“I... this... it... well... not much time has passed since your husband... since Darby...” He knotted his hands. “I’m sorry. I’m making a mess of this. What I’m trying to tell you is that I think of you often. No, that’s a lie. I think of you constantly.”
She was motionless.
Had he overacted?
“If I’ve insulted you... ,” he began.
“No,” Paige told him. “The opposite. I’m overwhelmed.”
“Mexico then?” Giving her a grin of unabashed hope designed to make her laugh.
She did. But stopped.
“John, not this soon. I want to get to know you more, but...” She searched for words. “There’s not only my feelings for Darby, but I also think I need to learn more about myself. You’re a powerful man. In your shadow, I don’t know that I’ll have that chance.”
“New York,” he said. “You’ll be home by two tonight.”
“I’m tempted. And I can’t believe I’m asking for a rain check, but... a rain check?”
“I understand,” Van Klees said moments later. “We’re on the runway. Lower the steps.”
A door in the body of the jet opened.
“John,” Paige said, “really. Another night.”
He shook his head no.
The steps reached the runway.
“Look behind you,” he told her. “You’ll notice the limo has departed.”
It had.
She turned to him again, and faced the barrel of a small revolver in his right hand.
***
“Why?” she asked.
“You’ll Find out and wish you hadn’t,” he said, comfortable in a wide leather chair, revolver hidden again in his suit. “In the meantime, tell me everything you discussed with this Slater Ellis.”
“I will not,” she said from her chair opposite the aisle. She was ramrod stiff with anger. “Kidnapping is a federal offense. No matter how much money you have –”
“Don’t be tedious. You’ve hidden yourself for a week, moving from hotel to hotel. You’ve cut yourself off from friends, acquaintances. Who’s to know you’ve left Florida?”
“My realtor. We have an appointment at nine tomorrow morning.”
He laughed, not deep and rich, but the laugh he felt and wanted to show. The grating sound of it widened her eyes. “You are a terrible liar. And even if it were true, nine o’clock is far too late. Didn’t I earlier inform you this jet flies almost five hundred miles every hour? By then, you will be halfway across the world, Untraceable.”
Paige clutched the armrests of the chair as the jet began to taxi down the runway. The interior was padded luxury, holding a full couch at one end, a large-screen television at the other, a bar area, and a work desk with a telephone. A door led to the cockpit – she hadn’t once seen the pilot. Van Klees had given him instructions by intercom.
“Untraceable?” Her voice was higher now, strained. As the jet accelerated, the realization came that she truly was a prisoner. “Flight plans. My realtor knows you’re the only one who could reach me. They’ll get around to investigating the wealthy John Hammond and discover he flew in and out of Tampa Bay the same night I disappeared.”
His laughter, longer and louder, frightened her into silence. Van Klees coughed and sputtered to recover his breath.
“John Hammond? He’s only a shell. I flew in as Jack Tansworth, president of TechnoGen. And Tansworth is only another shell. My dear, you have no idea who sits before you.”
Anger replaced fear, and the color began to return to her face. “You’re wrong. I have a good idea of who you are. A low-life piece of –”
“Tsk. Tsk. I’m the one who funded much of your good life. You do remember a man named Darby?”
Darby’s name shocked her into silence.
“Your late husband, I must admit, was very good at what he did. Few could work numbers and juggle books better.”
“He did not. He was an honest man.”
The jet was in the air now, banking above the city lights.
“I hear doubt in your voice,” Van Klees said. “I’ll even bet I can read your mind. You’re thinking of the last words you heard Darby speak. Remember? Over the extension the night he decided there was only one way to escape from me?”
Her body lost its ramrod stiffness, sagged, as if she were collapsing into herself. “You can’t know about that,” she whispered. “I never told you. Never told anyone what I’d heard.”
“Fool.” Van Klees laughed. He glanced at his watch. “Let me indulge you. It’s not often I’m able to allow the light of my genius to reach the world.”
