Prescription: Makeover

Raine was ethereal. Delicate. Feminine. Her honey-colored hair fell from a careless knot atop her head, with wisps brushing against her purple shadowed eyes and full lips. Ike had always figured her look was the product of a damn good makeup routine, but given the late hour and the fact that William’s call had woken the newlyweds, she was forced to conclude that Raine had been born feminine and beautiful, the exact sort of woman that men gravitated toward every single time.

And that was so not fair.

Ike sniffed. “He didn’t need to wake you guys up. This could’ve waited until morning.”

Raine’s eyes flashed prettily. “And you could’ve listened to Max and let the men handle this. Because of you, we’ve got nothing.”

The sting of truth had Ike baring her teeth. “Letting the men handle things is your style, not mine. Besides, we would’ve been fine if James Bond here—” she indicated William with a jerk of her thumb “—hadn’t broken cover. I could’ve talked my way out of the situation.”

She was spoiling for a fight, for something to dispel the residual buzz of adrenaline and the knowledge that William probably would have been an inducted member of The Nine by now if it weren’t for her.

He shot her a disgusted look and pointed to a chair. “Sit there and stay quiet until we can figure out how to get you to Boston safely, where your boss can keep you under lock and key in the secure apartments while Max and I worked this out.”

Max growled, “And exactly what part of ‘Max and I’did you miss when you went in there alone? You should’ve told me about the meeting. You could’ve been killed. And now they’ve seen your face.” He glared from William to Ike and back. “It won’t take them long to figure out who crashed their little party tonight, and then they’ll be coming for you. For all four of us. No doubt about that.” He threw an arm around his wife’s shoulders and hauled her close, face tight with worry.

Ike suppressed a shudder but said, “I’m far safer attacking than running.” And far saner. The high security apartment building maintained by Boston General, where she’d stayed for the first month after Zed’s death, had felt more like a prison than protection.

“Bull.” William turned back to Max. “Get her out of here. And keep her the hell away from me.”

Ike stepped forward, shouldering between the two men. She focused on Max, silently urging him to understand how important this was to her. “Please don’t shut me out. I found their meeting place once and I can do it again. If we combine our efforts, we might manage to pull this off.” She paused. “If we work at cross-purposes, nothing says we won’t get in each other’s way again.”

“Is that a threat?” William growled, handsome face creasing towards menace as he took a step nearer her, crowding her space.

Ike shrugged and forced herself not to back up, hoping her sudden nerves didn’t show, hoping he couldn’t tell that she never felt completely at ease in his presence. “Merely an observation,” she said. “My goal is stopping The Nine. I either work with you or I work alone. Your call.”

She expected a split vote. Instead William cursed, shifted, did something with the lining of his jacket and pulled a ridiculously small camera from an inner compartment in his leather jacket. He held it out to her. “Here. I got pictures of the three at the table. You can get me their names. The man with me was Paul Berryville, and as we came in, I heard one of them say something about Odin ‘taking care’of someone named Lukas Kupfer before a press conference. E-mail me whatever you find and for God’s sake, don’t go anywhere alone.” He glared at Max. “Take her home with you. I don’t want to see her until tomorrow.”

Then he stalked out, slamming the door at his back.

BY TEN THE NEXT morning William was in a foul mood. Not just because of the debacle the day before, when he’d lost four months of groundwork and a damn good cover, all thanks to an ungrateful amateur sleuth who couldn’t be bothered to thank him. No, he was even more bothered by the knowledge that she was working just down the hall, in the spare office he sometimes used as a crash pad when it was too much work to take the subway home to his spare, minimalist place.

Max had taken her to retrieve her Jeep, which they’d ditched in long-term parking at JFK, and then had driven her back to the office, leaving her for William to watch, which was just perfect as far as he was concerned. Just flipping perfect. There was nothing he liked better than babysitting on a Saturday morning. Worse, her very presence in the office distracted him, getting under his skin and making him twitchy.

After staring at his computer screen for nearly ten minutes with absolutely no idea what he was looking at, he tipped back in his chair and raised his voice to call, “You need anything in there?”

No answer.

A little louder, he said, “Hey, Einstein!” Max had said that was actually the name on her license, and William figured using a name like that out loud was guaranteed to tick off any rational woman.

Moments later, the phone next to his elbow rang. He picked it up. “Vasek & Caine Investigations, William Caine speaking.”

