Stronger Than Sin (12 page)

“We need a different inhibitor complex. One that controls the replication with fewer side effects,” Edwards advised.

“Now, why didn’t I think of that? Oh, wait, I did,” Morales chimed in snidely, looking upward and tapping his lips for effect.

“The complex that Carrera has developed—”

“Has to be better than the crap we have. Just look at Shaw. She’s not on a slab yet,” Morales said and jerked his hand in
the direction of their dead patient.

“Not yet,” Edwards replied and rubbed his lip with his finger before facing Whittaker. “Can you get us a sample of Carrera’s
inhibitor complex?”

Whittaker shrugged. “Carrera hasn’t needed to use it on Bradford yet. Why is that?”

Edwards shook his head and considered all that he knew about Bradford’s case. The genes implanted would be replicating, likely
as fast as with the others, only…

“The replication isn’t going to be as visible as with the other patients. Because of that, it may take Carrera a little time
to figure out what’s happening.”

Morales immediately added his assessment. “But she
will have to do something to keep Bradford’s bones from becoming too dense—”

“And having other parts of him turn to bone,” Whittaker said, recalling what he had seen of Bradford’s body.

Morales smiled in seeming pleasure at the mention of the unusual bone forming on Bradford. “Beautiful, isn’t it?”

Whittaker glared at Morales. “You’re a sick bastard, aren’t you?”

His condemnation earned an amused chuckle from the other man, who replied, “And I suppose you consider yourself a Boy Scout?”

Whittaker jangled the change in his pockets and said, “I’ll get you the inhibitor.”

Edwards elegantly crossed his arms over his chest, rumpling the expensive wool of his suit. He turned and faced the cages
with the patients.

“If it takes too long, we may need more test subjects,” he said.

Whittaker shrugged off that request. “There are plenty more where they came from,” he said, thinking of how easy it was just
to snag a few more homeless from the streets of nearby Camden or Philadelphia.

Edwards tapped his lip with his finger and finally said, “Then consider this a request to get us a few more.”

Jesse sucked in a breath at the chill as Liliana sprayed a topical anesthetic along his back.

“You’ll experience pressure from the scalpel.” She sprayed the area again and he jumped slightly but then settled down.

“I’m going to cut now,” she said, leaned over him, and carefully made the incision near the dimple beside the small of his
back.

“So far, so good, Doc,” Jesse replied.

Liliana exchanged the scalpel for the long needle needed to pierce through his bone and extract the sample. She also placed
the test tube for Jesse’s bone marrow sample nearby.

As she had done before, she warned Jesse about the next step in the process. “I’m going to insert the bone probe now. You
may feel some pressure again, possibly some pain when I remove the sample.”

“Thanks for letting me know,” he said and dropped his hands close to the legs of the massage table. Loosely wrapped them around
the legs.

Liliana inhaled deeply and inserted the probe into the incision she had made. Jesse shifted a bit, and his hands grasped the
legs of the table a little more tightly. She pressed the needle through the small distance to his hip bone and, when it hit
something hard, increased the force of her invasion to pierce the bone. A little bit more pressure than was normally necessary,
since she still felt the resistance of dense, hard bone rather than marrow.

Jesse was now gripping the legs tightly, and his breathing had grown choppy.

“Almost done,” she said, sympathizing with the pain he might be experiencing from the procedure. With a gentle final push,
the needle slipped into the marrow and she quickly attached the syringe to remove the sample.

Jesse groaned. His body was visibly trembling from the strain, and a thin line of blood trickled down the side of his hip
from the incision she had made. A second later,
however, she watched as the bleeding stopped and the wound seemed to be closing up.

Another moan erupted from Jesse, and his hands on the legs of the table were a bloodless white from the pressure he was exerting.

“Jesse?” she questioned, unsure of what was happening, since the worst of the procedure was already over.

“Hurts, Doc,” he replied, his breathing rough. His body shaking.

Liliana made a quick visual observation of the bone marrow sample she had taken, noting the bright phosphorescent glow before
transferring the sample to the test tube. She quickly placed the sample in her bag and turned her attention to dealing with
Jesse.

