Seeking Asylum (14 page)

“Yes!” she whispered as she spotted a rusted doorknob.

Thank you, Natasha.
It
was
the door. Now if it by some miracle it wasn’t locked…Rachel had come armed with a
fingernail file, a small screwdriver and a pair of tweezers, as well as a couple of credit cards, but she had little hope that she could pick the lock, even if it was an old one.

Carefully, quietly, she turned the knob. It protested with a small squeal, but the door didn’t budge.

Damn.
Was it locked or just stuck? Her money was on locked.

She turned the knob again and pushed against the door. Still nothing.

Digging out a credit card, she tried to slide it between the door and the door facing. She wriggled it carefully and jiggled the knob, but that effort met with failure, too.

So she dug in her pack for the fingernail file. Holding the knob with her left hand, she inserted the file into the keyhole with her right. As she carefully manipulated her makeshift tool, she turned and twisted the doorknob. Did she feel something click?

In the distance she heard a sharp whistle and a bark.

Her shoulders tensed and she froze in place. It was the guard, coming back. She muttered a curse. Didn’t he have anything to do except circle the damned building all night long?

Curling her body inward toward the door, she redoubled her efforts with the fingernail file, gripping the knob, wriggling the file and pushing at the same time.

The dog whined. Rachel stood rigid as a statue, not daring to breathe. Her hand cramped around the doorknob.

“You still after that squirrel, Babe?” the guard asked, his voice splitting the night. “What did I tell you about that owl? Is that what you see?”

The dog barked sharply.

“What is it, Babe?”

The door flew open.

Rachel overbalanced.

Hands grabbed her and jerked her forward, into pitch black. She shrieked.

Chapter Seven

Eric pulled Rachel’s slender body through the half-open door and pushed it shut. He wrapped one arm around her, pinning her arms to her sides, and clapped a hand over her mouth, barely in time to muffle her surprised cry.

“It’s Eric. Shh!”

She went completely limp.

“Rachel!” Had she fainted? Had he hurt her? With his heart crashing against his chest, he lowered her gently to the ground.

His eyes had dark-adapted, but there was very little light. All he saw was the pale oval of her face. He cradled her cheek in his hand. She felt hot.

“Rachel. Say something. Are you okay?”

He leaned over her and almost got knocked over as she scrambled up to a sitting position.

“Dear God, I thought I’d been caught. You scared me half to death!” she whispered angrily.

Relief that she wasn’t hurt turned into anger at her for cutting off their only line of communication earlier. “Quiet. And turn on your damn com unit. Don’t ever cut me off again.”

She turned it on. “Why turn it on now?”

“So we can hear each other.” He kept his voice controlled and stern, but the familiar, sexy hum of her voice in his ears soothed his fractured nerves.

He’d had to lie still for more than two hours during the afternoon while Thomas checked on him at odd intervals. He’d gotten the definite impression that Thomas was just waiting for the smallest excuse to medicate him. He’d even poked him in the shoulder once, but Eric had just half turned and glanced up with heavy-lidded eyes, then closed them again.

He could have used Rachel’s voice in his ear then. It might have eased his cramping muscles, distracted him from the agony of pretending to sleep.

Now, more relieved than he dared admit to see her safe, he settled beside her and wrapped his arm around her.

“How did you know I was here?”

He pressed his fingers against her lips. “The guard,” he mouthed, barely loud enough to be heard. But she hunched her shoulders and sat still.

The sound of footsteps and the whine of the dog leeched through the heavy wooden door. Eric waited, listening, until he was certain the guard had rounded the building, before releasing his hold on her.

As soon as he did she jumped up. “Where are we?”

Her voice swirled around him in stereo, echoing inside and outside his head.

“As far as I can tell, this is a small entryway below the kitchen of the original house. There are stairs behind us to my left. They lead up to the back hall, near where the nonperishable food items are stored.”

Rachel’s pale face peered at him suspiciously through the darkness. “How do you know all that?”