Paige stared at him. “If you knew about the call, you’ve been part of this from the beginning.”
“As John Hammond, I recruited Darby,” Van Klees said. “Early. He could bend a few tax rules for me or lose his new promotion at IWRC. And I convinced him the rules, of course, were silly. Anyone would have done the same. It progressed until he had found ways for me to connect my other companies into IWRC and to move money in and out that no tax man could find. Later I brought him into the fold.”
"TechnoGen and the Institute,” she said, barley audible about the rushing noise of the jet as it gained altitude. “Slater was right.”
“Slater is probably in Zwaan’s care by now,” he said flatly. “Right did him no good at all.”
She closed her eyes.
“IWRC is perfect,” her told her, “and you’ll notice I said is, not was. For with you and Slater gone, life will continue as normal in all my corporations.”
He stood and stretched. “Would you care for a glass of port?”
“With anyone but you.”
“False bravado,” he said. He moved to the bar and took his time pouring a glass for himself.
“A toast,” he proclaimed. “To me, genius incarnate. John Hammond of Hammond Developments, Jack Tansworth of TechnoGen, and whoever else I choose to be. Money, after all, gives freedom.”
He sipped on the port, and, still standing, continued his conversation.
“It is convenient that the world is filled with fools who believe in the force of good. When I first wondered how best to serve my Institute, I needed a way to hide money. A charitable organization made the perfect cloak to hide my magic from the work of fools, Then I realized I could form one that also served other needs. By the time Darby realized how IWRC truly aided the Institute, he couldn’t back out.”
“He did back out,” she spat. For the first time, she was almost proud of Darby’s final act. “And he did his best to stop you.”
“I’ll admit he disappointed me.” Van Klees smiled. This was a smile that made his face almost skeletal in its evil. “For a while, I hoped to recruit him more fully. That was my mistake, of course, showing him the Institute. But I believed at the time my promises could overcome whatever qualms he had left.”
Van Klees sipped more port and studied her. “Come, come. Ask. What promises?”
Her lips were pressed tight.
“He was fine with everything until he saw the children. I believe he had a weak spot for children. You had, after all, been trying for one of your own for years?”
No answer.
“Of course you had,” Van Klees continued. “That was one of my promises. That the Institute would help him let your fertile womb produce an heir for him.”
Van Klees set his empty port glass down on the bar. He turned his back on her briefly and reached for an object hidden in a cabinet.
“This will taste bitter,” he said, taking a pill from the small case he had retrieved. “Don’t be silly and resist. I’d rather avoid the barbarism of holding you down to force it into your mouth. Besides, you will wake up. You’re much more valuable to me alive.” He leered. “After all, didn’t I promise Darby you would bear children?”
***
Zwaan left the television set on – a rerun of M*A*S*H playing the suicide-is-painless theme song. Kitchen lights were on too. Whatever it took to lull Slater
Ellis into believing he should step inside Austad’s house with the third kid in tow.
Zwaan stood hunched in the darkness of the front entry closet, occasionally peering through the slats at the television screen to confirm his bearings. The other two kids and Austad were safely stowed in the back of a used van now hidden in the garage.
During the flight to LAX, Zwaan had given great thought – in his own way, he was as meticulous as Van Klees – to the best short-notice method of kidnapping and transporting five people some thousand-odd miles.
He quickly discarded commercial airlines as a ridiculous method. You don’t prop five drugged people on a push cart and move them through check-in; nor do you stow them in the unpressurized luggage compartment.
Zwaan had also dismissed hitching a ride on a military flight. He’d need to find trunks large enough to carry the bodies, and there’d be a trail, slight as it was, for some paper pusher to record.
So with cash and a false name, Zwaan had purchased a utility van, unmarked, not new, but not so old as to be unreliable. The drive back to the Institute would take barely more than the night; he’d gone farther on less sleep many times before. The only hitches had been Slater’s earlier-than-expected arrival and his shopping excursion – both facts reluctantly given by Ben Austad in response to a knife held to number seventeen’s throat.
