LITMIR.BIZ

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heart pounded, the rapid thud nearly drowning out all other sounds as she tried to scramble to her feet. This wasn’t happening, couldn’t be happening.Please God, let this be a nightmare.

      But she knew it wasn’t a dream the moment another skier flew around the corner, saw Zed’s motionless body and wiped out with a startled yell. A second skier appeared, then a third. She heard their shouts, saw them gesture wildly at Zed, then farther down the slope to where she lay.

      One skied toward her, a tall, broad-shouldered man who looked to be in his early forties. He was dressed entirely in gray, and his eyes were shielded behind tinted goggles. He crouched beside her. “Lie still. The ski patrol is on its way.”

      “Help me get these things off.” Ike yanked at her skis, cursing the bindings she habitually overtightened to get maximum speed on the slopes. “I work at a hospital. I can help him.”

      “You’re hurt. You should—”

      “Shut up and help me!” she snapped, and when her would-be rescuer tried to press her down flat, she fought him off, dragged herself to her feet and limped upslope.

      She elbowed her way through the growing crowd and dropped down beside Zed’s limp form. He had a bloodstained hand clamped to the side of his neck, and the snow beneath him was slushy and stained red.

      “Oh, God. Zed.” She pressed her hand over his in an effort to keep him from bleeding out.

      “You probably shouldn’t touch him,” a female voice said from the crowd. “That must’ve been a hell of a wipeout. He could’ve broken his back or something.”

      Ike whipped her head around and glared at the speaker, a teenaged snowboarder wearing a purple hoodie. “Shut up and call the ski patrol again. Tell them we’re going to need a helicopter evac and the cops.”

      She didn’t mention he’d been shot because she didn’t have time to deal with questions or panic. Zed was her only focus right now. Besides, it hadn’t been a random sniping, one where the gathering crowd would be at risk.

      No, there had been a single target, and the shooter was long gone.

      “Come on, Zed, stay with me.” She kept up the pressure while she searched for a second wound, but it looked as though he’d only caught the one bullet. Unfortunately it was a hell of a hit. She was a computer jockey, not a doctor, but she knew an arterial bleed when she saw one.

      “Where’s the damn ski patrol?” she shouted, her voice sharpening with panic when his breath rattled in his lungs.

      “Almost here,” someone said. Zed groaned and shifted, fighting back toward consciousness.

      Ike struggled to keep the pressure on when he tried to pull away. “Lie still, Zed. Help’s coming.”

      He cried out in pain, opened his eyes and looked around wildly for a few seconds, then zeroed in on her face. His mouth pulled back in a rictus of disbelief, then worked as he tried to say something.

      “Hush.” Ike leaned close, trying to shield him from the crowd, trying to will away the grayness she saw creeping over his skin. “Don’t try to talk. Concentrate on breathing, okay?”

      He reached up and grabbed her wrist with his free hand, hanging on as though he were sinking. Eyes locked on hers, he managed to say, “Why?”

      Tears streaming down her face, Ike leaned closer and said, “Sh. Just breathe.” But deep down inside, guilt stabbed deep at the knowledge that she knew exactly why. The sniper hadn’t been shooting at Zed.

      The bullet had been meant for her.

      Chapter Two

      Three months later

      “I can’t believe I have to wear a coat in my own office,” William Caine muttered. “It’s spring already. Isn’t it supposed to be warm out?”

      He sent a glare toward the thermostat, which was set at a chill fifty degrees, and yanked on his leather bomber jacket before returning to his desk, where a computer competed for space with a multiline phone and a pile of papers. Off to one side, a coffee mug overflowed with the pens that seemed to breed in his pockets.

      “You got a better idea for cutting costs?” his partner’s voice asked from the hall.

      “Nope.” William looked up and saw Max Vasek, the other half of Vasek & Caine Investigations, standing in the doorway.

      Max was as tall and dark and tough-looking as he’d ever been, but these days his craggy features sported new lines, new worries. William had seen the same signs in the mirror just that morning. A recent trim of his short brown hair and a fresh morning shave hadn’t done much to disguise the strain.

      Vasek & Caine wasn’t doing well, and the bills on the New York office suite were the least of their concerns.

      Four months ago the company had been a growing enterprise, bringing in new medical-type investigations on a weekly basis. Then Max had gotten himself caught up with his ex and her female sex enhancement drug, Thriller. The product tampering case had put Vasek & Caine smack in the crosshairs of The Nine, a group of very powerful scientists rumored to control worldwide scientific progress through a combination of bribery and extortion. In effect, they were the biotech mafia. Unfortunately, almost nobody outside of Max, Raine and William actually believed they existed.

      It couldn’t be a coincidence that Vasek & Caine’s clients had started drying up after that, though. The blackballing was a punishment. A warning, backed up by an anonymous note slid under the waiting room door a couple of months earlier.

      You stay out of our business and we’ll leave you and yours alone.

      Thing was, neither Max nor William took kindly to extortion. Hell, that was why they’d gone into business together in the first place.

      They’d met at Boston General Hospital, where ex-FBI agent William had been freelancing for a medical investigations group called Hospitals for Humanity—HFH—and Max worked in a lab. They’d both needed a change of scenery around the same time and they’d both wanted to make a difference. It had seemed natural to combine their specialties into private medical investigations, with a focus on cases like that of drug developer Raine Montgomery, the ex-flame who’d become Max’s wife three months earlier.

      At the thought of her, William glanced at his watch. “It’s Friday night. Aren’t you and Raine supposed to be somewhere?” He made the question seem casual, as though he didn’t care when his partner left the office.

      “I’m on my way right now.” But Max stayed put. “Listen, I need to ask a favor, and you’re not going to like it.”

      “That’s a heck of a sales technique. No wonder we’re down to our last few paying clients.”

      Max grimaced. “No, that would be the part where we discovered Raine’s drug was being sabotaged by a scientific cartel that isn’t supposed to exist. Which brings me to the favor.”

      “You don’t have to ask me to investigate the bastards,” William said. “I’m already on it.”

      “I know. And I also know I haven’t been much help lately,” Max said.

      “You’ve had other things to worry about, like making sure Raine’s drug returns to the market without any more glitches.” And making sure she stays safe, William thought but didn’t say.

      Though Max and Raine had engineered the arrest of Frederick Forsythe, the man directly responsible for sabotaging Thriller, there were at least eight other members of The Nine to watch out for, along with their underlings. Any one of them might decide to finish the job, which was why William intended to finish them first. His was an ordered world, structured around laws and categories. There were good guys and bad guys, and The Nine were very bad guys.

      Problem was, they also apparently had enough power to sway even his old bosses. That was the only logical explanation

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