Without a word, she turned and fled the room.
Robert stood staring after her for a long time, trying hard to ignore the rapid-fire beat of his heart and the slow ache of sexual frustration in his groin. Cursing under his breath, he turned to the palm computer lying on the cot. He stared at the screen unseeing for a moment while his body and his brain reconciled what had just happened. He knew he was treading on thin ice. Lily Scott was the last woman in the world he should be having sexual feelings for. For God’s sake, she’d had a child with another man. She’d let him believe she was dead for twenty-one months. But Robert could no longer deny that something powerful lingered between them. The only question that remained was whether either of them were crazy enough to do anything about it.
The computer beeped. Robert glanced at the tiny screen to see the incoming communication light flicker. He pulled out the satellite phone, quickly set up the dish antenna, hit several keys and the liquid crystal display screen glowed. He waited impatiently for the satellite signal to go through. When the green light flickered, he slipped the tiny microphone into his ear and listened to the grid coordinates beep. He typed in his identification number and password, then waited for voice recognition.
Hatch’s image appeared on the screen.
“What have you got?” Robert asked, surprised by the level of tension in his voice.
If Hatch noticed he made no indication. “One of the technicians called a few minutes ago with some prelim results. He wants me to patch you through.”
“Roger that.”
“Everything else okay?”
“Fine.”
The lights blinked with a flash of lightning, then the room went dark. “Damn it,” Robert muttered.
“I’m hoping that’s a storm that just took out your lights and not DeBruzkya’s fireworks,” Hatch said.
“It’s the storm.”
“Okay, then. Patching you through.”
Robert stared hard at the other man’s image and felt the hairs at his nape prickle. It wasn’t like Hatch not to ask him about the mission. Not to ask him why the hell he was running blood tests on a child when he should be interrogating his contact about DeBruzkya. Robert hadn’t done squat, and yet Hatch hadn’t even asked for an update. What the hell was going on?
Robert started to speak, but the click of the transfer cut him off. He waited impatiently through a series of clicks as he was patched through to the ARIES biomedical research facility. An instant later a male voice came over the line. “Dr. Davidson?”
“What have you got?”
A man with red hair and freckles wearing a white lab coat materialized on the screen. “We got some of the preliminary test results back on the blood sample image.”
Robert pulled up a blank screen with which to type in notes. “Go,” he said impatiently.
“It shows that this child has a very serious blood disease.”
Robert’s hands froze on the keyboard, a terrible uneasiness crawling along the back of his neck. “What disease?”
“Juvenile onset hereditary hemoedema.”
The words hit him like a punch. Shocking and brutal and damningly familiar. Robert stared at the man’s image on the screen, aware that his heart was pounding, that his brain was trying desperately not to jump to conclusions—and failing miserably. “Are you sure?” he heard himself say.
“There’s no mistake.” The other man paused. “With hereditary hemoedema the blood lacks a certain protein—”
“I know what it is,” he growled.
“If the child is showing symptoms, then you know the long-term prognosis is much improved if he gets a bone marrow transplant from a matching donor.”
Matching donor.
He closed his eyes.
“Dr. Davidson?”
Robert disconnected and stood staring at the blank screen, his thoughts running a hundred miles an hour. He knew all about hereditary hemoedema. Hell, he was an expert on the disease. He’d inherited it from his father and had been dealing with it since he was fourteen years old. And he knew it could only mean one thing when it came to that innocent child sleeping in the bedroom down the hall.
“Hell.” His voice sounded strange in the utter silence of the room. His chest felt tight, and for a moment, he couldn’t take a breath.
He thought about Jack. A little boy with hereditary juvenile onset hemoedema. A little boy with his eyes. His genes. His disease.
God in heaven. Jack was his son.
The reality of the situation shattered him. Why hadn’t he realized this before? The truth had been right under his nose. How could he have been so blind?
Knowing there was only one way to find out, Robert started for Lily’s bedroom.
Chapter 7