Zwaan lifted his left wrist close to his face and pressed the watch button to give it light.
Two minutes past nine. M*A*S*H's helicopter had flown into television’s netherland, top-of-the-hour deodorant ads had ended, and a brainless sitcom began to the applause of canned laughter. According to Austad, Slater had already been gone for two hours. He’d be back anytime, shopping bags in hand, helpless to ward off attack.
Zwaan had rehearsed it in his mind. When the door opened, he would open the plastic bag in his left hand to pull out the chloroform rag, jump from the closet, and muffle Slater’s face. Slater first because odds were he’d be tougher to handle than number twenty-one.
Zwaan heard the doorknob turn. He unzipped the plastic seal, careful to keep the bag as low as possible. Stupid move, to breathe the chloroform in these cramped quarters.
The light through the slats showed the door opening. Zwaan didn’t hesitate. In a coordinated sweeping of body, shoulders, and arms, he burst through the closed door, pulling the rag loose and charging into the entryway.
His eyes and mind registered his mistake. Not dark-haired, male features and shopping bags. But a woman, blonde, wide-eyed, blue jeans and sweater, clutching a small knapsack.
She began to scream. Zwaan was faster, and he’d already committed himself. The rag was up and over her mouth before she could finish drawing breath.
Within seconds, she slumped.
Zwaan let go of her head and neck and she fell to the throw rug on the hardwood floor, her body blocking the path of the door. He stuffed the rag back into the plastic bag and bent forward to grab her ankles.
As he began to drag her backward into the house – a crouched hyena pulling its prey away from the firelight and into the darkness – he glanced through the open door and down the sidewalk.
And cursed.
Five seconds more, he’d have closed the door, set the trap anew.
Instead, the man was leaning into the back of a 4 x 4, reaching through the tailgate window for shopping bags. The kid was halfway up the sidewalk, face shadowed by the streetlight behind, frozen by fear.
Zwaan reacted without hesitation.
He sprinted forward.
“Slater!” the kid screamed.
Zwaan saw it all clearly. The man straightening, the kid pivoting to burst back toward the truck.
Both pounded down the sidewalk, the kid losing ground.
Zwaan hoped the man would stop, try to protect the kid.
It didn’t happen.
Slater spun toward the driver’s side.
All Zwaan needed was another few seconds. But California suburb living defeated him, for the yard was too big, the distance from the house to the truck too far.
Slater was behind the wheel now, stretching across to pop the door open for the kid. The kid tumbled inside.
Zwaan’s hands were out, clutching for an arm, a leg, anything to drag the kid loose.
And the heavy door shut.
Zwaan heard the crunch of metal and bone before he felt it.
He looked at his betraying hand in disbelief. The door had slammed to latch shut, a gap between it and the frame trapped his index and second fingers.
The look of disbelief cost him a precious two seconds, seconds he could have used to grab the door handle with his free hand. Instead, as he stared downward at his crushed fingers, the electric door lock snapped down.
Then the pain hit.
Zwaan embraced the pain. Smiled.
The kid inside leaned away in terror. The man fumbled with keys.
Still smiling, Zwaan drew his other arm back and smashed his elbow and forearm into the passenger window. Shards of glass exploded inward.
Zwaan reached for the kid, but he scrambled away, diving through the gap of the bucket seat to the safety of the rear.
Zwaan stood on the running board of the truck, his shoulder and arm inside, stretching to reach the man at the wheel.
And the engine roared into accelerated life.
Zwaan grabbed the edge of the steering wheel. He yanked it toward him as the truck leaped forward, causing it to jump the curb, onto the grass. The truck was moving fast, but Zwaan kept his balance on the running board by gripping the steering wheel.
The man tried yanking the wheel back.
Zwaan smiled. Not against his strength.
