Release

Which wasn’t the point. His first concern had to be his family’s welfare. There was no choice, so he turned away from the phone, not willing to take the risk. He’d thought about writing to them, but he wasn’t sure who was watching them. He’d put nothing past Omicron.

He should go back to the house. Harper would be in bed by now, so he wouldn’t have to face her. He wasn’t nearly as embarrassed about the ham as he was about running out like a five-year-old.

He shook his head as he headed back down the long street filled with cramped shops. Boyle Heights was an old Los Angeles neighborhood that had gone through a number of transitions. Mary Lee at the clinic had told him that in the forties and fifties it was a haven for Jewish immigrants. Signs of their tenure were still around: an old synagogue converted into an apartment building with the Hebrew letters still outlined on the brick, a secondhand resale shop with a kosher chicken on the window. But now Boyle Heights, like most inner-city neighborhoods, was ruled by the gangs. There was graffiti and tags on every available surface. Bloods, Crips, gangs he’d never heard of—they were all visible in brilliant spray-paint hues.

No one had bothered him on his walk. He’d passed plenty of guys wearing colors, but they’d caught sight of his stump and steered clear. Guess it was good for something.

Of course, they might have been avoiding him because it was thirty degrees out here and he was wearing a T-shirt, jeans and no coat.

His gaze moved to the few feet in front of him as he neared the old house on St. Louis Street. Most of the people who lived in the area knew she was one of the doctors at the free clinic and therefore she was okay. He rode in on her ticket, which probably protected him more than his long hair or his disguise.

When he got to Harper’s, he thought again about not going in. He hated having to come here, having to do the crap work at the clinic. He hated everything about his life now, not the least of which was being a fugitive. The worst of it was feeling so helpless.

He wondered what Nate was doing tonight. Whatever it was, he was furthering their cause. Probably with Kate or Vince at his side, watching his back.

There was nothing for him to do but go on inside. To crawl into the basement and dream of days when he’d been whole. When he hadn’t given Harper a second thought.

He reached across his body to his left pocket and took out his key. The front light was on, so it wasn’t a problem, but the house was wired with some of the most sophisticated alarms in the world. Luckily he’d been the one who’d installed them when they’d bought the house, so he knew exactly how to get in quietly.

The moment he stepped inside, he knew Harper was asleep. Yeah, she could have just been in bed, but there was a different energy in the house when she was awake. He’d never say those words out loud, knowing how crazy he sounded. Shit, his unit would have laughed him out of Delta. Even so, he knew what he knew, and Harper was sleeping.

Another thing he knew how to do was be quiet. He’d had a lot of training in that department. He’d been on a hell of a lot of missions where to fail was to die. So he didn’t make much noise. Not even when he went down the long hallway to Harper’s bedroom, not when he stood in front of her door wondering what in hell he expected to find. He wasn’t about to knock. And he might be a lot of things, but he wasn’t about to go in uninvited. Not that she ever would. Not him. Not ever.

He turned before he did something stupid, but instead of heading to bed, he went to the bathroom. The chill had gone deep and he needed a good long, hot shower.

Once there, he stripped, turned on the water and avoided looking at himself in the mirror. With the room steamed sufficiently, he got under the flow, wincing at the heat. But he toughed it out until his whole body felt warm and relaxed. He hadn’t realized just how exhausted he was. The thought of going down to that cold, sterile basement, with the oversized OR lights and hulking machines all around his bed, was enough to make him wish he hadn’t come back at all.

Like the good soldier he used to be, he grabbed his washcloth off the rod, then picked up the soap with it. That’s how he washed these days. With the soap wrapped in terry. The only thing he hadn’t figured out was how to scrub his right shoulder. A back scrubber helped, but there were just some parts he couldn’t get to.

Even more disconcerting to him was washing his hair with one hand. He had no problem cleaning his hair, but it felt wrong. Weird how some things felt worse than others. Like those slip-on shoes. He hated those with a vengeance.

Finally he was as clean as he could get and warm all the way through, so he turned off the shower. He dried as much as possible and picked up his jeans. But he couldn’t put them back on. Instead he wrapped the towel around his waist, using the side of the sink as a hand substitute.

He shoved his clothes under his arm and headed out into the chilly hallway—and right into Harper.

She gasped. He dropped his clothes, and the knot of his towel loosened. He caught it about a second too late.

