Jessica Andersen - Covert M.D.

Annoyed, Rathe fired back, “Thanks to me, you didn’t break your neck trying some damn fool stunt in an attempt to—” He stopped himself. “Never mind. We’ve already covered that and you promised not to go down there again without me.” He fixed her with a look. “Right?”

“Sure. Whatever.” She glanced at her watch. “I’m scheduled to observe a rare-type kidney transplant in a little less than an hour. If we’re done here, I’m going up to my office to read over the rest of the material Talbot left for me.”

Done? They hadn’t even started yet, but Rathe didn’t argue the point. It was probably a good thing their covers would keep them separated for the most part. At night he could investigate the depths of the hospital, where he was positive the real machinations were occurring. During the day, he could keep watch over her and make sure she didn’t get too close to the danger he could feel fermenting below the surface of this case.

And sleep? He’d never needed much of that. Like Tony had always said, I’ll sleep plenty when I’m dead.

“Dream well, old friend,” Rathe murmured to himself, forgetting for the moment that Tony’s daughter sat opposite him.

“What was that?”

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.