Читать книгу Under the Microscope - Jessica Andersen - Страница 11

When a knock at the apartment door signaled the arrival of his take-out dinner, Max Vasek poked his head out of the bathroom and yelled, “Be right there!”

And it was about time, too. He’d called in the order nearly forty minutes ago. Then again, he’d learned that stuff like deliveries and repairs always took twice as long in New York City versus back in Boston, where he’d grown up and spent a chunk of his adult life.

It was a geographic law or something.

Hair still damp from his post-gym shower, wearing worn jeans and a heavy flannel shirt he’d left unbuttoned because the thermostat was on the fritz again and the five-room apartment was randomly cycling between arctic and parboil, Max padded to the door barefoot. He plucked a ten and a twenty from his wallet, undid the safety locks and opened the door. “Keep the—”

Then he stopped. Standing outside his apartment was a tall woman wearing a calf-length red coat and a bulky wool hat, tipped down so it obscured her face. She was long and lean, with a big leather bag slung diagonally across her body, city-style.

Clearly not his Chinese food.

“Whoops, sorry.” Max rocked back on his heels. “You the new tenant in 5B? If you’re wondering about the heat, the super said he’d get to it this week sometime, and he’s pretty good about stuff like that.”

The woman took a breath, and he saw her gloved hands twine together and hold before she said, “I’m not the new tenant.” Her husky voice was the first punch of a one-two, with “two” following the moment she looked up, so he could see her face. “I need to talk to you.”

Max’s breath whistled between his teeth, forced by the shock of that second punch.

Her long dark hair was pulled back under her hat, but a few loose curls touched the aristocratic angles of her face and the long curve of her neck. Her eyes were a haunting light brown that seemed to glow against her rosy skin and dark lashes, adding a pout to her full, dusky lips.

Raine Montgomery. He knew her instantly, even after—what had it been? Two years? Three?

Three years since she’d disappeared from her room at Boston General Hospital without a word, proving that he’d been wrong about her. She hadn’t had a deeper layer buried beneath the brittle, scared exterior. She had been exactly what she’d seemed on the surface. Shallow. Self-absorbed. Career-minded at the expense of family or loyalty.

And so achingly beautiful he’d talked himself into believing she needed him, talked himself into believing they had a future together.

Until she’d taken off.

“I went to your office and spoke with your partner. He gave me this address. I hope you don’t mind.” She tilted her head to look up at him, because although she was a slender five foot ten, he still topped her by nearly six inches. “May I come in?”

“I do mind.” In fact, he was going to kill William for giving out his home address. “And no, you can’t come in.” Max didn’t need to glance back into the bare rooms to know he didn’t want her anywhere near his apartment, or his life. “Since I know damn well this isn’t a social call, I can only assume you have a case for Vasek and Caine. Make an appointment during business hours and we’ll see what we can do for you.”

Translation: he’d pawn her off on William, who was nearly impervious to big brown eyes.

Max was tempted to tell her to get lost, but he wasn’t an idiot. He knew her company was getting set to launch their highly touted female sex-enhancement drug—not because he’d been keeping tabs on her, but because the buzz had been impossible to ignore. It stood to reason that she wanted to see him about Thriller.

The drug was slated to bring in big money. Big publicity. Exactly the sort of thing his and William’s company needed if they wanted to break out of the nickel-and-dime stuff and into mainstream competition.

“Tomorrow could be too late,” she argued. “I need to talk to you now.”

He was faintly surprised by the persistence, which jarred against his memory of a quiet, polite woman in a hospital bed, one who didn’t want to be fussed over as the doctors struggled to control a blood clotting issue. It was that very desire not to make a fuss that had made him want to fuss over her. Want to be with her. Want to wrap her in silk and take her away from danger and ugliness.

It was what his techie friend Ike called DIDS. Damsel In Distress Syndrome.

But, Max thought grimly, knowing you have a problem is the first step in fighting it.

He didn’t budge from the door. “You need to talk to me? So talk.”

She took a breath and glanced away. “First, I need to apologize. You were nothing but kind to me three years ago, and I treated you badly. I was sick, hormonal and upset and going through a really terrible time in my life, but that’s no excuse.” She paused and looked at him squarely before she said, “I’m sorry. I should have said goodbye.”

Three years ago, that might have mattered to him.

Now, he scowled. “Agreed. So what?”

He expected her to back down. Instead, she stood her ground while something dark and haunted moved through her expression. “I’m in trouble. You’ve heard of Thriller?”

