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He was alarmed by the question. “Good God, Diana.”
“It just seemed strange, that’s all,” she said softly. “You don’t have a nice bone in your body.”
He tried to smile. “I’m not comfortable with it, either. So hurry and get back in top form, so I can be my nasty familiar self again.”
She tried to smile with her swollen mouth. The results were painful. She got out of the car, teetering her unsteady way up the street.
Hurry, hurry,he urged her mentally. He didn’t want anyone to notice how she looked or ask her if she’d been mugged. If she needed help. Or God forbid, the police.
She went up her porch steps, and entered the house without encountering anyone. He pulled out into the street and dialed a number on the dedicated cell phone he had been given at the island.
Zhoglo answered. “Dr. Mathes? Is there a problem?”
He suppressed the unfamiliar nervousness the man’s baritone voice provoked in him. It was unacceptable that this man should actually intimidate him. He was beyond all that.
“Ah, unfortunately yes,” he admitted. “Diana Evans, the anesthesiologist who I had chosen for my team. She, ah…she—”
“Has proven to be less than worthy?” Zhoglo finished smoothly.
“She’s become erratic and unpredictable,” Mathes said, reluctantly. “I think that she’s close to a total breakdown.”
“Ah. I see. Sad. She is pretty. I saw pictures. I could have told you not to go into partnership with a woman that you are fucking, Doctor.”
Mathes swallowed down his angry response before he realized that he had done it, and was left with nothing left to say. Jaw flapping.
Maybe it was the scene at the island that intimidated him. A man could hardly be blamed for being a tad unnerved by throat-slashed, bullet-ridden corpses strewn left and right. Even Dr. Richard Mathes.
“You will be able to manage without her, I presume?” Zhoglo asked. “The team I assembled for you is adequate, no?”
“Yes,” he admitted. He had not yet met the members of the secret surgical teams, all of whom were from Eastern Europe, but he had studied their CV’s. All of them were superbly qualified. It made one wonder how Zhoglo had managed to hire so many fine doctors.
He had a sudden flash of the two Parisian girls, tied to the bed, throats gaping red. Nigel Dobbs, smiling cordially in the foreground.
Perhaps it was not such a mystery. All those doctors had families.
“I’ve given her sedatives,” he said. “She should sleep for several hours today.”
“Meaning that you want me to hurry up and clean up your mess for you, Doctor? By rights, you should put her down yourself.”
Mathes was utterly taken aback. “I—”
“Yes, I know.” Zhoglo sounded bored. “You are not competent. Such things require a specialist. I will send someone to take care of it. Is there anything more?”
Diana’s mysterious double flashed through Mathes’s mind, and just as quickly he dismissed it. His situation was bad enough as it was. “No.”
Zhoglo waited another moment and grunted. “Very well. I am not impressed, Doctor. Your Diana is not the security risk. You are.”
Mathes hurried to excuse himself, flustered. “I am sorry—”
“Do better, from now on,” Zhoglo said. “I do not tolerate failure. The effect of further failure upon your family would be…unfortunate.”
The connection broke. Mathes let the phone drop from a hand that was numb with an emotion he barely remembered. Fear.
He’d awakened a beast by poking a stick through the bars of its cage, just for fun—only to discover that the cage door hung wide open.
Becca woke up with an odd feeling of well-being. Her body felt boneless and warm, limp. She wiggled, felt the deep ache in her groin that was beginning to feel almost normal. The feeling she always had after a mad marathon of hot, crazy sex with Nick. Wow.
Not that the sensation was unpleasant. In fact, she squeezed, flexed, stretched, savored it. Her muff hurt quite a bit less than it had the previous mornings. It would seem that she was getting in shape, sex-wise. For the first time in her life.