“Oh, God, I’m sorry,” she said. She didn’t have on her robe. Just a sleep shirt that draped over her breasts, molding her nipples.

“What the hell are you doing?”

She stepped back abruptly. “Well, excuse me for worrying.”

“What, you think now that I’m a cripple, I can’t take care of myself?”

“No, I don’t—”

Without picking up his clothes, he walked past her, bumping her shoulder, cutting her off. He couldn’t look at her and he couldn’t stand for her to see him like this. It didn’t matter that she’d seen his stump a thousand times, that she’d given him the goddamn thing. He had to get out of there.

Halfway down to the basement his eyes started to burn, which made him want to break down the door, destroy everything in his path. Instead he just went to the side of his bed, dropped his towel on the floor and put his hand on his swelling erection.

VINCE HAD A BAD feeling about this. He should have heard from Corky Baker this morning. When he’d called the reporter, there had been no answer. Not on the home phone, the cell phone. And no one at the Times had any information.

Ever since Vince had gotten involved in this Omicron mess, he’d learned to be extraordinarily cautious. Although he hadn’t been in Kosovo, couldn’t have found the place on a map, he was in this fight to the end. Because of Kate. Because if anything happened to her, he wasn’t at all sure what he would do. She was the first—and last—woman he would ever love. And when it was over, when Omicron was exposed and Kate had her identity back, he planned on having one hell of a good life with her. Yeah. Just the two of them. So he’d be careful. Damn careful.

He’d had to wait until nightfall to come. Nate was pretty sure that Baker’s house was under surveillance, so they had to be in full stealth mode.

Kate had wanted to come, but he’d made up some bullshit about needing Nate to break in when the truth was he just wanted to keep her out of danger. It wasn’t possible, of course. Just knowing what she knew was enough to get her killed. But he didn’t have to watch it happen.

He would never have believed meeting Kate would have led him here. To quit his job as an LAPD homicide detective, to become part of this team of fugitives. Almost more unbelievable is that he’d had to go to Corky Baker and ask the reporter for help. He and Baker had a long, unhappy history of bumping into each other at murder scenes. Vince trying to solve them, Baker trying to earn Brownie points from his editor by snooping everywhere he didn’t belong. That very trait made him the right man to get on Omicron’s case.

Of course Vince had realized he was putting Baker in harm’s way. But this was the big time, the real deal, and if Baker ever wanted a chance for a Pulitzer, this was it.

Which was why Vince was worried as hell that Baker hadn’t checked in. He and Nate were dressed in black, like movie burglars, and they each had black ski masks to cover their pale white faces.

He felt stupid, as if this was all blown way out of proportion, even as the logical part of him knew the precautions weren’t nearly enough.

Without a word, they got out of the truck and headed toward the house, but they went via backyards and, briefly, across an alley. It was a little tricky to pick out the right house, as Vince had only come through the front door before.

Once they’d scaled the fence, Vince knew he’d found the right place. What bothered him was that he couldn’t remember if Baker had a dog. He remembered the kid, about eleven, cute, which meant he must have taken after his mom.

Nate pulled out a penlight, small but strong, and led them past the swimming pool. It was covered over for the winter, and leaves from the nearby trees had settled on the plastic.

Before they even attempted to get in, Nate did his thing with the alarm system. Vince waited by the back door, trying to come up with a reason Baker wouldn’t have called, but none of the excuses held water.

Vince would have told him to forget it if they hadn’t needed him so badly. Truth be told, Baker was turning out to be damn good at his job. Go figure.

“The alarm’s not on,” Nate said quietly. “And it’s not broken.”

“Shit.” Those bad feelings had been right on the money. Dammit. “Let’s do this.”

Despite what he’d told Kate, it was Vince himself who broke in. He had a nifty lock-pick set he’d gotten from a lifer he’d sent up three years ago. It took all of about ten seconds before the lock clicked and they were inside the dark, quiet house.

Once they’d closed the door, Nate got out a special little gadget that Vince had heard about but never seen. It was a monitor, the size of an iPod, that searched out video and audio signals. The little gizmo would alert them if there was a camera or a mike anywhere in the house. He watched intently as Nate pressed some buttons. It didn’t take long for Nate to give the go-ahead.

Vince got his own flashlight out and led Nate past the big grand piano and the long glass coffee table until they were just outside Baker’s office.