Covert M.D.

Rathe shook his head. “Nothing.” He stood. “We’ll meet after the transplant, compare notes and divvy up which one of us will follow which line of inquiry. That’ll save us from duplicating efforts.” And allow him to keep her on the outskirts of the heavy lifting.

“Fine.” She tipped her head, considering. “But we shouldn’t meet in public again. It would look strange, don’t you think?”

Irritated that he hadn’t thought of that first, which just went to show that mixed-sex partnerships were needlessly distracting, Rathe scowled. “You’re right. There’s no reason for a visiting lecturer to socialize with a janitor.” He tried not to let their respective roles annoy him, but Jack Wainwright had no doubt laughed long and loud when he’d decided on their cover stories.

Rathe McKay, legend-turned-janitor.

Oh, well. That made it a hell of a cover.

“We could meet in my office this afternoon,” she suggested tongue in cheek. “You could bring your mop and pretend—”

“I got it,” he growled, trying not to see the absurd humor in it. “But your office won’t work every day—it’ll look suspicious. Why don’t we meet at your apartment at change of shift, instead?”

“No. Absolutely not.” She tipped her chin down, eyes suddenly dark.

Rathe shrugged, trying not to care. “Fine. We’ll figure it out later. You go do your thing, Doc. I’ll be around.”

He watched her walk away and saw a hint of the young woman who’d once sat down beside him on the beach and showed him a book about Bateo. Like that teenager, Nia was still unsatisfied with who she was, where she was, always looking for the next thing that was just out of reach.

They were, Rathe acknowledged with a wry grimace, entirely too alike.

He swept her empty coffee cup off the table and crumpled it in one hand as he hesitated at the café door. He could return to the warren of corridors and small rooms in the basement that were the realm of the maintenance workers, the laundry crews and the other tradespeople who came and went through the large hospital. Rife with gossip and the occasional scoundrel, that was where he’d find the information he sought. He was sure of it.

He glanced over at the big bank of brushed-steel elevator doors that would carry him up into the ivory towers, to the wide, straight corridors and large airy rooms of the treatment and research floors where Nia belonged.

He muttered a curse and turned his back on the temptation. She would have to keep herself out of trouble for an hour. She could do it. She was a big girl now.

Or so she kept insisting.

OVER THE NEXT HOUR, Nia couldn’t cobble the information into a decent theory no matter how hard she tried. The failure grated on her as she shut and locked her office and headed down to the café. She barely had time to grab a quick snack before she observed Dr. Talbot transplant a healthy donor kidney into a young woman who had been born with small, subfunctional organs.

Nia rubbed at the faint scar above her hipbone while she waited for the elevator, her mind still on the mystery she was supposed to be unraveling. She had plenty of questions, but her theories were anemic at best.

The missing supplies made some sense—almost any medical item could be sold on the black market. And it was possible, if not likely, that the laundry hamper was being used to transport the pharmaceuticals down to the loading dock and out of the hospital. That would assume at least one thief had access to the locked supplies. Short Whiny Guy and Cadaver Man were her first guesses. Surely she and Rathe could find the pair.

Rathe. No, she refused to think about him. They had agreed to leave the past where it belonged. He hadn’t wanted the family that had loved him as a son, and he hadn’t wanted the woman who had loved him as a man. In the seven years since she’d last seen him, she had outgrown both her love and her desire to follow in his footsteps across the globe and back.

She’d decided to blaze her own trail instead.

“Focus,” she told herself sternly, glad she was alone in the descending elevator. “This isn’t about you or Rathe. It’s about the patients and the hospital.”

But none of this added up. How did the missing supplies account for the increase in transplant deaths? Were the two even related?

The doors slid open, and Nia stepped out into the big, open atrium at the center of the hospital, where all the wings intersected. A flash of navy blue caught her eye and she glanced over, half expecting to see Rathe waiting for her, ready to tell her where she could go, who she could see and what she could do.

But it was someone else, a stoop-shouldered old man in a janitor’s dark-blue uniform, listlessly swabbing at a puddle of something she didn’t care to know about.

Ignoring the single twitch of that restless muscle at the corner of her eye, Nia hurried to the café and bought a muffin to make up for the breakfast she’d been too keyed up to eat. She reversed direction and headed back to the elevators, biting into the muffin as her stomach growled.

