Stronger Than Sin (22 page)

“How long will it take to get the x-rays?” Liliana asked.

“Not long. It’s a slow night,” he said and shot an uneasy look over his shoulder at the patient.

Liliana suspected that even if it hadn’t been slow, curiosity and fear would have driven the young man to develop the exposures
quickly.

“Would you arrange for the patient to be transported up to his room?” She noted the room number the duty nurse had provided
on a slip of paper and handed it to the technician.

“Yes, Dr. Carrera.”

Liliana returned to the ER area to meet up with Whittaker and his goon. When she arrived, Whittaker stood by the chairs, pacing
back and forth. Howard was seated, still pale. Beads of sweat dotted his upper lip and forehead.

As she neared, she noted a slight bulge beneath one pant leg and a darkened area on his other pant leg.

Blood? she wondered.

“Are you hurt, Special Agent Howard?” Although she didn’t care for the man, she also couldn’t watch him suffer before her
eyes.

“He’s fine,” Whittaker responded curtly, and Howard didn’t contradict him.

With a slow nod, Liliana provided her report. “Patient is headed to his room, and we should have the x-rays shortly. I would
suggest we go there to discuss his condition.”

As she turned to walk to the quarantine wing, she noted the grimace that crossed Howard’s face as he rose, and his slight
limp.

Howard had been roughed up during the day’s earlier encounter with Jesse, but she didn’t remember any kind of injury with
the symptoms he now exhibited. She guessed that he could have been hurt doing some other task for Whittaker but questioned
why they would be keeping it from her.

Refraining from further conjecture—she had enough to think about with her nearly ossified patient—she remained silent.

When they arrived at the quarantine wing, the patient had already been transferred to a bed, the IV had been reconnected to
another bag of saline solution, and he was wired to a variety of monitors.

Liliana walked over to the monitors and reviewed the stats. All troubling: oxygen saturation down, blood pressure low, heart
rate slow. Very slow, which was likely contributing to the reduced O
₂
and blood pressure.

She adjusted the oxygen flow and, deciding that a more thorough physical examination was in order, eased on latex gloves.
Beneath her fingers his skin and flesh were hard, even in those spots not covered by the thin layer of exoskeleton.

When the X-ray technician arrived, her worst fears were confirmed.

Thick areas of white glared at her from the x-rays, pointing to advanced levels of bone formation throughout his body.

“Well?” Whittaker prompted, his tone irate.

“There’s little I can do for this patient. The damage is extensive, and his major organs have been compromised.”

“What about the inhibitor? Can’t that help?” Whittaker once again pressed, triggering even stronger distrust in Liliana. But
she needed to play it carefully until she knew more.

“As soon as I get some additional information, I can decide how to treat him.”

Her acquiescence mollified Whittaker, and he left the room but instructed Howard to stand guard.

The special agent did so inside the room, hands crossed before him as he silently stood by the door while Liliana noted the
patient’s vitals on the chart. As she was finishing, she shot a fleeting look at Howard.

Sweat marked his face, and his pristine white shirt was damp in spots. His skin was as white as chalk against the black of
his suit.

“I’m assuming our patient is a John Doe?” she asked and Howard nodded, but not without some apparent discomfort.

She dropped the metal chart into the holder at the foot of the bed and approached Whittaker’s man.

“Are you feeling all right, Special Agent?” she asked, eyeing him up close for any additional symptoms.

“I’m fine, ma’am,” he answered woodenly.

“Right,” Liliana replied and eased a chair to where Howard was standing.

“Why don’t you take your jacket off and rest a bit.”

That he didn’t argue was a testament to how badly he must have been feeling. When Liliana returned to the patient’s bedside,
she caught a glimpse of Howard as he removed his jacket. His shirt was totally soaked in spots. Beneath the fabric near the
small of his back, she detected what looked like a bandage and a trivial spot of blood staining the fabric.

Trivial, except for the location of the apparent wounds.

