Sloane paused outside the hospital room, studying the information on the card clipped to the door. This particular Ethan Jefferson Pediatric patient was Jenna Rand, a seventeen-year-old suffering from myasthenia gravis . . . and ten weeks pregnant.
He lifted a brow in Dr. Johnson’s direction. “Does she know?”
Johnson frowned, his eyes level under dark brows. “She thinks she’s getting better. I overheard her speaking to her parents on the telephone. They were discussing the pregnancy, and she seemed happy about it. I don’t think they told her of our requirement.”
Sloane snorted softly. “What is with parents today? They allow their damaged children to have children and happily pass on the problems of the race. When will they learn?”
Dr. Johnson pushed the door open and led the way into the room. At the sight of her visitors, the blonde girl in the bed struggled to push herself upright. Her head bobbed in greeting, presenting the men with a thin, sallow face in which frightened blue eyes occupied most of the available space. The disease had weakened her muscles so much that closing her eyelids would soon be a struggle.
“Good morning, Jenna.” Johnson moved to the foot of the bed. “You remember Mr. Sloane, don’t you?”
“Of course.” One corner of her mouth twitched in what must have been a smile. “I couldn’t have come to this hospital without Mr. Sloane’s help.”
“We do what we can.” Devin thrust his hands behind his back and looked around the room. There were no flowers on the nightstand, not a single card taped to the wall. Most of the girls brought at least a family photo, but Jenna Rand had brought nothing from the pitiful West Virginia trailer she and her parents called home.
“I was talking to my mom,” Jenna said, her gaze moving to the doctor’s face. “An’ she wants to know if I can come home soon. Since I’m feelin’ better an’ all—”
“We’re not quite finished with your treatment.” Johnson lowered his clipboard and gave the girl a fixed smile. “There’s still the matter of your baby. Even if we could eradicate the bad genes from your body, there’s always a chance your baby will have this disease too.”
“But if he doesn’t?”
“He could still be a carrier. And that would be bad for the rest of the world, don’t you see? One little stone tossed into the lake creates an infinite number of rings.”
Devin lowered himself to the edge of the girl’s bed. “I wanted to stop by and tell you that it’s been a pleasure to have you as our guest. We’ve learned a lot from your DNA, Jenna. I expect we’ll learn a lot from your fetus’s, too.”
The girl’s smile twitched again. “But my baby’s not born yet.”
“It can’t be born.” Devin patted her hand. “That’s one of our rules, sweetheart. In exchange for free treatment, all genetic disease patients must agree to sterilization. Unfortunately, you came here already pregnant.”
The girl’s gaze darted around the room. “But—I want my baby.”
“It’s already been decided, Jenna; it’s in the contract. Sometimes the things we want aren’t right for us. It’s not right to bring a deformed child into the world. If you want something to love, go home and get yourself a nice puppy.”
Dr. Johnson cleared his throat. “I’m afraid I have another bit of bad news. You see, Jenna, sometimes a person gets a disease because they have only one nucleotide in the wrong chemical form. We can cure it by changing the abnormal nucleotide back to its original form, but when a person is already born”—he shrugged—“the job is a lot harder. We can’t change millions of cells; the task is simply too big.”
In Jenna’s wide eyes Devin saw ignorance and confusion. They had learned all they could from her; it was time to move on.
He gave her hand a squeeze, then stood. “Thank you, Jenna, for being such a wonderful patient. I’m sure your parents will be happy to have you home.”
She tilted her head and looked at Johnson. “I don’t want a puppy.”
He leaned on the bed frame and met Devin’s eye. “We’ll do a complete hysterectomy. She won’t be aware of anything.”
Devin turned to leave. “Thank you, Doctor.”
“Here.” His nostrils flaring with distaste, Stuart dropped an envelope on Nadine’s desk. “Another set of applications from Sloane.”
She smiled at him, obscurely comforted by the knowledge that someone else shared her growing antipathy toward Devin Sloane. “I don’t need to see them.” She used the tip of her pen to push the envelope away. “Have Simon do the usual background checks—history of frivolous lawsuits, appropriate income limits, that sort of thing. Sloane wants his hospital patients poor and serious.”
Eyeing the package as if it were a bad smell, Stuart picked up the envelope and gingerly held it between two fingers. “By the way, Nadine, we had to order a new set of filing cabinets just to handle the Sloane hospital paperwork.”
