True Evil

Alex closed her hands around his arm where it enfolded her. 'Don't freak out if I cry,' she said. 'Because I feel like I'm going to.'

'Why?'

'Because life sucks right now. It's been sucking for a really long time.'

Chris squeezed as tight as he could for a few moments, then eased up. 'There are worse things than this. That's one thing I've learned in medicine. It can always get worse.'

She turned her head so that her cheek touched his. 'I hope not.'

'We need to sleep, Alex.'

'I know. Are you going to puke on me?'

His laughter sounded like someone else laughing in a dream. 'I'll try not to.'

She tensed in his arms.

'What's the matter?' he asked.

'I forgot to check in with someone online. Jamie, actually. It's kind of a tradition.'

Chris struggled to raise his arm. 'Go ahead.'

She pulled his arm back down and snuggled in close. 'No…it's too late now. He'll be all right for one night.'

CHAPTER 40

'Oh, shit,' said a female voice.

Chris came awake with the bed moving beneath him. Every muscle in his body ached, but his chest and neck felt as though he had endured a car crash.

'Shit, shit, shit,' cursed the woman. 'I slept through my alarm.'

Alex, he remembered. He blinked his eyes open and felt full daylight stab his retinas. Alex was standing beside the bed, pulling on her jeans.

'What time is it?' he asked.

'Nine a.m. I set my cell alarm, but I forgot to plug in my phone. It died during the night. I guess that snuggling scrambled my brain.'

Chris sat up, and a wave of nausea rolled through his stomach. 'Do you need to use the bathroom?'

She looked at his face and caught his meaning. 'Just let me pee.'

She disappeared into the bathroom. Chris slid his legs off the bed, then got up slowly and went to the minibar. He chose a cold Dasani, which felt good going down but made him pray he could keep it there. When he was confident that he could, he went to his bag and took his morning dose of antivirals: AZT, ritonavir, enfuvirtide, and vidarabine. As he swallowed the last pill, the toilet flushed in the bathroom.

'I'm done,' Alex called. 'All yours.'

'I think I'm okay now. I felt like I had diarrhea, but it passed.'

She walked over and sat on one of the club chairs. She had washed her face, and for the first time he saw the scars without makeup covering them. In his mind, he saw an image of someone throwing acid onto a painting of a woman.

'What are you thinking?' she asked.

'About today.'

Her suspicion didn't fade. 'You've got two choices. Drive back to Natchez for chemotherapy, or fly to Sloan- Kettering for chemotherapy.'

'Now you're my mother?'

Alex turned up her palms. 'You want to play Russian roulette with your life?'

'That's what chemotherapy would be under these circumstances. We don't know what was injected into me. My best chance for survival is to find out exactly what's killing me. Only then can I get effective treatment.'

Alex considered this. 'How do you plan to do that?'

'How about you and Kaiser catch the son of a bitch for me?'

'I guess you feel better this morning.'

Chris picked up his pants and struggled to put them on.

'Where are you going that you need your pants?' Alex asked.

'Over to UMC, to see the researchers Peter Connolly told me about. If they're not there anymore, I'll get the names of the top people in the Hematology and Oncology departments and try to see them.'

'For what purpose?'

A wave of dizziness hit him. He sat on the edge of the bed, rocking slowly. 'I think we've focused too much on Shane Lansing. Okay, he owns a radiation-oncology center. He owns a lot of other stuff, too. We know that something was injected into me. If that something was radioactive, it probably would have shown up on the X-ray I had yesterday. I think it's more likely that Connolly is right.

Someone got hold of my blood-or semen-then altered it and reinjected it into me. If that's the case, the odds are against Lansing. Shane cares more about money than medicine, so he doesn't have that depth of knowledge. We're looking for superdoctors, Alex. People who are experts on bone marrow, genetics, oncogenic viruses. There aren't many of those in this entire state, and the ones we do have are right across the street.'

Alex leaned forward in her chair, excitement in her eyes. 'How's your body? Can you function?'

'I think so. I'd better take a shower, though. I'm not going to impress anybody smelling like vomit.'

'Good call.' She walked to the bedside phone. 'I'm going to order some breakfast. Can you eat anything?'

'Toast and a bowl of grits. And hot tea.'

She smiled broadly. 'You're the only man I've spent the night with in the last ten years who ordered grits in the morning.'

'Welcome home.'

Andrew Rusk was ten miles south of Jackson when his fear hit critical mass. A few days ago, there had been only one car following him. Now there was a motorized battalion, operating in shifts. All American cars, most of the drivers white males between twenty-five and forty-five. He was in deep shit. Cursing Alex Morse with visceral hatred, he swerved off the interstate at the Byram exit and pulled into the drive-through lane of the Wendy's restaurant there. Two cars followed him.

'Goddamnit!' he shouted.

Last night, when he received the Viagra spam from Dr. Tarver, Rusk had been elated. He didn't know where Tarver had been hiding, but he was sure that the doctor had good reason to be out of contact. After all, they had hardly spent more than a few minutes in each other's company over the past five years. Last night this trip had seemed like a leisurely drive down to the hunting camp. Now it was impossible. If he led those sons of bitches in the government sedans to Chickamauga, Dr. Tarver would kill them and him without a second's hesitation.

Rusk ordered a cheeseburger and a Coke and watched one of the tail cars park in the lot a few yards away. What the hell could he do? If they were following him like this, then they were tapping his phones as well. The office, the house, his cell phones. For a moment he wondered if Carson Barnett had turned him in.

No way, he assured himself. Barnett wanted out of his marriage, and he was willing to do anything to accomplish that. It was that fucking Morse. But was it only Morse? That was the question.

Last night, Thora Shepard had called his house fourteen times. After two hysterical messages had been left on his answering machine, Rusk unplugged the phone. When he arrived at his office this morning, Janice had reported twelve messages left by a Mrs. Shepard, each one more frantic than the last. Thora wasn't so stupid as to have stated her reason for needing to talk to him, but something told him that Alex Morse was involved. That, or Thora was having second thoughts about killing her husband. That wouldn't surprise Rusk. The woman might be movie-star hot, but she was also nuts, as he had seen the first time around. Typical society chick, really. She looked