A heavy blow from behind drove her to her knees.

“Gonna getcha, bitch!” The high-pitched, almost giggling voice near her ear lodged quick panic in her throat.

She hit the floor, the muffin bounced away, and her left eye nearly locked itself shut. Her attacker followed her down and lay crosswise atop her.

Nia squirmed desperately and tried to scream, but the huge, smothering weight drove the breath from her lungs. Faintly she heard cries of alarm. Running feet.

Her heart hammered in her ears, and terror sweated from her palms. Every self-defense move she’d learned was useless. She had no leverage. She pushed against the floor, but to no avail.

“Where’s your money? Where is it?” Rough hands groped at her pockets, at her body. She fought back, jabbing with her feet and elbows whenever her attacker’s weight shifted enough to allow it. But her blows sank into heavy, hot blubber and she still couldn’t breathe.

“Where is it?” The man flipped her over, looming large in her oxygen-starved vision. His face was pocked with scars, some from acne, some from injuries. His hair was greasy and limp, his face covered with rank sweat. “Where is your money?”

She didn’t need to see the needle tracks on his upraised arm to know he was beyond reason. He raised his arm higher, and a switchblade glittered in a ray of sunlight.

Running feet thundered. A woman screamed.

And the knife descended in a killing arc.

Chapter Three

Time seemed to slow, picking out Nia’s last few moments in exquisite detail. She saw the distended, bulging veins in her attacker’s forearm, saw an onlooker’s mouth form a perfect O of horror. She smelled sour, unwashed man and the sharp taint of her own fear. She felt the weight of him, like that of a lover, pressing her into the hard floor, shifting atop her as the blade descended.

And she wished, with a burning intensity that was close to pain, that she had been a better daughter.

Then the knife completed its arc and the world sped up again. Navy blue flashed before Nia’s eyes. Her attacker jolted and fell to the side. The switchblade hit the polished marble, chimed like a bell and skipped harmlessly away.

Free! She was free!

Not stopping to question it, she scrambled to a crouch, ready to escape if possible, fight if necessary. But she didn’t need to do either. Her attacker’s attention had shifted to the old, stoop-shouldered maintenance man who’d come to her rescue.

Only it wasn’t an old janitor.

Navy ball cap missing, and a broken-off mop handle in his hands, Rathe faced the bear-size junkie, who swayed on his feet and shook his head as though to clear it. But the rheumy eyes were disconcertingly sharp as they focused with deadly intent.

“You got money? I need a fix, man. Just gimme a fix and I’ll go away. I don’t want to hurt you, man.” The drug-crazed giant belied this by taking a swipe at Rathe, who darted out of reach.

“McKay, look out!” Nia cried, then belatedly remembered their cover. She wasn’t supposed to know him.

His eyes flicked to her, and the junkie charged with a roar, nearly catching the “janitor” by surprise.

Rathe stepped back and spun the mop handle in a neat one-two-three tattoo that caught the man on the ribs, throat and just behind the ear. Seemingly undeterred, the attacker lurched forward, hamlike arms reaching. But his drug-induced invincibility propelled him straight into a whistling arc of wood as Rathe teed off on his attacker’s temple. And this time, he put some muscle into it. The mop handle met flesh with a thud and a crack as the beleaguered wood broke under pressure. The enormous man dropped like a rock.

And stayed down.

Nobody moved for a beat, then scattered applause broke out in the atrium. Voices murmured. Gentle, helping hands tugged at Nia, pulling her to her feet and checking her for injury. But the voices seemed muted, the touches faraway. Her whole attention was centered on the man who stood above his fallen enemy, making the navy janitor’s garb look like a warrior’s armor.

“Rathe,” she whispered, and though he was twenty feet away, his head snapped up. His eyes found hers, and the energy surged between them as it had once before, hot and wanting, sharp and ready. Then, like a suddenly stilled heart, the connection was broken as he looked away. His shoulders sagged. He seemed to shrink. His eyes dulled to those of a bored laborer whose mind was on other things. He bent and retrieved his ball cap, looking more washed out than he’d been seven years earlier, near dead with fever.

