Chapter 23
23
L ina lay sprawled atop him on the wide sofa, their bare legs tangled, her hair cascading over his chest. Taking advantage of the second night Leo booked for them tempted him like nothing else—other than Lina herself. But no matter how much he craved it, it wasn’t in the cards.
“What do you think about hitting Port Townsend first?” he asked, keeping his voice quiet in the peace of the moment. “If we find another crumb from your dad, we’ll know we’re on the right track. We can head to central Oregon from there before returning to the coast.”
A beat passed before she nodded against his chest. “If the weather looks good, we can head to Roxanne’s after my grandfather’s, drop the car, and take your bike back to Mystery Lake.”
“And stop in Murphys on the way.”
“Sounds like a plan,” she mumbled, sounding more as if she preferred sleeping to following her father’s hazy trail. He didn’t blame her. But once they sorted all this out, they’d have plenty of lazy days. When or where—her life was in Seattle and his in Mystery Lake—they’d figure out.
Despite their good intentions to get on the road, it took another hour before they pulled away from the lake house and headed toward Deception Pass. They’d cross over to Whidbey Island and catch the ferry across the Puget Sound to Port Townsend. If they found a clue, they’d head straight to central Oregon. Unlike Orcas, though, the Pendleton post office didn’t stay open twenty-four hours—a little bit of info Lina learned when she mapped the route between the two towns. Both were anxious to avoid delays, but they wouldn’t make it to town before closing, so they agreed to car camp outside Pendleton and hit the local branch first thing in the morning. After that, barring anything unforeseen, reaching Arch Cape, then Coos Bay, that same day wouldn’t pose any problems. They’d stay a night with Roxanne before making the long drive to Mystery Lake the following day in one shot. It wouldn’t be the most comfortable few days, but not the worst either had ever experienced.
The ferry pitched and rolled across the sound, but they made it to Port Townsend without a hitch, where they found a PO containing another death certificate, Payton Slaughter. The twenty-eight-year-old woman died of an aneurysm in Green Bay, Wisconsin, five years earlier.
The confirmation was bittersweet. Identifying Dr. Kato’s pattern gave them hope they’d figure out who killed him and why. But collecting death certificates wasn’t exactly uplifting.
“Call Leo and tell him another picture is coming,” Viper suggested as he navigated down the peninsula. “And that we should have two more by tomorrow.”
The phone rang as she reached for it, Leo’s name popping up on the in-dash screen. Viper connected the call but let Lina answer.
“Hey, Leo. We have one more. We figured out my dad’s system this morning and think we’ll have two more for you by tomorrow,” she said.
“Oh yeah? What’s the story?” he asked. Lina gave him an abbreviated version of what they discovered and uncovered. “Wow, he really trusted you to figure this all out,” Leo said when she finished. Viper barely refrained from wincing. Lina took delayed processing to a whole new level, but it would hit her soon—hit her that her dad knew her better than she gave him credit for, and not only did he know her, but he believed in her.
“We were about to call you,” Viper said, moving the conversation along. “Lina will send you the picture of the newest certificate, but do you have something for us?”
“I do. Your first three subjects—Annibel, Jeremiah, and Joyce—died from the causes on their certificates, but those causes were either brought on or worsened by disseminated intravascular coagulation, a rare blood disorder where blood clots form throughout the body.”
“How rare?” Lina asked.
“About one percent of hospitalizations.”
“Mortality rate?” she asked.
“High,” Leo replied. “It varies depending on the other circumstances such as sepsis or pregnancy, but it’s not forgiving and not easily treatable.”
“Definitely something that would interest my dad,” Lina said.
“Based on what you’ve said, I agree,” Viper said. “Why all the secrecy, though? He was a renowned hematologist. If he wanted to study it, I can’t imagine the university would have denied him.”
Leo remained silent. Lina tipped her head in thought. “You’re right,” she said. “There must be something about these specific people that caught his attention. Any chance you looked into their lives, Leo?”
“Not yet, just their medical information. Which, should it ever come up with law enforcement, we will not discuss.”
Lina snorted, drawing a smile from Viper. “I excelled at hostile interrogations training. Your secret’s safe with me.”
“Mantis and Charley are having dinner with Kara and Ethan tonight. They’ll take the information to Kara. I can research the science, but with her stepping in to cover that, it frees me up to focus on the question you raised—what is it that put these three people on your dad’s radar?”
“I’ll send you a pic of Payton Slaughter’s certificate,” Lina said. “But given the fact that she died of a massive aneurysm, I’m going to bet that disseminated intervascular coagulation played a role in her death, as well.”
“DIC,” Leo said. “It’s too long to call by its name.”
“Right, DIC,” Lina repeated. “We should have another certificate by early tomorrow and a sixth by the afternoon. We’ll head down to California after that.”
“Good. Not that Viper can’t take care of himself, but Mantis gets antsy when the chicks are away from the nest for too long.”
