Keep her talking, her sense of self-preservation insisted. If she’s talking, she’s not doing—whatever she’s going to do.

  Meg sucked in a breath. She thought she might have cracked a rib, but didn’t know when, and tugged at her bonds, which had no give. “Who is—”

  The lab intercom buzzed live, making both women jump. Then a male voice said, “Dr. Foulke. We’d like to talk to you.”

  For a wild, wishful moment, Meg thought the voice belonged to Erik, just as she’d imagined he had been holding the small mirror in the doorway. But it didn’t.

  “This is Reid Peters of the Chinatown station,” the detective’s voice continued. “I’ve been authorized to ask for your demands and act on them, but only if we have proof that Dr. Corning is alive and well.”

  That earned her a glare from Annette. “You’ve got an intercom? Bitch.” She leaned over Meg’s main lab bench, puzzled over the phone for a few seconds, then stabbed the appropriate button. “She’s alive, but I’m not talking to you. Get Zachary Cage. And make it fast.”

  Without waiting for an answer, she used a nearby rolling chair to climb up onto the lab bench, as she had when she’d first rigged the buckets to the emergency shower. Now, she pulled an old-fashioned kitchen egg timer from the pocket of her overlarge sweatshirt, cranked the timer to the halfway point, and attached it to the contraption overhead.

  Then she returned to the phone. “You’ve got five minutes or the bitch is dead. And this time I mean it.”

  Meg heard the ticking overhead and started to count the seconds. She imagined the chaos outside her lab, cops and lab workers waiting to see what would happen next, or planning something desperate and futile that would never work.

  There was no real way in or out of the lab except the doors. And the windows, of course, but they were five stories up and the radiation safety geeks made sure the sashes were kept locked. The vents were all self-contained and shielded, in case of a leak. Annette had inadvertently trapped her in one of the most secure locations on the hospital property.

  Or, Meg thought, looking upward, maybe it wasn’t an accident. Annette had been a step ahead of them all along. She had probably planned this.

  But what was her goal? What did she want?

  There was no answer as Annette stood in the center of the room, off by the automatic DNA sequencer she’d wrecked in a fit of rage minutes earlier. Her stillness and the contrast from the earlier violence was frightening.

  The seconds built to minutes. A single drop of liquid fell from above and landed on the granite lab bench near Meg. There was no bubbling hiss of reaction—the benches were impervious to most chemicals—but she knew what would happen to human flesh. Burning. Pain.

  Liquefaction.

  She shuddered and tugged at her bonds again. They felt like rope, or maybe torn fabric. Another drop fell. Then another. The clock ticked down and an ominous whirring sound began to build overhead as the strange-looking mechanism attached to the shower began to activate.

  Panic surged, overriding fear. Meg looked over and saw that Annette was still frozen in place, lips moving, attention turned inward.

  Knowing this might be her only chance, Meg used her bound feet and weight to turn the chair around and scoot back against the lab bench. She raised her wrists and pressed them to the table.

  And felt the burn when the first drop of acid landed.

  ERIK LISTENED to the terse reports filtering into his earpiece, and gritted his teeth. He was balanced on a narrow cement ledge, five stories up, edging his way to a lab window Max swore he’d left open that morning, when Jemma’s dust allergies had overridden the radiation geeks’ strictures.

  “Who’s dumb idea was this again?” he muttered, knowing damn well it’d been his.

  Detective Peters’s voice crackled in his ear. “You say something, Falco?”

  “I said I’m almost to the corner.” He risked a look down and really wished he hadn’t. The cars below were too far away, the air too empty.

  He wasn’t much higher than he’d been with Luke Cannon the day before—with one glaring difference. Well, three if he counted the lack of ropes, padding or belay buddy separately. It all added up to something he didn’t want to deal with.

  Yet he was dealing. For Meg.

  He pressed his face to the rough wall and slid his right foot, testing for the next solid foothold. Check and recheck your purchase, Cannon’s voice said in his head. It’s not that you shouldn’t trust your bad leg—but you should proceed with caution.