“Where is the pain, Jesse?”

“Hip. Back. Head,” he said, groaned, and began to bang his head against the padded top of the table.

Liliana examined the site of the incision. A pale white line was starting to form along the cut, and as she palpated the area
around the incision, she could feel a slight hardness that said additional bone was forming beneath. Probably all along the
path of the probe and at his hip.

He moaned again and warned, “Move her back, Bruno.”

Jesse staggered to his feet, holding his head with his hands and looking almost wild-eyed.

“Jesse?” she said, but Bruno was yanking her away and to a far side of the room.

“It’s the pain. It makes him lose control.”

Jesse lurched forward toward the gym equipment and grabbed hold of the handle for the bench press to steady himself. A few
feet away was a body bag suspended from
a chain in the ceiling. Jesse attacked it, brutally punching the bag.

Liliana flinched at the sound and the force of his blows, imagining the destruction he could wreak on a human body. Despite
that, she realized that if there was one thing that Jesse had it was control, contrary to Bruno’s statement. Despite his very
obvious pain, he had managed to turn the response away from her and Bruno and to the inanimate body bag.

The muscles in his body trembled and rippled as he struck at it, and fear took hold in Liliana, but a different kind of fear
than she had expected.

It wasn’t the violence making her worry. It was the reality that the test she had done and the beating Jesse was administering
were going to create inflammation and injury. And if she was right about her earlier assessment, that was going to create
even more destruction in Jesse’s body. Unless they could control the bone formation.

It suddenly occurred to her just what they had to do.

She jerked away from Bruno and to the massage table. Grabbed her cell phone from her medical bag and dialed Carmen. Her friend
answered almost instantly.

“How’d it go,
amiga?
” Carmen asked.

“Not good,” Liliana admitted. “Can you create a filter for those bone proteins we detected in Jesse? Enough to get the plasmapheresis
setup working?”

“I think I can,” Carmen replied.

“I need that done ASAP, and clear the lab. Just you, me—”

“And our special patient?” Carmen piped in, which meant someone was in the lab that hadn’t been cleared to know about Jesse.

“Yes. How long will it take?”

“An hour or two.”

Jesse was still pounding the bag, although not as forcefully. Sweat dripped from his body, and he was near the edge of physical
exhaustion, probably the only thing that worked to control the anger and the pain.

“Make it happen. We’ll see you soon,” Liliana said.

“I don’t know if that’s possible,” Bruno advised and approached her.

She shot a glance at Jesse as he dropped to his knees, hugging the bottom of the bag for support. She jabbed her finger at
Bruno and said, “You want to lose the golden goose?”

Bruno paled beneath his olive-colored skin. “That can’t happen. Doc. Whittaker—”

“Will demote your ass if it does. Which means I have to get Jesse to the lab.” She crossed her arms and raised her chin to
get her point across. And for good measure, she said, “And don’t call me ‘Doc.’ ”

Bruno glanced at Jesse as he kneeled before the bag, sweat dripping from his body. His breathing rough from his exertions.

“Fuck it. I’ll be waiting in the garage for you. Make sure he covers up his face,” Bruno said.

She walked over to the massage table and grabbed the sweats Jesse had been wearing earlier. She also snagged a few towels
from a storage unit next to a water cooler. Gingerly she approached Jesse, unsure of how he would react.

“Did you hear the plan, Jesse?” She stopped about a foot away from him.

He glanced up at her, a dead look in his crystal blue eyes. “Not sure I can move.”

At least he seemed aware and in control. She took a step closer, dropped his sweats by his body, and knelt beside him. She
handed him a towel, which he grasped in one unsteady hand. She kept another and tenderly ran it down his arm.

“There’s no rush, Jesse. When you feel strong enough,” she said and continued her ministrations, drying his body little by
little.

Her touch was torture, Jesse thought. Each slight pass of the towel roused emotions more painful than the physical exertions
that had taxed his body. It had been too long since someone had cared for him like this. Since someone had worried about him.

