by Gary Birken
CHAPTER 75
It was seven p.m. when Morgan finished seeing her last patient.
She signed out to the physician relieving her, and by seven thirty she was heading north on the Florida Turnpike. The traffic was surprisingly forgiving, allaying any lingering fears she had about being late for her meeting with Adele.
By the time she pulled into the parking lot, the sun had completely faded. The lot was poorly lighted and the only car around was parked directly in front of the travel agency. Assuming it was Adele’s, Morgan pulled in next to the late model sedan.
The four stores, including the front part of the travel agency, were dark. She checked the time. It was five to eight. Morgan turned off the engine, grabbed her purse, and stepped out of the Thunderbird. The only sound was that of a dog barking in the distance. Standing between the two cars, Morgan took a precautionary look around.
Even if she had never heard of Mason Kaine, her surroundings would have made her apprehensive. She was surprised that Adele would work late at such a secluded location. Instinctively, Morgan clutched her purse between her arm and chest, closed the car door, and started toward the store. The incessant barking of the dog abruptly stopped.
As she was making her way between the two cars, she heard the sound of footsteps moving quickly across the pavement. She picked up her pace but before she could emerge from between the cars, the footsteps got louder. Her instinct was to lunge for the sidewalk, but before she could, she was seized from behind.
In an instant, the man’s powerful arm encircled her waist and lifted her off of the ground. Before she could react, his other hand slammed against her mouth, smothering any attempts she made to cry out. Pulled tightly against him, she could feel his heavy breathing. In one swift jerk, he spun her away from him and then shoved her face hard against her car. The image of the hulking man who had confronted her outside of her dry cleaners about Kevin’s whereabouts jumped into her mind.
He pushed his face against the back of her head. “All I want is your purse, lady,” he said in a distorted whisper. “Don’t try to turn around. I don’t want to hurt you, but I will.”
Morgan dropped her bag.
“I’m going to pick up your purse now. If you move, I’ll strangle you.”
Almost thankful she was only being mugged, Morgan nodded. As soon as she did, she felt the man’s grip on her abdomen ease off. She expected him to lean over, pick up her purse, and take off running, but instead, she felt a sudden pin-prick along the side of her neck. There was no question in her mind she had been injected with something.
In a frenzied state of mind, she struggled to extricate herself, but the man’s grasp on her only intensified. Pinning her against her car, Morgan could again feel the heavy weight of his chest heaving against her back. She knew he had no intention of letting her go, and whatever precious seconds she had to act were quickly evaporating. Every desperate attempt she made to squirm free met with even more resistance.
Gasping for air under his powerful hand, she looked across the parking lot, hoping somebody would come to her assistance. Morgan’s brain now whirled under the effect of the drug. It was if she were clinging to a ghostlike carnival ride that had spun off its tracks and was now hurtling her toward a brilliantly lit tunnel. On the brink of unconsciousness, every particle of strength and resolve she had vanished.
CHAPTER 76
Morgan awakened to the deafening whine of a powerful engine. She felt herself moving forward in a serpentine motion.
She had spent enough time on airboats to be familiar with the airplane engine’s characteristic sound. Lying on her side on the bottom of the boat, her body quaked from the cold night air hammering against her. Although she had no idea where she was, she did have a clear recollection of everything that had happened to her.
After a few seconds, she forced open her eyes. Gazing toward the back of the boat, all she could make out among the dark night shadows was the airboat’s huge fan and the vague silhouette of a man sitting high in the pilot’s chair with his hand on the control lever. With a sudden surge of adrenaline pouring into her veins, Morgan struggled to come to her feet, but the duct tape binding her ankles and wrists wouldn’t permit it. Squirming and twisting on the boat’s cold bottom, she finally rolled onto her back. Breathless, she stared up at the cloud-covered sky. The boat suddenly decelerated. She heard a man’s laughter.
“I know who you are,” she screamed.
The laughter stopped. “Gideon. The name’s Gideon,” he said in an unnatural throaty voice.
From the rhythmic pelting of the thick reeds of saw grass against the side of the boat, Morgan sensed they were winding slowly through the swamp.
“Take me back or—”
“Or what, Dr. Connolly? You’ll scream?” He laughed again. “Be my guest. We’re twenty miles from civilization. The only things out here that will hear you, you’d rather not attract.”
“What do you want from me?” she demanded.
“Justice. Your incompetence was responsible for the death of my sons. It’s time you took responsibility.”
“There was nothing anybody could have done.”
“I disagree,” he said impassively.
Her body shuddered as if she were riddled with fever. “What’s killing me going to solve?”
“I’m not looking to solve anything. I’m looking for justice,” he told her, continuing to speak in a gruff voice.
“I’m begging you. Please don’t do this. I’m pregnant.”
He chuckled harder. “You’re hardly in a position to preach to me about the loss of a child.”
“You killed my father. Haven’t you made me suffer enough?”
His voice suddenly filled with anger. “Don’t talk to me about suffering. I had to stand next to my wife and watch her say good-bye to our sons. Can you, even for an instant, fathom her pain?”