He nodded, accepting the change of topic if not the apology. “Female sexuality drug. Lots of publicity. Launches sometime this week.”

“Actually, it was supposed to launch today. The FDA put a hold on it.” Still standing in the hallway, she unslung the leather bag from around her neck, opened it and pulled out a folder that was filled with a half inch of papers and had a data disk taped to the front inside a plastic sleeve. She offered it to him. “Four women are dead from cardiac arrest. According to the reports, the only thing they had in common was that all four took Thriller before they died.”

He ignored the folder. “Call William in the morning and make an appointment. Our history back in Boston doesn’t give you the right to hunt me up at home, and it doesn’t qualify you for preferential treatment. Hell, if anything, I should tell him to ask for hazard pay.”

He told himself he’d meant the comment as a joke, but it landed flat.

Three years earlier, he’d been more or less content with his lab work at Boston General Hospital. With a Ph.D in biochemistry, a postdoc in a fertility lab and a half-dozen major first-author papers to his name, he could’ve run his own group, but preferred having someone else manage the basics, leaving him free to pursue interesting side projects.

It was one such side project that had put him in contact with a then-pregnant Raine. When danger had stalked the lab and its patients, Max had appointed himself the pretty divorcée’s guardian, and had thought his growing feelings were reciprocated.

In the end, an empty hospital room had proven otherwise.

“I already spoke to your partner about the case,” she said quickly. “He told me to talk to you.”

Max bet she was leaving out a few steps. Like how she’d conned William into giving up his address. No doubt she’d implied—or outright said—that they’d been lovers, when they’d been nothing of the sort.

Though they might have been lovers. If they’d met at another time, under different circumstances…

It didn’t matter, Max told himself. They’d met the way they’d met, and parted the way they’d parted.

And he’d gone on to make some really bad decisions in the aftermath. Maybe it wasn’t fair to blame her for them, but that didn’t change the upshot.

Damsels in distress were nothing but trouble.

He held up a hand before she could speak again. “Look, Raine. An apology doesn’t change anything.” He stepped back, into the apartment. “If you want Vasek and Caine to handle your case, you’ll have to deal with William, not me.”

With that, he shut the door on her. He didn’t slam it, because a slam would indicate anger, suggesting he still cared.

No, he shut it gently, with a firm, final-sounding thunk.

Then he locked and double locked it. But as he turned away from the door and stared into the barren apartment, which had been stripped of most of its furnishings and absolutely everything of monetary value, he had to wonder.

Was he locking her out, or locking himself in?

RAINE STOOD IN THE HALLWAY for a long moment, trembling. Not with fear or anger, though that was part of it. And not with the accumulated stress of the past two days, though that was part of it, too. But the rest of it was Max.

She’d thought she’d been prepared to see him.

She’d been wrong.

He was taller than she remembered, and broader, but his voice was the same, a deep, dark rumble that used an educated man’s vocabulary in a blue-collar Boston accent. His face remained a collection of heavy planes and angles that shouldn’t have been handsome but somehow was, even beneath a faint shadow of stubble. All that was the same.

But his eyes were different. How he’d looked at her was different.

When they’d known each other for those few short weeks at Boston General, under the strangest of circumstances, he’d treated her so kindly, so gently. He hadn’t said much, but he’d been there through the entire terrifying ordeal, and he’d never looked at her as though she were the enemy, as though she had betrayed him.

Never looked at her the way he had just now.

“It’s nothing more than I deserve,” she said aloud. “I took off on him.”

It occurred to her that his reaction—along with his partner’s raised brows and quick cooperation when she’d given her name—was confirmation that Max remembered her, evidence that the feelings hadn’t been all on her side. But it was also proof that she’d hurt him when she’d left, and she hadn’t wanted that.

She’d wanted to punish herself for getting sick and miscarrying the baby, not him. But it seemed as though she’d managed to do both, and she wasn’t sure how to fix it. Wasn’t sure it was fixable at all.

On the long, traffic-delayed drive from the Vasek and Caine offices in Manhattan, she’d worked out what she would say when Max opened the door. But the shock of seeing him had driven the planned speech out of her head.

He’d turned her down before she’d been able to get back on track. So now what?

“General Gao’s?”

Raine gasped and spun at the unfamiliar voice.

A young man in courier’s clothes and a bike helmet stumbled back a step and held up a fragrant brown bag as a shield. “General Gao’s!” he repeated. “Pork fried rice.” He pointed to Max’s door. “You’re in 5A, right?”

