Page 8 of Heart of Danger
She drew in a deep breath and he kept his eyes on her face. Because for a slender woman, she had a really great rack. Which had nothing to do with anything, of course. Just an observation.
He was definitely going to head down the mountain next week and get laid, though.
“My name is Catherine Young,” she said quietly. “Dr. Catherine Young. I am a neuroscientist and I work in a research lab, Millon Laboratories, about twenty miles south of Palo Alto. All of which you obviously read from documents in my purse. I am also an expert on dementia.”
She stopped, as if giving him time to react.
Mac simply waited.
Dementia, huh. Maybe that was his problem. He was demented for not knocking her out and leaving her three hundred miles away from here. Yeah, he was losing it.
He couldn’t see it, but he knew Jon was tapping away at his virtual keyboard. The woman had barely finished talking when Jon’s voice came in over the invisible ear pod.
“She’s telling the truth, boss. Catherine Anne Young, born August 8, 2006. Lives on University Road, Palo Alto.” Low whistle. “Got more degrees than my dog has fleas. Cum laude, too. That is one smart lady. I’m looking at her driver’s license, photo matches and am now looking at…ah. At her company ID. Millon Labs. It all checks out.”
Mac gave an almost imperceptible nod, which she wouldn’t catch but Jon would.
Then Jon came back on. “Whoa, boss. Millon, the company she works for? It’s owned by Futura Technology. And, it took evenmetwo minutes to find this out, and there’s a series of shell companies here I’ll spare you, but guess who the final owner of Futura is?” Jon sometimes got carried away with his own smarts. Mac could almost see him smacking himself on the forehead because of course Mac couldn’t answer. “Sorry, boss. Arka Pharmaceuticals. That’s who. Our luscious Dr. Young ultimately works for Arka.”
Arka Pharmaceuticals. Their last mission. He and Jon and Nick had almost died on that mission. The false intel that Arka Pharmaceuticals was working on a weaponized form ofYersinia pestis—the bubonic plague—had cost them everything.
Because there had been no plague, only some very bright scientists working on a cure for cancer. Because the mission had cost him his entire team. Only he, Jon and Nick had escaped. And because he and his entire team had been betrayed by their commander, a man they had all loved. That was Arka Pharmaceuticals. And that was the company this woman worked for.
Mac didn’t believe in coincidences. She might look soft, she might not be an operator in the technical sense and she might well be a doctor with degrees coming out her ears, but his first instinct was correct.
This woman was dangerous.
“Go on.” She’d stopped and continued studying his face, as if it was giving something away. Good luck with that. His face didn’t give anything away.
“I work mainly in the lab, but we have a ward of test subjects suffering from rapid onset severe dementia. Men and women who are so far gone they can’t remember their names, can’t remember anything about their past. Some are barely sentient. We’re working on a cure for dementia, a way to re-establish the synapses that have been lost. I’ll spare you the technical details. Our protocols are highly experimental, very cutting edge, but several show a great deal of promise. Each test subject was informed of the risks in a time when two neurologists certified that they were of sound mind and each patient signed a release. Or, failing that, a family member with power of attorney signed. The patients were assigned numbers, which I would have objected to, but they were all well beyond recognizing their own names. There was one patient in the protocol group, however, known as number Nine…”
Her voice trailed off and she looked down at her hands, trying to think what to say next.
Mac let the silence go on for a while. Finally, he made an impatient gesture with his hand. “Number Nine? What was the matter with patient number Nine? Besides being nearly brain dead.”
Her eyes lifted. She had truly beautiful eyes. A light gray, rimmed with a circle of darker gray, surrounding by amazingly long thick eyelashes. Possibly even her own, since she didn’t seem to be wearing makeup.
Shit. What was thematterwith him? Letting himself be distracted by pretty eyes during an interrogation that might have life or death consequences. Lack of sex wasn’t an excuse. There wasn’t an excuse. He forced himself to focus.
She just stared at him. Her face was soft, open, vulnerable. Much as Mac wanted to read operational awareness and craft in her expression, he simply wasn’t seeing it. Everything he’d ever learned about interrogation techniques was signaling something impossible. Either she was very, very good—better than anyone he’d ever come across—or the woman wasn’t lying. Was no threat to him.
Except…she’d come looking for him in a snowstorm. For him specifically.
Of course she was a fucking threat.
“Dr. Young?”
She started slightly, as if she’d gone into a trance. There were white brackets around her mouth and her nostrils were pinched. She’d nearly gone into hypothermia and driven up in the snow. She’d be exhausted. Now that he thought of it, he looked for signs of exhaustion and found them. She was swaying lightly in her chair as if sitting up straight took effort.
Mac had a thin membrane on his left forearm which was a keypad. He pulled up the sleeve of his sweater and typed under the table—bring food and something hot to drink in 30 minand nearly smiled at the treat awaiting this woman, who didn’t deserve it.
They had the best chef in the world here in Haven.
He lifted his hands up from under the table and gestured impatiently.
“What about this number Nine? Who was he?”
“Number nine was a large man, 53 years of age, according to his file, though he looked much older. Dementia patients often look ten even twenty years older than they are. They are incapable of looking after themselves and age rapidly. Number Nine’s files said he was a business executive who had worked for a succession of companies, the turnover being extremely rapid in the previous four years. This is consistent with a diagnosis of a dementing disorder. He’d be hired on the basis of his track record then the company would discover he wasn’t up to the job. And then soon, of course, the track record was one of failure. Divorced, no children. His medical plan didn’t cover a shelter home. He enrolled himself in the program, while he was still capable of signing documents. Everything was normal, if anything about these patients can be considered normal.”