He’d been holed up in an airport hotel, having landed near collapse and been unable to make it further. Twenty-one-year-old Nadia, halfway through her accelerated M.D., had gotten the message before her father. This was it, she’d thought. This was her way of proving to her father that she was cut out for HFH. Her way of proving to Rathe that she was worthy of—

“Ma’am? Excuse me, ma’am? The officers are here. Ma’am? Are you okay?” The gentle hands shook her out of the past and back to a present that included a mess of hospital security guards, an unconscious junkie and a switchblade lying, seemingly harmless, on the floor.

Eyes fixed on the knife, Nia began to shake.

Over the roaring in her ears, she heard someone say, “Hey, grab her, she’s going to faint!” just as another voice, farther away, asked, “Where’d that janitor go? He was here a minute ago.”

Rathe. The name steadied her, reminded her she was alive, thanks to him. Reminded her that she had a job to do. The reputation of her sex to uphold. She could imagine him scoffing at her. This is why women shouldn’t be in dangerous field situations. They fall apart.

Well, damn it. Not her. Not today.

“I’m fine.” She batted away the helping hands and turned toward the knot of security guards, who gave way to a pair of men in street clothes.

The younger of the two, handsome in a neat brown suit and crisp white shirt, held out his hand. “Detective Peters, ma’am.” He indicated his partner with his other hand, and a wedding band glinted gold in the light. For some reason Nia found the symbol comforting. “And my partner, Detective Sturgeon. We were in the neighborhood.”

The older detective, long-jowled and smelling faintly of peppermints, nodded gravely. “Ma’am. What can you tell us about the incident?”

“He said he wanted my money,” she answered, scrambling to put the kaleidoscopic memories of the last few minutes into some sort of order. “He had needle marks on his arms and his eyes…” She trailed off, realizing something for the first time.

His eyes had been normal. Calculating. And murderous.

HALF AN HOUR LATER, Nia fumbled to unlock her office door with shaking hands. She’d answered the detectives’ questions and arranged for them to meet with Talbot and Hart. She’d watched the pockmarked man wake up cursing, and had seen him stagger off between a pair of uniformed officers, still cursing. She’d assured the onlookers she was fine, and professed ignorance at what had become of the janitor.

All in all, she thought she’d held it together well. But now she was in her office, alone. It was okay to fall apart.

She closed the door behind her and didn’t turn on the lights as she slumped against the wall and felt the switch poke into her spine. She pressed the back of her hand to her lips and willed the tears to come.

But there were no tears. In their place was a nagging sense of guilt that she’d realized something important in those last few moments, and it had been just as quickly forgotten. Overlapping that was an edgy energy that seemed to curl red and blue behind her closed eyelids.

After a few moments the shakes subsided, and Nia realized that whatever stubborn streak had forced her to defy her father’s wishes and go off into the unknown…that part of her wouldn’t let the tears come now.

“Damn it.” She pushed away from the door, slapped on the light and froze when she saw the man sitting in the chair behind her borrowed desk.

“My sentiments exactly,” Rathe concurred. His eyes gleamed with an indefinable emotion that sent skitters of heat racing through her body. His cap lay on the desk. The dark blue coveralls were open several buttons at the throat and rolled up at the sleeve to expose the corded muscles beneath the tanned skin of his forearms. His shoulders were square and powerful, and with a start, Nia realized he could turn the uniform from a disguise to a fashion statement with a simple change in posture and expression.

He stood, uncoiling slowly from the chair as though afraid she might bolt. But bolting was the last thing on her mind as she identified the heady, racing sensation that had pounded through her during the fight and set her hands to shaking afterward. Excitement. This was it. This was the adventure she craved, the thrill she’d been seeking.

This was it.

She wasn’t sure why it had been lacking in her previous assignments, or why she’d found it in an urban hospital rather than in the midst of a deep, dark forest, but there it was. The adrenaline poured through her body, throbbed at her nerve endings and clamored in her head. She wanted to run. She wanted to dance, to sing, to tip her head back and scream.

Wanting to include him in her joy, she grinned at Rathe.

