Forever, page 17
“But how did you know he’d be a help?”
“After I met her”—he nodded at Lydia—“and learned what she was, I got sick. Or was diagnosed, whatever. I didn’t know anyone like her, but then I thought of him… and figured he might have some contacts. That’s how I got your number.”
There was a pause. And then the female said in a dry voice, “Any chance he had a mohawk?”
“As a matter of fact… yes.”
Alex Hess rolled her eyes. “He’s a goddamn busybody. But what I can’t figure out…”
“Is what?” Lydia asked roughly.
“I don’t know any wolven, either. Yeah, sure, I’m sorry about… what’s going to happen to you both in a couple of months. I just don’t understand why I’m some kind of connector for you? I’m just being honest. A dying human, a wolven, and me? There just aren’t any intersections here.”
As Lydia lowered her head, Daniel stroked her arm. “Looks like all three of us are confused.”
Lydia was trying to think of something to say when from out of the corner of her eye, movement registered in the trees. Flaring her nostrils, she got nothing in terms of scent. Then again, the wind was blowing from the opposite direction, so there was no way to sniff out who or what it was.
But someone—or something—was watching them.
“We’ve got company,” she said quietly. “Right there.”
TWENTY
DOWN IN C.P.’S laboratory, things had gotten quite quiet, the hustle and bustle of researchers dimmed down, only a few stragglers passing by outside of her patient room. Although what time was it, midnight? She checked her watch. Then slipped off the exam table and went over to the computer at the desk. After she signed in, she glanced at the clock at the bottom right-hand corner of the monitor. 12:17 a.m.
But who was counting.
Turning away from the blue glow, she tucked the two halves of the loose fleece she was wearing around her bare upper body and paced back over to the exam table. Then she returned to the desk. Went back to the table.
Glancing down at her bare feet, she noted the pressure marks from her high heels, the bunions, the callouses. Wearing stilettos was hard on the toes and heels, but mostly where it didn’t show… on the balls of one’s footsies.
When she’d arrived down at the facility, she’d had no intentions of getting into a hospital johnny. No, thank you. She’d come in fully clothed as she always was, ripping the door open with her chin held high and her professional facade firmly in place. It had only been after Gus had shut them together in this exam room that things had gotten undone. And not just her jacket and blouse.
Goddamn, you were never more naked than fully clothed in front of a doctor—when you knew something was wrong with you.
On his side, Gus had been amazing. To keep down the chatter among his fellow researchers, he had been the one who’d drawn her blood, taken her vitals, and run the tests. He had also asked her more questions than she could count about her medical history—and when she’d gotten cold and started to pull her jacket back on over her blood-draw sites and the electrodes he’d stuck all over her, he’d taken off the fleece he had on and draped it around her.
She hadn’t zipped it up. But like that made it any less intimate? At least she had kept her bra on the whole time.
C.P. checked the door. Still closed. No footsteps coming down the hall to it, either.
Tilting her head to the side, she brought up the fleece’s sleeve, closed her eyes, and drew in a deep breath.
What cologne did he use? It was incredible—
“Did I spill something?”
C.P. gasped and dropped her arm. “I’m sorry?”
“On the sleeve?”
She blinked at him stupidly and tried to translate the words he’d spoken—
“Ah, no.” She straightened her shoulders. “You didn’t.”
“I just washed it, actually.” He went over to the rolling chair and sat down. “Good thing I don’t like the cold, right? Otherwise, we would have had to wrap you up in layers of lab coats.”
“What kind of car do you drive?” she blurted as she sat down in the chair next to the desk.
Annnd where had that come from, she wondered.
Gus paused as he logged out of her sign-in and put in his own. “I—ah. I drive a Tesla?”
“Oh.”
He sat back. “Is that a problem?”
“Oh, no. It’s great.” She refolded his fleece over her torso, wrapping it all around herself. “Really.”
“Don’t tell me…”
As he refocused on the screen, she frowned. “What.”
His fingers hit the keys in a hard pattern. “You’re a car guy, aren’t you.”
“I’m a woman who likes cars, yes.”
“You’re a motor head, I mean. Who doesn’t approve of electric cars because you’re a dinosaur who refuses to give a shit about the environment.”
C.P. thinned her lips. “Guess you’ve got me dead to rights. Tell me, all that electricity you’re using, are you going to ignore the amount of fossil fuel that’s used to produce it?”
“You’re really playin’ like that. After gas-guzzlers have ruined the—”
“And anything that needs engine sounds piped through the speakers to—”
Both of them shut up at the same time. And she wasn’t sure who started laughing first. Maybe it was him, probably it was her, but either way, all of a sudden, she was wheezing and wiping her eyes while he was holding his belly, the release of tension like a sea change in her, in him.
When things had run their course and they were both sitting back in their seats and smiling, she was the one who refocused them.
“So,” she said on a sigh, “what do you think, Doc.”