“Did you want something?”

He glared from the phone to the door and back before he scowled. “You could’ve walked down the hall.”

“So could you. I don’t respond well to yelling.”

He bared his teeth, welcoming the sting of annoyance. “As far as I can tell, you don’t respond well to much of anything. The first time Zach Cage introduced us at Boston General, you told me we’d get along fine if I kept my FBI nose out of your computer systems. And the second time we met, you barked at me for passing info directly to Cage instead of going through you.”

Her voice held an amused note when she said, “I’m flattered you remember me so well. Guess you thought I was cute, huh?”

He remembered the incidents far too well, he realized with a start. He could picture her on each occasion, how her tight black clothes and high heeled boots had showcased a killer body and how her short black hair emphasized an angular face that was more arresting than classically beautiful. He remembered how she’d glared at him and how she’d stuck in his mind for too long after they’d parted ways each time.

“Don’t be flattered,” he countered. “I don’t like working with people who don’t know how to be part of a team.”

“Right. Which is why you went to your meeting at the Coach House without backup.”

“And I definitely,” he said through gritted teeth, “don’t think you’re cute.”

He could think of a number of words to describe her, none of which were anywhere close to being as innocuous as cute.

“Big surprise,” she said drily. “No doubt you like women who wear frilly dresses and lipstick.” There was a pause, then a slight edge in her voice when she said, “I don’t suppose you sent me…no. Never mind.”

William’s instincts quivered to life. “What?”

“I said never mind.” She paused and her voice went hollow. “Oh, God. Berryville’s dead.” She said something else, but William was already hanging up the phone and heading for her office at a run.

He found her working three computers at once. On the leftmost screen his snapshots from the Coach House were matched against DMV photos of the three men. On the right she’d pulled up a series of records for Dr. Paul Berryville, including his supposedly classified FDA background check. But it was the center screen that commanded William’s attention with a photograph of smoldering wreckage and the headline Eight top scientists killed in Catskills crash.

Ike didn’t turn to look at him, but her body was tense beneath the black leather biker jacket she wore because they still had the heat turned off. Her voice held dull horror when she said, “A charter jet flying a bunch of scientists to a private retreat lost power and crashed in upstate New York last night. The men we saw yesterday are dead, along with three other prominent scientists and their drivers. Odin wasn’t taking any chances that they’d lead us to him.”

“Christ.” William let out a breath, sickened by the realization that the leader of The Nine had killed his own people to make sure they wouldn’t talk. Worse, given that Grosskill had ignored the evidence after Forsythe’s arrest, there was little chance the FBI would believe that the mythical leader of an imaginary group of scientific bogeymen was responsible for a charter plane crash.

“He killed his own people,” Ike repeated, voice shaking.

“I’d like to believe this means the end of The Nine,” William said after a long moment. “But I’m afraid I’m not that optimistic.”

Ike nodded. “He’ll recruit and rebuild The Nine, maybe even stronger than before.” She clicked on one photograph after the other, erasing the men from her screens. When she was done, all she had left was a blank monitor, which seemed to sum up their investigation. They had suspicions but no official backup, bodies but no suspects.

“You got any ideas?” William asked her, their personal differences seeming less important all of a sudden.

“Maybe. Yes, I think so.” She hit three computer keys in quick succession, bringing up a new screen on the middle monitor. “I found Lukas Kupfer and the press conference they were talking about. Kupfer is a PhD at the Markham Institute near UMass Amherst. His lab is working on a treatment for a disease called Duchenne muscular dystrophy, and they’ve got a big announcement planned for this Friday. Something about a new gene therapy protocol for Duchenne.”

William stared at Kupfer’s file photo, which showed a bespectacled fortysomething man whose face held both laugh lines and sadness. “They said Odin was going to handle it personally. That means we need to get someone inside Kupfer’s lab, pronto.”

Ike tapped a few keys and brought up the Markham Institute’s collaborators list. She indicated a pair of names. “I know these two from Boston General. If I get Zach Cage involved, we could put together a decent cover story, maybe invent a visiting scientist at BoGen who wants to get a look at Kupfer’s research. He’d probably buy it.”

William grimaced and shook his head. “Unfortunately I don’t know enough science to pull off a cover story in an academic lab.”

“Maybe not,” Ike said. She glanced up at him. “But I do.”

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