He dried his face and then somehow mustered the strength to reach up and swipe the towel along the back of his neck. His muscles
were stiffening. He worried that he had overdone it, only the pain of the procedure had been so great that if he hadn’t tired
himself, the rage might have overpowered him.

That he had acted selflessly didn’t make the ache any less painful, he thought as he reached up and attempted to work out
the kinks by rubbing his arm.

He groaned at the discomfort, and a second later, she brushed away his hand and commenced a gentler massage. As their gazes
connected, she asked, “Can you tolerate any NSAIDS?”

Morales had occasionally given him painkillers, so he nodded. She was suddenly in action, returning to her medical bag, grabbing
a bottle, and then pouring a glass of water from the cooler. She returned and gave him the medication, then resumed the massage,
extending it to other parts of his body as she dried him.

Whether it was the medication or her touch, in a few short minutes he was better and stronger. She must have sensed it, since
she paused and handed him his sweats.

“I’ll help you get dressed.”

She assisted him, although he would have preferred her help in undressing much, much more, he thought.

Luckily she missed the wayward turn of his attention and eased beneath his arm without hesitation to help him up onto his
feet. He wavered for a moment, physically depleted, but her presence steadied him.

Together they did the short walk to the garage, where Bruno waited in a large Suburban with windows tinted so black, only
his silhouette was visible behind the wheel. By the door, Jesse paused at a hanging organizer where assorted keys dangled
along with a pair of Oakley sunglasses and a Mauraders hat.

He slipped on the hat and glasses.

No one would know who he was, she thought. The glasses hid his eyes and wrapped around to hide a goodly portion of his face.
The hat and shaggy hair added to the disguise, leaving few recognizable features. Just the small cleft in his chin and his
firm masculine lips.

Beautiful lips, she thought, and a second later a dimple erupted beside that luscious mouth, as if Jesse had guessed at the
nature of her thoughts and approved.

“In your dreams,” she goaded.

“It would be a shame to limit it just to dreams,” he immediately retorted.

She jerked her finger in the direction of the car. “Get in the back. I’ll ride shotgun with our friend Bruno.”

Jesse opened the door and she discovered another of Whittaker’s goons—Howard—was in the back seat. The
heavy tinted glass had hidden his presence. Jesse slipped into the back seat, and she climbed into the SUV for the short ride
to the lab.

Bruno locked the doors with a loud
kathunk
and peered into the rearview mirror. “No funny business, Bradford.”

Jesse tossed his hands up into the air. “Does it look like I can do much of anything?”

Neither Bruno nor his partner said anything else as Bruno pulled out of the garage, shut it with a remote, and then eased
onto Ocean Avenue before heading westward toward the FBI laboratory and the hospital. The proximity to the hospital brought
her some relief. If anything went wrong with any of the medications she gave Jesse, or the plasmapheresis, being nearby was
good in case of an emergency.

She only hoped that wouldn’t be necessary and glanced at her watch. It had taken them more than half an hour to cool down
and dry Jesse. He seemed more relaxed, less uncomfortable than he had earlier, she thought as she peered over her shoulder
at him. His head was resting against the back of the seat, and his long legs were stretched out as far as possible. His hands
were propped on his thighs, but loosely and absent any signs of pain.

Blessfully peaceful, she thought, recalling the earlier violence he had directed against the body bag.

Violence to be feared,
she reminded herself, driving away the empathy she was feeling for him. One of her teachers in medical school had warned
her that she sometimes got too emotionally involved with her patients. She was on the brink of it this time and forced herself
to recall the risks involved with Jesse.

His violent strength.

The possibility that he might die if they couldn’t stop the bone production.

His immense size, daunting for anyone, but in particular for her, since he topped her by at least a foot.

His physical presence nearly overwhelmed her when she was beside him, and yet there was something about that difference that
also pulled at her. She could imagine the peace of being surrounded in those strong arms, or the way he might lift her as
if she weighed nearly nothing.

Not that she did, she thought, shooting a glance down at her ample curves before driving such thoughts from her mind.