His eyes narrowing, he advanced on her and leaned down so they were face-to-face. “This is not a joke, Nia. I expected better of you!” Stunned, she drew back, but he followed, crowding her against the closed door with his body and his anger. “Don’t you get it? You could’ve been killed out there.” He stabbed a finger towards the atrium, then placed his palm flat against the door beside her head, effectively trapping her.

“Well, I wasn’t, thanks to you,” she fired back. “That’s why HFH doctors work in teams, remember? So we can watch each other’s backs.” She shoved at his chest with both hands, but he was like sun-warmed granite, hard and immovable. “Damn it, let me go!”

She saw the change in his eyes, a flash of resignation and a wash of heat. Her body answered the call before she was even aware of receiving it, and he bent close and whispered, “I can’t.”

Then he kissed her, and all that restless, edgy energy redirected itself to her lips, and to the places where their bodies merged. Her palms burned where they rested on his coveralls. Almost without volition, her fingers curved into the material and held fast.

The gap of seven years was bridged in that first instant of contact. Her lips parted on a sigh as they were covered with his, the touch surprisingly gentle for such a hard, elemental man.

She dug her fingers in deeper, feeling the wall of his chest beneath the coarse coverall material. Unsatisfied, she slid one hand up, into the vee of his unbuttoned uniform, and found warm, resilient flesh covered with a smattering of hair.

Warm flesh, not hot. He’d been hot before, burning with fever and smelling faintly of exotic spices and sickness. The memory seared her with excitement and a dull undercurrent of shame.

“Nia.” He broke the kiss for a moment to search her eyes. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that, but that scene in the atrium scared the hell out of me.” He pressed his lips to her temple, like he’d done the morning he’d sent her back to her father. “Please. If you’ve ever forgiven what I did to you, to your father, please give me this. Please pull out of Investigations and find something safer to do.”

His tone, and the casual caress, stabbed straight into her heart, which she’d long ago tried to armor against the memory of Rathe McKay. But his words brought a wash of pure, clean anger to chase away the thrill of his touch. “Something safer?” She cursed in Arabic and had the satisfaction of seeing him wince. “What is your definition of safe? Should I spend the rest of my days barefoot, pregnant and waiting for my man to come home?”

He let her go and stalked away, stopping on the opposite side of the desk. “No, of course not.” He stared at a generic poster of a cheerful-looking palm tree shading an empty beach. “But this isn’t what your father wanted for you. He didn’t want you working dangerous assignments for HFH, and he didn’t want you involved with—” He broke off and cursed. “He didn’t want you involved with any of this.”

The pain pulsed in her heart and low in her back. “Don’t you dare speak of my father. You have no right.”

He grimaced. “Think what you will, but Tony was the best friend I ever had. Yours was the closest thing I ever had to a family.”

“Yet you abandoned us,” Nia said quietly, hating that her voice broke when she said, “You abandoned me. My father.”

“I did what I thought was best.”

“You did what came naturally.” She turned away, betrayal and need tangling together in a messy ball in her chest. “You ignored the people who loved you. Just like in Tehru.”

There was a beat of silence. Another. The room chilled.

Nia couldn’t believe she’d said that. Couldn’t believe she’d even thought it. Her anger fled from a wash of shame, and she stretched out a hand. “Rathe, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”

He stepped away, eyes blank. “Sure you did. And you’re right, at least about what happened with Maria. Which proves my point. Women don’t belong in war zones. They don’t belong in dangerous situations. And they sure as hell shouldn’t traipse around the world looking for trouble.” He scowled and looked away. “Quit HFH while you can, Nadia. Start a medical practice somewhere safe. Pediatrics in a small town, maybe, or a GP near your mother. You’re not cut out for this life.”

She hissed through her teeth. “Because I’m a woman?”

He nodded shortly. “This isn’t going to work. I can’t mentor you if I have to keep saving you from jumping on the back of a moving laundry van or being knifed in the damn lobby.” He reached for the doorknob, opened the door he’d pressed her against minutes earlier while they kissed. “I’ll call Jack and ask him to reassign you. After what just happened, I’m sure he’ll agree it’s for the best. You’re simply not tough enough for Investigations.”

She lifted her chin. “You have no idea how tough I am, McKay. Don’t think you know me because you knew my father.”

“I know enough,” he said flatly, still not meeting her eyes.

