by Jana DeLeon
“A possible precursor to cancer,” Zach chimed in.
“Right. The girls are taken for a week, then returned—perfectly healthy and with no memory of what happened.”
“Okay, even if I buy that Spencer impregnated these women against their will, where did the eggs come from? They had to be the same person, right? There’s no way they’d develop the same disease at the same age otherwise. Wouldn’t that imply a genetic similarity?”
Raissa nodded. “I think so.”
“But that doesn’t explain Melissa Franco. Why start all this again after nine years had passed?”
“My best guess is that when Susannah Franco couldn’t get pregnant, she talked about it with her family. I’m certain Monk Marsella is the one who kidnapped those other girls, and he must have known enough about what was going on to convince whoever he was working for to do it for Susannah.”
“You think Monk Marsella strong-armed Dr. Spencer into impregnating Susannah with a bionic baby?”
“Monk could’ve threatened to expose the other girls, so he agreed to the procedure.”
“Then why wait almost six years after creating Melissa to kill him?”
“I don’t know for sure, but it looks like someone’s eliminating all liability associated with this mess. That would also explain why Dr. Spencer’s car has a bullet hole, likely from my gun, in his trunk. He must have seen Melissa going into my shop after the appointments. He knew I could expose his relationship with Melissa and her mother.”
“And on the day of the kidnapping, you went to the police station. It must have been Spencer who pushed you in front of the bus.” Zach was beginning to think that in a bizarre, out-of-this-world sort of way, things were starting to make sense. “That would explain why Susannah lied about Melissa’s medical condition, and why I got the feeling she wasn’t as worried as her husband. She already knew where Melissa was and why. She knew they were going to do something that would kill off the cancer. She knew Melissa would return to her, the perfect child.”
“Exactly. And I think that treatment involved a blood transfusion from Hank Henry.”
“Whoa, you lost me here.” Zach shook his head. So much for things making sense. “Why Hank? Because he was abducted?”
“Because he was abducted by an alien, like the others, and because he had a needle mark in his arm and was anemic when he was brought into the hospital. They were giving him iron pills, remember?”
“Okay, I’ll bite—why Hank Henry?”
“We know Hank couldn’t have been Helena’s biological son,” Raissa explained. “But he’s obviously tied up in this mess, because Monk mentioned his name to Sonny in connection with the kidnapping—Sonny just didn’t know why. And from everything Maryse told me, the man’s never been sick a day in his life. I think Hank is the original version of the bionic baby, and a successful one. He supposedly had periodic problems with anemia, but what if it was because they were harvesting blood from him? Doing a transfusion to save the other girls?”
“But Hank’s never been kidnapped before.”
“No. Because he’s always been available, and I think that’s why Helena was impregnated. So they could keep an eye on their work. Until the last couple of years, at least, when Hank pulled a disappearing act.”
“But the only person who could have gotten that much blood from him without anyone suspecting something is—”
“Yes,” a voice sounded behind them. Raissa and Zach whirled around to find Dr. Breaux standing in the doorway, a 9-millimeter in his hand.
“I’m really sorry you had to push the issue,” Dr. Breaux said. “We’d stopped our work here because it was too dangerous, but then Monk insisted we start again. I knew impregnating Susannah would be a mistake, but we couldn’t afford to kill her. We weren’t sure how much her cousin had told her, and with her husband’s connections…”
He motioned to both of them with his gun. “Put your hands up and step out from behind that desk.”
Raissa glanced at Zach, who barely shook his head. There was no way to get to their weapons in time. They stepped out from behind the desk and walked toward the doctor until he told them to stop, about ten feet in front of him. “You”—Dr. Breaux waved his gun at Zach—“take out your gun. Slowly, or I shoot her right now. Slide it across the floor to me.”
Zach slid his pistol out of his hip holster and pushed it across the floor toward the doctor.
“Now you,” Dr. Breaux said, and motioned to Raissa.
