The steady thump of his heart reassured her, as did the power of his arms when they closed around her. “I know.” The words were as soft as the kiss he pressed to the top of her head.
Both gestures made her feel safe. Whole.
“Have you seen— Oops! Sorry, you two.” Jemma
grimaced in the doorway, but her eyes held a hint of amusement. “Didn’t mean to interrupt.”
Erik shifted to face her, and Meg noticed that he used the cane as though it were an accessory rather than a crutch. She would have to ask him about that, and about where he’d learned to climb. But there would be time enough for that later.
“There’ll be time to fool around later,” he said, paralleling her thoughts exactly. “Who were you looking for?”
“I can’t find Max.” When Meg made a small sound of distress, Jemma immediately added, “Don’t worry. He’s around somewhere. But he’s in a panic. Raine’s gone.”
Meg froze. “What do you mean, gone? She was doing so well. Was it the miscarriage? Why didn’t someone—”
“No!” Jemma said quickly. “No, I’m sorry. I meant gone as in
gone.
She signed herself out against the attending’s recommendation.”
Erik went rigid. “What? She shouldn’t. We have to get her back here whether she likes it or not.” He turned to Meg. “You can do that, right? With the clotting problem?”
“Not necessarily.” Meg shook her head. “She could be in real danger, or she could be fine. Factor IV Leiden is strange that way. Now that she’s not pregnant…” She shrugged. “I know it’s not ideal, but maybe she felt like this was the right thing to do. Maybe she needed to…get away for a while.”
Erik cursed. “Get away from me, you mean.”
“Or Max. Or her life.” She squeezed his arm. “It’s not your fault any more than it was my fault that Annette wanted what I had. She was—” Meg searched for the word “—confused. Unhappy. And she kept talking about someone named Edward. I wonder who that was. A lover maybe?”
“Her brother,” a new voice said from the doorway. Detective Peters stepped inside, looking tired. “A computer search turned up her next of kin—her mother, who died last year, and her twin brother Edward, who died in his teens. Leukemia.”
Meg winced. “She never spoke of it. Heck, she never talked much at all.” She paused. “I can’t help thinking that I should have helped her. I don’t know. Somehow.” She glanced at Erik. “In the lab, she talked about being a woman, how her mother told her she’d never get ahead. How things would’ve been better if she’d been born a man. I guess…” She swallowed and forced herself to recall those last few horrifying moments in the lab. “I guess she was trying to prove herself at Boston General. Trying to prove that her mother was right. Then I came in and started making waves with my work. With who I am. I never realized.”
Erik tightened his arm around her waist, supporting her even though she knew his thoughts remained at least partly on Raine’s disappearance. “Not your fault. It sounds like her mother did a number on her.”
Peters nodded. “We’re searching Annette’s place now, and should be able to piece together more of it in the next few days. Regardless, she’s gone. Her
remains have been removed from the crime scene, and there’s no doubting the identification. You two—” he included Meg and Erik in his gesture “—and your employees are safe. Back to business as usual.”
Business as usual. The words gave Meg another wince and a kink of uncertainty as the ER doctor arrived with the vascular surgeon and shooed Erik, Jemma and the detective out of the room. She answered the doctors’ questions and followed their instructions to move her fingers in sequence, then held still for another set of X-rays. But all the while, her brain churned with fuzzy thoughtlets and impossible wishes.
By the time they had her wrist sewn up and wrapped in a mile of bandages, she had her plan. Maybe midsurgery wasn’t the best time to make life-altering decisions, but it was like free falling—sometimes the quickest decisions made under pressure were the best ones. Knowing it, she made the necessary phone call from her room before she gave the okay for the nurses to let Erik in.
Zachary Cage arrived on his heels, causing Erik to raise his eyebrows askance.
“I called him,” Meg said. She felt a faint flutter in her stomach and told herself she was doing the right thing. “I asked him to bring the paperwork. It’s time to do your deal.”
Erik went still. “You’re dropping your opposition to the sale?”
“You can have the NPT.” She took a deep breath
and told herself that everything would be okay. “I trust you to develop the technique fairly and ethically.”
When Cage handed her the paperwork, she signed beside his signature and that of a committee head, without a murmur, having read and reread every word of it over the past two weeks. The sale stripped her of all control of the NPT technology.
But that was okay. She was making room for a new chapter in her life’s work. One that started with the man who crossed the room in uneven strides, took the pen from her good hand with a sizzling brush of fingertips and signed on a line farther down. He capped the pen, passed the paperwork to Cage, and took her hand.
He shook it. “Congratulations on your new lab, Dr. Corning. Or would you rather I call you ‘professor’?”
Maybe it was the painkillers, maybe the stress of the past few weeks, but it took a long moment for Erik’s words to penetrate, even longer for them to make any sense. When they did, Meg’s heart picked up a beat. She looked from Erik to Cage and back. “Professor?”
Cage grinned. “Didn’t anyone ever tell you to read thoroughly before you sign on the dotted line? That’s not the original deal. It’s a licensing contract. FalcoTechno gets the rights to commercialize the prenatal testing, and agrees to subsidize your lab for the next five years while you examine the feasibility and technicalities of stem cell development, with the funding renewable based on results and the agreement of both parties.”
Meg stared at the pages. “Wow.” The room spun as the butterflies in her stomach expanded to fly outward, fluttering through her veins in winding paths of disbelief and joy. “Wow.” Then she looked up at Erik and found him watching her with all the love in the world shining in his dark eyes. “I was ready to give it to you. All of it.”
He smiled. “I’m giving it back.” Then he lifted an eyebrow. “Of course, you realize that I have an agenda.”
She laughed and set the butterflies free. Or maybe she was the one who was finally free, because it felt an awful lot like she was flying when she said, “As long as it involves candlelight and spaghetti, I’m in.”
He pulled her close, being mindful of the bandages. “It’s a date. Tonight, and every tomorrow after that.”
They kissed, sealing the deal in a gesture more binding than paper and ink, and Meg realized that it wasn’t the same as free-falling, after all.
Because now she had someone waiting to catch her.
ISBN: 978-1-4592-2243-4
RED ALERT
Copyright © 2006 by Dr. Jessica S. Andersen
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Bear Claw Creek Crime Lab
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