“Fine,” she snapped. “But don’t bother calling Wainwright. I’ll do it.” She turned her back, lifted the phone and waited pointedly for him to leave. When she heard the door close behind him, she lowered the handset and pressed both hands flat to the desk as the fight drained out of her.

This assignment wasn’t anything like she’d imagined it would be.

She’d had it all planned out, how she’d impress the senior investigator with her quick wits and—if necessary—her guts. How they would solve the case in record time and shock Wainwright.

And if news of her success reached Rathe McKay in some far-off land, she’d imagined he might be happy for her. A little proud. And maybe, just maybe, he would think of her and regret dismissing her twice—once when he’d pushed her from his bed and again later when he’d brusquely refused to see Tony that last time.

But nothing about this job had turned out right. Nothing.

Nia sighed and picked up the phone. She stabbed Wainwright’s number and waited while his secretary put her through.

He sounded concerned. She’d never called him during an assignment before. “Nia? What’s wrong? Do you have a problem?”

She tightened her fingers on the receiver and wished there was another way. “No, Jack. You have a problem.”

IN A SERVICE ELEVATOR headed down to the depths of Boston General, Rathe rubbed his chest where the skin felt tight and tender. An odd sensation flooded through him. It was shame, perhaps, and disappointment that Nia had agreed to be reassigned. It surprised him that she’d given in so easily.

Don’t think you know me, she’d said, but he knew enough. He knew that she had grown into a beautiful woman—a beautiful younger woman, though the ten years between them didn’t seem as important now as they had before. And he knew that the kiss they’d shared upstairs would haunt him once she was gone, just as the memory of her touch had stayed with him long after he’d hopped on an airplane to wherever, with the imprint of Tony’s fist tattooed on his jaw.

The elevator doors opened and Rathe stepped out, remembering that day and the pain. The subbasement echoed with a noisy quiet, filled with hisses of steam and the hum of machinery nearly below the level of his hearing. Above the background he heard a whisper of sound. A cough or perhaps a footstep.

He tensed. The skin on the back of his neck tightened, though there was no logical reason for it. Any number of hospital personnel could be in the subbasement for legitimate reasons.

But his instincts told him otherwise.

With a flash of gratitude that Nia was safe upstairs and soon to be assigned to another HFH division, he eased closer to the puke-green cinder block wall and crept toward the corner up ahead, where a second corridor branched off the main hallway. The noise came again, and this time there was no mistaking it. Running footsteps.

“Damn!” Discarding stealth for speed, Rathe sprinted around the corner. Ahead, a tall, navy-clad figure disappeared around the next bend.

Flight doesn’t always equal guilt, the HFH manuals warned. Maybe that was true elsewhere in the world, but not at Boston General. He’d bet his medical degree that this guy was running for a reason.

Well, he wouldn’t get far. Rathe ducked his head and accelerated, glad that he’d traded the janitor’s standard sneakers for his own custom-made boots, which were tough enough to protect him from desert sands and soft enough to render him nearly silent. Doors sped past, and he skidded a little when he turned the corner and stopped dead.

The loading dock. Damn. The door swung shut on a slice of the outdoors, leaving the dimly lit area empty. “Bloody hell,” he said aloud and reached for the door.

The attack hit him from behind. A man grabbed him and shoved him into the wall. Hard.

Rathe reacted instantly, jabbing an elbow back and twining his foot around the other man’s ankle, but his assailant was taller and light on his feet. The bigger man spun away. His elbow cracked against Rathe’s jaw. Rathe’s head whipped to the side, and he swung out blindly, felt a spurt of satisfaction when he connected and heard a grunt of pain.

He yanked off his ball cap for better visibility and sent his fist into the gaunt, gray face of his attacker. Dimly he recognized Cadaver Man from Nia’s description, and the realization that the bastard could have hurt her lent fury to his blows.

He wound up for the knockout when the cell phone hidden inside his coveralls rang. The noise distracted him for only an instant, but it was long enough for the gray, corpselike man to slip inside his guard and punch him in the gut. Rathe doubled over, then dropped to the floor, rolling away in case there was a follow-up kick. But there wasn’t. The tall man stared down at him for a heartbeat, a disconcerting lack of expression on his face.