Gus cleared his throat and brought up a couple of different reports, minimizing the windows so he could look at all of them at once. As his dark eyes went back and forth, it was like he was trying to read tea leaves in the numerical values in those columns, and though she was sure to know what some of the results meant, she wasn’t going to look.
Instead, she focused on his face, noting everything from the way his lashes curled up and his brows arched… to the cut of his jaw… and the curve of his lower lip. He’d had his ears pierced on both sides, but he never wore earrings so the holes were just pinpricks that were slightly darker. And he had a chicken pox scar on his cheek.
She found herself wondering what he’d been like as a teenager, all lanky limbs and dreams of basketball. He’d told her once, in an offhand way, that he’d wanted to be Kareem Abdul-Jabbar when he was younger.
No wait… he hadn’t told that to her. He’d made the comment to someone else, when they’d been riding the elevator in a group.
Gus turned his whole body toward her, swiveling his chair around. And even though they had known each other professionally for a couple of years, and she trusted him as much as she trusted anybody, she was suddenly scared of him. But that was more what he might say, wasn’t it.
His face was a mask, no emotion showing.
“Tell me,” she said in her best C.P. Phalen voice.
“I think you’re a good candidate for Vita.”
As C.P. released the breath she had been unaware of holding, she couldn’t tell what exactly she was relieved by: That she was the guinea pig they’d been looking for… or that, as a patient, she might have a last-ditch option that could, possibly, give her a little more time—because she knew better than to think in terms of a cure. Not after childhood cancer, then the two bouts of the AML before this moment.
Time. That was all she wanted.
“Yeah,” Gus said. “That’s what we all want.”
“I didn’t know I’d spoken that out loud.” She gave an awkward laugh. “Anyway. Good. This is what we want, right? This is… a good outcome.”
As he blew out a breath, he put his elbows on his knees and leaned in to her. The triangulated pose emphasized the size of his shoulders and his biceps, and for a self-defined geek—she’d heard him in the break room calling himself that—he was in better shape than most college guys. Then again, with the amount of Coke he sucked down on a regular basis? He had to burn all that energy off somehow, and evidently that would still be on the basketball court. Or at some gym.
When he stayed quiet, she frowned. “Okay, spill it. What isn’t going to work.”
“You know what my concerns are. All along, I’ve worried about what it’s going to do to the liver. If we get the leukemia under control, but leave you on dialysis? That’s not what we’re after.”
Her eyes went to his hands. They were blunt-tipped, his fingers squared off, his nails precisely trimmed and totally clean. He was lean enough that the veins that ran down into his hands were evident, and for some reason, that was sexy as hell.
Maybe because it made her wonder how tight his abs were.
“Anything else you’re concerned about?” she prompted.
“Where are you with all the negotiations? I know you went somewhere this morning? Can you tell me anything?”
“No, I can’t.”
His mouth thinned. “Well, what do we do if you crash? What if you can’t be… C.P. Phalen anymore?”
She opened her mouth. Closed it. “I don’t know. We’ll have to cross that bridge if we get to it.”
“Do you have a second-in-command?”
“On the business side? No. I’m a solo operator—it cuts down on the conversation.”
He laughed in a short rush. “Why am I not surprised.” Then he got serious again. “Okay, so as your oncologist, I’m going to go into my spiel here. You need to be prepared for side effects, some of which may be debilitating. I’m going to ask that you stay down here when we administer the protocol—”
“Why can’t I just be upstairs in my home.”
“Your bedroom is not a clinical space.”
“Yes, it is—”
“Look, I’m not going to argue with you, or remind you that we will be introducing a novel agent into your body that has never been in a human before.”
She pointed to the screen. “Is there anything else we need to discuss with the tests?”
“No, MD Anderson did an extensive workup when you were there two weeks ago. Is that where you went today?”
“I did go to Houston. But I didn’t follow through on my appointment.”
“Ah, yes, the email I received from you this morning. Was that when you decided you were done with the conventional treatment? Or did your team at Anderson pull the plug earlier?”
C.P. got to her feet and thought about the way she’d pulled out of Gunnar Rhobes’s penthouse conference room.
“My doctors told me I couldn’t have any more treatment a day or so ago.”
Actually, Gus had walked in just after she’d hung up the phone with her team there. He’d assumed her distraction was from her having seen Daniel’s results, but it had been her own medical data that had rattled her—although of course, she’d felt awful for Lydia and Daniel given their own situation.
So much bad news lately.
“My oncologist in Houston had suggested a couple different clinical trials.” She shrugged. “But after Daniel gave his final no, I figured, why not do my own for Vita? And now I’m going to suggest we go up to the house so you can see exactly how my bedroom is decorated—and I’m not talking about the drapes.”
She reached for the door.
“Who else knows you’re doing this?” he asked as he looked up at her.
“No one. And no one can know. I need to be anonymous, or the corporations I’m negotiating with will see this as the biggest conflict of interest since Pharma Bro.”
Gus stared at the screen for a little longer. Then he logged off and stood up, too.
“You need to have someone in charge of your business affairs. If something goes wrong with you, I’m going to lose everything I’ve worked for—and hell, that may happen anyway with whatever terms you’re negotiating.”
