Bone Cold (9 page)

Cashion’s eyes widened. “What’re you talking about?”

“You don’t watch the news?” Tom shook his head. “For a mover and shaker like you, that’s hard to believe.”

“Are you referring to the children who’ve gone missing the past couple of weeks?” He turned his attention back to Sarah. “All those kids were born at Avalon?”

Sarah nodded. “You see what I mean? I believe there’s a connection.”

Something new flashed in the man’s eyes. “Are you investigating the hospital?”

Tom had a hunch. “We are. We told the administrator that we were following up on the leads you provided?”

“What?” Sheer terror danced in his eyes then.

“You have some reason to be afraid of the hospital’s administrator, Mr. Cashion?” Sarah asked.

“You don’t understand,” Cashion grabbed his cell phone as if he feared he might need to call for help, “we signed a nondisclosure statement. I can’t talk about it. You have to leave now.”

“The others are already talking,” Tom lied. “Senator Adams is pushing hard for us to get to the bottom of what Avalon has done.”

Tiny beads of sweat glistened on Cashion’s face. “We were desperate.”

Tom exchanged a knowing look with Sarah. She placed her hand over one of Cashion’s to comfort him. He flinched. “Losing a child is devastating.”

Cashion nodded. “They did everything they could at the ER.” He cleared his throat. “But Catherine’s neck was broken. They couldn’t save her.”

“She died here,” Tom said, “in this ER.”

Another weary nod from Cashion. “A man came into the room. We thought it was another of the doctors, but he wasn’t on staff here.”

“He had a proposition for you?” Tom prompted.

“He said he was sorry for our loss.” Cashion looked from Tom to Sarah. “Then he asked what we would be willing to give to have our daughter back. Not another child. Not someone who looked like Catherine…
Catherine
.”

Sarah gasped, but she covered it well with a cough.

“How did he propose to do this?” Tom prepared for the part of this mystery he’d been expecting to unfold. They were close. He could feel it.

“He said they would take genetic material from Catherine before her body was taken away and then they would…
clone
her. Mary would carry her just as she’d carried her the first time.” His lips spread into a smile even as the tears slid down his face. “She looked exactly like Catherine when she was born. Everything, from her first word to her first step was exactly the same. Except for the Asperger. They took care of that problem. Cassie is perfect.”

Tom looked to Sarah, but she didn’t appear ready to ask the next question. He pushed on. “You’re saying they created an exact replica of your daughter?”

Cashion nodded. “Yes. Lately she’d even been remembering things she couldn’t possibly have known, and yet, somehow she did.” He shrugged. “Meltzer couldn’t explain that one. She surprised us all with her knowledge of things that happened…
before
.” Another wobbly smile. “They kept their promise. They gave us Catherine back.”

Tom suspected the doctor at Avalon understood precisely what was happening. More of those random errors. “We need the name of the doctor who gave you your second daughter.”

“We were forced to agree to never divulge anything about this,” Cashion went on. “Mary and I assumed there were other families who went through the same program, but we never knew who they were.” He frowned. “So all those missing children…?”

“The name,” Tom pushed. “We need his name.”

“Dr. Detlef Meltzer. The program was his brainchild.”

Meltzer wasn’t the name Tom had expected to hear. He’d been certain Avalon’s administrator was the one.

“Did you ever speak to anyone else besides Meltzer?” Sarah asked.

“Even if there was a tech or nurse involved, Meltzer conducted all the procedures.” Cashion closed his eyes. “Please. I can’t talk about this anymore.”

Tom disconnected the landline from the wall and dismantled Cashion’s cell phone, tossing the SIM card into the cup of water on the bedside table. “You are not to speak of this conversation with anyone,” he warned.

Cashion looked startled.

“To catch this guy and to find the children, he can’t know we’re on to him. We need the element of surprise.” Tom needed Cashion to understand those terms.

“You think he has my daughter and the others? But why?”

“One of the children has developed a serious illness,” Sarah explained.

“There are other things,” Tom added. “Like your daughter’s memories. Those kinds of unexpected developments could reveal to the rest of the world what Meltzer has been up to. There are laws against human cloning, Mr. Cashion. We have reason to believe, he’s scrambling to do damage control.”

“You’re saying he may try to… destroy the children?”

Tom nodded. “That’s what I’m saying.”

The only thing he couldn’t say right now was how he would stop this travesty.

Holy Cross Hospital,

Silver Springs, Maryland 10:00 p.m.

Lawrence Cashion awoke from a fitful sleep. His room was dark. Had he turned off the television? Maybe a nurse had come into the room without him waking.

He swiped a hand over his face and licked his lips. His mouth was so dry. He wished Mary were here. She would take care of him the way she always did. She knew how to make him feel better. But Mary was gone.

