that had earned his company millions from working. He’d even tested the tissue-regeneration formula on himself. The prototypes might be scarred and ugly, but he’d regained the use of his hands. The fingerprints hadn’t all come back, but he had sensation in almost every nerve, and most of his dexterity had returned. He could do his work. He could type his notes and mix his chemicals and write his equations. He could feel heat and cold and pain.
God, yes. He was a pro at that now. Through and through. Some days, pain was all he could feel.
Damon paused in the center of his new lab. He pulled back the front of his white coat, propped his hands at his hips, tipped his head back and roared at the soundproof ceiling.
It wasn’t fair that he should be alive while Miranda was dead. It wasn’t fair that he should have more money than some small countries and not know happiness anymore. It wasn’t fair that he couldn’t find the solution to Miranda’s Formula—the tissue-regenerating miracle intended to save patients who shared the same genetic predisposition she’d had.
He couldn’t even honor her memory with that.
“So what are you going to do about it, Doc?” he asked aloud, breathing deeply and talking to himself in a way that had always cleared his thoughts and enabled him to concentrate. “For starters, I’m going to see if that persistent bastard has made any progress breaking into SinPharm’s restricted files.”
With something new to engage his brain, Damon was a happier man. He rolled a stool over to his computer and logged in to his company’s database. In just a few keystrokes, he located the illegal activity and grinned. The nosy SOB was back. “Welcome, Mr. Black Hole of the Universe.” Catchy online name. Appropriate since the hacker had tried a dozen different ways to download his research codes. In the middle of the night, when SinPharm’s corporate offices were closed and the satellite labs and production facilities had been secured, someone was trying to hack into Damon’s private files.
It had been another restless night a couple weeks back when he’d first detected the unknown computer geek trying to access his research through online channels. The hacker had broken in three different times to download codes that were misdirecting fakes to begin with. Once the false codes were applied to the data that had been stolen from his lab eighteen months ago, the thieves would realize that they’d been duped. Again. They’d wind up with cotton candy or a laxative—not any of his patented medicines or experimental drugs.
Though he’d had no luck tracing either the location or the identity of Black Hole yet, Damon had led the intruder on a merry chase. He sat and watched the screen as his opponent peeled away layer after layer of security protocols, getting closer to the translation codes that could turn Damon’s equations from gibberish into millions of dollars.
And just when the perp was about to reach the innermost level, Damon pushed a button and scrambled the codes all over again.
His laughter was rare, a rusty sound that stretched the scarred muscles of his throat. SinPharm’s security firm had their way of preventing industrial espionage, and Damon had his.
“That should keep you busy for a few more days.” Hell, if the enemy wanted to reproduce his formulas and market competitive medical treatments without doing their own research, then they were damn well gonna have to get past him. Unless he tracked them down first and introduced them to the FDA, the FCC and any other government organization whose laws they’d violated.
And if Damon discovered the hacker was in any way responsible for the theft and fire that led to Miranda’s suicide, then he would personally put him out of business.
Permanently.
While he relished the image of the unknown spy throwing up his hands and cursing at the computer screen, Damon knew he had problems closer to home he needed to deal with. He glanced at the broken glass and dissipating chemical on the floor. “Like you.”
Damon rolled his stool over to another desk, where two rows of monitors helped him keep an eye on the Sinclair Tower through adjustable interior and exterior security cameras. He typed in a command and brought up a view of the main rooms in the penthouse upstairs. Good. All was quiet. His housekeeper’s seemingly intuitive ability to know when he’d screwed up and needed a little extra help hadn’t awakened her from her sleep.
But by morning, if he didn’t clean it up tonight, then she’d somehow know. She’d be down here at first light, cleaning and tutting herself into a worried state until she verified for herself that he hadn’t been cut or injured in any way.
Corporate spies he could handle. But it was funny how such a tiny little woman, who’d once changed his diapers and sent him to his room, could transform six feet, three inches of brains and testosterone into a guilty little boy, as eager to please as he was to cover his tracks and stay out of trouble with her.
But the bonded cleaning crew he hired to sterilize the lab once a week brought their own supplies, and if there was a broom to be had, he wasn’t finding it.
Mental note: buy cleaning supplies for the lab.
In the meantime, he could raid his housekeeper’s private stash. Damon draped his lab coat over a hook beside the rear exit, swiped his key card through the lock and hurried up the back stairs to the penthouse where they lived on the top two floors.
His plan was simple: sneak into her unguarded kitchen to borrow a broom and dustpan, then dispose of the evidence and hide the fact that he’d spent yet another sleep-deprived night working in his lab.
Yet as he tiptoed past the darkened hallway that led to her quarters, something made Damon stop. Everything was as neat and tidy as it had appeared on the monitor downstairs. But something was off. Perhaps it was the absence of any familiar sound that pricked his senses and put him on alert. There was no humidifier running, no television chattering on after his housekeeper had fallen asleep. He heard no soft, denasal snore. Damon leaned the broom and dustpan against the wall, turned the corner and gently knocked on her door.
There was no answer. The woman had raised him after his mother’s death, had stayed on after his marriage. She’d been there through his father’s passing. Had remained with him past her own retirement, the accident and Miranda’s suicide. They were as close to being a family as two people who shared no bloodline could be. Squashing a flare of panic beneath cold, rational purpose, Damon opened the bedroom door to check on her.
“Helen?”
“MISS SNOW?” A nurse joined Kit at the ICU window, looking through the criss-crossed steel filaments inside the glass to the fragile, wan woman in the hospital bed on the other side.
“There’s no change, is there.” Kit had stayed as close as the hospital staff would allow while surgical and neurological teams stitched up the elderly woman’s head wound, monitored cranial pressure and vital signs, and tucked her into the sterile room for observation. Until she regained consciousness, there was no way for the doctors to completely assess how much damage the three attackers had done. No way for the police to get any more information on the mugging beyond Kit’s concise—but all too incomplete—statement.
“We’re doing everything we can.” The plump nurse shrugged. “The rest is up to her.”
The mysterious Helen didn’t look strong enough to fight off a pesky fly, much less fight for her life. We’re all dead?
Where was the hope in that? Was that going to be Helen’s last, despairing thought? Kit splayed her fingers at the edge of the cool glass, wishing she