His femurs and the area right above his ilium. Perfect spots for the sampling of bone marrow.

“You didn’t care for Bradford beating the crap out of you, did you, Special Agent?” she asked, hoping to elicit a response.

“Bradford’s a loose cannon. Has been ever since his
playing days,” Howard replied, calmly and with no hint of malice.

“Still, it must have pissed you off,” she continued while easing her hand into their John Doe’s to test one of the reflex
points there.

No reaction came from either man.

She shot a look at Howard, who remained impassive as he sat on the chair, some color restored to his face.

“Well, Special Agent? Did it make you angry?” she pressed.

A deadly smile spread across his features, creating a chill in her as he said, “I don’t get angry. I get even.”

She was spared from answering as her cell phone chirped—Carmen calling.

“What do you have for me?” she asked.

T
he lab results Carmen had provided had been bad, but not as bad as the call that had come from Ramon in the wee morning hours.

Whittaker was not an FBI agent. At least not anymore. He had been forced into retirement after a mission had gone wrong thanks
to a serious error in judgment on his part.

The current information on Whittaker, provided to Ramon by another FBI agent who happened to be a friend of her cousin’s,
was that Whittaker headed a private security group known to engage in an assortment of activities, some of them not so legal.
Unfortunately, neither the FBI nor any of the other organizations supposedly keeping track of Whittaker and his men had been
able to find sufficient evidence to charge them with any wrongdoing.

As for Howard and Bruno, more bad news.

Howard had been dishonorably discharged from the military. Bruno had spent substantial time behind bars due to his participation
in organized crime.

Ramon had wanted to act immediately to round them up, but Liliana had asked him to wait, needing to know what they were doing
and why. More importantly,
desperate to know why Jesse had thrown his lot in with men like these.

Sleep was impossible after getting Ramon’s news. Every time she closed her eyes, the image of her nearly skeletal patient
replayed itself, and each time, his face had been replaced by Jesse’s.

With sleep evading her, she had slipped on jeans, a sweatshirt, and a thick jacket and had gone for a walk along the boardwalk.
It was dark, but the streetlamps along the walk cast a weak light. She paused in the dim circle of light, reached up, and
took hold of the crucifix she wore.

Closing her eyes, she said a prayer for guidance.

How he could be lying to me even as he made love to me?

It hadn’t been just sex, as rushed as it had been. They had made love, because she had no doubt they both had feelings for
each other.

But her judgment of men was suspect, she reminded herself again. Look at how horribly it had turned out with her ex-fiancé.
And Jesse’s reputation with women was far worse.

Which had her wondering how she could have developed feelings for him.

Opening her eyes, she noticed the dawn inching up past the horizon. Crimson trails spread upward into the pitch-black morning
sky, bringing to mind an old saying.

Red sky at morning, sailors take warning.

She had to maintain a sense of caution, she realized, even while acknowledging that she had to confront Jesse about his lies.
Her one hope was that he would have a plausible explanation for why he was helping a man like Whittaker.

Shoving away from the boardwalk railing, she walked toward the center of town, needing to work off the nervous energy that
had kept her awake for the better part of the early morning.

A lone jogger approached her, a mutt on a leash attached to the fluorescent safety vest he wore. He ran right past her, dipping
his head in a breathless greeting.

She returned the welcome and pressed onward on the empty boardwalk. In the summer there would be dozens of people along the
beachfront, even at such an early hour. Surfers, joggers, and bicycle riders mostly, trying to get in their activities before
it got too crowded.

On Main Avenue, she turned westward and strolled past the still-closed shops. It was barely past six, and the seasonal stores
would not open even later in the day.

The bakery, however, was already active as people dropped by for breakfast rolls and pastries. When she walked in, one of
the young women behind the counter tossed out a greeting.

“Morning, Lil. The usual?” she said, and Liliana confirmed it with a smile. She was a creature of habit, which made her wonder
why she had deviated from such routines with Jesse or even Whittaker. Her normal inclination would have been to refuse a request
to leave the safety of what was familiar—the hospital. But then again, she would have done anything to extend her brother
Mick’s happiness and help Caterina return to normal.

