Stronger Than Sin (17 page)

But as her gaze met his, all she could see was caring and not a desire for subjugation. Cradling the straight line of his
jaw, she leaned forward and kissed him, leaving no doubt in his mind about what was in her heart. About what she wanted.

When they broke apart, they were both breathing heavily and Ramon shot a half glance at the bag with the takeout food in the
backseat.

“Do you think that’ll keep in the oven?”

Carmen smiled, reached down, and covered the very obvious proof of his need beneath the khaki of his police uniform. “I think
it can wait.”

Ramon’s eyelids fluttered as she caressed him until desire dragged them close and a rough groan escaped his lips. “
Dios,
you’ll get us arrested if you keep this up.”

With a final stroke, she primly sat back into her seat.

“I’ve heard handcuffs are quite popular—”

He silenced her by gently placing his finger on her lips. “Don’t go there—otherwise I don’t think we’ll ever make it to my
place.”

She kissed the tip of his finger and said, “Then please hurry home. I’m hungry.”

“Me, too,” Ramon replied, but from the wicked grin on his face, she knew it wasn’t about the food. It was about
her, something new and decidedly different in her life—being the center of someone’s attention.

She kind of liked it.

Liked him and let her brain wander to whether he might let her try the handcuffs later that night.

J
esse had been dreaming of her when he fell asleep. Fantasizing about her in the middle of the night when his desire had become
so strong, it had woken him. He hadn’t been able to go back to sleep since. Every time he closed his eyes, she was there waiting
for him. Arms opened wide to hold him close to her silky-smooth skin. Her ample breasts crushed to his chest as he encircled
her with his arms and brought her body flush to his.

He gulped in a breath and opened his eyes, painfully erect once again. Or maybe his erection had never ebbed during the course
of the long night. It made him wonder if he should do as all those annoying commercials instructed and call a doctor, since
it had to have been hours that he was aroused.

Problem was there was only one doctor who could take care of this particular problem.

Rising, he noted out his window that the bright colors of the dawn were pushing away the night sky. In no time at all, the
sun would be full, and so he decided it was time to get up anyway. Maybe a nice warm shower would help him get rid of his
little problem.

Well, not so little, he thought pridefully.

Shoving aside the sheets, he ambled to the shower, pulling his hair off his face. Scrubbed his morning beard, which rasped
loudly in the quiet of the morning.

In the bathroom he stared into the mirror. Considered how he might appear to her. With his shaggy hair and stubble, he was
likely not her type. She probably was used to those carefully manicured types in expensive designer suits.

He brushed his teeth, and as he was scrounging around for his deodorant, he noticed the scissors in the drawer. He reached
for them almost before he knew what he was doing.

Grabbing his hair in bunches, he snipped and measured. Trimmed a few inches here and there, shaped it as best as he could
until it seemed a trifle neater. Then he shaved, scraping off the stubble to reveal the clear skin beneath.

Passing a hand across his face, he nodded in approval and headed for the shower.

With the water as hot as he could stand it, he let the liquid cascade down his shoulders and across his midsection from the
jets along the sides of the stall. Soaping up, he ran his hands across his body, flinching as he encountered the large patch
on his right side and the smaller but just as troubling spot on his left.

Those physical reminders of his damaged state worked more effectively than any cold shower.

Damaged goods wouldn’t appeal to any woman.

Rinsing off quickly, he stepped out of the shower, toweled down with brisk strokes, and returned to his bedroom to dress.

Whittaker was there, Bruno and Howard beside him.
In his hand Whittaker held a small kraft envelope. Howard grasped a black rod that looked way too much like the cattle prod
Morales employed in his twisted games. But then Howard whipped his arm and the rod extended to about two feet in length.

Two feet of hard, threatening metal.

“Something wrong?” he asked, striding right up to the trio. If there was one thing he’d learned over his many years of competition,
it was to never show your fear.

Whittaker got straight to the point. “I gave you a mission yesterday.”

“I tried—”

Howard snapped the steel rod across his left side, just below the bony patch. The blow pounded into his ribs, bringing punishing
pain.

