“Which you could have ignored. Why didn’t you?”

“Honestly? It provided me a good excuse to abandon Nate, the Hunts, all of it. Turns out that my objectivity wasn’t so strong after all. Knowing Violet was lost, I lost heart.

“Now they’ll know without doubt that I’m a traitor to the cause. Nate will be livid with me for making him look bad with the rich and powerful Hunts. On the other hand, if the drug works as we fully expect it to, he’ll be delighted not to have to share the praise.”

“You’ll miss out on getting the credit.”

“Violet will miss out on much more.” She swiped a tear off her cheek, turned quickly away, and headed for the bathroom. “Excuse me. When I come out, I’ll call for a car.”

“Brynn—”

“I never cry in front of anyone.” She went into the bathroom and closed the door behind her. The lock clicked.

Rye went to the door and knocked. “Brynn.”

“Give me a few minutes. Please.”

Cursing under his breath, he backed away. He supposed she had earned a crying jag.

He lifted his bomber jacket off the bed and took his cell phone from the pocket. He sat down on the end of the bed where Brynn had been, holding the phone in his palm, bouncing it a couple of times in indecision, then, before he chickened out, tapped in a number.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Mom.”

She gushed a breath around his name. “Oh, it’s so good to hear your voice.”

“I called this morning.”

“It said unknown caller.”

“Yeah, I’m using a spare. Anyhow, the day got away. I’m not interrupting Thanksgiving dinner, am I?”

“No, we ate early. Enough food to feed an army. We’ve got leftovers that can easily be warmed up if you’re calling to tell me you’re on your way.”

The hopefulness in her voice made him squeeze his eyes shut. “I’m a long way from Austin. In Atlanta. Grounded by fog.”

“It’s been on the news. You’re not flying—”

“Not tonight. Tomorrow.”

“Where are you off to?”

Did it matter? No. But he told her anyway. Then, “Do I hear a baby crying?”

“That’s Cameron. He’s been fussy all day. He’s teething.”

Cameron, his youngest nephew. He’d seen him only in pictures his proud brother had texted, along with subtle admonitions that if he could fly from coast to coast on a daily basis, surely he could make a stop in Texas to see his family.

He cleared his throat. “So, uh, the whole brood is there today?”

“Except for you. You’re missed.”

“I miss everybody, too. But, you know, work. It’s crazy.” Of course work wasn’t the reason he didn’t go home, and she knew that.

“Your dad’s out on the porch. He’ll want to—”

“No, don’t bother him. I’ll try to call again in a day or so, talk to him then.”

“Rye—”

“I’d better go and let you get back to the party.”

“Rye. We want to see you. We don’t have to talk about…about anything you don’t want to. Please. Can’t you come home for a couple of days, at least?”

“I’ll try to do that.”

“When?”

He plowed his fingers through his hair and held his forehead in his palm. “When I can, Mom.”

She didn’t ask when that might be. She had asked before and had never received a definitive answer. He didn’t have one to give her.

Her voice husky with restrained emotion, she said, “Be careful, sweetheart.”

“I will.”

“Promise me.”

“I promise.”

“I love you, Rye.”

“Love you, too.”

He disconnected, held the phone against his lips, then, fed up with himself and life in general, tossed it onto the dresser. It landed just as Brynn opened the bathroom door.

She glanced at the discarded phone, then looked at him. “Who was that?”

He stayed as he was, just looking at her where she stood poised on the threshold between the two rooms, hair a mass of dark swirls backlit by the bathroom vanity lights. Those damn gray eyes, lined with the blackest of black eyelashes, now wet and spiky from recent tears, were regarding him with concern.

He said, “Come here.”

Her footsteps were hesitant, but she came to stand directly in front of him. He placed his hands on the sides of her waist, pulled her between his legs, and pressed his face into the hollow where her ribs separated.

She settled her hands on his head, so tentatively that at first he thought he’d imagined it. “Rye? What are we doing?”

Running his hands up and down the backs of her thighs, he nuzzled her middle, then tilted his head back and looked into her face. “Nothing.” He reached for his jacket again and spread it open across his thighs. “It’s a shame you don’t like her.”