Had he killed her?

A moan rose in his throat. Surely, he hadn’t gone that far? And his sweet baby girl? Had he harmed Cassie, too?

He squeezed his eyes shut and prayed. If there was a God in heaven would he have allowed Lawrence to do such heinous things?

Sobs choked him. He was all alone now. He had nothing.

“Why oh why, Lord?”

“That’s very good question, Lawrence.”

His eyes flew open. The room was completely dark… but he knew that voice. “What’re you doing here, Meltzer?” Fury tightened his lips.

“Why, Lawrence, after all I’ve done for you and your family, how could you let me down so?”

Fear slid through him, making his diseased heart thump harder. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He should have known he couldn’t trust that cop and the FBI agent to keep his secret. They’d screwed him.
God, I don’t want to di
e.

The bastard laughed at him. “Ah, but you do know what I’m talking about, Lawrence. You failed to adhere to our contract. You failed your family. You’ve been talking to the FBI.”

Agony howled through Lawrence. It was true. It was true. He’d failed everyone, including himself.

Meltzer’s firm hand patted him on the shoulder. Lawrence jerked at the touch.

“There, there, Lawrence, no need to fall to pieces. We both know what must be done.”

“What about the officer watching my room?” Would Meltzer kill him with a cop right outside? His heart pounded erratically.

The doctor smiled down at him. “No need to worry about him, Lawrence. I’ve had someone watching you. I grew concerned when Agent Cuddahy and Detective Cuddahy returned for a second interview and then a guard was placed at your door. I’m afraid that last cup of coffee won’t keep him awake as he’d hoped. He’s fast asleep. So you see, Lawrence, no one knows I’m here. If you do the right thing, perhaps I can find a new and better home for your sweet Cassie.”

Lawrence didn’t bother arguing. At least his little girl would be safe. He didn’t even put up a struggle as the needle pierced his skin. He closed his eyes and waited for death. This was what he deserved.

Forgive me, Mary
.

2569 Edge Cove Road

Saint Michaels, Maryland, 11:50 p.m.

Sarah wanted to shake Tom, but she didn’t dare touch him. They were wasting time. Cashion had named Meltzer. They should be questioning him right now instead of sitting here watching his house.

Once they’d located the doctor’s home and started their surveillance, she had done some research on the man. Dr. Detlef Meltzer was seventy and a renowned geneticist. Meltzer’s father, now deceased, left Germany as a young man in 1947 when Meltzer was just a toddler. The family settled in Boston. A Harvard Medical School graduate, Meltzer did his internship and residency at the prestigious Johns Hopkins University Hospital. The man was touted as a genius in the field of genetic research.

At fifty-two, he’d resigned as a distinguished professor of genetics and began a small, exclusive private practice with hospital privileges at Avalon. Six years ago he closed his practice. If Cashion could be believed, Meltzer had taken his work to an entirely new and completely unethical, as well as illegal, level. Confirming Cashion’s story and finding where the illegal activities were taking place—and hopefully where the children were being held—was what they needed now.

The sticking point was that everything Sarah had been able to dig up so far suggested Detlef Meltzer was a model citizen. He spent a great deal of time supporting charities. Never had so much as a parking ticket. No malpractice suits. No debt. No tax issues. The possibility that they were wasting their time was immense. They had been watching the house since shortly before five this afternoon. Meltzer had only arrived home half an hour ago. He’d parked in the garage and there had been no activity outside the house since.

Sarah’s patience was thinning. “What now?”

“We’ve been over this already,” Tom said, his attention fixed on the luxurious home sprawled on two acres along the shore of the river. “If Meltzer senses we’re on to him the children’s lives could be in danger. We have to be patient.”

“That’s assuming he’s our man.” Sarah wanted to find those children and sitting here wasn’t getting that done. “All we have to go on is the word of a suspected murderer.” She had barely kept the anxiety at bay the past few hours. It was clawing hard at her now.

“Avalon is the common denominator. Cashion’s statement merely confirms what I already suspected.”

They’d stopped agreeing on how to conduct this investigation between the meeting with Schneider at IHOP and the interrogation of Cashion at Holy Cross. When she’d asked Tom why there weren’t other agents working this case, he had blown her off and changed the subject. She might have dismissed his elusiveness as more of that need-to-know business except he wouldn’t meet her eyes when he answered. That was usually her evasive tactic, for totally different reasons. Not Tom. He was always the forthright one. Her instincts warned there was something more keeping him quiet.

“Since I’m on the outside looking in,” Sarah tried a different approach, “obviously I can’t see the connection as well as you do.”

“There are things I can’t explain just yet.”