Nadine looked up from the report she’d been reading. “We’ve been doing that many intake packages?”
“Yes and no.” Stuart paused, the envelope dangling from his hand like a dead animal. “Yes, we’ve been doing a lot of background checks. But it’s the dead files that take up so much space. I wanted to put them all on computer disk, but Simon says we need to keep the actual documents.”
Nadine tapped her pen on the desk, trying to comprehend what she was hearing. “Dead files—you mean applicants who are rejected?”
“I mean the files of dead patients.” Stuart’s mouth thinned with distaste. “Bodies are piling up like cord wood.”
“Cut the sarcasm, Stu. Sometimes patients die.” She reached for her diet soda, then smiled. “You just don’t like Sloane.”
“You’re right, I don’t.” He dropped the envelope into a chair and moved closer to her desk, a dim flush racing across his clean-cut features. “I know he’s one of our biggest clients, but honestly, Nadine, something’s out of whack with his hospital.”
Nadine sipped her soda, then lifted a warning brow. “Don’t you think Sloane has all kinds of people watching over his shoulder? He’s had his critics, but they’ve never been able to prove a single allegation against him.”
“I think he’s killing people, but he covers himself. And people like us help him do it.”
She put down her soda and looked her assistant in the eye. “I may have done some things I’m not proud of, but murder would be crossing the line. So don’t come to me with exaggerations and suspicions about Sloane unless you can back them up.”
Stuart matched her intensity, look for look. “Give me ten minutes at my computer and I’ll show you what I mean.”
Convinced the young man was wasting her time, Nadine waved him out the door. He returned five minutes later, a computer printout trailing behind him.
“Most hospitals,” he began with no preamble, “lose between 10 and 15 percent of their patients per year. The mortality rate at Sloane’s pediatric hospital last year was 18 percent, not terribly unusual. But the mortality rate of the hospital’s discharged patients jumps to 78 percent.”
Nadine leaned forward, her heart going into sudden shock. She pulled the pages toward her, read the statistics, saw the long list of patients who had been transferred into Stuart’s “dead files.”
“You’re comparing apples and oranges.” She frowned. “Sloane’s patients are terminally ill. His is the hospital of last resort.”
“He’s supposed to be curing them. But despite all the hype, the statistics suggest Sloane is sending these kids home to die.”
The thought was so absurd that Nadine couldn’t stop a smile, though she felt a long way from genuine humor. “If something were wrong, these people would be suing for medical malpractice. Instead, they’re heaping praise on Sloane’s head.”
“Think about his patients’ families, Nadine.” Stuart dropped into the empty chair before her desk, his face a study in exasperation. “His admissions policy virtually guarantees they’re all poor and relatively uneducated.”
“It’s a charity hospital; it’s designed to aid the poor.”
“It’s designed to cure genetic diseases. The media creates so much hoopla over Sloane’s few successes that these parents send their kids to Sloane and hope for a miracle. When they don’t get their miracle, they’re stuck. They can’t criticize Sloane, because at least he cared enough to take in their kid. Which brings me to another point—if he’s not curing these kids, what is he doing with them?”
The question snapped like a whip, making Nadine flinch. “What do you mean?”
“I mean”—Stuart lowered his voice—“it’s a research hospital. What if he’s only using these kids . . . as guinea pigs?”
She shook her head. “Not even Sloane is that low.” She skimmed the list in her hand, then stabbed her pen at a name. “Look here. Tommy Brown, age ten. Sickle cell anemia. He was accepted into the program, but died before he was ever admitted.” She leaned back and met Stu’s gaze. “There goes your theory about Sloane being a merchant of menace. These kids are dying because they’re sick, not because they’ve spent time in his hospital.”
Stuart shrugged. “I don’t know, but I find the figures terrifying. If my kid ever developed a genetic disease, the Ethan Jefferson Pediatric Hospital for Genetic Research is the last place on earth I’d send him.”
“You don’t have a kid.”
Stuart gave her a grim smile. “Neither do 78 percent of the families who send their children to Sloane’s hospital.”
Nadine managed to shove Stuart’s accusations to the back of her mind, but she couldn’t help feeling trapped in an ever-shrinking space between the weight of her suspicions and her knowledge of Sloane’s temperament. His exploitation of hapless Lara Godfrey had already proven that he’d do virtually anything for science.
Had he been using sick children to further his own knowledge?