She thought of all those stock options that were part of his employment contract. And then there was Vita, herself, the culmination of his life’s work.
For all she didn’t want to die, she hadn’t really considered the practical implications of having no will. No clear heirs. No successor for her business.
C.P. focused on Gus. “I’ll take care of it.”
* * *
Back up at the trailhead on the mountain’s summit, Xhex palmed her gun and trained it just past the front fender of the blacked-out SUV. Narrowing her eyes, she searched the dark contours of the pine trees and the boulders—but she saw nothing.
Just as she was thinking about making some kind of threatening announcement, Lydia, the wolven, had the brass balls to simply walk forward.
As Daniel went to get up from the tailgate, Xhex shook her head. “I’ve got her.”
She expected an argument. And respected the fuck out of the guy that he didn’t waste his time or hers. He just nodded and stayed where he was.
Xhex jogged a little to catch up to the female, but then she remained in the rear. There was something about the way the wolven scanned the landscape—it was different, like there were other senses being called into service, other instincts being relied upon. Meanwhile, on Xhex’s side, she was scenting everything she could and getting a big fat zero. Nothing moving, nothing that tipped her off—
“Stop,” Xhex said.
The wolven instantly froze.
Xhex looked down to the ground and pointed. “Here. They were standing right here.”
She dropped to her haunches and took out her cell phone, triggering the beam. The footprints were obvious but not distinctive, big enough to be a male’s yet nothing of particular note when it came to treads or a heel. Running the little light up the closest trunk, she saw no disturbance in the pine tree’s bark pattern or its branches.
Just as she was about to suggest they go back, Lydia lowered her whole body to the ground. Planting her arms on either side of the prints, she leaned down and put her nose close to the markings.
“What is it,” Xhex said as the female straightened and sat back on her heels.
The wolven looked over. “It smells… like you.”
“I’m sorry?”
“The scent. It’s like yours.”
Xhex glanced around. The Brotherhood, she thought. Of course they’d followed her here—after what had happened to John Matthew last night, everyone was still jumpy. But they were clearly going to be discreet about it.
“I know who it is,” she said as she stood back up. “Who followed me, who’s checking up on me, I mean.”
“Is there a problem?”
“No, just backup I didn’t ask for.” Xhex wondered where they were hiding out. “But I appreciate them looking after me.”
“It’s good to have friends.” The wolven got to her feet as well. “You’re lucky.”
Xhex focused on the female. “What’s your name?”
“Lydia.” A hand was extended. “Lydia Susi. It’s nice to meet you, Alex.”
“That’s not my real name.” She shook what was offered. “Xhex. That’s who I am.”
A true smile came back at her, the kind that lit up those eyes. “Nice to meet you.”
Don’t do it, Xhex told herself.
Except… of course she read the female’s grid.
“Oh, shit,” she murmured.
“What? Are you all right?”
How do I explain, Xhex wondered.
“Ah, sorry. Nothing—I just… I know your man’s sick. And that’s got to be fucking awful.”
“It is… a living nightmare. I’m just muddling through, really—I worry about him, he worries about me. It’s a circle of madness that spins faster and faster as time gets tighter and tighter. I get these flares of hope and then we grate against each other and then… we find a connection. There’s no consistency to anything other than the terminal diagnosis.”
If only it were Rehv stalking around in the shadows, Xhex thought. He could tell them all why in the hell he—
All at once, an image of the entity Xhex had run into on the trail from before crossed her mind… sure as if it had been implanted into her skull.
“I think I know why we’re all here,” she said with a kind of defeat.
Blade, that bastard, had told her to come here, not Rehv. Rehv might have been the conduit… but what her brother had set her up for was the destiny. Was this her journey? Just to pass along what she had seen of that glowing entity? If so, being a messenger wasn’t a tough job—except what the fuck did it have to do with the nightmares from the past that had haunted her for so long?
Although not anymore. She hadn’t woken up screaming during the day for months.
“Your Daniel told me he was worried about leaving you all alone,” she heard herself say to the wolven. “So there really is no medical hope for him, is there.”
Lydia took a deep breath. “No, there isn’t.”
Xhex narrowed her eyes as the female’s grid shifted: She was lying. “None?”
When a quick shake of the head came back at her, Xhex left that alone. “Well, he’s concerned that he’s going to die, and there’s going to be no one who will help you through your grief.”
As she spoke, it was strange. The voice was hers… but the words felt like someone else’s, like an energy was flowing through her to the female.
“You need to come to the mountain,” Xhex said. “This is the place where you will find your support.”
Or more like, it will find you.
Lydia put her hand on the base of her throat. Then she began to blink quicker.
Xhex reached out and touched the female’s shoulder. “You’re supposed to be here. I think that’s why you and I were put together through your man. You need to go and find the light. You need to hear the message that there is something here for you, and it will be your solace when you feel like there is no peace to be found anywhere. The mountain has something to tell you—just like it had something to tell me. The light… is the key.”