“Of course.” Thinking fast, Raine dug her wallet out of her purse. “How much do I owe you?”

She paid him, added a generous tip and waited until he was gone, until she was alone in the hallway.

Then she faced Max’s door and took a deep breath. “Well, here goes nothing.”

She wasn’t giving up on her company.

According to Jeff, the FDA investigators had practically locked down Rainey Days while they pored over the computer and hard-copy files of the clinical trials. They were checking to see whether Thriller was safe for human use. They were also looking for evidence of criminal misconduct. Falsified evidence. Mysteriously “lost” toxicity reports.

Though she knew they would find no such thing, Raine didn’t dare trust the system. Her childhood had taught her that much. Besides, the FDA was part of the government, and elections were on the horizon. If a competing company started throwing its financial weight around with influential candidates, she could be in deep trouble.

She needed her own investigation, damn it. She would’ve preferred to hire William Caine, but he’d claimed he was overbooked, that Max would have to help her.

Granted, he’d said that after he’d figured out who she was.

“Fine,” she said under her breath. “We’ll do it the hard way.”

She unbuttoned her long coat, tugged on the hem of her camel-colored sweater and faced the door squarely, trying to look like the boss of a growing company.

Then she knocked. “Delivery.”

She heard his footsteps on the hardwood floor she’d glimpsed just inside the door. When the steps paused but the locks didn’t disengage, she held the bag up and stared at the fish-eye peephole. “You want your dinner? Let me in.”

It felt like forever before she heard the locks turn. The door opened and Max glared out. His shirt was buttoned now, and he had thick socks on his feet and a knit cap pulled over his short dark hair. “I don’t remember you being this bossy before.”

“You didn’t know me before,” she said, telling herself that the flutter in her stomach was nothing more complicated than nerves.

She expected a snappy rejoinder, or maybe agreement.

Instead, she got an inscrutable stare.

When the silence grew long and uncomfortable, she cleared her throat. “I want to hire you to help me prove that Thriller didn’t kill those women. I’m afraid the only way to do that is to figure out what did kill them. I can’t do that by myself. I need an investigator. A good one. If—no when we succeed, it could be a huge boost to Vasek and Caine. I’ll give you all the credit, whatever publicity you want. TV appearances, ads, you name it.” She held out the paper bag. “Will you at least hear me out?”

He looked from the bag to her, and she knew he wasn’t weighing the food bribe. He was trying to decide whether the good of his company outweighed their history.

As the boss of her own start-up, Raine knew what the answer had to be. Practicality would win over emotion every time.

Otherwise, she wouldn’t be here, would she?

Finally, he stepped back and muttered, “Come in.”

The thrill of victory was dampened by the sly shift of heat when she walked past him, the shimmer of awkwardness at being inside his space.

The discomfort increased when she looked around. The apartment was large and airy, with carved moldings and neutrally painted walls. The hardwood floors were worn but well varnished, stretching from the tiles of an open kitchen nook, through the main living space, and narrowing into a hallway and glimpses of other rooms. She could see the small details of the hand carved woodwork on the trim and doors, mainly because that was almost the only thing to see. The apartment was bare, as though he’d just arrived and the moving vans hadn’t caught up yet.

Yet downstairs, the label on his mailbox was yellow with age.

“Nice place,” she said faintly, wanting to ask but knowing she didn’t have the right.

The living-room furnishings consisted of a smallish plasma-screen TV bolted to one wall and a single faux-leather chair with a trash basket beside it. The TV sat in a square of darker paint, as though it had taken the place of a larger set.

Max cleared his throat and avoided her eyes. “My roommate moved out and took a bunch of stuff a few months back. I haven’t had a chance to replace the things yet.”

“I just figured your decorator was a minimalist,” Raine said, trying for a joke when there was no laughter to be had. She held out his dinner. “Are you sharing?”

He snagged the bag. “Not on your life. Start talking.”

When he went into the kitchen, she took another look around, wondering what had happened. Was the roommate thing true, or had his furniture been repossessed?

It struck her then that while Max didn’t know anything about her, the same was equally true in reverse.

So why did it feel as if they’d known each other so very well?

He reappeared with a white carton in one hand and a fork in the other. He propped a hip on the corner of a granite countertop and dug in. “Clock’s ticking.”

She held out the file folder she’d assembled back at the office in New Bridge. “It’s all in here—everything we’ve managed to pull together on the clinical trials and the four dead women. It’s not much, which is why we need a professional. My people are scientists and marketers, not pharmaceutical investigators.”