The force of the strike was enough to drop him to his knees. Nausea came on strongly, making him dry heave before the embers
of anger flared to life.

He was on his knees, struggling for control, when Whittaker opened the kraft envelope and removed something from within.

Photos, he realized, and then the embers the beating had stoked smoldered more powerfully as Whittaker flashed the images
of his younger sister before his eyes.

“She’s looking good. Howard snapped these last night,” Whittaker said and tossed them to the floor before Jesse.

Howard whipped him again, this time across his back.

Jesse went down on all fours from the wallop, his head hanging down, facing the photos of his sister.

Whittaker leaned close and whispered in his ear, “Next time you fail, she’s toast.”

The rage he had been trying to bank erupted like a backdraft denied air for too long.

He lunged forward, tackling Whittaker to the ground with a thud that shook the floor.

Howard was quickly on Jesse, striking at him with the steel rod, but Jesse blocked the blow and, with a swipe of his leg,
took down Howard, as well.

He jumped to his feet, met Bruno’s stunned gaze. Before Bruno could reach for his gun, Jesse knocked him out cold with one
punch.

Bruno’s body had barely hit the ground when Whittaker and Howard were both on him, pummeling him with their fists and landing
another powerful swipe that brought him to the ground.

They then began to kick at him, raining blow after blow until Jesse managed to grab Whittaker’s leg and force him down once
again. He landed a jab that stunned the other man and thought all he had to do was get past Howard and—

Howard hit him hard, across the side of the head.

The crack of the steel rod sent him staggering backward as the warmth of blood trailed down the side of his face.

His knees hit the bed and he crumpled to the ground. Black circles danced before his eyes, and he was having trouble breathing.
Each inhalation brought excruciating pain in his side.

He was going to die.

And he was going to have failed his sister, he thought as darkness threatened to overtake him. He sucked air through his nose,
trying to lessen the pain, and pushed back at unconsciousness.

With blurry eyes he saw Howard approaching, his nose bloody. A purpling bruise was already forming on the side of his face
and he held the long, lethal rod in his hand.

He raised it, and Jesse prepared for the blow, but suddenly Liliana called out, “What the hell is going on?”

L
iliana.

A moment later she was at his side, her hand at his neck, feeling for his pulse.

Liliana,
he thought again.

“I’m here, Jesse,” she said, and he realized then that he had said her name.

He dragged in a breath, groaning as his ribs protested the movement, slight as it was.

“Try not to breathe so deeply. You may have a broken rib or two,” Liliana warned as she ran her hand across his side, where
a deep purple bruise had already formed.

Fear gripped her hard as she noted all the other contusions on his body.

Glaring up at Howard, who still stood by threateningly, a dangerous-looking rod in his hand, she commanded, “Back off.”

Howard held his ground while Whittaker scrambled to his feet. The FBI agent approached, looking not much better than Howard.
An angry scrape stretched across one cheekbone. One eye sported a shiner, and blood dripped from the side of his mouth.

“I need to get Jesse to a hospital,” she said, worried
about his assorted injuries and how his body would react to the damage. Her one hope was that the plasmapheresis treatment
they had run the night before had filtered out enough of the bone-producing proteins to prevent the formation of any bone
at the various points of damage.

“No. He’s a risk to others and to this assignment.”

“He may die—”

“But many more may die if this mission is compromised,” Whittaker countered.

“He’s right,” Jesse said, the words weak and choppy.

She stared at Jesse. Like Whittaker, he had an assortment of bruises on his face and a gash on the side of his head, which
was bleeding profusely.

She grabbed a piece of gauze from her medical bag and placed it over the gash. Applied gentle pressure and Jesse flinched.

“If we don’t get you to a hospital—”

“It’s okay. I’ll be okay,” he replied and moaned from the pain of speaking.

Liliana rose from where she had been kneeling by Jesse’s side.

“Help me get him into bed. Gently. If his ribs are broken, they could puncture a lung.”

