, which had started to set.

It wouldn’t be fully solidified for hours, maybe days, but the partially thickened soup blocked his efforts. She couldn’t be more than three feet away, but he couldn’t get to her.

Heart pounding, fearing it was already too late, he reached up and grabbed on to the hook, then waved to the operator. “Pull me toward the other side. Slowly!”

Gravel and grit dug into his hands as the hook moved, dragging him through the resisting cement, sparking tortured howls in his bum leg.

Not for the first time, he wished they had just cut the damn thing off.

Then he felt something beneath him. A change in the texture, a hint of cloth and something solid.

“Hold it!” he shouted. “Stop! I’ve got her.”

He looped one arm over the hook and reached down with the other. He felt for a handful of cloth, an arm, something he could use to drag her to the surface.

A strong hand clasped his wrist.

“She’s conscious!” he shouted. “Pull me up, quick! No,” he contradicted himself, “Slowly. Very slowly.”

He didn’t want to lose his grip. More importantly, he didn’t want to hurt her. The hold of the cement was stronger than he’d expected.

He reached down and grabbed her upper arm, near where it joined her body. As though they’d discussed the plan, she wrapped her arms around his legs and hung on tight.

This time he welcomed the burn of pain that shot up his right hip.

“Okay, pull!”

The crane engine revved above him and the weighted hook lifted. Erik’s shoulder joint popped.

The hook rose, but he didn’t. A human anchor weighted him down. She was stuck fast, and the seconds counting down in his head told him she didn’t have much time left.

Indeed, he felt her grip slacken, sliding in the grit and the grime.

Then her hands fell away. Her body went limp against him and the image of her peaches-and-cream complexion went gray in his mind’s eye.

No!

The hook continued to lift. Erik’s shoulder and arm burned, but there was no give from below.

He needed more lift, more strength, more leverage. The man he’d been before would have had the tools and the skills, but the man he was now had nothing but a mangled leg.

With a roar of anger at things he couldn’t change no matter how much he wanted to, he let go of the trapped, unconscious woman and reached up to grab the ascending hook with both hands. He dragged his legs forward and wrapped them around her body. He locked his good ankle around his bad calf and hung on tight.

If the pins and screws that ached in the dark of winter nights had ever served a purpose, now was the time.

“Lift hard!” he shouted to the operator, and tensed every muscle in his body. The moment the engine surged, he scissored his legs forward, curling his body up in an effort to break the cement hold on her body.

Nothing.

As the clock ticked down past “too late” in his head, he tried again, summoning all of the strength he’d retained, and maybe some remembered from back when he was whole. He pulled himself up toward the hook with his arms and dragged the woman with him, legs vised around her torso.

He felt a shift. A give. And then he was moving upward, toward street level, toward safety.

And he brought Meg Corning along with him.

He heard cheers from the crowd, whoops of sirens and the shouts of local cops creating order. The crane operator lifted him above the crowd, then back down, lowering Erik and his limp burden onto a hastily cleared section of pavement near the broken barrier.

Uniformed officers reached up to take the unconscious woman, who was immediately swarmed by emergency personnel. They left Erik to jump down on his own.

He did, then staggered and nearly fell.

“I’ve got you.” An overweight, balding stranger grabbed him by his sodden suit jacket, righted him, and shoved his cane into his hand. “Here. You’ll need this.”

Erik stared at the cane, at the ring of polished wood near the handle that made it stronger and weaker at the same time. “You can say that again. Thanks for hanging on to it for me.”

“No sweat. I owe you one.”

Erik glanced up. “Do I know you?”

“It’s not a big deal if you don’t remember me, Mr. Falco.” The stranger grinned. “You bought out my father’s company a couple of years ago. Celltronics. Gave him enough money to retire to a big-assed boat in the Caribbean, and put all the grandkids through college.”

“Glad it worked out,” Erik said automatically, though he barely remembered the deal, which had been one of too many acquisitions, all aimed at an impossible goal.

Or maybe not so impossible anymore. Not once he got his hands on the NPT technology.

At the thought of the technology and its creator, he turned toward the knot of rescue personnel nearby. To his surprise, he saw that Meg was conscious, sitting up without assistance while chunks of half-set cement dribbled from her lab coat and dark hair.

And she was glaring daggers at him.

DAMN IT, Meg thought. The bastard had lied to her. And then he’d rescued her.

How was she supposed to react to that?

The aftershocks raced through her body, remnants of those long seconds that she’d been submerged in the cement. She’d told herself to be calm, to remember her old training. Count your heartbeats, her skydiving instructor had told her. It’ll keep the panic away.

