man could rise. She smacked him in the shoulder, sending both purse and attacker flying. Unfazed by his fluent foreign curses, she jumped over the woman’s skinned-up legs and raised the skillet to go after the smaller man.
But a third pair of arms grabbed her from behind and slung her against the building. The skillet banged against the wall, stinging her fingers and popping her grip. It clattered to the ground as the man she’d struck lurched forward, wanting his own retribution. “Nobody hits me, bitch!”
He shoved her before she had a chance to react. She smacked into solid limestone. The air whooshed from her lungs and her head spun from the dizzying contact.
“Get out of here! Now!” Blurry hands pulled the man in the Chiefs parka back and urged him to run.
Kit sank to her knees as the three men scattered. By the time she could fill her lungs with cold air and clear her head, they were gone. Along with the woman’s purse.
Kit didn’t waste time pursuing them. The older woman, groaning but not moving, was a greater concern. Kit crawled over and knelt beside her, quickly assessing that her unfocused eyes were open and her pulse was beating. Recognizing the snowy cap of hair and slight build beneath the thick wool coat and knitted scarf, she asked, “Helen?”
Recognize was a generous term. The woman came into the diner for an occasional cup of tea, but usually just nodded and smiled when they passed each other on the sidewalk or in the parking garage. She seemed friendly enough, but very private. She’d probably been a resident around here for years, and was being cautious about the alarming changes in her environment.
Any wonder? The dangerous proof was the fresh tracks in the snow, exiting the alley between the parking garage and the Sinclair Building’s side entrances.
“Helen? That’s your name, right?” The woman gasped as Kit peeled the wool scarf away from the bloody wound at her temple. She’d had enough training in her forensic classes to identify the long, round indentation of the wound. Those greedy bastards had hit this fly-weight woman with a pipe, or maybe shoved her into one of the scaffolding bars. But this wasn’t the time for Kit’s innate curiosity to kick in. The woman was going into shock.
“Germane!”
Where was he?
Kit didn’t want to leave the woman’s side. Briefly peeling off her sweater and baring her flanks and back to the chapping cold, Kit removed her cotton turtleneck and pressed it against Helen’s wound while she redressed. “Where do you live? What’s your last name?”
Though she moaned at the contact, Helen was fading.
“Hang on.” She shouted over her shoulder, “Germane!”
“Right behind you, girl.” Germane limped through the back door, carrying a blanket beneath his arm and a cell phone against his ear. He relayed information to the dispatcher as he hurried down the stairs. “That’s right. The Sinclair Building at Ninth and Walnut. Looks like an elderly woman in the alley on the north side.” He paused and frowned. “I didn’t see nothin’. But if you don’t get that ambulance here soon, the cops’ll be investigating a murder, not a mugging.”
“Germane?” Kit took the blanket from him as he shut his phone and braced a hand on her shoulder to kneel on the opposite side of the woman. Kit winced at the bruise that must already be swelling on her shoulder blade.
His sharp eyes didn’t miss a trick. “How bad are you hurt?”
“I had a run-in with the wall, but it’s nothing serious.” Kit skipped the details and unfolded the blanket to tuck it around Helen’s slight figure. Germane was already listening to the older woman’s breathing and checking for pupil response. “How is she?”
“She’s got a concussion for sure. Hell, they could’ve cracked her skull, as deep as that wound goes.”
Kit turned toward the end of the alley where the footprints disappeared. “The muggers took her purse, and she hasn’t given me her name. I think it’s Helen, but I don’t who to contact or what to tell the paramedics. Do you know her?”
“Keep talking to her,” Germane advised, measuring the woman’s pulse. “All I know is, she lives upstairs. She’s been in a few times, pesterin’ me for my barbecue sauce recipe. Says she used to make as good. She’s always by herself, though, so maybe there isn’t anybody to cook for anymore.”
Or anyone to call. Kit smoothed away the droplets of melting snow from the woman’s cool cheek. “Helen? Can you hear me? Look at me, Helen.”
The rheumy blue eyes blinked. Her pale lips slurred a question. “Are you dead?”
“What?” Kit panicked when Helen’s eyes drifted shut. “No. I’m very much alive. And so are you. Stay with me, Helen.” She pulled the woman’s bony hand between her own and tried to rub some warmth back into it. “Helen? You’re not alone. Stay with me.”
Her cold hand went limp in Kit’s grasp as she murmured, “We’re all dead.”
Chapter Two
The fire was all around him, climbing up the walls and leaping across the ceiling.
Dr. Damon Sinclair crawled toward the emergency exit at the back of his lab. The door where he’d entered minutes earlier to pick up his notes for tomorrow’s board meeting was no longer an escape route. The glass entryway had shattered and the fire was now licking its way into the hallway on the opposite side.
Beakers exploded from the heat and rained glass on his back. Their contents fed the flames. The few sprinklers that had survived the explosion were doing little more than creating steam as they spat out water at irregular intervals.
If he hadn’t smelled the chemicals—if he hadn’t reacted to the searing stench of the volatile combination and dived beneath his desk to avoid the initial blast—he’d already be dead. The milliseconds of warning had left him with a head wound, an armful of research documentation and a chance at survival. But that chance was slim if he couldn’t find a way out.
Blinded by the blood seeping into his left eye, feverish from the blazing heat, he moved forward by instinct alone. When he hit a wall instead of the exit, he knew he had to make a choice. He set the binders on the floor with a reverence for the miracles contained inside. His work could save lives—it had saved lives. And now he’d set it aside to save his own life.
The answers were all inside his head, anyway. Given enough time, he could recreate them if he had to. If he ever got out of this hellfire, he’d have all the time in the world to…
A farewell look at his work elicited a choice curse.
“What the hell is this garbage?” These weren’t his notes. Just pages and pages of numbers and equations that didn’t make sense. He hurled the worthless counterfeits into the growing flames.
Was that what this was about? This treacherous, purposeful destruction, just to hide a theft?
Whoever was responsible… Whoever had planted that damned incendiary… Reams of notes and calculations—gone. Successful equations and rejected experiments he could learn from—gone. State-of-the-art technology designed by his own hands…
His hands…
“Son
