Red Alert. Jessica Andersen

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      Six years earlier, her résumé had overridden his reluctance to work with a pretty, single woman his age, and he’d hired her into the then-startup FalcoTechno. They had grown together, Raine and the company, and she’d proven herself to be an exception to his rules. She was a beautiful woman who kept her mind strictly on business. One he could trust to get his back.

      They’d stayed out of each other’s personal lives. Hell, he hadn’t even realized she’d been married until six weeks earlier, when he’d found her in the men’s bathroom, crying, disoriented and puking.

      She’d confessed to being pregnant with her husband’s baby…a year after the divorce was final.

      The experience had forged an uncomfortable intimacy between Erik and Raine, one he’d tried like hell to ignore until he got word that Dr. Meg Corning had once again blocked his offer to buy the rights to her Noninvasive Prenatal Testing technology.

      When his request for a meeting had been denied—not just once, but three different times—he’d gone with Plan B and asked Raine to pose as a prospective test subject to get inside information. It had been her idea that they pretend to be a married couple so he could get a firsthand look. He’d agreed, but couldn’t help worrying that she’d gotten the wrong idea.

      Or that she was playing him.

      God knew, he’d fallen for it before.

      Now, his fingers tightened on the phone. “No more Mr. and Mrs. Phillips. She pegged me as a ringer.” Which was almost a relief.

      “Then why do you need me?” Raine asked.

      Not wanting to worry her unnecessarily, he said, “Just meet me in the Boston General lobby as soon as you can, okay? And bring the garment bag from my office closet. I need a change of clothes.”

      He cut the connection before she could ask why. He started to head back to the hospital, but a hail brought him up short.

      “Mr. Falco? Lieutenant?”

      Erik turned at the once-familiar title. “Falco, please. Or Erik. I haven’t been a cop for nearly eight years.”

      The two plainclothes detectives wore badges clipped to their belts and standard-issue shoulder holsters beneath their jackets. The younger of the two—who looked close to Erik’s age of thirty-eight—wore a brown suit that complemented his brown hair and clean-cut good looks, while his partner, who was closer to sixty, with a droopy, almost fishlike face, wore washed-out blue.

      Both suits were decent quality but off-the-rack, just as Erik’s had been back when he was on the job, back before a woman and his own stupidity had killed a good man and cost Erik the use of his leg and the life he’d known.

      The brown-haired cop said, “I’m Detective Reid Peters.” He gestured to his older partner. “This is Sturgeon. We’d like to ask you a few questions.”

      Erik blocked a spear of resentful nostalgia for the cop-speak and leaned on his cane. “Fire away.”

      Peters pulled out a PDA. It was a few generations older and much lower quality than Erik’s top-of-the-line pocket computer, but it was still a far cry from the spiral-bound notebooks of years past. The younger detective used a stylus to tap open a new file, then set the record function before he asked, “How well do you know the victim?”

      “She’s not a victim—it was an accident.” Erik narrowed his eyes. “Wasn’t it?”

      The detectives didn’t answer, letting their original question hang.

      Erik’s temper spiked a notch. “Don’t give me the silent routine. I was on the job—you know that or you wouldn’t have called me ‘lieutenant.’ So I’ll make a deal…you tell me what you know and I tell you what I know. Otherwise, you can talk to my lawyers. I have an entire department full, and they’ll enjoy running you around for weeks if I tell them to.”

      Peters shared a look with Sturgeon, the sort of nonverbal communication partners developed over many years of teamwork.

      The sort of look that reminded Erik of his old partner, James Hadley. Jimmy.

      After a moment the older detective shrugged. “It might not have been an accident. There’s supposed to be a metal railing separating the construction site from the sidewalk. The contractor swears it was put in last week, but it’s gone.”

      “Contractors lie,” Erik said, having been stung on a few projects over the years. “Subcontractors cut corners. That doesn’t say ‘intentional’ to me.”

      But his instincts jangled. The sluiceway had opened at precisely the wrong moment. When he’d looked at the cement truck cab moments later, the driver had been gone, the door hanging open.

      Peters stared at him for a long moment as though assessing him. Finally he nodded. “Have a look at this.” He led them back through the police line, to the place where Meg had fallen through.

      Erik took one look at the wooden railing and cursed bitterly. The panel had been neatly sawn through.

      “So let me ask you.” Peters tucked the PDA into his pocket, giving an illusion of off-the-record, though he hadn’t turned off the recording feature. “Who was the target here? Boston General, Meg Corning…or you?”

      Chapter Three

      Raine knocked on the door to Meg’s office almost an hour later, still looking polished and professional. Beautiful.

      In comparison, Meg felt like a train wreck. Jemma had managed to find her a T-shirt to wear under a set of green scrubs, along with a pair of gym shoes, but that had been the extent of scroungeable spare clothes.

      Meg was itchy and uncomfortable, and beginning to wish she’d taken that trip to the ER and from there gone home.

      But she’d wanted to speak with Raine personally. The dark-haired beauty might work for FalcoTechno, she might have come to the lab under false pretenses, but she’d inadvertently made herself one of Meg’s patients. Besides, whatever she’d done, she was a human being.

      A woman. An expectant mother.

      Meg waved her in. “Have a seat, Ms. Montgomery. I need to talk to you about something.”

      “If it’s about what Erik and I did this morning, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”

      “It’s not about that,” Meg interrupted. “It’s about the blood sample you gave us. There’s a problem.”

      The bloom in the other woman’s cheeks drained to pasty white, then took on a hot flush. “With the pregnancy?”

      She didn’t call it the baby. She called it the pregnancy. That, in Meg’s clinical experience, was a telling detail. But this wasn’t a counseling session, so she focused on the information that could save Raine’s life. “It’s not just the pregnancy. Our genetic screen revealed that you carry two gene mutations that put you at a high risk for developing blood clots in your arms and legs, or having a stroke or heart attack.”

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