Passionate Immunity (12 page)

“We’re trained how to be…persuasive. Don’t worry about it.”

Kimber chuckled. Despite the wonderful feel of Tristan’s fingers on her shoulders she could not relax. With a sigh tilted her head back to look at Tristan.

“I can’t stop thinking about her,” she confessed. “Could you call Abigail? Make up some excuse? Maybe pretend to be a wrong number, or some poor telemarketer schmuck in a different country and calculating the time zone wrong. It’s gnawing at me and I can’t understand why.”

“Feminine instinct,” Tristan murmured. He picked up his phone with one hand, still massaging her with his other as he glanced at her envelope and dialled the number she had written down. “Never let it be said I didn’t trust or fully believe in the power of female intuition.”

“And now you’ve said that Abigail will be perfectly fine and I’ll be relegated to nothing more than a worry wart.” Kimber chuckled.

She let her eyes close once again, confident she’d be proved a fool in a minute. Maybe the stress of the entire situation had got to her finally? She’d built something small and well-meaning into a giant turmoil inside her head. Perhaps she and Tristan could even go to bed for the few hours remaining of the night. They could get some rest, maybe sleep for a bit and then explore each other anew before starting the day once more.

She’d love to run her tongue all over his cock, suck him down while stroking his balls. She bet he’d—

“Oh shit,” Tristan said. His hand moved from her shoulder and Kimber felt a sinking in her stomach. She looked up at him and watched him redial the number, his features taut with strain.

She knew something was wrong, anyone could see that.

Tristan held the phone pressed to his ear for a moment, shaking his head angrily as he hung up again.

“Her line is disconnected. There’s no answer.”

The brief moment of self-doubt evaporated and all of Kimber’s earlier worries crowded back into her mind. She’d known it couldn’t have been that simple after all.

Chapter Seven

It wasn’t often Tristan felt completely out of his depth.

He knew his strengths and weaknesses. Tristan was a smart man. Used to action and making decisions based on scraps of knowledge and far too little time, he had an enviable success rate on completing his missions. The years had given him an instinctive understanding of when to ask for help, when to slog it out himself and when to just shoot or burn everything in sight.

Until recently he had felt there was very little he couldn’t overcome or succeed in.

In a short space of time, however, he had lost his partner, discovered his boss had hoodwinked their entire division and fallen in love with the brainiest lady scientist it had ever been his pleasure to know.

Watching Kimber move around the laboratory was a pleasure. He followed her as she used the various pieces of equipment the way a pianist would caress the keys to create beautiful music. Seeing her so obviously in her element—and far outside his meagre scientific understanding—Tristan had needed to step back and accept the fact this was her world and within these confines she ran the show.

He might be in charge while they picked locks, dodged bullets and broke multiple laws, but there in the laboratory it was Kimberly who knew what to do and how to achieve their best outcome. Tristan actually found himself relaxing while he watched Kimber work. Her movements had an easy grace to them—her familiarity with the various pieces of equipment clearly visible.

“I’ve decided to start with some of the most basic diagnostic tests,” she said, though she continued to work. “It’s been a while since I’ve done much of this, years, actually. I want to refresh myself and get back into the university mindset before I try some of the more complicated experiments. We only have the one sample and I don’t want to mess it up.”

“You heard me call Lucas earlier, he’s in with some of our best hackers, trying to track down Abigail,” Tristan said. “When we find her we can always ask for a blood sample if you need more.”

“It might become moot if she can explain what Harper and Henley have been trying to do,” Kimber agreed. She used a pipette to place a single drop of blood precisely on a glass slide. Tristan watched as she put a smaller square over the drop of blood and the capillary action caused the tiny dot to spread in a wide, see-through thin layer beneath the glass.

She appeared to juggle multiple tests at a time. Leaving the glass slides, she then placed the test tube full of blood on a fast-moving instrument which buzzed. She pressed the plastic against its side.

“This is a vortex,” she explained. Tristan figured his confusion or curiosity—or possibly both—must have been visible on his face. “The mechanics are simple. This section spins around fast, and you gently press something against it. The purpose is to mix it up, to homogenise the sample and make certain the tiny amount you take to test is representative of the whole tube.”

