Under the Microscope

come through if she called for him. Not that she would, of course, but in the case of an emergency…

“Get a grip,” she told herself. “They don’t know where we are. You’re safe here.”

Still, the creepy feeling persisted as she checked and double checked the locks, then stripped down for her shower.

She was tempted to luxuriate beneath the spray, but that felt somehow wrong after what she’d been through that day. Cari Summerton would never again take a good shower, would she? That sweet little girl would never get to swim with her mother, never get to talk to her, laugh with her, yell at her, all those things girls did when they grew up with a mother of their own.

Many of the things Raine had missed out on.

“This isn’t about you,” Raine said sternly as she shut off the water and stepped out onto the bath-mat. “None of it is about you. At least not directly.”

It was about Thriller. About a group of men who, for reasons unknown, had decided to discredit the drug and destroy her in the process.

Collateral damage, Ike had called it.

When self-pity threatened, Raine scrubbed harder at her hair, wringing it dry until the tears came from the pull at her scalp rather than worthless sniveling. She wrapped a dry towel around her torso and stepped out into the hotel room.

And stopped. “Oh, hell.” Her relatively clean clothes-the business outfit she’d washed in the sink last night and hung to dry-were in Max’s duffel. She looked down at herself. “Oh, hell no. That’s so not happening.”

Refusing to be so stupid-or obvious-as to visit Max in a hotel-size towel, she grimaced and pulled the jeans and sweater back on. She padded to the connecting door barefoot and knocked.

She heard the sound of a lock being thrown, and the door swung open to reveal a scowling Max. “There wasn’t supposed to be a connecting door.”

Though she felt a frisson of disappointment at how thoroughly he wanted to avoid her, Raine shrugged. “Sorry. I promise not to bother you again. I need my clothes.”

His face went blank. Then comprehension washed over his expression. “Right. Wait here.” He turned away, cursed and turned back. “Ignore me, I’m being an ass. Come in.” He gestured to a table beneath the single window, where a room service tray rested. “Eat. I got enough for two, because I figured you wouldn’t follow orders.”

“I just got out of the shower!” But even given the circumstances, Raine found a faint smile. “It’s one of the basic differences between men and women. The woman showers first. The man orders food.”

Still standing, they shared a tentative smile.

At Max’s prompting, she sat. Their knees bumped beneath the hotel-issue table, but neither of them mentioned the contact.

Many things went unspoken as the meal progressed.

By silent accord, they kept the conversation light. They didn’t speculate on the case. They didn’t talk about their past association or the way it had ended. They didn’t talk about Charlotte or Max’s empty apartment. Raine didn’t ask whether he’d ever gone to New Bridge, looking for her once she’d run.

Instead, they stuck to safe stuff like movies-which they mostly agreed on-books-ditto-and the occasional foray into current affairs and politics, where they were forced to agree to disagree.

The good news was that it made for a pleasant meal. The bad news was that it recalled entirely too many of the hours they’d shared during her stay at Boston General.

Worse, it reminded her that Max wasn’t just a handsome face stuck on a hell of a body. He wasn’t just an overprotective macho man in search of a little woman to take care of.

He was both of those things, true.

But he was also really good company, damn it.

When the meal was over, their conversation faltered. She fell silent, and after a moment, he did, too. They stared at each other over the remains of their food. The scene was lit by daylight filtering through cheap hotel curtains. It wasn’t romantic, wasn’t ambience, but Raine’s heart tilted nonetheless.

“Aw, hell.” Max leaned forward and Raine met him halfway. Their kiss tasted of red wine and companionship, and the heat built gently. Surely. As though this time it was right.

Only it wasn’t. He’d already admitted he didn’t see her as an equal.

He was still looking to save her.

Raine pulled away, blood humming, and saw the knowledge already written in his eyes.

“Not yet,” he said as though they’d already discussed it. “Not tonight.”

Maybe not ever. Probably not ever.

“Thanks for the meal.” Raine stood and gathered her change of clothes. “See you tomorrow.”

She surprised herself by sleeping through the afternoon and night, and she woke with the taste of him on her lips.

THE ADDRESS IKE HAD GIVEN THEM in Richmond, Virginia, belonged not to a family member of the second victim, Minifred Tyrrel, but to her former roommate, Jenni, a late twenty-something who died her hair platinum blond and wore her pants two sizes too small.

She had agreed to meet with them at noon. When she opened the door, she took one look at Max and couldn’t have been more helpful.

“Minni was on the pill,” she said, inching a little closer to Max on the love seat she’d insisted they both use, leaving Raine on the big couch by herself.

Max forced himself to hold his ground and continue with the questions as though her stocking-clad foot wasn’t taking a leisurely tour of his inseam. “Any other meds? What about recreational drugs?”

“A little X. Maybe some pot now and then. Nothing hard-core.” She glanced at the kitchen, overtly ignoring Raine. “Can I get you anything?”

“No, I’m fine,” Max answered, leery of what she might offer. “Did Minni smoke or drink?”

“She drank some. Nothing heavy-duty. And she used to smoke, but she quit right before she got her nose done. The doctors said it would screw up the healing.”

“True enough.” As he kept going with the questions-mostly gleaned from basic medical history reports, with a few oddball-risk factors Ike and Raine had come up with-Max took a look around the third-floor apartment. It was cramped and vaguely seedy, though one of the girls had made an effort to pretty the place up by draping brightly colored scarves over the lamps and tacking travel posters across the more obvious cracks in the drywall.

By the time they’d gotten to Minni’s eating habits-and Jenni’s foot had cruised past Max’s knee-Raine interrupted, “No offense, Jenni, but you don’t seem too broken up by your roommate’s death.”

“We weren’t tight.” As though realizing that sounded bitchy, she quickly said, “And I’m on antidepressants.”

Which made it all better, apparently.

Max ran her through the rest of the questions at lightning speed, and he and Raine escaped into the early afternoon air of Virginia.

They made it to the car before they looked at each other and burst out laughing.

“Her foot was…it was…” Raine pointed and dissolved into giggles.

“I know exactly where it was, thank you,” Max said, still chuckling. “And where it was going.”

Their laughter drained quickly, but it had boiled off some of the tension between them as they pulled back onto the road, headed for New York City and the parents of the third victim, Denise Allen.

The disposable cell phone rang just before they reached the Virginia border. He answered. “What have you got for me?”

“I think I’ve got a few things you’ll be interested in hearing,” Ike’s voice said, sounding far away.

“Tell me.” The cheap plastic creaked when his fingers tightened on the casing, but the disposable phones were the only safe method of communication. There was too good a chance that their regular numbers were being monitored.

Raine mouthed, Is that Ike? When Max nodded, she gestured for him to hold the phone away from his ear and leaned close so she could listen in.

Ike said, “First off, I’ve tracked down the sample batch information for the four dead women, to see when the pills that-allegedly-killed them were manufactured. Two came from the same batch, but the other two don’t come