Her need for answers impelled her onto a jet; by sunset she was being ushered into Sloane’s paneled office. He greeted her with a warm smile, finished dictating a thought into his tape recorder, then came forward to greet her, his hands outstretched.
“Nadine! What brings you to Charlottesville?” When she didn’t step into his embrace, he looked at her with a speculative gaze. “Not bad news about Ms. O’Hara, I hope? Madison says the trial is proceeding as planned.”
“This has nothing to do with Lara or the boy.” Nadine took the seat he offered, then crossed her legs and fixed him in a steady gaze. “Devin . . . my assistant came to me this afternoon with some serious concerns.”
“Really?” He sank into a chair across from her, then pressed his fingertips together. “We are a team, Nadine. Ask what you will and I’ll try my best to answer.”
She glanced at the floor and tried to rein in her scattered thoughts. “An inordinate number of your hospital patients are dying once they return home.” She met his direct gaze. “Seventy-eight percent last year. Doesn’t that number seem high to you?”
Devin tilted his head. “That’s probably correct. Our patients are seriously ill, you know. We do what we can to help them, but we are only beginning to research some of the rarer diseases.”
“That’s what I thought, but records indicate that some of your patients are dying from diseases for which you have already found a cure. Three of your cystic fibrosis patients have died in the last six months, but you’ve had a breakthrough with CF.”
Devin scratched his ear. “I can’t comment without looking at the case files, but I suspect the patients came to us after we solved that problem. We’re not taking any more CF cases.”
Nadine gaped at him. “You could cure these children and yet you’re not willing—”
“I’m not interested in curing children. I’m interested in repairing human DNA.” Devin spoke in a calm voice completely at odds with the dreadful truth he’d just expressed. “I’m not going to paint a rosy picture for you, Nadine; you know me too well. If we happen to stumble across a cure in our work, fine, we’ll make millions as we sell our research to other hospitals. Yet financial gain is not our ultimate goal. These children are valuable because in studying what went wrong in their genetic makeup, we can learn how to make things right again.”
A tremor of terror shot through her. “You’re using children as lab rats.”
He smiled. “Actually, we’re helping mankind. We’ve sterilized every last one of our patients, so we are sparing a future generation from similar suffering. Best of all, we give worth and meaning to our patients’ stunted lives. Before they leave us, we take samples of their DNA to help chart our progress back up the genetic staircase. We have devolved, Nadine, but step by step, gene by gene, my researchers are rebuilding the potential of the human race.”
She stared at him, unable to speak.
“Now,” Sloane said, his voice cold and exact, “we find ourselves at the edge of another set of circles. Congratulations, Nadine, I had not thought to bring you this far. But you are a most persistent woman.”
“More circles?” Her voice, like her nerves, was in shreds.
“Three more—my threefold plan. The first phase of my plan was the hospital, of course. Lara Godfrey O’Hara confounded phase two when she took off with the boy, but soon I’ll have access to a human being with a 5,300-year head start on the work we’re currently doing.”
Outside, the sun had set and only a single lamp lit Devin’s office. The encroaching darkness felt heavy and threatening. Nadine shifted in her chair. “What will you do with the boy?”
“Rear him, of course, with all my love and attention. Use his DNA as a model. And occasionally take a tissue sample for my work with phase three.”
Nadine closed her eyes. Resisting the urge to clap her hands over her ears, she gripped the armrests of her chair. “Go on.”
Sloane chuckled softly. “I see I’ve upset you, and that’s a pity. Have you ever considered what makes one man old at age sixty while another is strong and vibrant at seventy? The mechanism that controls human aging is tied up in our genetics. With Hunter’s DNA, I will be able to rejuvenate my own genes. I’m fifty-two, but once we find the boy, the implementation of phase three will begin. From our initial research, I believe I will be able to live at least another hundred years . . . in relatively robust health.”
His voice was as low as a lover’s, but his next words were sharp and tinged with poison. “I trust you with this information, Nadine, because I know you value our association. Those of us in the circle must protect each other, for if the ring breaks, all are equally vulnerable.”
She sat without speaking as his threat reverberated through the room and knew he wouldn’t hesitate to act against her. If she went to the authorities, Sloane would know—and he’d get to her long before anyone managed to pierce the wall of security around him.
She uncrossed her legs and stood, feeling as hollow as her voice sounded. “Just remember this, Devin.” She lowered her gaze into his. “By seeking to transcend human nature, you may fall far below it.”