Tristan chuckled and nodded, the answer surprisingly simple for what at a first glance had appeared to be a complex thing.

“Seeing as I have pierced the seal I plan to set up as many tests as I can perform,” she continued. “I will reseal the tube when I’m done, but blood oxidises very quickly. I can’t swear that placing a new cap on the tube will keep it from decaying. This is very much in for a penny, in for a pound. I can only do my best.”

“It’ll be fine,” Tristan reassured her. “I can tell you’ve already set up a number of tests, even if they simply rule out things Henley and Harper are doing, it will all assist us. I trust you.”

Kimber threw him a harried but brilliantly bright smile, then she gathered fresh pipettes and continued to work.

“I’m setting up some gels and doing some loop streaks to see what kinds of cultures I can grow with the sample. I also want to do some stains and smears, maybe even run a few chromatographs. These are all regular diagnostics and from that I can move forward on hopefully some more complex tests that will narrow down the field.”

“More complex tests?” Tristan echoed.

Kimber laughed.

“Have I told you that I’ve never shot a gun before?”

The statement struck Tristan as a strange thing for her to confess right now.

“When we were in the clinic, and you were shooting at that worker, I felt completely out of my depth. Even though I’ve always wanted to do something like this, I realised we all have our own areas of expertise. This here, now, is mine. But that doesn’t make you or your skills any less impressive.”

Tristan grinned, touched that she was sensitive enough to say something so kind to him. She had a soft heart, his Kimber.

“How about I teach you how to shoot?” he offered. “I can help you practice, and next time we’re in a similar situation you can shoot the bad guys and I can boast arrogantly about how magnificent you are?”

Kimber laughed and dropped purple liquid onto the microscope slide. The red drop of blood instantly turned a dark black/purple. She picked the glass up and walked to place it under a microscope.

“There will be a next time?” she teased him.

“Good point. If I have my way you’ll never be in a situation like that again. But the offer of shooting lessons still stands.”

Kimber studied him intently. Again, he wished he could read her mind.

“I’d like that,” she replied in a soft voice. “I’d like to spend a lot more time with you, Tristan, with or without the shooting lessons.”

He wished he could take her in his arms, hold her close and never let her go, but he knew this wasn’t the right time or place for that sort of affection and intimacy.

“I plan to stick with you forever, love,” he answered. “If you’ll let me I won’t ever let you go. That’s a promise.”

Kimber’s face lit up, her eyes warmly sparkling and her grin infectious. She nodded her head, her blonde curls bouncing. “I might just hold you to that, Agency man,” she replied, then turned to lower her face and stare into the eye-piece of the microscope.

Tristan remained silent while she fiddled with the knobs, moving the slide this way and that under the lamp as she seemed to search through the tiny drop of blood. Not wanting to divert her attention or interrupt, he watched her, entranced, as she worked.

A timer she had clipped to the edge of her sweater earlier buzzed. Muttering to herself, Kimber lifted her gaze and crossed to the centrifuge. She removed the samples then walked to a fume hood. She began to dispense the separated serums out into different gel plates.

Tristan tried to follow what she was doing, but it all became too complicated for him.

The long evening began to catch up with him and he realised he had an urgent need for a hot, strong cup of tea. His instant reaction was to stay by Kimber’s side, but he quashed this. She was perfectly safe there. The lab was secure and he’d only be down the hall. The shooting earlier must have rattled him far more than he had believed.

“I feel like some tea,” he said, breaking Kimber’s focus. “Would you like some?”

“Oh, I’d love some,” she replied with enthusiasm. “I take it black and as strong as you can make it without letting it cool too much, please.”

She blew him a kiss, making him chuckle.

“I might be a quarter of an hour,” he warned her.

She waved a hand to indicate she’d heard him, her attention already riveted back upon her work.