Gideon throttled the engine all the way back. The airboat glided to a stop.
“We can still work this out. Let me prove to you that I didn’t do anything wrong. We can go to the hospital administration and—”
“Shut up,” he screamed. “Your pathetic begging insults both of us. I’ve been to your administration. They barely acknowledged me. I wasted hours begging them to talk to me. All I ever got was a poorly veiled courtesy call from some junior administrator whose marching orders were obviously to appease me with lies. I’m sorry, Doctor, but you’ll have to forgive me if I have no interest in speaking to some condescending administrator.”
Morgan struggled to keep calm. “Forget the hospital then—we can go to the state. I know a lot of people who would be willing to—”
“Stop lying to me. I’m not an idiot. I’ve been to every health-care agency in the state. Either they don’t have the time or they don’t care. Don’t you understand? It’s all a giant conspiracy between the hospitals, the government, and the doctors to conceal their guilt.”
Morgan had dealt with enough paranoid patients to recognize the unshakeable conviction in Kaine’s voice. Trying to convince him that he was wrong was like shouting at the rain.
Morgan lay motionless, prodding her mind to think of anything that would change Kaine’s mind about killing her. Before she could come up with anything, she heard him climbing down from his chair. Her pulse quickened at the sound of his footsteps moving across the boat.
Without saying a word he straddled her body and placed his hand on her leg. The horrid fear of what might precede her death flashed in her mind. But his hand slid downward, to her ankles, where he unwrapped the duct tape. When he was finished he did the same thing to her wrists.
“Do you know how most people who become stranded in the Everglades at night die?” When she didn’t answer, he said, “Hypothermia. The water temperature’s about seventy-five degrees. The funny thing is that most people lost out here don’t even think about hypothermia. They’re too busy trying to avoid the gator holes. An angry mother alligator will shred you to pieces in a New
York minute. The poisonous snakes will probably leave you alone, but I can’t say the same for all the pythons and boas that live out here now. Did you know that a full-grown python can take down a panther?”
“I’m not the evil person you think I am. Please take me back,” Morgan pleaded.
“It’s not my responsibility to judge your sins. I’ll leave that up to God. My job’s to arrange the meeting.”
“You’re insane,” she bellowed.
“Get up.”
When she didn’t move, he grabbed her arm and yanked her to her feet. Standing behind her, he pushed her toward the back of the boat.
“I can’t see,” she screamed.
A beam of light appeared at her feet. The force of his hand around her arm clamped down harder. She took one hesitant step after another until she reached the back of the boat. He made sure to stay behind her. He then turned off the flashlight.
“Step up on the side. I’ll help you in.”
“I’m begging you,” she sobbed. Morgan could feel every stroke of her heart as she looked out into the endless black void beyond the end of the boat. For the first time, she viewed her death as a certainty, but her unspoken prayers were for her baby.
“I’ll kill you,” she whispered as she placed her foot up on the edge.
“Not in this lifetime. Now get off my boat.” When she didn’t move, he said, “I assure you, you’ll last a lot longer if your clothes stay dry. It’s your choice. You can either step off the boat or I’ll throw you off.”
Morgan considered lashing out at Kaine but knew he was right about the Everglades and hypothermia. She had taken care of several people who had gotten lost in the Glades who came into the emergency room with a very low body temperature. The last thing she wanted was to be thrown in.
“Why don’t you just shoot me,” she said.
“Because I want you to suffer as much as possible before you die. Don’t complain. At least I’m giving you a chance. That’s a lot more than you gave my boys.”
Still frozen on the side of the boat, Morgan suddenly felt her arms and neck being sprayed with what seemed to be insect repellant. “I changed my mind,” he said. “Keeping the mosquitoes off of you for a while will give you a chance to enjoy the ecosystem to its fullest.”
And then, with his hands supporting her, Morgan stepped into the insect-infested swamp.
CHAPTER 77
Up to her waist in water, Morgan felt the slimy muck beneath her feet slither up between her toes.
She hadn’t been in the swamp more than a minute when, above the raucous clamor of the wildlife and insects, she heard Kaine throttle up the airboat’s engine.
“Don’t leave me here,” she whispered over and over again.
It wasn’t until the boat moved away that the full terror of what was happening permeated every cell of her body. When the boat was about fifty yards away the front lights came on. She screamed out, begging him to return. But when she saw the lights rapidly fading across the grasslands, she knew her fate had been sealed.
Alone in the black abyss, she wept uncontrollably. Even though she didn’t move, the dense saw grass that surrounded her stabbed at her neck and face. Leaping to her mind were accounts she had heard about people getting lost in the Everglades at night, and how they had walked aimlessly in circles for hours before they collapsed from hypothermia.
Morgan knew her one and only hope of surviving would be to last until daybreak. With the sunrise would come airboats and the chance of being rescued. Standing in the chilly water, playing a mind game with herself, she passed the time by plotting her revenge against Kaine. She slowly turned her wrist and noted the time. It was ten twenty-five.