  Only there wasn’t time for caution, wasn’t time to be weak or broken. With his cane tucked in his belt alongside his weapon, more talisman than crutch, he needed to rely on himself, and on the climbing skills he’d grossly exaggerated to Peters.

  No sweat, he’d told the detective, I could walk that in my sleep. Only now he was sweating bullets as he reached the corner, where the narrow ledge fell away, only to reappear on the other side of the building. After that, it was just a few feet to the window that was supposedly open.

  He swallowed, trying to find a hint of moisture in his too-dry mouth. “Any progress inside?”

  “Cage is working on her now. Foulke keeps talking about someone named Edward, and how she should have had Meg’s lab, should’ve had tenure, should’ve had a ton of things Meg got because of her father’s name.”

  “You’re kidding.” Erik stopped dead on the realization that for all Meg’s lectures about the purity of academia and the evils of industry, the danger had come from one of her own co-workers, over something as small—or as large—as tenure.

  Then he resumed his progress. He slung his leg around the corner, closed his eyes, trusted his bad leg to hold, and stepped around.

  He made it.

  After what seemed like an hour, but was truly no more than a few seconds, he asked, “Time?”

  “Ninety seconds left.”

  He nodded, though nobody could see him except a passing seagull and perhaps the odd pedestrian who might happen to look up the hospital wall. “I’m on it. Just a few more—”

  “Hold it,” Peters’s voice interrupted. “There’s something going on inside. There’s—”

  The window beside him exploded outward. A gun sounded once. Twice. Meg screamed.

  Every fiber of Erik’s being howled for him to dive through that window and come up firing, snapping off shot after shot to save the woman he lo— Yes, damn it, the woman he loved.

  It didn’t make any sense, but he loved her. He wanted her. He wanted to make it work with her, even though things seemed unworkable.

  But he’d gone in too fast once before, with fatal consequences. He’d made every other mistake in the book with Meg, but he wouldn’t make this one.

  “Stand down,” he said, trusting the earpiece to capture his words. “Don’t go through those doors. I’ve got it.”

  And this time he wouldn’t fail.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The second shot plowed into the heavy composite frame beneath the granite bench. Meg clamped her lips together, refusing to scream again and help Annette aim.

  She’d overbalanced the chair to get out of the way of the first bullet when Annette had spun and fired without warning. Now she tugged furiously at her raw, burning wrists.

  “Come on, come on!”

  Tears of pain and fear blurred her vision as the buzzing from above grew louder and the noxious chemicals dripped faster, burning where they hit flesh.

  Another few seconds and the shower would let go, dumping gallons of caustic chemicals onto her.

  “Come on, you bastard!” She wasn’t sure if she was cursing the woman standing in the center of the room, shifting sporadically between male and female personas, the bonds or the man she’d hoped would rescue her, but one last vicious tug brought a slice of pain, a rip of cloth and blessed release.

  Her hands were free.

  “Dr. Foulke? Annette? I’m here.” Zachary Cage’s voice spoke over the intercom, calm and placating, as though they were talking about vacation time rather than murder. “You said you wanted to talk to me, so let’s talk.”

  “It’s too late,” Annette said to the room at large, her voice sliding into a lower, manly register. “You had your chance to promote me, to recognize everything I’ve done for you. Mother was—” Her voice caught, then steadied. “Mother was right. Sometimes a man has to make others see his value. That’s what I’m doing. Making you see.”

  Meg could tell from the change in tone that Annette had turned toward her lab bench. She imagined the woman raising Erik’s service revolver, imagined her aiming the weapon, tightening her finger on the trigger. Panic flared. Meg fumbled with the bonds securing her ankles to the chair. Her fingers cramped with pain as the acid continued to eat at flesh and tendon. She hadn’t looked at the damage, hadn’t been able to bear to look. The pain spoke for itself.