“Got it. You do things based on what you know.” Enough with the cloak and dagger routine. She grabbed her purse. “I do the same. I’ll find my own way back home.” She reached for the door handle.

“Sarah, wait.” Long fingers curled around her left forearm.

This time she refused to look at him. Mainly, because she needed to concentrate on not reacting to his touch, which was extremely difficult to do when she became trapped in those green eyes.
Sophie’s eyes
. “Why would I do that? I have eight missing children to find. This is my first lead. I’m not waiting around for you to decide to share your secrets. Maybe your case is about this Dr. Meltzer and his evil experiments, but mine is about finding those kids before they end up statistics.”

“If we don’t stop Meltzer, his work will continue. How many more children will he sacrifice to science?”

Like she needed a reminder. “I need the whole truth, Tom.”

“I’ve watched Avalon for three months. Waiting for anything that might give me a legitimate reason to get a warrant and turn that place upside down. My source had me keeping an eye on Dr. Kira Gerard, a Pediatric Geneticist, but she died two weeks ago. With her out of the picture, my investigation stalled. Meltzer hasn’t been on staff for years. I had no reason to look at him… until now.”

“Your source?” Sarah glared at him. “I thought this morning was the first time you’d met Schneider?”

“He wasn’t my first Avalon source.” Tom looked away. “Jenny Collins, an RN, contacted me a few months ago. She worked directly with Gerard.”

Sarah couldn’t respond for several seconds. Finally, she regained enough of her composure to demand, “You’re telling me that you’ve been watching Avalon for three months.” She pulled free of his touch. “Two weeks ago this geneticist your source gave up dies and children suddenly start going missing—children you discovered were connected to Avalon. And you did nothing to stop it!”

This was incredible!

“It wasn’t until the Myers child went missing that I picked up on the case. His rare illness matched the list of possibilities in the profile of random errors. Even then, it wasn’t until the Adams’s child was taken that I recognized the connection.”

Sarah wrestled in a deep breath. The idea that he had known this and hadn’t told her—not even after Cashion’s confession—was too much. “I’ll ask you again, what’re we waiting for? Why not move in for questioning and a search of the doctor’s properties? If all you say is true, there’s probable cause for a warrant.”

“We don’t know where the children are. What if he has a backup plan in place? If anything goes wrong, the children might be terminated. We can’t stop that from happening if we don’t know where they are. It’s imperative that we know the children’s location before we make a move.”

His reasoning made sense, but something was wrong here. “What about Meltzer’s cell phone records? Shouldn’t we be getting a warrant for those?” Sarah looked around, checked in front of and behind his SUV. “Where’s your backup? I haven’t seen you make the first call to give updates on what we’ve discovered. Where’s the rest of your team, Tom? Who are you reporting to?”

“Like I said.” he stared forward, his face wiped clean of emotion. “There are things I can’t share.”

He was lying to her. She couldn’t believe it. Too stunned to trust herself to say more, Sarah stared at the home across the street. What were they going to do? Sit here all night and watch for the man to make a move? She powered her window down and inhaled the night air. The wind coming off the water was crisp and clean.
Deep breath. Hold it. Release slowly
. She needed to get out and walk. The anxiety was building. Her heart and pulse rate were escalating.

God, she did not want this to happen now.

Tom was already looking for chinks in her armor. She wasn’t about to give him exactly what he was looking for. The pill she’d downed before the second interview with Cashion had long since worn off. Unless she climbed out of the SUV and ran a few miles, there might be no way around the unpleasant business of taking another right in front of him.
Think about anything else
.

They were parked in the driveway of a summerhouse. That was Sarah’s contribution to their impotent stakeout. She’d called a realtor contact and acquired extensive information on the properties on this prestigious cul-de-sac. Two of the four homes were only occupied from the end of May until mid-September. She’d also learned that Meltzer had purchased his property for three and a half million dollars seven years ago. His wife had passed away five years ago. They had no children. He lived in that enormous house all alone.

Just like you, Sarah. All alone
.

Her chest grew tighter. She couldn’t keep sitting here. A deep breath was impossible. “I need to take a walk.”

Sarah was out of the car before Tom could stop her this time. It was dark. No one was going to notice. A couple of lights had come on inside the Meltzer house, but there was no landscape lighting to chase away the deepening gloom of dusk.

Mostly, she just needed space. She’d been cramped up in the SUV with Tom most of the day. She couldn’t bear to breathe in his scent anymore. She didn’t want to hear the sound of his voice. She pressed her fingertips to her eyes and took a breath. All she had to do was get through the next hour or so. Once she was home and away from him, she would be okay. She could call Larson and they would figure out how to proceed.