“I’m not going anywhere.” Her response seemed automatic, as if her mouth spoke without her brain being fully cognisant of it. “These gels will need half an hour to acclimatise before I can start adding the enzymes for digestion. And I need to centrifuge more platelets for the—wait, I’m sure you’re not fussed. It will be at least an hour before I have any information even remotely interesting to share with you. I’d love to have you here watching me, but honestly, take your time.”

Visions of a lovely mug of tea and perhaps a muffin or two filling his mind, Tristan left Kimber in the lab, secure in the knowledge she was right at home.

* * * *

“I want to state again these are just my preliminary findings and—far more importantly—they’re just my thoughts and ideas. I don’t want any of you taking them as gospel carved in stone,” Kimber reiterated for the third time in as many minutes.

“Kimberly, we are fully apprised of that, but we need some theories to work on,” Preston replied.

For a moment she felt envy at her friend’s crisp, clean countenance. His suit was pressed to perfection, every crease sharp as a knife. His face seemed careworn but well rested. Preston ran a hand through his short black hair and glanced at her with ill-concealed impatience.

She threw a glance at Tristan, seeking his support without even consciously thinking about it. Tiredness ebbed at her body and mind, sapping her strength and making her temper short. Kimber felt rumpled, stained and on edge. She knew without even checking that she appeared even messier than she felt.

Tristan still looked like a cool drink of water. His hair was mussed, but in that sexy way, like he’d just rolled out of bed. The dark strands spiked around his face, his warm brown eyes showing only a hint of the exhaustion he must have been feeling. Lucas, on the other hand, seemed as if he had rested. Energised, he had been hassling the technology geeks into hastening their search for Abigail Turner.

Lucas, Kimber had come to realise, enjoyed the action and hectic pace of being an agent. Despite the fact the last day and a half had been everything and far more than she could have ever imagined, Kimber knew the moment she came near a comfortable, safe bed that she would happily crash and sleep for a good eight hours.

Tristan turned and caught her gaze. Their eyes locked and her heartbeat sped up.

On the other hand, if Tristan happened to be in that bed with her, she would jump his bones without a second thought. Sleep be damned. He set a fire in her knickers, no question about it. Kimber had a lifetime worth of fantasies, erotic and kinky, to live out. Tristan was exactly the sort of man with whom she wanted to enact each and every one of them out on.

Preston cleared his throat, dragging her flagging attention back to him. He raised one black eyebrow at her. With a blush she realised she’d been daydreaming, staring at Tristan, and the small office had fallen silent, waiting for her to give them the summary she’d promised.

“Right,” she replied hastily, almost swallowing around her words to get them out. “I found an astonishing number of viruses in Abigail’s blood, far more than I would have expected in any ordinary person. That’s one of the main reasons it took me so long to get a proper handle on what I think is happening.”

“So this Abigail Turner is an incredibly sick young woman?” Preston interjected.

Kimber frowned, paused before she answered. After a moment’s thought she shook her head. “Not exactly,” she hedged. “You see, the levels of each pathogen were incredibly low. At first I thought it was contamination of some sort, but eventually I realised many of these were low because Abigail’s immune system had overcome the diseases. For a period of time after we conquer any sickness there are still traces of it in our blood.”

“So she has been very sick recently?” Lucas summarised.

Again Kimber shook her head. “Not naturally, no.” She winced at the uncertainty in her tone. Her audience of three stared at her. The weight of their combined curiosity made her very faintly nervous. She cleared her throat and with a final glance at Tristan took the plunge. “I think Dr Harper added multiple variants of different diseases into his vaccine. This is all pure conjecture at this point, but I think my results are leaning towards the vaccine being used not only to heighten the patient’s immune response, but also to widen the spectrum of what would be natural in humans.”

All three gentlemen continued to stare at her with various levels of concentration on their faces. They all remained silent and she tried to reword herself better, more concisely. “Some vaccines are very simple,” she explained. “They are to help your body fight one strain of one disease. Others are more complex, like, say, the flu vaccine. They are made up of multiple different strains of the same disease to give your immune system a broad-spectrum understanding of the disease, so if the germs mutate slightly you can still recognise it correctly and fight it easily.”