Raissa removed her pistol from the back of her jeans and slid it across the floor. She made no move at all for her ankle holster and hoped the doctor had no idea she always doubled up on weapons.
Dr. Breaux shook his head. “I was hoping I was wrong about you, Raissa, but some things just never added up. And when Dr. Spencer told me you went to the police after the abduction, I was afraid my worst fears were right. You have a certain way of moving, of watching people, that’s familiar to me from my war days. You’re a well-trained machine.”
“How long has this been going on?” Raissa asked.
Dr. Breaux kicked both of their guns into a corner, then studied her for a moment. “I guess it doesn’t matter if I tell you. You’ll be the only people left who will know everything, except me, and that will all change in another couple of minutes.
“It started after the war…during the war, if you want the real beginning,” Dr. Breaux said. “I was captured in a village in Vietnam. There was an outbreak of influenza. Thousands of sick people and one doctor. When they found out I was a doctor, they put me to work in their makeshift clinic.”
“This wasn’t about the flu,” Raissa said.
“No. We cared for flu patients all day long and well into the evening, but at night, a Vietnamese doctor worked his own magic in nothing more than a pop-up tent and not even five thousand dollars’ worth of medical equipment. Pretty impressive, when you consider he made the first huge theoretical strides in building a superhuman race. He’d barely started work on human embryos, but if he’d had the equipment and more time, he might have been successful. His theories were mostly sound, and decades ahead of anything I’d ever seen.”
“So you and Dr. Spencer re-created his research in the States after you were rescued and returned.”
Dr. Breaux laughed. “I killed him for his research and escaped with all of it. Do you really think I was going to let someone beat me to this discovery?”
“You impregnated women without their permission. You genetically altered the embryos before implanting. You knew what you were doing was illegal on so many levels, not to mention morally reprehensible.”
“We needed a test sample, and we couldn’t afford for all the children to be raised in the same location or someone might clue in on complications. Mothers wanted children. And I had several potential investors lining up to make me a very wealthy man.”
“I thought Hank was a success. You could’ve cut and run,” Raissa said.
“Yes, Hank was a success, but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t duplicate the results with girls. No girls, no deal with investors. With Melissa, I’d finally isolated the problem and was ready to move forward with a new round of babies, when Helena got cancer.”
Raissa felt the blood drain from her head. “Oh, my God. It was you who killed Helena.”
“I could hardly have her asking Hank for a bone-marrow transplant, then finding out he wasn’t her son. She would’ve made things very messy.”
“And then you kidnapped Hank,” Raissa said.
“Of course. I knew where Monk had kept an extra alien suit, but never figured on having to use it. It was quite a bit of fun, though, the look on Hank’s face.”
“And Melissa?”
“She’ll be safely home tomorrow—just like the others.”
“Why kill Dr. Spencer?”
“He was a liability. He was in a panic, ready to confess everything, and had forgotten entirely what a crack shot I was in the military. I’ve alw
ays kept in practice. You never know when you might need to kill something.”
Raissa stared at Dr. Breaux, his eyes cold and calculating, and realized this was the end. This man had been working toward a single-minded purpose for over half of his life. He believed he was God and wasn’t going to let anything get in his way.
She reached for Zach’s hand and held it tightly in her own, regret washing over her. “I am so sorry,” she said.
Zach shook his head. “I’m not.”
“Touching,” Dr. Breaux said. His finger tightened on the trigger, and Raissa closed her eyes, waiting for the end.
Suddenly, the door to the records room flew open and Sonny Hebert burst in. Sonny fired one shot at Dr. Breaux and caught him in the leg, but the doctor managed to squeeze off one of his own and caught the mobster in his arm. Sonny dropped his gun and launched behind a bookshelf to protect himself from more fire. Raissa and Zach hesitated for only a moment, then dove behind the computer desk.
