Crossing The Line. Lori Wilde

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СКАЧАТЬ ducked her head, lowered her eyes. “I work at Confidential Rejuvenations. As our motto goes, ‘You do it, we keep it strictly confidential.’”

      “That’s the motto?”

      Dr. Rodriquez shrugged. “If you have questions, you should talk to Mark. Anyway, welcome aboard. It was nice meeting you, but I’ve got surgery in thirty minutes.” With a wave of her fingertips, she was gone.

      Twenty minutes later the welcome reception began breaking up as the doctors wandered off to make morning rounds.

      “Come on,” Mark inclined his head toward the back exit. “I’ll show you to your office.”

      Dante set down his champagne glass and followed Mark out into the corridor. He was ready to get to work.

      They left the hospital proper and took the flagstone path to the physicians’ offices at the back of the property. Inside the clean, glossy building Mark introduced him to the perky young receptionist named Hailey. She looked barely out of high school, had a subtle tattoo of a blue butterfly on the inside of her wrist and she blushed when Dante shook her hand.

      “Here we are.” Mark stopped outside the fifth office on the left and handed Dante a key. He clamped a hand on his shoulder. “I can’t tell you how good it is to have you at Confidential Rejuvenations. Feels like old times.”

      “It’s great to be here,” Dante said. It wasn’t a lie. It was great to be so close to catching the low-life scum who was poisoning people with dangerous designer street drugs.

      “I’ll let you get settled in,” Mark said. “If you need anything, just ask Hailey. I’ve got rounds, but I’ll be back at noon and we can grab some lunch and do a little reminiscing about our football glory days at UT.”

      He nodded. “Sounds like a plan.”

      Mark closed the door after him, leaving Dante alone in the office that was three times the size of his office in Quantico. He ran a hand along the polished mahogany desk, spun the leather swivel chair, thickly padded and handstitched. His feet sank into the opulent Karastan carpet patterned in a burgundy, black and beige paisley. He walked over to flip the special-order wood blinds covering a wide picture window behind the desk, and his gaze traveled to the built-in floor-to-ceiling bookcases, chock-full of medical tomes, lining two of the four walls.

      The place was too cushy, too plush. A doctor could get very soft here. Dante curled his lip in distaste. Was that what had happened to his ex-roommate? Had he gotten so accustomed to living the good life that greed had driven him to start producing Rapture?

       You don’t know for sure that Mark is involved. It could be anyone. Covey, Butler, Dr. Rodriquez, the orderly named Ricky, even Elle.

      Dante fisted his hands. He didn’t know the answer for sure, but he was going to find out. He remembered Mark’s hunger for the finer things in life. They’d both grownup with similar backgrounds—absent mother, abusive father, oldest sibling. And they were both high achievers, striving to escape the dire circumstances they’d been born into. But where Mark placed high values on material possessions and grandiose titles, Dante valued ideals like honor and integrity.

       And revenge.

      It was true. Revenge was a stronger motivator than either honor or integrity. If he wasn’t so determined to put Furio Gambezi behind bars for Leeza’s death, he wouldn’t be undercover, lying about who he was. Spying on people who assumed he was their friend.

      The two sides of Dante’s personality warred.

      The humanitarian part of him was disgusted at how low he’d stooped. But another part of him, the bloodthirsty side, realized the end did indeed justify the means. When Gambezi and the scum who was supplying the gangster with Rapture were off the streets, countless lives would be spared. For that goal, the cost of Dante’s integrity was a small price to pay. He couldn’t lose sight of it.

      Still, he found betraying his own ideals hard to live with. He crossed to the window and opened the blinds, hoping that a glimpse at nature would soothe the battle going on in his head.

      Hands jammed into his pockets, he stared out the window to where the verdant field trailed off into a copse of oak and pecan trees. The sky had become overcast since he’d been inside; he remembered the weather report had called for an afternoon drizzle. It had rolled in early from the Colorado River, bringing a gray but compelling dampness.

       Better get to work. You’ve got to make this look convincing.

      Just as he was about to turn from the window, one of the hospital’s side exit doors opened and a woman stepped out.

      The flare of auburn hair immediately seized his attention. He took a deep breath. Elle Kingston hesitated on the back porch. Dante noticed she held something clutched in her hands, but he couldn’t tell what itwas. Furtively she glanced first to the right and then to the left, looking guilty as sin.

      Suspicious behavior.

      What was she up to?

      He narrowed his eyes, watching as she hunched her shoulders against the drizzle and scurried across the lawn. She paused at the edge of the forest, looked over her shoulder again and then quickly disappeared into the trees.

      ELLE SLIPPED INTO the forest, the four cans of almost expired infant formula that she had boosted from the newborn nursery cradled in her arms. Fear pushed her heart rate higher. Anxiety had her biting her bottom lip.

      Please, please, let the baby be okay, she prayed.

      Worried that she might have been seen, Elle cast one more glance over her shoulder, looking back from where she’d come.

      In the foggy drizzle, the five-story hospital built of stylized red stone looked positively gothic with its witch’s hat turrets, black slate roof and gingerbread trim. The guarded wrought-iron gates, privacy hedges and trellises twined with English ivy only added to the air of mystery.

      Neighbors called it a fortress. Pleased patients dubbed it a sanctuary. Texas Monthly had christened Confidential Rejuvenations a place where celebrity secrets go to die.

      At times like this, with gray weather enshrouding those stony walls, the place made Elle feel exquisitely sad at the thought of all those people with so much to hide.

      The thing of it was, in spite of her occasionally mixed feelings about Confidential Rejuvenations and the work they did here, she loved her job. And she was concerned over the strange goings-on of the recent weeks. First there’d been the media leaks, then the arson in the laundry room. After that, several items had gone missing. Strange things like a ham from the kitchen, crutches from central supply, a crate of bleach from the janitor’s closet.

      Taken one by one, the occurrences were nothing more than criminal mischief, but added together, it didn’t seem like a coincidence. Elle was beginning to wonder if someone was purposely trying to sabotage the hospital. The idea that someone was intentionally doing harm to the place she loved angered her.

      She shook off her fanciful thoughts. There was no time for this. She had to make this quick. She had less than an hour left on her lunch break.

      Resolutely she pushed deeper into thewoods. After several minutes of hiking, she passed the meditation sanctuary tucked СКАЧАТЬ