Under The Knife. Tess Gerritsen
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never let me forget it, will you?”
She turned to him. Sunset had painted the sky orange, and the glow seemed to burn in her hair and in her cheeks. Suddenly he wondered how it would feel to run his fingers through those wind-tumbled strands, wondered what that face would feel like against his lips. The thought had popped out of nowhere and now that it was out, he couldn’t get rid of it. Certainly it was the last thing he ought to be thinking. But she was standing so dangerously close that he’d either have to back away or kiss her.
He managed to hold his ground. Barely. “As I said, Dr. Chesne, I’m only doing my job.”
She shook her head and her hair, that sun-streaked, mahogany hair, flew violently in the wind. “No, it’s more than that. I think you have some sort of vendetta. You’re out to hang the whole medical profession. Aren’t you?”
David was taken aback by her accusation. Even as he started to deny it, he knew she’d hit too close to home. Somehow she’d found his old wound, had reopened it with the verbal equivalent of a surgeon’s scalpel. “Out to hang the whole profession, am I?” he managed to say. “Well, let me tell you something, Doctor. It’s incompetents like you that make my job so easy.”
Rage flared in her eyes, as sudden and brilliant as two coals igniting. For an instant he thought she was going to slap him. Instead she whirled around, slid into her car and slammed the door. The Audi screeched out of the stall so sharply he had to flinch aside.
As he watched her car roar away, he couldn’t help regretting those unnecessarily brutal words. But he’d said them in self-defense. That perverse attraction he’d felt to her had grown too compelling; he knew it had to be severed, right there and then.
As he turned to leave, something caught his eye, a thin shaft of reflected light. Glittering on the pavement was a silver pen; it had rolled under her car when she’d dropped her purse. He picked it up and studied the engraved name: Katharine Chesne, M.D.
For a moment he stood there, weighing the pen, thinking about its owner. Wondering if she, too, had no one to go home to. And it suddenly struck him, as he stood alone on the windy pier, just how empty he felt.
Once, he’d been grateful for the emptiness. It had meant the blessed absence of pain. Now he longed to feel something—anything—if only to reassure himself that he was alive. He knew the emotions were still there, locked up somewhere inside him. He’d felt them stirring faintly when he’d looked into Kate Chesne’s burning eyes. Not a full-blown emotion, perhaps, but a flicker. A blip on the tracing of a terminally ill heart.
The patient wasn’t dead. Not yet.
He felt himself smiling. He tossed the pen up in the air and caught it smartly. Then he slipped it into his breast pocket and walked to his car.
* * *
THE DOG WAS deeply anesthetized, its legs spread-eagled, its belly shaved and prepped with iodine. It was a German shepherd, obviously well-bred and just as obviously unloved.
Guy Santini hated to see such a handsome creature end up on his research table, but lab animals were scarce these days and he had to use whatever the supplier sent him. He consoled himself with the knowledge that the animals suffered no pain. They slept blissfully through the entire surgical procedure and when it was over, the ventilator was turned off and they were injected with a lethal dose of Pentothal. Death came peacefully; it was a far better end than the animals would have faced on the streets. And each sacrifice yielded data for his research, a few more dots on a graph, a few more clues to the mysteries of hepatic physiology.
He glanced at the instruments neatly laid out on the tray: the scalpel, the clamps, the catheters. Above the table, a pressure monitor awaited final hookup. Everything was ready. He reached for the scalpel.
The whine of the door swinging closed made him pause. Footsteps clipped toward him across the polished lab floor. Glancing across the table, he saw Ann Richter standing there. They looked at each other in silence.
“I see you didn’t go to Ellen’s services, either,” he said.
“I wanted to. But I was afraid.”
“Afraid?” He frowned. “Of what?”
“I’m sorry, Guy. I no longer have a choice.” Silently, she held out a letter. “It’s from Charlie Decker’s lawyer. They’re asking questions about Jenny Brook.”
“What?” Guy stripped off his gloves and snatched the paper from her hand. What he read there made him look up at her in alarm. “You’re not going to tell them, are you? Ann, you can’t—”
“It’s a subpoena, Guy.”
“Lie to them, for God’s sake!”
“Decker’s out, Guy. You didn’t know that, did you? He was released from the state hospital a month ago. He’s been calling me. Leaving little notes at my apartment. Sometimes I even think he’s following me….”
“He can’t hurt you.”
“Can’t he?” She nodded at the paper he was holding. “Henry got one, just like it. So did Ellen. Just before she…” Ann stopped, as if voicing her worst fears somehow would turn them to reality. Only now did Guy notice how haggard she was. Dark circles shadowed her eyes, and the ash-blond hair, of which she’d always been so proud, looked as if it hadn’t been combed in days. “It has to end, Guy,” she said softly. “I can’t spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder for Charlie Decker.”
He crumpled the paper in his fist. He began to pace back and forth, his agitation escalating to panic. “You could leave the islands—you could go away for a while—”
“How long, Guy? A month? A year?”
“As long as it takes for this to settle down. Look, I’ll give you the money—” He fumbled for his wallet and took out fifty dollars, all the cash he had. “Here. I promise I’ll send you more—”
“I’m not asking for your money.”
“Go on, take it.”
“I told you, I—”
“For God’s sake, take it!” His voice, harsh with desperation, echoed off the stark white walls. “Please, Ann,” he urged quietly. “I’m asking you, as a friend. Please.”
She looked down at the money he was holding. Slowly, she reached out and took it. As her fingers closed around the bills she announced, “I’m leaving tonight. For San Francisco. I have a brother—”
“Call me when you get there. I’ll send you all the money you need.” She didn’t seem to hear him. “Ann? You’ll do this for me. Won’t you?”
She looked off blankly at the far wall. He longed to reassure her, to tell her that nothing could possibly go wrong; but they’d both know it was a lie. He watched as she walked slowly to the door. Just before she left, he said, “Thank you, Ann.”
She didn’t turn around. She simply paused in the doorway. Then she gave a little shrug, just before she vanished out the door.
* * *
AS ANN HEADED for the bus stop, she was still clutching the money Guy had given her. Fifty dollars! As if that was enough! A thousand, a million dollars wouldn’t be enough.
She boarded the bus for Waikiki. From her window seat she stared out at a numbing succession of city blocks. At Kalakaua, she got off and began to walk quickly toward her apartment building. Buses roared past, choking her with fumes. Her hands turned clammy in the heat. Concrete buildings seemed to press in on all sides and tourists clotted the sidewalks. As she wove her way through them, she felt a growing sense of uneasiness.
She began to walk faster.
Two blocks north of Kalakaua, the crowd thinned out and she found herself at a corner, waiting for a stoplight to change. In that instant, as she stood alone and exposed in the fading