The fear of attracting all sorts of predatory animals had prevented her from screaming for help. In spite of the repellant Kaine had sprayed on her, she found herself slapping away at the steady stream of insects landing on her face and neck. With her fear of not being rescued eclipsing her terror of what animals might be lurking nearby, she began to scream blindly into the night. Every few seconds she stopped, hoping beyond hope to hear a response or to see the approaching lights of an airboat. But there were no answers to her pleas, and there were no lights.
After a few minutes, she became so breathless from screaming that she was forced to stop. Between gasps of air, she noticed she was shivering. Without realizing it, she had allowed her arms to drop to her sides and into the water. She instantly yanked them out and folded them across her chest. She struggled not to think about the peril her baby faced. She rolled her wrist over and again checked the time. She had been in the water for forty minutes. The absence of any visual clues and her falling body temperature were making it more difficult for her to maintain her balance on the swamp’s boggy floor.
She had just managed to steady herself when she suddenly heard a strange rustling of the saw grass. Before she had time to stop herself, she screamed out. Her eyes darted back and forth, trying to locate where it was coming from. She couldn’t see a thing but had no illusions that the moonless night would offer her protection from the nocturnal predators that were all around her.
She heard the smooth crackling of the reeds again. She slammed her eyes shut and prayed that whatever was out there would leave her and her baby alone. With her eyes closed, Morgan never saw the thin track of light that suddenly appeared on the swamp’s surface. It was no more than fifty feet from her and vanished as quickly as it had appeared.
Her only thought was to stay as still as possible. She clenched her hands. A minute or so passed and she heard nothing more. Only slightly relieved, she still didn’t know if the animal had moved on or was, at this very moment, stalking her. Continuing to shiver, she felt as if her mental acuity was slipping. Fearing she was suffering from the early effects of hypothermia, she pulled her arms even harder against her body, struggling to preserve every precious degree of body heat possible.
“Only seven hours to go until sunrise,” she joked out loud in a staccato voice. “I’ve stayed awake for forty-eight hours dozens of times. I can do this.” She closed her eyes, telling herself over and over again that if she could make it through the night, the baby would too.
The first drone of the distant engine was so faint that Morgan almost missed it. When the engine became a little louder, her eyes popped open.
“Ignore it. You’re hearing things,” she whispered, likening the delusion to the sudden appearance of a desert oasis to a parched nomad.
But when the chopping reverberation became steadily louder, Morgan realized it was no invention of her imagination, and that the looming sound was that of a helicopter engine. Realizing it was behind her, she strung together a dozen or so baby steps to turn around. Momentarily wobbling in place, she extended her arms straight out to her sides and spread her stance to maintain her balance.
Her first thought was that the helicopter was passing over by pure chance. There was no chance the pilot would see her. She raised her eyes and stared at the sky. At first, what she saw was nothing more than a far-off speck of light. She locked her eyes on the dot and watched it become larger until it spread out into an ever-brightening beacon that painted the water’s surface.
In near disbelief, Morgan watched as the helicopter descended, appearing as if it were coming straight toward her. The engine’s roar filled the night as the chopper now hovered just above the water no more than fifty yards away from her.
Morgan waved her arms madly in the air. Above the deafening beating of the engine, she screamed in a voice already hoarse from yelling. “I’m here. I’m over here.”
In the next moment, she found herself awash in a torrent of light from the helicopter’s searchlight. Joyous to the point of tears, she continued to scream and gesture frantically at the helicopter, which descended the last few feet and came to rest on its two huge pontoons.
“We see you. Don’t move,” came a voice from a loudspeaker.
Morgan let her arms fall to her side. Her legs ached and it to
ok every drop of strength in her body not to fall. It seemed like the longest two minutes of her life waiting for the officer from Fish and Wildlife to reach her. When he did, she began crying uncontrollably, shedding more tears of pure elation than she ever imagined she could.
“Are you all right, ma’am?” the officer asked, putting his arm around her shoulder.
“I . . . I think so . . . I’m just very cold.”
“I’ve got you now. We’re going to get you into the helicopter and then to a hospital.”
“Please take me to Dade Presbyterian. I’m a physician there.”
The officer helped Morgan over to the helicopter and then assisted her in. She was still shaking when he got her inside. He reached overhead, pulled two blankets down from a shelf, and wrapped them tightly around her.
He then rotated his microphone in front of his mouth and gestured to the pilot. “We’re good to go.”
“Thank you,” she told the young man over and over again.
The powerful beating of the engine reached a crescendo, providing the helicopter with liftoff power. As it rose above the shadowy swamp below and then sliced across the night sky, Morgan said another prayer for her baby.
CHAPTER 78
No longer shuddering from the chill of the Everglades, Morgan lay in Dade Presbyterian’s emergency room with an IV taped securely in the back of her hand.
“You’re a lucky girl,” Jenny Silverman said as she passed the ultrasound probe over Morgan’s lower abdomen. “Everything looks fine. That’s one tough kid you’re cooking.” Morgan’s fear of what might have become of her if she hadn’t been rescued paled in comparison to her relief that her baby had come through the ordeal unscathed.
Jenny asked, “Are you going home tonight or is Chuck going to admit you for observation?”