Raissa pulled her pistol from her ankle holster and fired off a shot at the doctor, who slipped behind a set of bookcases just in time to avoid her shot. “Checkmate,” she whispered to Zach. “Two of us and two of them.” Raissa had no doubt that Sonny would only delay coming after her long enough to kill the doctor.
Raissa peeked around the side of the desk and gasped in surprise. Helena Henry was dangling from a ventilation pipe, pushing as hard as she could against the bookcase Dr. Breaux was hiding behind. The bookcase rocked back and forth, almost to the tipping point. Raissa tugged at Zach and pointed to the bookcase. “Helena,” she whispered.
Zach nodded and perched on the other side of the desk, prepared to dive for his weapon as soon as the bookcase toppled. Raissa held her breath as the bookcase tipped forward, then backward, then forward, and seemed to almost pause before it crashed into the bookcase in front of it, setting them off like dominos all the way to the front of the office.
The fallout was immediate. Sonny popped up from behind the desk, dove for his gun, and opened fire at the doctor, who in turn had opened fire at everything in the room. Zach grabbed his weapon and ran for the emergency exit at the opposite corner of the room, Raissa close behind.
She heard Helena yelling at her to hurry, when she felt the bullet rip through her thigh. She stumbled and tried to brace herself, but her head hit the side of a metal filing cabinet. The last thing she remembered seeing was Zach’s horrified expression as he looked back at her, and then everything went black.
Chapter Twenty-two
Raissa awakened to a burning pain in her leg and voices arguing above her. She opened her eyes, but everything was blurry. Finally, things sharpened a bit, and she saw Helena hovering right over her face, looking down anxiously at her.
“Are you all right?” Helena asked. “Say something if you are. Anything.”
“I think so,” Raissa said, a whisper all she could manage with her aching head.
“The emergency-room staff is on their way, although I have no idea how Zach is going to explain this mess.” Helena said. “And those two have been going at it ever since Sonny dropped Dr. Breaux.” Helena moved to the side and Raissa looked up at Sonny and Zach, squared off and equally pissed.
“I didn’t shoot her,” Sonny argued. “I was only firing at the doctor. And I’m not going to apologize for killing the bastard who messes with kids.”
“Your guy kidnapped those kids,” Zach pointed out.
“I suspected Monk was up to something, but I could never prove it until Raissa blew her cover. I got all over Monk and he told me some of it, but he said he didn’t do another job for them after I found out. I didn’t figure out the rest until today, after talking with Susannah Franco. Those doctor assholes convinced him to take that first girl by telling him she was going to die and they could save her. Monk said if they didn’t return the girl to her parents, he’d blow the lid off everything. Monk thought he was helping the girls, the dumb son-of-a-bitch. He never should have gotten involved, and he damn sure shouldn’t have gotten his cousin involved, especially after he’d been out of it for years.”
Raissa sucked in a breath. Finally, things were making sense. After the years spent trying to heal his dying daughter, Sonny would be the last man alive to intentionally hurt a child, despite his many other destructive ways.
“What are you even doing here, Sonny?” Zach asked.
“I came to talk to Hank, then saw you two and figured you were here for the same reason. You went off a different direction, so I waited a bit, then saw that doctor go the same way. I could see the outline of his pistol in his pocket, so I followed. I heard everything that sick fucker said.”
Zach shook his head. “This whole thing is unbelievable. Why in the world would Susannah Franco want to have a baby she knew would get cancer?”
“Monk told me the doctors said they’d fixed the problem,” Sonny said. “My guess is that Monk never even told Susannah about the illness. I think they were just using Melissa as a last test case before cutting out to another country. When Melissa got sick, Monk knew they’d lied. He confronted Spencer and Breaux, and they killed him.”
“You expect me to believe that?” Zach asked.
“I don’t give a shit what you believe. I know what I know. I just couldn’t do anything about it until I knew for sure Melissa was going to be all right. I’ve waited years to finally understand this, but it’s over. Melissa is the last of them, so there’s no longer a use for Dr. Mengele. Besides, he shot at me first.”