Then again, Max had been a scientist when she’d known him. What had changed?

“Is there anything besides optimism that makes you think your drug wasn’t responsible for the deaths?” he asked, his tone making the question seem like a dig. “I mean, clinical trials usually contain what, a few thousand people? If there’s a rare risk factor, it’s entirely possible that your sample populations might not have contained an example. You might just have missed it.”

Raine dug her fingernails into her palms, knowing the scenario he painted was one-hundred-percent possible. But that wasn’t the explanation for the deaths. She knew it. She felt it.

Optimism? Perhaps. But right now it was her only hope.

“Our clinical trials were exhaustive,” she said, knowing that didn’t really answer his question. “We used computers to test out another million or so models. All negative. Besides, the dead women don’t share any risk factors.”

“None that you’ve found yet.” He nodded at the file in her hands.

“Which is why I need your help,” she said quietly, mustering as much dignity as she could. When his expression didn’t change, didn’t soften, she let out a small defeated sigh. “What will it take to get you onboard? Do you want me to apologize again? Double your hourly rate? Get down on my knees and beg?” She would do it if she had to, for the sake of the company she’d built from nothing. For the sake of her future. Her employees’ futures.

A heavy weight settled on her shoulders, feeling like each of the dreams she let herself imagine late at night.

He stared at her for a long moment, giving nothing away. Then he gestured with his fork. “Leave your info. I’ll have a look at it and talk to William. Call the office in the morning and set up a real appointment. I’ll let you know then.”

Instead of relief, Raine felt a new layer of tension settle. “Let me know what?”

“Whether we’ll take the case or not.” He sent her a hard look. “And if we do, it won’t be because of Boston, apology or not.”

A faint chill skittered across her skin, warning her that the agreeable Max Vasek she’d known before might not be the only side of him.

She’d known she would have to work to get past his initial resistance. Now, she reevaluated, and came up thinking that she might never get past it. She could only hope they’d manage to work together in a sort of armed truce.

She nodded slowly. “I understand.” She turned toward the door, only then realizing that she could see her breath. The apartment was bitter cold. Another sign that Max’s finances were in trouble?

She turned back and confessed, “I can’t pay a retainer. That’s why the others wouldn’t take the case.”

He shrugged, expression shuttered. “If we take the case, William and I will keep track of our hours and expenses, and you can pay us when it’s over.” Now his eyes focused on her. “Can I trust that you won’t run away from the debt?”

She wasn’t sure if the faint mockery in his tone was directed at her or himself, but she knew she wasn’t going to find a better deal elsewhere. If Thriller went back on the market, it would take months—maybe longer—for sales to rebound, but they would rebound. Then she’d be solvent and able to pay. If Thriller wound up banned from the market…

Hell, she’d probably have to sell off the rest of the Rainey Days drug portfolio to settle her debts. She’d find the money one way or the other, except that one way, she’d be a success.

The other, a failure.

She swallowed hard, told herself this was what she’d come to New York to achieve, and nodded. “It’s a deal.”

He dug his fork into the carton and turned his back on her. “Then I guess I’ll see you tomorrow.”

His message was clear. He would consider working with her for both their benefits, but that didn’t mean she was forgiven.

WHEN THE TAP OF HER HEELS receded in the hallway outside his apartment, Max dropped the carton of fried rice onto the counter and scrubbed both hands across his face.

Well. Raine Montgomery.

Damn it, he hadn’t expected ever to see her again. Hadn’t expected to want her if he did. He knew better. But that didn’t change the fact that his head was jammed with the sight and scent of her, that her husky voice sounded in his ears the way it had before, tempting him, challenging him.

She’s no different than Charlotte, he reminded himself. A professional damsel in distress.

Lucky for him, he knew better. He’d been vaccinated against DIDS.

Twice.

He grabbed the phone and punched in William’s number, trying to believe his friend had a reason for giving out his home info.

The two men had known each other at Boston General, where the ex-FBI agent had worked for Hospitals for Humanity, a part-humanitarian, part-undercover investigative group with branches at hospitals across the U.S. When the men had found themselves needing a change at about the same time, they’d gone into business and Vasek and Caine Investigations was born.

It might die tonight, Max thought as the phone rang. When William answered, Max didn’t bother with pleasantries. “Damn it. Why’d you send her over here?”

William didn’t call him on the rudeness. “I figured that given your history with her, you’d want to know she was in trouble.”