The truck kept plunging away from the street, into the yard.
The man would have to stop soon, and only then would Zwaan let go of the steering wheel, then reach below himself to yank the passenger door handle and pop the door open to release his crushed fingers.
As the truck slowed, Zwaan strained to hold the steering wheel, strained against the man and his efforts to yank it away, when incredibly, the man gave in and spun the wheel in Zwaan’s direction, accelerating at the same time.
It was a good move, almost throwing Zwaan one-armed, like a bronco rider flailing from his saddle. But Zwaan recovered, somehow maintaining his grip on the steering wheel. Then he saw the reason for Slater’s move.
A tree. Scraping down the side of the truck. Slamming the outside mirror and pounding into the side of Zwaan’s body,
It knocked him off the running board, knocked his feet onto the ground. He would have been spun away from the truck except his fingers were still stuck in the closed door, pulling Zwaan along.
He had no choice but to run with the truck as Slater turned toward the street again. Zwaan tried to jump back onto the running board, but the truck was bouncing and he couldn’t climb on.
Five steps. Ten steps. The street was approaching in a blinding blur.
Zwaan did the only thing he could.
He dove away from the truck. The momentum of his massive body tore his Fingers at the knuckles, and he landed, rolling, tumbling, stopping inches short of the curb.
He stared at the disappearing taillights of the truck. Not long, Zwaan understood when to quit the fight and move on. He still had two of the kids and the translator. That would do. For now.
As Zwaan walked back to the house, he held the torn stumps of this fingers up to minimize the blood loss, the gore dripping down his wrist. Inside, he’d find a towel, wrap it. Then he’d drive the van from the garage and find an emergency medical clinic far enough from here to be safe. It only took one hand to drive, and he could be in New Mexico early tomorrow.
Van Klees was waiting for him.
Chapter 11
Friday, May 24
Paige woke to a black mask. She couldn’t scream. She didn’t have the energy.
The black mask transformed itself into a face as Paige slowly focused. The face smiled broadly.
Paige managed to nod. The face disappeared. Paige closed her eyes, too tired to move, too tired to wonder where she was.
She woke again – unable to measure how much time had passed – to cool wetness. The same black woman with the wide face was gently wiping her forehead.
Paige tried to speak. “Hello,” she croaked.
“How is it you do today?”
Paige tried to place the accent but couldn’t. Not musical enough to be Jamaican. Not lofty enough for British. A strange, lilted and broken cant to the black woman’s words.
“I don’t know how it is I do,” Paige said, her voice returning with wakefulness. “I don’t know where it is I do either.”
“You are in the Room of Joy,” she said. “When it is you have a return of good spirits, I will tell you more.” She set her wet cloth aside. With one strong hand she lifted Paige’s head. With her other hand, she brought a glass forward to Paige’s mouth. “For now, take this water into your body and rest further. All of us must be prepared for the miracle when it arrives.”
“Miracle?” Paige asked after gulping down the water.
“Yes, lovely one. Miracle. An angel may deliver to you, too, a child conceived without the grunting efforts of a man. A child we pray you might be able to bear to term and deliver and present to the lord with joy,”
Paige struggled to sit upright.
Her bed was one of a couple dozen in a large, windowless ward, pleasantly lit by recessed lights. Some of the beds held sleeping women. Others did not.
Women, most of them of African descent, moved slowly throughout the ward, speaking to each other in muted voices. Paige saw that many of them walked with bellies huge with child.
Past the last row of beds was a large open area. Stove, cupboards, and sinks were arranged in one corner. Dining tables in the center. Couches and a fireplace in the far corner. On the other side of the open area, the ward continued. Curtains blocked Paige’s view of what that area of the ward held or how far it extended. Sounds, however, gave her a clue: crying babies.
The Room of Joy.
***
She woke next to the cold stare of the man who had called himself John Hammond. He was holding her wrist, his forefinger and second finger pressed to feel her heartbeat.
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