“He barely nicked you. It’s not even bleeding anymore.”
“Yeah, well, he didn’t just nick your girlfriend. I’d think you’d be thanking me instead of complaining.”
Raissa struggled up to a sitting position, distracting the two men from their conversation.
Zach dropped down beside her. “Don’t move. You hit your head and we need to make sure there’s no damage. The nurse is coming with a gurney.”
Raissa looked at Zach, his expression filled with worry and anger and love, and she felt her chest constrict. He really cared for her, and as much as she’d tried not to, she’d fallen for the surly detective in a big way.
The door to the office flew open and two nurses rushed in with a gurney. Zach barked orders, and the nurses made quick work of securing her to the gurney. As they wheeled her out of the office, Raissa looked back at the man who wanted to protect her, then at the other man, the one who wanted to kill her, and was suddenly overwhelmed with the hopelessness of it all.
Zach pulled out his cell phone and dialed Captain Saucier. This was one time his boss wouldn’t mind having to get out of bed. He told the captain everything he and Raissa had discovered about the girls, and the captain started making things happen. A quick real-estate search turned up a warehouse in New Orleans owned by Dr. Breaux, and thirty minutes later, Zach got word that Melissa was alive and well and on her way to a hospital.
Susannah Franco broke down when questioned by the police and gave up everything she knew about Monk, the experiment, and the other kidnappings. The mayor had caught her in a lie the day of the kidnapping and she’d confessed everything to him. In a typical move, the mayor had kept it all quiet in the guise of protecting his son and granddaughter, but Zach suspected he just wanted to increase his popularity.
Zach, Sonny, and the two policemen the captain had sent relocated to an exam room just off the lobby of the hospital. The police officers were trying to get everything Sonny knew on record, but kept double-checking with Zach. Not that he blamed them. Sonny’s story sounded more far-fetched than a Hollywood movie.
After ten minutes of disbelief from the officers and swearing and hand gesturing from Sonny, Zach stepped across the hall to the visitor’s lounge to pour himself a cup of coffee. What a night. What a mess. Raissa had blown the lid off of one of the most bizarre and corrupt things he’d ever heard of in his life. And she’d taken a bullet for her trouble.
His heart clutched when he thought about how close he
’d come to losing her. And as much as he knew that Sonny Hebert belonged behind bars, he couldn’t hate the man who’d saved the woman he loved.
Holy shit.
He set his coffee down on the table and the liquid sloshed over the rim of the cup, burning his hand. He shook the coffee off his hand and grabbed a napkin from the counter to wipe off the rest.
You’ve really done it now, Blanchard.
He stepped up to a window and stared out into the darkness. How the hell had he allowed this to happen? He’d fallen for a woman who was going to disappear like the wind as soon as she checked out of the hospital, and the worst part was, there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it. Raissa would never be safe with Sonny still gunning for her. She’d move off and become a bank teller in Idaho or a waitress in Seattle, and he’d never see her again.
He’d just go on the same way he always had.
No. He shook his head. Things would never be the same again.
Raissa sat propped up against the pillows of her hospital bed, her head still throbbing. The only good part was, the pain in her head had caused her to completely forget the pain in her leg. Maryse and Mildred had arrived earlier, and Raissa had filled them in on everything. Now they sat at the side of the bed, listening to Helena, who was perched on the bed, telling them everything that had happened when the New Orleans police arrived after Raissa had been taken away.
“The police were confused as hell, but the long and short of the immediate situation is that the only bad guy in the mix was Dr. Breaux, who is dead.”
Mildred shook her head, the dismay on her face clear as day. “I still just can’t believe it. How could we have been so wrong? We never noticed anything at all.”
Maryse patted her hand. “It’s not our fault. Obviously he’d been at this for a long time. We had no way of knowing that he was someone completely different. How could we?”
“I’m dead proof of that,” Helena said. “He admitted to Raissa that he killed me.”