Lina shot him a look. Viper shrugged. “He’s a bit of a mother hen. If we’re not home, he can’t take care of us. Not that we need it, but we humor him.” It was more complicated than humoring him, but Viper didn’t want to get into it. Mantis’s upbringing was similar to his—in fact, all the men of the Falcons had grown up in Dysfunctional homes. Yes, with a capital D . Now that they’d built a real family together, they each guarded it with their lives. Mantis, as the MC president, took the responsibility even more seriously than the others. Which said a lot.
“It’s also nice knowing you have someone who cares,” Lina said. Her light tone didn’t fool Viper. A small reminder that he did have people who chose him, who wanted him in their lives.
“That it is,” he murmured as she and Leo agreed to talk after they’d retrieved what they assumed would be the sixth death certificate.
When the call ended, she grabbed her phone and began typing something in. He didn’t need to ask what.
“DIC is a blood condition that causes small clots in the intravascular system,” she read.
“In blood veins?” he clarified. She nodded, still scanning whatever site she landed on. “Like all over?”
She took a beat to respond. “That’s what it looks like from my sixty-second read. I’m sure it’s more complicated than that, but essentially, blood clots form in the veins, putting the patient at risk for things like a stroke.”
“What about the hemorrhaging?”
She frowned. “It’s interesting. When the clots form, they start to use, or suck up, platelets and clotting factors.”
“So when bleeding happens in other parts of the body—like a hemorrhage after birth—the body doesn’t have the same ability to stop it because everything it needs is already being used,” he finished with a grimace. “I can see why that would be a problem. Is it genetic?”
“It looks to be an acquired condition,” she replied. “Common causes include sepsis, severe injuries, cancer, pregnancy complications. Things like that.”
“All traumas to the body in some way,” he said.
She nodded. “But you can get it from viral or bacterial infections, too.” She huffed. “I’m glad I’m not a hypochondriac. This is the stuff of nightmares.”
“Any additional information on the mortality rate?”
“Like Leo said, it varies based on the underlying cause. But this article indicates that the mortality rate averages around fifty percent.”
“And there’s no treatment?”
She bobbed her head. “Treating the underlying condition appears to be the priority, but apparently, they can do platelet infusions and things like that. There are potential side effects to those, too. But I imagine, if you have sepsis and DIC, you’d probably consider the risk worth it.”
“Your dad would be interested in this, wouldn’t he?” he asked, although he already knew the answer. He was damn glad people like Alistair Kato existed. As interesting as he found the biology, Viper couldn’t imagine dedicating his life to studying blood.
Lina set her phone down and leaned against the back of the seat. “Yes, he would have. The puzzle of what triggered the blood to clot would fascinate him, as would the questions of why—why only certain people, why only certain conditions—those sorts of things.”
“And preventing it? Would that have interested him?”
She made a face. “Not to sound cold, but no. His work centered on finding root causes. He’d then hand those findings over to others to figure out what to do with them. Blood held his interest, not so much people.”
“Which makes this interesting because if we’re right, in this case, these people ”—he nodded to the stack of envelopes on the console between them—“very much interested your father.”
She closed her eyes, her head still resting on the seat. “Why couldn’t he have left me a letter? Or better yet, talked to me?”
“It’s likely someone killed him over whatever he found. He was trying to protect you, Lina.”
She rolled her head and looked at him. “I can protect myself. Especially if I have all the information at my fingertips.”
“I agree, but I don’t think he wanted you involved at all. This whole treasure hunt feels like a last-resort option. A safeguard. My guess is he was hoping that he’d accomplish what he intended to accomplish and that you’d never be in this position.”
“And he couldn’t put everything in one place?”
She sounded like a petulant teenager, but Viper heard her pain. With her father’s death, she’d lost more than his presence in her life. She’d lost chances—the chance to be a different person with him, to build a relationship based on who they were as people and not hindered by who she wanted him to be. Death stole the future, and without a past for her to draw from, he suspected she was feeling adrift in a sea of regret, self-recriminations, and sorrow.
“If he put it in one place and the people who came after him found it, they’d find everything. Everything he died trying to protect. I’m not saying he was right or wrong, but he did ensure that you, and only you, could find it.”
She flopped her head back against the seat. “You’re being very reasonable,” she grumbled, closing her eyes.
“I can stop if it will make you feel better,” he offered with a grin.
“Maybe a little.”
He chuckled. “You’re right. It makes no sense why your dad didn’t talk to you. Obviously, he trusts you, or he wouldn’t have set this up. He should have trusted you from the start.”
She smiled, her eyes still closed. “Thank you,” she said. Two miles rolled by before she spoke again. “As much as I’d like to put the blame on him for making this all so complicated, the truth is, I never gave him a chance to talk to me. I stopped by once a month to check on him because my mother asked me to. I rarely stayed for more than thirty minutes. When would he have had a chance to talk to me? Or, more to the point, what did I ever do to let him know I’d listen? Or care? The answer to those last two questions is nothing.” She rubbed her hand over her heart, a reflexive motion.
Viper reached over and wrapped his fingers around hers before setting their hands on his thigh. “Based on everything you’ve told me, I’m not sure if he considered whether you cared for him. But he did trust you.” He lifted their hands and kissed the back of hers. “He trusted you, Lina. And I’m guessing, for a man like him, that’s no small thing.”