  Sobbing now, she gave one last desperate yank.

  And she was free.

  “Dr. Foulke? Are you listening?” Cage’s voice echoed in the room. The egg timer hit zero and dinged. The buzzing ended with a thump, and the shower cut loose with a pressurized spray of acid and base, which hissed when they touched each other, forming chloride gas.

  Meg screamed and rolled out from underneath the lab bench. She scrambled to her hands and knees, her legs too cramped to run. She banged into another bench, trapped between the solid surface and the spreading pool of foaming liquid. The only escape was out into the main aisle.

  Directly into Annette’s line of fire.

  Sobbing, gasping, praying for help though there seemed to be none to have, Meg flung herself across the lab space, headed for the door. She stopped dead when she saw the crude device wired to the door, blinking with a malevolent red light.

  She’d forgotten about the booby traps.

  Halfway across the room, near the windows, Annette turned. Her face creased into a smile of sick satisfaction. She raised Erik’s service revolver two-handed. Aimed. Tightened her finger on the trigger.

  “Get away from her!” A blur erupted through the shot-out window and launched itself at Annette.

  Meg’s brain jammed on the image of Erik, his face nearly gray beneath its normal healthy pallor, coming through the window. From outside. From five stories up.

  To save her.

  Time stopped. The universe collided in a logjam of relief and disbelief, fear and hot, hard longing.

  Erik had come. He’d climbed. For her.

  He staggered and fell, and turned the fall into a roll that saved his life when Annette fired where he’d just been. He slammed his shoulder into her legs, driving her back three steps, then regained his feet, yanked his weapon from the small of his back and turned to Meg.

  Their eyes met. The contact arced between them, a complicated mix of things they’d said that morning and other things left unsaid.

  Like I love you.

  His eyes flashed with fury and he shouted, “Run, damn it!”

  Annette turned and fired. A force slammed into Meg’s forearm, pressure and impact without pain. Then the pain followed, along with a spurt of blood.

  She stared at her wrist, at the through-and-through bullet wound beside the acid burns.

  And the world sped up to a blur.

  “Meg!” Erik’s agonized shout battered through the shock. She turned, expecting another bullet.

  Instead, Annette flung the empty gun aside and ran toward the door. To the blinking unit wired to the door.

  Erik raised his gun and sighted, but Meg yelled, “No! She’s got the trigger!”

  She saw his expression, saw the moment of decision as Annette reached for the box, holding the remote detonator in her hand.

  Erik lunged for Meg and grabbed her around the waist. “Come on. Let’s get the hell out of here!”

  “There’s no way out!” Annette howled, her voice escalating over a weird, cackling laugh that didn’t sound male or female. Hell, it barely sounded human.

  When Erik dragged her toward the window, pain tore through Meg’s soul, sharper than the agony in her arm. “My lab!”

  The words emerged in a fit of coughing as the chloride gas diffused throughout the room.

  “Leave it. You’re more important.” He grabbed her arm, fingers biting deep in a pressure that seemed to convey more than he’d said. “Out.”

  He boosted her up onto the windowsill as Annette’s laughter soared and she screamed, “If I can’t have it, nobody can!”

  In a blur, Meg found herself outside the building, five stories up, precariously balanced on a narrow ledge. She was facing out with her back to the wall and nothing but air in front of her to grab on to.

  Then Erik was there, pressing her flat with his body, urging her away from the window. “Get to the corner. Go!”

  A gigantic, rending explosion sounded in the lab. The wall shuddered and Meg screamed when her foot slipped.

  “Hang on!” He banded his arm across her waist. “Turn around. There’s room, and it’s more like free-climbing when you’re facing the wall. Bouldering. Whatever you want to call it.”

  Smoke and flames billowed through the window beside them. Another explosion sounded, deeper inside the lab. The stone wall heaved as though it might buckle at any moment.

  Blinded by tears, choking on sobs and the burn of chloride gas, Meg did as he ordered, reversing her position so her cheek was pressed against the rapidly heating stone.