And it had. Mostly.

Then Erik Phillips had come for her.

Only he wasn’t Erik Phillips. He was Erik Falco, head of FalcoTechno, which was one of the largest technology conglomerates on the eastern seaboard.

And one of the highest bidders trying to buy her upcoming patents.

Piercing blue eyes fixed on her, Falco crossed to where she sat on the bumper of an ambulance, huddled beneath a scratchy wool blanket. “How do you feel?”

“Alive, thanks to you.” She tightened the blanket around her shoulders. “I’m not sure why you made the effort, though. It’d be much easier for you to push the deal through with me out of the picture.”

He nodded, acknowledging his identity, as well as the standoff that had been handled through lawyers and the hospital administration up to that point. But his expression darkened as he said, “You think I’d let you drown to get the deal done?”

She shrugged, feeling the rasp of drying grit against her skin. “In my experience, the human element doesn’t matter much to commercial drug developers.”

“Oh. You’re one of them.” He rolled his eyes. “You’re one of those researchers who think academia is the only pure science. God forbid someone make a profit off research.”

She sniffed. “Let’s just say I’ve had better luck with the university types.”

“Why? Because your mother left you and your father for a man with a bigger house and a better bankroll?” Falco stopped and cursed. “I apologize. Please forget I said that.” He waved to the hovering paramedics. “Let’s get you transported to the ER so the docs can check you out.”

“I’m fine.” She stood stiffly, feeling her suede skirt and pretty green pullover crackle with the motion. “And no, I won’t forget what you said. Don’t think you know me because your people did a few background checks. And don’t think you can order me around because you saved my life, or because you think that little charade with—” She broke off. “Oh, hell. You’ve got to get Raine—if that’s even her name—back here.”

“Why? What’s wrong?”

Cautious of patient privacy, Meg said, “Not here. Have your wife—” She saw the shift in his expression and pressed her lips together. “Another lie. Who is she?”

He didn’t even have the grace to look ashamed. “Raine Montgomery, vice president of my pharmaceuticals division.”

“Lucky for you there was a pregnant woman handy. And lucky for her, too. Have her meet me in the lab in ten minutes.”

He scowled. “You won’t be in the lab in ten minutes. You’ll be in the ER.”

Temper fraying with the need to get somewhere alone, somewhere private where she could shake, scream, fall apart, all the things she couldn’t do across the street from her office and in full view of countless hospital employees, Meg snapped, “Don’t tell me what to do. In fact, leave me the hell alone. I want to see Raine ASAP, but I don’t want to see you. Not ever again.”

His expression shifted to neutral. “That could be difficult.”

She sneered at him. “The way I’ve heard it, you thrive on a challenge, Mr. Falco. Consider this one.”

She turned and pushed through the crowd to the hospital, ignoring the TV reporters’ microphones and shouted questions. She left the cops enough information to find her later, after she’d cleaned up. After she’d broken down.

It wasn’t until she was halfway across Kneeland Street that she realized her feet were burning. She looked down and stared stupidly at her gray-smeared toes, which were barely covered by torn panty hose.

She’d lost her tall brown boots. They’d been sucked off by the cement, left behind when Erik Falco had risked his own life to drag her out of the muck.

That small detail brought home the danger before she was ready for it. Her stomach knotted on a surge of nausea and her throat closed down until only a trickle of oxygen seeped through.

She was suffocating.

The gray waves closed in on her, surrounding her, compressing her. Killing her.

Not here, Meg told herself. Not now. Not yet. Not where she would cause a scene on hospital property. Her father was right. Her science was controversial enough without her personal exploits adding fuel to the flame. The thought of her dependable, rock-steady sire helped hold off the shakes and she forced her trembling legs to carry her the rest of the way across the street, barefoot.

She thought she heard her name called in deep, masculine tones, but she didn’t turn back. If it was one of the officers, he could phone the lab. If it was Falco, he could go to hell.

She had no intention of prostituting her work to some megacompany that cared only for profit.

And if he tried to force the issue with her bosses, she’d fight him tooth and nail.

“DAMN STUBBORN WOMAN.” Erik cursed under his breath as she disappeared through the main hospital doors. Then again, why did that surprise him? She’d already managed to block his representatives at every turn, fighting to keep her discovery in the public arena by administering it through the university rather than a private company.

He respected the effort. Too bad it was doomed, because he had no intention of failing. Her fetal cell isolation process would be his, with or without her cooperation. His whole pharma staff was on it.

At the thought of his staff, he grabbed for his cell phone and speed dialed the office. “Get me Raine.” When she answered the transfer, he said, “Sorry for the quick turnaround, but I need you back at the hospital right now.”