“Still having the panic attacks?”

Sarah braced herself, swallowed back the hostile response that wanted to lash from her. There was one house on this side of the street as well as the one they were watching that were occupied. Drawing attention to their presence would prove counterproductive.

“Yes.” To hell with what he thought. Sarah reached into her bag and dug out her prescription bottle. She opened the bottle with shaking hands and popped the much-needed relief. When she’d swallowed it down, she went on, “Panic attacks. Nightmares. I have to remind myself to eat.” She shook the bottle before dropping it into her purse. “This is my life, Tom. Aren’t you glad you asked?”

She paced the drive from his SUV to the garage, back and forth. He let her. Didn’t say a word, in fact. He went over to the front porch steps and sat down.

If this was her house she would have some sort of motion sensor lights. The yard and drive were completely dark. At this moment, she appreciated the advantage, but who leaves a multi-million dollar property unattended and unprotected like this?

“People with the big bucks,” she muttered.

Not that it was any of her business. The security analysis was just a distraction.

She’d been involved with enough stakeouts to know this was the way it worked more often than not. Hours and hours were spent waiting and hoping for any little thing that might move the investigation forward. She just didn’t like being on a stakeout with her ex-husband. Not quite ex, she reminded herself.

Stop lying to yourself, Sarah
. The real problem was the undeniable fact that she couldn’t stop reacting to him on a level that had nothing to do with being a cop. The sound of his voice, the way he looked at her—Jesus Christ, his touch—every part of him awakened feelings she hadn’t experienced in years. How on earth could he still do that?

Her errant gaze sought and found him seated on those steps, his attention seemingly focused across the street, his hands hanging between his spread knees. It was too dark to see his face. She could well imagine what was going on in his head. If telling him the truth hurt his feelings or made him judge her, well that was just too bad.

She wanted to find those missing kids. He was standing squarely in the way of the one damned decent lead uncovered in two weeks and even it hinged on Tom’s word and that of a suspected killer. Her temper flared again. This was why they shouldn’t be working this case together. All she wanted to do was yell at him until he went away. How could she focus on the case with him this close? He… confused her, disabled her defenses.

Livid all over again, she walked past his SUV and to the street that curled around the cul-de-sac. The house right next to Meltzer’s was empty for the winter. She’d wanted to burrow in there, but Tom had disagreed. Too close, he’d said.

The streetlamps discreetly placed around the cul-de-sac were gas operated and gave off little illumination. People in high-end neighborhoods like this didn’t want the lights obscuring the stars or invading their privacy. That was a good thing under the circumstances. She could walk the cul-de-sac without being spotted unless someone came outside with a flashlight. It was cloudy enough to prevent the moon from being a concern. Her clothes were dark so no worries there. At least she could walk off some of this damned tension.

Had Tom requested a wiretap for the good doctor’s phone? Not to her knowledge. They hadn’t been apart since the big revelation from Cashion. Tom hadn’t called for a warrant. He hadn’t done a damned thing, which meant they were wasting precious minutes and hours!

By the time Sarah stopped her mental rant, she was all the way around the loop and passing the end of the Meltzer’s driveway. There were other homes on neighboring streets. If spotted, as far as anyone knew she could be a health nut out for late night stroll. This wasn’t suspicious at all.
Right
. This was a perfect example of why emotions had no place on the job.

“Sarah.”

She whipped around, startled. He’d decided to follow her and she hadn’t noticed. Just further evidence that she wasn’t up to par in his presence. The concept made her angry—mostly at herself.

“Walking around out here isn’t a smart move. It’s better if no one knows we’re here.”

“Yeah, well, I needed some space.” She headed back down the drive where his SUV waited. No need to pretend, he knew the ugly truth now.

“Get in the car.”

She glanced across the hood at the man who’d spoken. “I need to keep moving.” If she kept walking, even if only up and down the driveway, the panic would recede a lot faster.

“We should talk,” he said, his tone gentler now.

“What I want to know is why aren’t we talking to him?” She gestured toward the house at the end of the long tree-lined drive across the street. “We’re wasting time. Maybe I should just call a friend for a ride home.” Not that she had any friends, really. She had colleagues and business contacts, but she didn’t have any friends. Did Carla count? Maybe. Sarah wasn’t sure of anything anymore.

The heavy night air shuddered into her lungs. No Carla didn’t count. They weren’t friends. They were companions in agony. Agony had brought them together and it kept them apart except on the rare occasions when hope dared to make a fleeting appearance. How could you be friends when all you shared was the kind of unspeakable horror no one wanted to know?

How could you be a wife to a man who knew what you’d done? A man who, when you looked at him, all you could see was the loss and devastation you had caused.