  He was right. The position felt more secure. Her flats weren’t climbing shoes, but she could feel the ledge with her toes.

  “There’s a seam above your head,” his voice said in her ear, making her aware that he was pressed against her with masculine strength, his body between her and the noxious smoke coming from the lab window. His voice was tight when he said, “Reach up and use it for balance. We’ve got to move.”

  He hustled her to the corner while the building quivered and shook. Deep rumbles sounded from within, the sound growing fainter as they moved away from the window. Away from her lab. Her life’s work.

  “Stay with me,” he said when her feet faltered. “We can’t stop now. You’re going to have to swing around the corner—there’s an identical ledge on the other side. Trust me.”

  She turned her head and looked at him, really looked at him, and saw the strength of determination, the power of the man he’d once been, the man he’d found again somewhere along the line when she wasn’t looking.

  She nodded. “I trust you.”

  With the warm strength of him at her back, she wedged the fingers of her good hand into the overhead seam in the wall, took a breath, said a prayer, and pushed off to swing around the corner.

  An explosion blew out the wall behind her, even as she found her toehold on the new side of the building.

  “Erik!” Her heart stopped dead in her chest and she peered around the corner. “Erik!”

  Strong fingers grabbed her good wrist and pulled her away from the corner, startling a scream out of her. She looked back to find a cop on the ledge with her, wearing riot gear and a safety rope. “This way, ma’am, and quickly. The wall could go any moment.”

  She yanked away from his touch, the motion almost sending her off the side of the building. For a moment she felt as though she were flying. Then that moment was gone and she was nothing more than a scared woman, years older than she’d been when she’d jumped out of perfectly good planes for fun.

  But she had something now that she hadn’t had back then.

  A man worth living for. A man worth fighting for.

  Favoring her wounded wrist, which left a gory blood trail on the reddish stonework, she worked her way back to the corner, heart pounding with fear, eyes blurred with tears at the thought that she might already be too late. She might already have lost him, with the last words between them angry ones because she’d been too stubborn, too convinced of her own cause to listen to his.

  “Erik?” The word was little more than a whisper as she stuck her head around the corner and saw nothing.

  The wall was gone, the ledge a smoldering wreck.

  Her lungs closed on the foul air, on the knowledge that she’d lost him.

  Meg. She thought she heard him whisper her name, thought for one mad, crazy moment that his ghost had so quickly come to haunt her.

  Then she saw it.

  The tip of a gunmetal-gray cane was hooked over the farthest corner of the ledge.

  ERIK HEARD HER SHOUT his name, and he saw her head appear, seeming farther away than she should have been.

  His heat-slicked fingers slipped on the smooth metal bore of the cane until he was clinging to the very end. He scrabbled for purchase with his feet, but found nothing but air and fear.

  “Go!” he shouted. “Get out of here before the whole wall collapses!”

  Her head disappeared, and for an instant he thought she’d listened to him. Relief battled despair. Then her face reappeared, the face he would forever hold in his heart. She shouted, “Grab this! We’ve got you!”

  A fat black rope snaked down, knotted at the end.

  Part of him feared he would pull her off the wall, but the larger part of him trusted her not to be stupid. And for the first time in a long time, in the eight years since that fateful bank robbery, he saw the future, saw himself with Meg—with his cane, without, it didn’t matter anymore. His leg wasn’t nearly as important as he’d let it become.

  She was important. They were important.

  Love was important.

  He grabbed the rope and tangled his legs around it. Then he unhooked the cane.

  And swung free as the wall beside him crumbled.

  ONCE THEY’D HAULED Erik to safety, Meg lost herself in the ensuing mad scramble, a blur of flak-jacket-wearing cops, rescue personnel and researchers being evacuated from nearby labs and floors. The entire hospital was put on alert, but it seemed as though the structural damage had been contained to the Corning Lab, where the destruction had been complete.