“Another stint as Mrs. Phillips?” Raine asked, her voice carrying an unfamiliar lilt that put him on edge.

Six years earlier, her résumé had overridden his reluctance to work with a pretty, single woman his age, and he’d hired her into the then-startup FalcoTechno. They had grown together, Raine and the company, and she’d proven herself to be an exception to his rules. She was a beautiful woman who kept her mind strictly on business. One he could trust to get his back.

They’d stayed out of each other’s personal lives. Hell, he hadn’t even realized she’d been married until six weeks earlier, when he’d found her in the men’s bathroom, crying, disoriented and puking.

She’d confessed to being pregnant with her husband’s baby…a year after the divorce was final.

The experience had forged an uncomfortable intimacy between Erik and Raine, one he’d tried like hell to ignore until he got word that Dr. Meg Corning had once again blocked his offer to buy the rights to her Noninvasive Prenatal Testing technology.

When his request for a meeting had been denied—not just once, but three different times—he’d gone with Plan B and asked Raine to pose as a prospective test subject to get inside information. It had been her idea that they pretend to be a married couple so he could get a firsthand look. He’d agreed, but couldn’t help worrying that she’d gotten the wrong idea.

Or that she was playing him.

God knew, he’d fallen for it before.

Now, his fingers tightened on the phone. “No more Mr. and Mrs. Phillips. She pegged me as a ringer.” Which was almost a relief.

“Then why do you need me?” Raine asked.

Not wanting to worry her unnecessarily, he said, “Just meet me in the Boston General lobby as soon as you can, okay? And bring the garment bag from my office closet. I need a change of clothes.”

He cut the connection before she could ask why. He started to head back to the hospital, but a hail brought him up short.

“Mr. Falco? Lieutenant?”

Erik turned at the once-familiar title. “Falco, please. Or Erik. I haven’t been a cop for nearly eight years.”

The two plainclothes detectives wore badges clipped to their belts and standard-issue shoulder holsters beneath their jackets. The younger of the two—who looked close to Erik’s age of thirty-eight—wore a brown suit that complemented his brown hair and clean-cut good looks, while his partner, who was closer to sixty, with a droopy, almost fishlike face, wore washed-out blue.

Both suits were decent quality but off-the-rack, just as Erik’s had been back when he was on the job, back before a woman and his own stupidity had killed a good man and cost Erik the use of his leg and the life he’d known.

The brown-haired cop said, “I’m Detective Reid Peters.” He gestured to his older partner. “This is Sturgeon. We’d like to ask you a few questions.”

Erik blocked a spear of resentful nostalgia for the cop-speak and leaned on his cane. “Fire away.”

Peters pulled out a PDA. It was a few generations older and much lower quality than Erik’s top-of-the-line pocket computer, but it was still a far cry from the spiral-bound notebooks of years past. The younger detective used a stylus to tap open a new file, then set the record function before he asked, “How well do you know the victim?”

“She’s not a victim—it was an accident.” Erik narrowed his eyes. “Wasn’t it?”

The detectives didn’t answer, letting their original question hang.

Erik’s temper spiked a notch. “Don’t give me the silent routine. I was on the job—you know that or you wouldn’t have called me ‘lieutenant.’ So I’ll make a deal…you tell me what you know and I tell you what I know. Otherwise, you can talk to my lawyers. I have an entire department full, and they’ll enjoy running you around for weeks if I tell them to.”

Peters shared a look with Sturgeon, the sort of nonverbal communication partners developed over many years of teamwork.

The sort of look that reminded Erik of his old partner, James Hadley. Jimmy.

After a moment the older detective shrugged. “It might not have been an accident. There’s supposed to be a metal railing separating the construction site from the sidewalk. The contractor swears it was put in last week, but it’s gone.”

“Contractors lie,” Erik said, having been stung on a few projects over the years. “Subcontractors cut corners. That doesn’t say ‘intentional’ to me.”

But his instincts jangled. The sluiceway had opened at precisely the wrong moment. When he’d looked at the cement truck cab moments later, the driver had been gone, the door hanging open.

Peters stared at him for a long moment as though assessing him. Finally he nodded. “Have a look at this.” He led them back through the police line, to the place where Meg had fallen through.

Erik took one look at the wooden railing and cursed bitterly. The panel had been neatly sawn through.

“So let me ask you.” Peters tucked the PDA into his pocket, giving an illusion of off-the-record, though he hadn’t turned off the recording feature. “Who was the target here? Boston General, Meg Corning…or you?”