And now there was Jesse to think about.

And the John Doe in the hospital.

And the nearly half-a-dozen missing gene-therapy patients from Wardwell.

A bushel of reasons for why she had strayed from her
comfort zone, but she had never expected that such a journey would risk the safety of her heart.

As the young woman behind the counter handed her a cup of coffee and a buttered roll, Liliana thanked her, paid for the food,
and then hurried from the shop. She turned up Pilgrim’s Pathway, opting to return to her condo through town rather than back
along the beachfront.

As she sipped her coffee and nibbled on the roll, she considered her plan of action for the day, deciding on what she would
say to Jesse. Trying to determine what, if anything, she was going to do about Whittaker and his men.

She hastened toward her condo, past the ochre and brown auditorium with the large white cross smack in the middle of the structure
facing the ocean. Nearby, small sheds and wooden tent frames stood empty. The tents dated back to the days of religious revival
meetings but now sat empty, waiting for when the residents would return and pitch the tents in which they would live for the
summer.

For nearly a hundred years the tents had routinely been going up and down. Liliana suspected that a hundred years from now,
the routine would be the same.

Routine was important it reminded her as she sped the final few blocks to the street of her condo. As she entered her building,
she had already decided what she would do. How she would restore order and protect all those who needed her.

She only had one hope for herself for the day—that Jesse would not fail her.

J
esse paced back and forth along the balcony of his home, staring out at the ocean.

Angry red streaks colored the morning sky.

Angry
being an apt description of how he was feeling.

He was angry at Morales and his partners for lying to him about the gene therapies.

Angry at Whittaker and his thugs for threatening his sister and Liliana.

But more than anything else, he was furious with himself.

Once again he had failed to do what was right.

God might forgive him for the sins of lust and greed when he had lost his way during his football career.

God might even forgive him for the pride that had made him bribe his way into the Wardwell experiments.

But he was certain God was never ever going to forgive him for making love to Liliana while he was living a lie.

Jesse wasn’t even sure that he could forgive himself, much less hope that Liliana might absolve him.

Not even the chill wind blowing off the ocean could cool the rage churning inside him, creating dangerous heat at his core
that needed relief.

He entered his bedroom and tore off the sweatshirt and pants he had worn to sleep.

They smelled of her. Womanly, with the faintest whiff of some kind of flowery fragrance. He hadn’t noticed that aroma at first.
Only when he had buried his face in the side of her neck had the slightest hint of perfume teased him.

He brought the shirt up to his face and inhaled deeply, imprinting her scent in his mind. Safeguarding it and the associated
memories.

Dressing in fresh fleece, he nearly skipped down the stairs in his haste to reach the gym and work out his anger and frustration.

It was dark downstairs still, but at the sound of his footsteps, a light snapped on in the guest bedroom, where Whittaker’s
men took turns sleeping.

Howard stumbled to the door. His sandy blond hair was disheveled, sticking up in spots but matted in others as if drenched
with sweat. The white T-shirt he wore was stained with light and dark spots that looked wet, and at midthigh, a rusty red
blotch marred the leg of his gray sweatpants.

He looked like shit, Jesse thought.

And pissed off.

Howard’s hazel-colored eyes glittered with an unusual light that penetrated the dimness in the hallway.

“Mornin’,” Jesse said, trying to avoid a confrontation.

Howard grunted and staggered back into the room.

Jesse paused in the doorway as Howard fell onto the bed. The linens were in disarray, half off and on and twisted, as if he’d
had a rough night. Judging from the way Howard lay staring up at the ceiling, almost distractedly, Jesse guessed this morning
was not much better.

Jesse sought out Bruno to tell him about Howard’s condition.

He found the man in the kitchen, half asleep in one of the kitchen chairs. His eyes opened sluggishly at Jesse’s entry.