His touch should have felt casual. But somehow it didn’t. There was a warm comfort, an intimacy, about the way his palm was— She stepped away from him. “And you’re asking them with me.” She put the picture down and settled on the large leather sofa in the plane’s main compartment. She smiled wearily. “Thank you, Lynch.”
“You’re very welcome. We’ll find him, Kendra.”
There was something so definite about his tone that, for the first time since they’d found that body in the snow, she felt genuine hope. “Sure we will.” She leaned back. “I guess I’m tired.”
“It’s been a long day. We’ll get in the air, and I’ll take you home.”
She suddenly remembered. “My car … It’s at your place.”
“You’re welcome to stay with me, and I’d certainly prefer it. But I know you well enough to know that you’ll be more comfortable in your own bed.”
“You do know me well.”
“I’ll drop you off at your place and pick you up tomorrow. The FBI lab may have some answers about that substance you found in Waldridge’s hotel room. And while we’re there, we can give them that picture to work on.”
“Oh, they’ll love that.”
“They’ll do it. Not because of the pressure I can put on them, but because they owe you. And they’re smart enough to know that they’ll need your help again sometime. You’re the one with the real capital, not me.”
“If that’s true, I’ll use it all if it will help me find Waldridge.”
“I know. Waldridge is a lucky man.” He picked up a throw blanket and draped it over her. “Get some sleep. I’ll have you home in no time.”
Intimacy again, she thought drowsily as she watched him go into the cockpit. The way he had tucked the blanket around her, his smile, the comfort that he had managed to instill. He had sensed that slight withdrawal and moved to reassure.
Why?
It didn’t matter. Better just to accept the complications that made Lynch the man he was.
Just as she’d learned to accept the complications of Waldridge all those years ago …
CHAPTER
5
St. Bartholomew’s Hospital
London, England
Nine Years Earlier
“ENJOYING YOUR TIME in London, Kendra?”
It was Dr. Waldridge’s voice, she realized with relief.
It had been almost half an hour since she’d been wheeled into the surgical theater, and she was beginning to wonder if Dr. Waldridge was even going to show. He could have changed his mind, couldn’t he? She smiled up from the operating table. “Nice of you to drop by. I hope I’m not cutting into your breakfast time.”
“You are, but I’ll try not to hold it against you. I’ll make up for it at lunch. Did you get a good night’s sleep?”
“Good enough, I guess.” She was lying. She had been too tense, too aware of what this day could hold for her. But now he was here and, as usual, she felt calmer, more able to cope. “I’m surprised they didn’t knock me out. They told me there isn’t even an anesthesiologist in the room.”
“That’s right. No need. You’ll be awake the entire time. I don’t want you to miss a second of this.”
“What kind of surgeon are you anyway?”
“The cunningly brilliant kind. Most of the difficult work has already been done. We’ve already combined stem-cell cultures with cells from your eyes, and we’ll be secreting them back in with a formula we’ve developed to help your damaged retinas regenerate. Your body will be doing most of the work over the next few weeks, my dear.”
“We hope.”
“The human body is an amazing thing. You can sew on a severed finger and all those thousands of nerve endings will work furiously to reattach themselves within months. Incredible, isn’t it? The body wants so very desperately to make itself whole. In this case, I’m just giving it a helping hand.”
“Well, you do your part, and I’ll do mine.”
“It’s a deal.”
She cocked her head as she heard more footsteps entering the surgical theater. “But if this is such a simple procedure, why the big production?”
“Production is right. We have video cameras covering this from several angles. We’ll be trying this a few different ways in our various subjects, and we need to see what works best.”
“As long as mine is the one that works best, I’ll be happy.”
He chuckled. “So will I. By the way, your mother is watching. She’s sitting in the observation booth above us.”
“I told her she should go see Stonehenge or something.”
“Well, maybe soon you can go see it with her.”
Possibles. All those wonderful possibilities teasing her on the horizon.
Kendra smiled. “Aren’t you supposed to manage my expectations? You told me yourself this was a long shot.”
“And it is. But I have a good feeling about you.”
“A ‘good feeling’? That’s funny talk coming from a research scientist.”
“Agreed. And I can guarantee that I will never repeat it in any paper I write on the project. But instinct can be a powerful thing.”