How did he know? He’d avoided asking himself that
question. He couldn’t explain the vague impressions that slipped into his brain at odd moments. Particularly when he was on the verge of sleep or as he walked through darkened corridors, times when his mind floated free. He had the very definite feeling that there was only one explanation for his acceptance of the sensations, for his belief that he was being led in the right direction. It had to be Caleb.

Avoiding Rachel’s curious gaze, he shrugged. “I looked at the blueprints, too, when we were in the hotel room.”

“Oh, come on. They weren’t
that
specific.”

Eric clamped his lips together. There was no way she would believe the truth. He was barely able to acknowledge to himself that it was his connection to his brother that had fed him the information.

If he told Rachel that, she would think he was crazy. So he improvised.

“I’ve been exploring.”

Rachel sent him a glance filled with doubt. Did she suspect that he was not giving her the whole truth?

“Let’s get away from the door. I’m pretty sure that guard makes two rounds an hour, but it could be three.”

He pulled her close and wrapped his arm around her waist.

She stiffened. “I don’t understand how you just happened to be here in time to open that door.”

Eric heard the stubborn lilt to her voice. She wasn’t going to give up. “You told me you were going to try to find a way into the basement tonight. You couldn’t come through the main entrance again without causing suspicion, since you’re not supposed to be here. You told me what Natasha said about this entrance. Shift change is at eleven.” He paused. “You could have waited, but I didn’t think you’d be able to.”

She twisted and looked up at him with a frown.

He almost chuckled. She didn’t like that he could read her so well. He didn’t tell her that he’d been down here around nine o’clock, as well. Or that he’d planned to sneak back around midnight and every other hour until morning, if he had to.

He also didn’t tell her how relieved he’d been when he’d heard her rattling the doorknob. He didn’t even try to explain to himself how he was so certain it was she and not the guard checking the door.

“Wasn’t there a flashlight among the tools Decker gave you?”

She dug out a tiny, stainless-steel tube.

“Great.” He turned the light on, then adjusted the brightness of the beam. “This is a super-high-intensity bulb. Turning the lip will adjust the intensity.”

He shone the light on her. Her small frame appeared fragile in the black clothes and her pale face was beautiful, even in the harsh light.

He forced himself to think about the reason they were here.

“What else did Natasha tell you about the blueprints? Was she able to identify any of the rooms on the basement level?”

“She said right inside the door there was a mudroom, with a washroom and a root cellar, and a couple of other unidentified rooms connecting it. Toward the front the basement becomes nothing more than a dirt-lined crawl-way.”

Eric swept the narrow light around the room. A few stained boxes and some broken bits of furniture were all he saw. Sending the faint light skittering along the walls, he counted three doors.

“Which way is Medical Records?”

“It’s on the—” she paused “—west side of the building.”

“Okay, let’s go.”

He heard her uneven breathing. “What are you going to do?”

He bent his head toward hers. “I only have a few more minutes until I have to be back in my bed.”

“Oh, no! I forgot about your bed checks. Eric, you have to go now. How did you get out of your room?”

Eric guided her over to the door in the direction she’d indicated. He paused with his hand on the doorknob. “There was some excitement a little while ago. One of the patients had a seizure. Apparently a bad one.”

Rachel placed her hands on his bare chest.

Immediately his body responded to the warmth of her fingers. He was standing in front of her in his nighttime uniform. All patients had to change into pajamas by ten o’clock. So he wore briefs and thin cotton pajama bottoms and nothing else.

She slid her hands across his collarbones and down his arms to clutch his forearms.

He shivered, knowing she wasn’t trying to be seductive. Her face reflected her concern for the patient who had seized.

“Oh, no! Who was it?”

Eric felt her concern through her tight, hot grip on his arms. “I’m sorry, Rachel. I don’t know. I just know it gave me a chance to sneak out of my room and across to the service hall.”

With an effort, he turned away from her and twisted the knob. “Give me whatever you were using on that door.”

“It was a fingernail file.”

“No kidding?” He raised an eyebrow.
Practical.
“What else did you bring?”

“Don’t laugh at me.”

