LITMIR.BIZ

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punks, mostly paperwork.” He tossed the scrap back on his desk. “A visit with D.A. Hedlund, and a lab run for the last batch of results.”

      Reid snagged the last piece of paper from Sturgeon’s hand and tucked it into his own neat notebook. “I’ll take the lab, you deal with Hedlund.”

      “Fine.” Sturgeon cut him a glance and grinned. “And say hi to her for me, will you?”

      Reid scowled and straightened his tie.

      THE WALLS were watching her. She was sure of it. She could feel him out there, somewhere, watching to make sure she didn’t make a mistake. Or was he watching the house instead? That was an even more terrifying thought. Though she’d insisted that Maureen keep Jilly inside for the day, he knew where they lived. How she walked to work.

      He knew.

      Stephanie glanced down at the blue latex-encased hands working their way through a plate of samples, and wondered whether they were still attached to her body. She hadn’t consciously told them to set up the experiment, but they seemed to be doing fine without her.

      What was she going to do? She looked quickly around the lab for the zillionth time, half expecting to find a stranger standing over by the ultra-low temp freezer, watching her. But there was nobody there.

      Molly was at her bench working on the last few experiments they’d need to finish before they announced the discovery of the Fenton’s Ataxia gene—a coup for their boss Genie Watson, whose best friend had died of the disease.

      Terry was at the computer, his Adam’s apple bobbing now and again as he struggled with the last part of his dissertation. Though a laboratory genius, Terry was a disaster at putting things into words. Normally, Steph would’ve been at the computer with him, helping make the science into language. But today she was frozen at her bench, afraid that the watcher would interpret the least social contact as betrayal.

      I’ll send her back in pieces.

      She glanced out past the reception area, to where the lab leaders’ offices were dark. Genie and Nick were at a two-week genetics conference in Hawaii. Steph wished they were around. After everything they’d been through the year before, which had culminated with Nick subduing the murderous madman, Steph thought they would know what to do.

      But then again, the lab leaders would probably insist on going to the police, and that wasn’t an option.

      There was no way Steph was endangering her child or her aunt by making yet another catastrophic error in judgment. She was going this one alone. She had no choice.

      Beep-beep…beep-beep…beep-beep.

      She glanced at her lab timer, a sophisticated clock that allowed her to monitor up to ten different experiments at once. Today, there was only one display in action, and it was blinking 00:00.

      The Makepeace film was ready for processing.

      Glancing around one more time, still convinced that she was being watched, Steph collected the freezer cassette from the counter where she’d let it defrost. Be a match, she prayed, though she feared it wasn’t.

      Normally, DNA gels didn’t need to be frozen down with their films, but since one of the samples in this experiment had been badly degraded seminal fluid from the little girl’s rape kit, Steph had needed to intensify the radioactive signal before she could see the results. Freezing the trapped radioactivity at minus eighty slowed the particles down long enough for them to bounce off a reflective screen and pass through the X-ray film a second time, effectively doubling the signal.

      Ignoring the bite of cold metal through the thin latex gloves, Steph lugged the lightproof film cassette to the developer room and tried not to look back over her shoulder as she stepped into the hall.

      Last year, Genie had been attacked inside the black, close room. She’d been badly beaten and left for dead. Though the space had been cleaned and repainted since, going through the revolving door and hearing it rubba-thump behind her still gave Steph the willies, particularly today. What if he came in while she was developing the film? She’d be trapped.

      The light lock gaped at her like a screaming black mouth, and she stepped into it on unsteady legs and let it roll shut behind her. When nothing sprang out of the darkness to grab her, she processed the clammy film as quickly as possible and escaped back into the lighted hallway. She snatched the processed X-ray film from the delivery port before it was completely dry.

      And cursed sharply. Hopelessly.

      At the other end of the hall, one of the techs looked up at her oath. “Everything okay, Steph?”

      “Sure, Jared. Everything’s fine,” she answered automatically as her brain raced.

      Make sure the Makepeace DNA is a positive match.

      “Everything’s fine,” she repeated to herself just in case saying it made it true.

      But it wasn’t fine.

      The Makepeace DNA wasn’t a match.

      What the hell was she going to do now?

      REID PAUSED in the elevator lobby of the thirteenth floor and buzzed to be let in. He remembered the first time he’d seen Boston General’s Genetic Research Building, and the big, hulking machines and the crisp, white-coated people that moved among them. It looked like something out of one of the science-fiction movies he’d watched as a kid when there wasn’t a cops-and-robbers flick playing.

      But this wasn’t science fiction. It was real. And in the nine months the Chinatown station had been subcontracting its DNA forensics out to the Watson/Wellington lab, their conviction rate had risen ten percent.

      Even D.A. Hedlund was grudgingly impressed.

      The door swung open automatically as someone buzzed him in from within the maze of corridors that wound through the thirteenth floor. And as he turned toward the Watson side of the labyrinth, Reid remembered the day he and Sturgeon had been called out for an assault and attempted rape on this very floor.

      Reid had been moved by the white-coated woman covered in blood and crumpled beneath a stainless-steel sink. He had been glad to see that Genie Watson was breathing and almost conscious when they carried her out of the tiny room on a stretcher. He had been annoyed at the number of feet that had tracked the blood evidence around the room, and he had been dreading the phone call he would have to make, canceling yet another date with Yvette. But then again, she’d been getting clingy. Making noises about commitment and—gulp—kids. He remembered thinking that maybe it wasn’t a bad thing he was canceling on her again. He’d pushed his way out of the developer room, turned toward a knot of murmuring white-coated technicians to begin the necessary round of questioning—and felt like he’d been shot point-blank in the chest while wearing a Kevlar vest.

      She was so tiny the lab coat swallowed her up and didn’t even hint at her figure. Her curly red hair was so vivid that it had looked out of place against all that sterile white, and her wide, worried eyes had looked like wet jade.

      Suddenly Yvette’s five-foot-ten seemed gargantuan, her expensive hair too blond and her clothing too tight and colorful. He hadn’t had the heart to tell Yvette about his waning desire for her, but she’d figured it out soon enough.

      “Detective Peters?”

      And there she was again. Dressed in a lab coat.

      He looked around. Somehow, his feet had brought him to Stephanie’s bench. She was standing, staring up at him with a sheaf of printouts clutched to her chest. The pages crinkled as her fingers tightened on them. They were already badly wrinkled, which was unusual for the military precision of the Watson lab.

      “Can I help you, Detective Peters? If not, I’m quite busy. I have work to catch up on from yesterday.” Though not quite rude, her tone certainly wasn’t friendly. Tension seemed to emanate from her in waves, and as he watched, her eyes slid to a shadowy corner of the lab.

      A tickle traveled across his left shoulder blade.

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