Searching for Cate

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Bonus Features

Chapter 1

“What do you mean it’s not compatible?”

Special Agent Catherine Kowalski stared at the short, husky lab technician before her. A basket filled with vials, syringes and other blood-letting paraphernalia was looped over his arm and he looked at her as if she were a deranged troll who had wandered out of a fairy tale.

The drone of voices in the hospital corridor outside her mother’s single-care unit faded into the background as she tried to make some kind of sense of what the man had just told her.

It’s a mistake, a voice whispered in her head. But still, there was this terrible tightening in the pit of her stomach, as if she was about to hear something she didn’t want to hear.

This was absurd, she thought. Just a small foul-up, nothing more.

“She’s my mother. How could my blood type be incompatible with hers? There has to be some mistake,” Cate insisted.

There was no sympathy on the technician’s rounded, pockmarked face, just a weariness that came from doing the same laboratory procedures day after endless day. There was more than just a touch of indignation in his eyes at being questioned.

His voice was flat, nasal. “No mistake. I tested it twice.”

Her stomach twisted a little harder. Somewhere in the distance, an alarm went off, followed by the sound of running feet. She blocked it out, her mind focused on what this new information ultimately meant.

No more surprises, I can’t handle any more surprises. Cate had graduated near the top of her class at Quantico. In the field, there were few better. But on the personal front, she felt as if her life had been falling apart for the past few years.

And this might be the final tumble.

Cate’s eyes narrowed. Her voice was low, steely. “Test it again.”

Submitting to the blood-typing test had been nothing more than an annoying formality in Cate’s eyes. She’d thought it a waste of time even as she agreed.

Time had always been very precious to her.

Ever since she could remember, for reasons she could never pin down, she’d always wanted to cram as much as she could into a day, into an hour. It was as if soon, very soon, her time would run out. Over the years, every so often, she’d tried to talk herself out of the feeling.

Instead, she’d been proven to be right. Because there hadn’t been enough time, not with the father whom she adored. Officer Thaddeus Kowalski, Big Ted to his friends, had died in the line of duty, protecting one of his fellow officers during the foiling of an unsuccessful liquor store robbery. She was fifteen at the time. It seemed like the entire San Francisco police force turned out for his funeral. She would have willingly done without the tribute, if it meant having her father back, even for a few hours.

When she was a little girl, they used to watch all the old classic westerns together, and her father always told her that he wanted to die with his boots on. She’d cling to him and tell him that he could never die. He’d laughed and told her not to worry. That he wasn’t prepared to go for a very long time.

He’d lied to her and died much too soon.

As had Gabe Summer.

Special Agent Gabriel Summer, the only man she had ever allowed herself to open her heart to. Gabe, who had stubbornly assaulted the walls she’d put up around herself until they’d finally cracked and then come down. Gabe, who somehow managed to keep an upbeat attitude about everything in general and humanity in particular.

Gabe, of whom nothing more than his arm had been found in the rubble that represented a nation’s final departure from innocence on that horrific September 11 morning in 2001.

Like her father, Gabe had left her much, much too soon. They never had the chance to get married the way they’d planned, or have the children he wanted so much to have with her. The lifetime she’d hoped for, allowed herself to plan for, hadn’t happened. Because there wasn’t enough time.

And now, with her mother diagnosed with leukemia and her bone marrow discovered not to be a match, Cate had thought at the very least she could donate blood to be stored for her mother so that when a match would be found—as she knew in her heart just had to be found—at least the blood supply would be ample.

But now here was this stoop-shouldered man myopically blinking at her behind rimless eyeglasses, telling her something that just couldn’t be true.

“I can’t test it again,” he informed her flatly. “I’ve got work to do.”

Lowering his head, he gave the impression that he was prepared to ram his way past her if she didn’t let him by.

Cate planted herself in front of him. At five foot four, she wasn’t exactly a raging bull. To the undiscerning eye, she might have even looked fragile. But every ounce she possessed was toned and trained. She was far stronger than she appeared and knew how to use an opponent’s weight against him.

She temporarily halted the technician’s departure with a warning glare.

“Look, a lot goes on in the lab. You people are overworked and underpaid and mistakes are made. I need you to test my blood again. And then, if you get the same results, test hers. Just don’t come back and tell me they’re incompatible, because they’re not. They can’t be.”

The small man stepped back, his eyes never leaving her face. “Lady, you’re AB positive. Your mother’s O. I don’t care how many tests you want me to run, that’s not going to change. You give her your blood, she dies, end of story.” He drew himself up to the five foot three inches he came to in his elevator shoes. The vials in the basket clinked against one another. Annoyance creased his wide brow, traveling up to his receding hairline. “Now, I’ve got other patients to see to.”