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.
Seeming convinced there was nothing in the shadows, she brushed past him. The starched white cotton of her lab coat feathered across the back of his hand, leaving a hot wave of arousal in its wake and reminding him that about a year ago he’d developed a thing for lab coats. For redheads wearing lab coats and nothing else…
Test results, he reminded himself, you’re here for test results. Then, when he took in the tense set of her shoulders and the nervous darting of her eyes, his reasons for being there suddenly seemed less important than they had a moment ago. The tingle centered on his spine.
Something was up.
“How’s your daughter?” he asked casually. “Any ill effects from her field trip yesterday?”
She flinched, as though fearing he knew something she didn’t, then shook her head. “Um, no. She seems fine. In fact, I think she’s come through this better than either Maureen or I. I’m still a basket case though, thinking of what might have happened, and if Maureen even lets her step foot outside the house today I’ll be surprised.”
There was a quick tremble in her voice, and she fiddled with a mechanical pencil as she spoke, clicking the lead and then tapping the point on the hard lab bench until the fragile graphite snapped. Reid wondered whether that was all there was to it. Leftover nerves? Or something more?
He didn’t have much experience with kids, but he’d heard the fierceness in Sturgeon’s voice once or twice when one of the guppies had been threatened in very minor ways. Stephanie had been so determinedly tough the day before he supposed she might be suffering the backlash.
But if she looked over into the darkness next to that big machine one more time…
“Are you okay?” he asked, jerking his head at the corner. “You seem nervous.”
She shook her head in quick denial. “No—not nervous. I’m fine. Everything’s fine.”
He nodded slowly, not believing her for a second but still not sure whether her daughter’s disappearance had freaked her out or there was something else. “Okay, then.” He paused. Clearly today wasn’t a good day to ask her out for lunch. Then again, Reid thought, never would be a better time to ask her out—she had a kid, and Sturgeon’s success aside, no kid needed a cop around.
So he shrugged, pushed aside the image of her wearing a lab coat, a pair of red high heels and nothing else, and said, “I need to pick up the latest DNA results for Sturgeon’s and my cases. That’d be Makepeace, Garcia and Roberts.” He knew it was careless of them to name their DNAs rather than numbering them so the results were blinded for the researchers, but really, what interest did a lab tech have in messing with police work?
She shook her head and clutched the papers tighter to her chest. “They’re not ready yet.”
That