Brynn looked down at the painting and gave a faint smile. “She’s growing on me.”

“Yeah? That’s good. Because she definitely has her uses.”

Brynn looked again at the pinup girl, then regarded him warily. “I’m not sure I want to hear what they are.”

He grinned. “I’d enjoy detailing some of them, but I can’t make you late.”

“Late?”

He worked his fingers into a small tear in the seam where the silk lining was stitched to the leather, then reached for Brynn’s hand and turned it palm up.

“Before Lambert and the Hunts get to you, you’ve got to get this to Violet.”

In her palm lay the bubble-wrapped vial of GX-42.

Chapter 19

6:41 p.m.

Deputies Wilson and Rawlins watched Nate Lambert back his Jag from his reserved parking space and drive out of the garage.

Replacing the formed foam inside the box hadn’t been as easy as removing it. Once that was done, apologizing for their mistrust and for wasting more than half an hour of the doctor’s valuable time, they had insisted on seeing him out of the deserted office building and safely on his way.

Rawlins waited until Lambert’s taillights were no longer in sight, then remarked to his partner, “This may go down as being the worst Thanksgiving ever.”

“You’d rather be at home with a wife on the warpath and puking kids?”

“Maybe. Because this sucks.”

Wilson snorted a mirthless laugh. “Not often do I have this much egg on my face. I would have sworn we’d find some kind of contraband.”

“Me, too. And you know what? I think our friend Dr. Lambert thought we would, too.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. It looked to me like he was as shocked as we were to come up empty.”

“I know he wasn’t glad to see us on his doorstep,” Wilson said. “But was he afraid of being caught red-handed at something illicit? Or was he just being an asshole?”

“He’s definitely an asshole. But when I produced that search warrant, he looked exactly like my nephew did right before yakking the crab dip.”

Wilson thought on it. “It was the same expression Brynn O’Neal had when we made her unlock the box.”

“That’s another thing. What’s up with her? Why did she lie to Lambert about her car?”

“To make a clean getaway.”

“Yes, but why?” Rawlins persisted. “This morning she was itching to get back here to him and their patient.”

“That’s what she said, but that’s not what she did. She ran off with Mallett. I’m telling you, this whole thing—” Wilson broke off, walked a few feet forward, then knelt on one knee in the parking space next to Lambert’s and looked more closely at the spots on the concrete floor that had drawn his attention. “Blood.”

Rawlins joined him to take a look. “Relatively fresh.”

Wilson called attention to the name on the wall. “In Dr. O’Neal’s parking space.”

It wasn’t a copious amount of blood, but the quantity didn’t signify as much as its being there at all. The two deputies tracked the intermittent drops as far as the exit, but once beyond the cover of the building, the trail had been washed away by rain.

“Whoever was bleeding walked out of here,” Wilson said.

“Then what?”

“Hell if I know. Maybe somebody just got a nosebleed.”

Rawlins turned to Wilson, looking skeptical. “Is that what you really think?”

“No.”

“Me neither. Based on everything else that has happened, I think we ought to bring in Atlanta PD.” He glanced around, spotting the security cameras mounted at strategic points in the ceiling. “We should have a video of what went down here. I’ll call it in. You get a home address for Brynn O’Neal. We’ll start looking for her there.”

They were walking quickly toward the SUV when Rawlins’s cell phone rang. “Probably the wife demanding a divorce.”

But it was Myra. Rawlins put her on speaker. She cut to the chase. “Two things. Thatcher went off duty, so Braxton took over for him at the hospital. He just called. Brady’s bum heart—”

“He has a bum heart?”

“Everybody knows that,” she said with exasperation. “It’s giving them some concern. Vitals-wise, he’s lost a lot of ground. His cardiologist is on his way to the hospital as we speak. Marlene’s fit to be tied.”

“Hell,” Rawlins said, exchanging a worried frown with Wilson. “What’s the second thing?”

“The license plate number on that black Mercedes.”

“The café’s camera angle was wrong. We didn’t get it.”

“That camera didn’t, but the one at the hardware store did.”