“Serve the bastard right,” Howard muttered beneath his breath, but a second later, he and Bruno—who had finally gotten to
his feet—were slowly lifting Jesse onto the bed.

Behind them, Whittaker hastily plucked some papers from the floor and stuffed them into his jacket pocket.

Liliana left Jesse’s side and stalked right up to Whittaker. She was so close her nose nearly bumped the bottom of his chin.
“What happened here?” she asked.

“Bradford just went crazy,” Whittaker said, but he
looked down and to the left, and a little tic played at the corner of his mouth. Sure signs that he was lying.

“What if I can’t treat his injuries here?”

“I won’t authorize a trip to the hospital,” Whittaker reiterated, glancing over her head to where his two men were placing
Jesse on the bed.

With a lean forefinger, Whittaker pointed to them. “Time for you to get to work. Maybe call Dr. Rojas for some of that inhibitor.”

An uneasy feeling crept into her gut. Not only had he lied to her about the reason for the beating, this was the second time
in as many days that he had brought up the medication that she and Carmen had been refining.

As his probing gaze met hers, she worried that he sensed her disquiet and so she quickly looked away, but not before dangling
the carrot before him.

“It may be necessary to stop the gene replication in his body with the inhibitor complex. Hopefully our overnight tests with
his bone marrow will confirm that it’s safe to use on Jesse.”

From the corner of her eye, she detected the sly smile before he controlled it. Apprehension settled in more deeply as she
returned to Jesse’s side. Whittaker wanted the complex enough to beat Jesse even while knowing that such a beating might kill
him.

Why would he want the inhibitor? For other patients? But if they had found the other gene therapy patients, why wasn’t he
telling her so that she could help them?

Maybe because the FBI agent had something to hide.

She sat on the edge of Jesse’s bed, but before she started working on Jesse she said, “I suggest the three of you get cleaned
up. I’ll let you know if I need your help.”

Whittaker jerked his head toward the door. “Bruno, stand guard. Howard, you’re with me.”

Both men snapped to do his bidding, but once they had left, Liliana walked to the door and shut it.

Hurrying back to Jesse, she worked on the gash on his head, which was still bleeding more than she liked. She cleaned the
cut with some antiseptic pads from her bag and then closed the wound with butterfly bandages. Blood leaked from the sealed
edges for just a moment but then stopped, relieving some of her concern that they had filtered needed clotting elements from
Jesse’s blood along with the bone proteins.

“Don’t worry,” Jesse said and patted her thigh before resting his hand there.

The weight of it was comforting, until she noticed the raw abrasions on his knuckles from punching the other men.

“Did you go crazy, Jesse? Because you don’t seem very crazy to me right now.”

“Doesn’t matter,” he replied and grimaced as he tried to draw a deeper breath.

It did matter to her. If one of them was lying, she wanted to know who and why.

And she hoped it wasn’t Jesse lying, although she sensed she wouldn’t get the complete story from either him or Whittaker.

Leaning over Jesse, she placed her hand along the bony patch on his right side.

Jesse reacted immediately, grabbing hold of her hand.

She glanced at him, and his discomfort was clear. He didn’t want her to feel that part of him. That inhuman part of him.

“I need to examine you.”

Jesse shifted her hand downward, to a narrow line of deep purple bruising beneath the damaged area. Carefully Liliana ran
her hand across the rib beneath. The bone appeared to be in one piece.

“It’s not broken,” she confirmed.

“Hurts like a bitch,” he said and covered her hand with his as it rested against his side.

“Tell me what happened, Jesse,” she pressed again, pulling her hand away to examine the various other injuries on his body.
Worrying that at each site he would soon be developing bone like that on both sides of his ribs and hands.

“Got angry. Went after Whittaker.”

This time she didn’t doubt him. Nothing about his demeanor suggested he was lying, but despite that, she still knew he was
holding back.

That bothered her. A lot. More than it should, maybe because she had wanted more from him.

Jesse could see the disappointment on her face. The emotion replaced her earlier concern over him and her anger with Whittaker.