Max didn’t bother asking how or what William knew about him and Raine. William had known pretty much everything that had gone on at Boston General. “Why, so I’d help her, or so I could gloat?”

“Whichever lets you get on with things,” William answered pragmatically. “There’s more to life than living alone in a five-room unfurnished apartment in the city.”

“I like being alone. So sue me.” Alone wasn’t the same as lonely, Max told himself. And it was sure as hell better than being used. “And just be cause I don’t date as often as you do—” make that ever “—doesn’t mean it has anything to do with what did or didn’t happen between me and Raine Montgomery back at BoGen.”

“Then it was no big deal seeing her, you don’t care that I gave her your address, and you’re taking the case, right? This could be the break we’ve been looking for, you know.”

“Only if we find something the FDA doesn’t,” Max cautioned. “And no, I haven’t taken the case yet. I wanted to talk to you about it first, since I’ll want you to be point man.”

“No can do. I’m tied up through next week at the earliest with that malpractice thing, and I took on a new pro bono this morning. You’re on your own.”

Max gritted his teeth. “Don’t try to fix my life for me, Caine.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it. You’re doing such a good job on your own.” William’s voice dropped a notch and the flippancy vanished. “Look—we both know you’ve been marking time ever since Charlotte left. Maybe it’s because of this woman, maybe it’s something else, I don’t know. Whatever it is, you can do better. You can be better.”

Max winced because he’d heard nearly the same words from his father a few days earlier, during their bimonthly phone call. According to his father, Max was closing in on forty fast. He should have a wife by now, a family. Sons. Daughters. Little ones to come home to and play with, and watch grow into not-so-little ones, like his nieces in the old neighborhood had done.

And maybe his pop had a point. But between college and grad school, the wife hadn’t happened. The children hadn’t happened. Over the past couple of years, he’d been wrapped up in starting and then growing the new company. Then there’d been Charlotte. For a while he’d thought he was all set. Then he’d been less sure. Then she’d been gone. And now…

What was his excuse now?

“Maybe you’re right,” he said slowly. “Maybe I do have something to work out where Raine is concerned.” Maybe that was why he’d opened the door the second time, knowing even then that he would take the case.

Not to be near her, but to exorcize her.

Which led to another realization. He’d already decided to take the case. For the company. For himself.

“Fine. I’ll do it.”

He hung up the phone, then glanced around the bare apartment, which seemed so much emptier than it had an hour before. He picked up the folder Raine had left, which was prominently marked with her address, the Rainey Days office address and several phone numbers.

Logically, he knew he should review the data and make a few calls from the apartment, or maybe wait until the next day and work out of the Caine and Vasek office downtown. Instead, he cursed and headed for the bedroom, where there was a mattress on the floor, a few boxes full of clothes and a duffel he kept packed for emergencies.

Fifteen minutes later, he was on his way to the scene of the crime.

On his way to see her.

RAINE SPENT THE TWO-HOUR DRIVE from New York City to New Bridge, Connecticut, trying to convince herself that everything was going to be okay.

She failed.

She was too aware of the vehicles in her rearview mirror, too aware of being jumbled up at the idea of working with Max, being near Max.

“This is business,” she said aloud as she passed the line into North New Bridge, the suburb where she’d rented a small house. “Strictly business. Nothing personal.”

Then again, it had been business when Max had watched over her in Boston General. She’d been hospitalized partly because of the pregnancy and its complications, partly because a killer had stalked Max’s boss at the lab. Max had appointed himself her de facto bodyguard for a time. It had been business, not personal, but she’d developed feelings for him just the same.

“I was pregnant. It was hormones. I even convinced myself I was in love with Erik for a while there.” When the words echoed back at her, she turned up the radio to drown them out, to drown out the knowledge that while she’d quickly talked herself out of the infatuation with her boss at FalcoTechno, she hadn’t been able to dismiss Max Vasek’s memory so easily.

Now it was the man himself, not the memory, who haunted her thoughts as she pulled into the driveway beside her small white house.

The lights were off when she let herself in, prompting her to grumble about needing to reset the automatic timer. She was a few steps inside the door when she noticed that the burglar alarm was solid green rather than blinking red.

“What the—”

A dark blur swung through her peripheral vision and a savage blow caught her behind the ear, driving her against the wall. Panic spurted alongside pain as the darkness grew arms and legs, and a man’s weight pinned her.

“Help!” she screamed. “Help me!”

Then blackness.