stretching her neck and then standing up from the stool she’d been using. It had been a long while since she’d enjoyed the amnesia that came with getting deep into scientific study, her brain lit up with extrapolations and questions, her body left behind as she fell into an intellectual vortex.
Linking her hands over her head, she arched left. Leaned right.
All over the exam table in front of her, spread like the snow that covered everything else in New York State, were pages and pages of patient files. The species evidently had an issue with the storage of its blood, both for transfusion and for feeding purposes. Unless the stuff came directly from the vein, it was all but clinically worthless. So … if someone had an arterial wound and experienced a sharp drop in blood volume? Or if they were giving birth and had a uterine bleed? Unless someone of the species was standing handy with an available jugular, the patient was going to die. And the same was true for feeding, especially when it came to transitions. If you were trapped indoors because of sunlight, and no one could get to you when the change hit? You were dead.
It was a fascinating problem, and it related to John’s wound in a couple of different ways. For one, transfusions for vampires were trouble. The white blood cell count in the recipient inevitably exploded after blood was given intravenously. Every time. So there was something in transfused blood that turned it into a foreign body to be defended against, and she’d wondered initially if this wasn’t a solution for John: Give him some blood vein to vein and have his immune system ramp up all over his body. Unfortunately, any transfusion under those conditions was potentially fatal—so no-go there, given that she wasn’t sure it would help him.
The risk/reward equation just didn’t work.
But maybe there was another solution somewhere.
And the other way the studies were tied to John was on the feeding side. She assumed he was fully fed.
But maybe, she thought, we need to make him take his mate, Xhex’s, vein—
Sarah stopped. Looked around at the exam room. Stared down at the spreadsheets.
Amazing to think in just over twenty-four hours she’d gone from “they” to “we.”
On that note, she went over to the door and let herself out into the corridor.
Nate’s room just two doors down and she knocked before she entered. When she heard his voice, she leaned inside.
“Feel like some company?”
The boy—um, man—sat up higher in the bed. “Please.”
Sarah entered and brought a chair over with her. Sitting down, she crossed her legs and smiled. “You look great.”
“They said I’m free to go at nightfall tomorrow.” Nate frowned. “But I don’t have anywhere to go.”
Yeah, I get that, she thought.
“I’m sure you’ll find a …” She cleared her throat. “I wish I could help. But I’m on the other side of things.”
Funny how disappointing that was now.
“How did you know?” he asked. “That I was in there, I mean. You never said.”
“I work at BioMed. Well, worked. I’m very sure I’m out of a job by now.”
She had remote-accessed her home phone, and there weren’t any messages from HR or her supervisor. But she hadn’t showed up for work, and if that trend continued—given that there was still nothing about the BioMed raid on the news—she had to imagine someone would start trying to find her.
She hurried to fill the silence. “I want to assure you that I wasn’t involved in … I didn’t have anything to do with the experiments on you.”
“I know.” He fanned out his large hands as if still marveling at the changes he’d been through. “But how did you find me?”
“Did you know the people who worked on you? By name?” Sarah’s heart began to pound. “Did you know them?”
“They always had masks on and they tried not to speak around me. Sometimes they slipped up, but never about names.”
Sarah took a deep breath. “My fiancé worked in the department.” As Nate stiffened, she shook her head. “He’s dead. He died two years ago—actually, he was murdered. I’m not with someone who hurt you.”
Any longer, she thought to herself.
She thought about Gerry sitting at that computer of his, his back to her, all holed up in that home office. Keeping secrets, bad secrets.
“He was murdered?” Nate asked.
As Sarah nodded, her temples started to hum with pain and she winced, rubbing her head. “He was a diabetic. But I believe he was killed.”