“Trust me, I won’t.” He couldn’t tell her that laughing was the last thing he felt like doing. He’d already shocked himself a couple of times tonight by the way he kept finding excuses to touch her.

It was as if he couldn’t keep his hands off her. He’d never experienced such a strong desire for a particular woman before. His adolescent years had been far from typical, and even as an adult, while he was no virgin, he’d always found it difficult to connect with women on a personal level. The emotional drain was too much.

Not with Rachel, though. He tried to put it off on the weirdly seductive intimacy of her voice in his ear, but he’d used these com units before, with Natasha and Laurel. Neither of them had ever turned him on by just whispering his name.

“I brought the nail file, a screwdriver and some credit cards.” She shrugged. “I didn’t know if I could pick the lock or not.”

Inventive and resourceful.
He stuck the file into the keyhole. After a few deft manipulations, he felt the tumblers move.

“I think I’ve got it,” he whispered. “Stand back, I’m going to open the door a crack. If anyone notices us, you hide, then as soon as you can, get out of here and back to your apartment.”

“I’m not leaving you.” Her voice slid through his brain as her hand closed around his arm.

“Have you forgotten who’s in charge here?” He turned the knob slowly and gently pushed on the door. A dim sliver of light grew as he moved one millimeter at a time. And with each tiny movement of the door, Rachel’s fingers tightened on his arm.

Finally he got a look at what was on the other side of the door. Shelves and shelves of folders, neatly ordered, impeccably lined up and brightly color-coded.

He slid the door closed and put his hand on hers where it rested on his arm. Ignoring the fact that through the com unit he could talk to her from five miles away, he slid his hand up her arm to her neck and bent his head toward her until their foreheads were touching.

“Good going, Dr. Harper,” he whispered. “Behind that door are shelves full of files.”

“Medical Records.” Rachel’s breath warmed his mouth. “This door must be in the rear of the stacks. I didn’t see it the other night.”

He nodded slightly. “You were smart to bring tools. You’d make a good partner.”

“Do you really think so?”

“Yes. You were brave to come in here, given your fear of the dark.”

“How did you know—”

Without considering the consequences, he slid his thumb under her chin and tilted her head up.

“You told me, by your reaction when I described how Grandmother locked Caleb in the closet.”

Her lashes dipped to hide her eyes. “It’s childish to be afraid of the dark,” she said dismissively.

He brushed the backs of his fingers across her cheek and bent his head, allowing his lips to barely touch hers.

She took a soft, swift breath and her lips parted. In surprise? In invitation? He had no idea. With desire and curiosity surging through him, he brushed his mouth across hers again, a featherlike touch that left him aching.

She didn’t pursue his mouth, but she didn’t pull away, either. It was as if she knew how fragile and fleeting the
moment was, just as he did. And, like him, she didn’t want to do anything to break the spell.

Her lips trembled.

A thump and a scrape of metal on metal sounded above them.

Eric jerked his head up and tensed. He took a step closer to Rachel, shielding her with his body, though what he could do in pajama bottoms and nothing else, armed with a nail file and a flashlight, he didn’t know.

“It’s the service elevators,” she whispered nervously.

Voices sounded on the other side of the door. Someone had entered the Medical Records room.

“I thought your doctor friend said nobody came down here at night.” He felt her shrug.

“He’s not my friend. And what he said was ‘unless there was an emergency or a new admission.’”

The com units made it possible for them to talk with hardly a sound. Rachel’s breathy voice tickled inside Eric’s head.

“Do you recognize the voices?”

She shook her head. “I can barely hear anything.”

Eric tightened his fingers around her neck as the voices rose. “Shh. I’m going to slide the door open a crack.”

Beside him, he felt her stiffen.

Carefully turning the knob, he pushed on the door and held his breath, listening.

“Here it is.”

It was a male voice, not far from the door.

“I knew this chart had to be misfiled. So how’d your job interview go?”

Eric couldn’t make out what the other person was saying.

The voice near the door began to fade as the man
headed toward the other end of the room. “Did you hear about the FDA investigation?”