by Kira Peikoff
He brushed those concerns aside, gazing down at the woman’s face—her sloped nose, her chapped pink lips, her arched brows. Each steady breath she inhaled was an affirmation of his own reason for being. He memorized the moment, knowing she would soon be leaving his care. It was hard not to get attached to the patients whose lives he had saved, even if they were mysteries as human beings.
“We did good,” he said, standing over her. “It was rough for a while there, but you pulled through.”
Her lids twitched at his voice, then fluttered open. She stared up at him blankly.
“Well, look who’s awake! Hello there,” he said, watching her expression transform into curiosity as she took in his white coat, wrinkled hands, and kindly face. “What’s your name?”
She cleared her throat, keeping her intelligent eyes on him. “Isabel. Where am I?”
“Nice to meet you, Isabel. I’m Dr. Quinn, and you’re in a hospital. You had a bad accident a few days ago in the ocean. Do you remember?”
“No.” She shook her head with surprising exertion.
“You don’t remember?”
“No, I do.” A fierce glare narrowed her eyes.
“You do? Then what’s no?”
“It wasn’t an accident.” She fingered the bruises at the base of her neck. “I was murdered.”
CHAPTER 1
The Day of Isabel
Key West
Her death happened fast.
When the ferocious wave slammed her and her fellow surfers off their boards, she plummeted to the bottom, but didn’t panic. Not at first. She held her breath as she tumbled through the chaos, waiting for the sea to straighten itself out. The light of dawn struck the water, transforming its surface into a glittering kaleidoscope above her. She pushed her way up, greedy for air.
That was when a mysterious hand yanked her ponytail down. Her head snapped back, her lips parted, a nauseating flood of salt water rushed in. She choked and gagged and grew furious. Her arms and legs thrashed, but the hand was as firm as an anchor chaining her to death. She kicked harder, clawing and biting at her tormentor: a wet-suited scuba diver whose lips were wrapped around a breathing tube. It enraged her that this monster was feasting on air while she drowned. Her lungs felt like pressure tanks about to explode. He clamped down on either side of her neck with both hands and squeezed.
Soon a realization came that she had no choice but to confront: she wasn’t going to make it. Yet in spite of her rage and despair, she clung to an absurd optimism that persisted until the very end.
She never wondered why she was being killed. She understood perfectly. Her only surprise was that she, of all people, had succumbed—in the one place she thought she was safe. She didn’t even get to say good-bye. Her final thought was of Richard Barnett—and how, like a typical man, he had failed her, having vanished from her life without ever making good on his promise.
Despite everything, death itself was peaceful. In the final split second came acceptance—then the absence of pain, followed by an all-encompassing blackness. She encountered no light or universal warmth. Instead, she simply ceased to exist, along with the secret of the violence she almost carried to her grave.
Six months before
The Brazilian Amazon was no place for wimps. But Isabel Leon believed she could survive anything. The Arctic tundra in the winter, where she sought warmth inside a bear’s carcass. The shark-infested waters of Australia, where she fashioned a raft of bamboo. The scorching dryness of the Sahara with nothing but her own sweat to drink.
Those were only the first three episodes of Wild Woman, the new reality show that was going to redefine what it meant to be a lady in the twenty-first century. She was brainy, with a master’s degree in exercise science, and just as tough as any man: she’d participated in three triathlons alongside her army vet father. Yet her toughness didn’t negate her femininity. The camera adored her lithe figure, green eyes, and cascading dark hair; it was television, after all.
To the producers, she was a star in the making. Little did they know she was as vulnerable as any other twenty-eight-year-old woman running empty on heartache. In the last year, her father had passed away of a sudden heart attack, and her fiancé had admitted to cheating on her with his ex. So the show was a way to reconnect with her own strength rather than a vehicle for fame. But if fortune came her way, she wasn’t about to deny it. Then her widowed mother wouldn’t have to work anymore, and her little brother could quit worrying about whether their family’s struggling indie bookstore back home in Key West was going to make it. Her mom and Andy were the loves of her life; they were all she had left.
She was thinking of them—not death—when the producers dropped her by helicopter into the middle of the rainforest. She didn’t pay much attention to her own mortality. The concept was about as real as an outer galaxy; it existed, but only in the abstract, light-years away.
She had no idea that the very moment she jumped to the ground, a fateful e-mail was whooshing into her inbox. An e-mail that would trigger the events leading to her murder.
But in the midst of the jungle, the canopy of trees was so dense that she barely had access to sunlight, let alone e-mail. So she wasn’t too worried about anything other than getting through the next week. Snakes, vermin, insects, and birds thrived in such quantity that it was enough to make Manhattan look sparse. The constant buzzing and hissing, plus the smothering humidity at 97 degrees, forced her into high alert against predators and heatstroke. Hydration was key: you could survive only three days without water.
Yet even with all the rain, uncontaminated water was nearly impossible to come by. Plan A was to find some bromeliad plants—a relative of the pineapple, its broad waxy leaves could act like a bowl for catching rainwater. Yet her luck ran dry, as it were. Instead of bromeliads, she came across benign-looking heart-shaped leaves that she recognized as the deadly curare, a plant used by natives to poison arrow tips. Giving it a wide berth, she stumbled onto a small pool of clear standing water—so delectably temping—but likely chock full of parasites. She knew she had to boil it, but all all the potential kindling she could gather was slick with moisture, so fire wouldn’t take.
While looking for dry twigs, she kept her eyes peeled for food sources like berries, recalling a mnemonic from her days in Girl Scouts: White and yellow, kill a fellow. Purple and blue, good for you. Red . . . could be good, could be dead. At least back then she’d had a troop and a leader to guide her. Even on her most difficult survivalist adventures, working as a white-water rafting guide during the summers, she’d never really been alone. Once, while leading a group of six tourists on the Middle Fork of the Salmon River in Idaho, she and her charges had gotten stranded after a jagged underwater rock tore apart their raft. While they waited three days for help to reach them in the dense woods, she launched into cool survival mode—collecting water from the dew on plant leaves, foraging for pine nuts and cattail stalks, using one man’s glasses to start a fire. Once they were finally rescued by helicopter, the story of her heroism landed her several local prime-time television interviews, both in Idaho and back home in Florida. It was through one of those charismatic appearances that the producers of Wild Woman noticed her and invited her to a casting call. And now, quite astonishingly since she’d never aspired to fortune or stardom, she had her very own television show.
Back in the Amazon, with the camera crew watching her every failed attempt to find a suitable drinking source, she felt increasingly distressed for reasons they would never know. The producers wanted to intervene after her second dehydrated day, but she refused. It was the last episode of the season, and so far, she hadn’t required any assistance. She was determined not to spoil her pristine record, as though doing so would constitute a betrayal of her promise to the viewers—that she was “alone in the wild.” After what her ex-fiancé put her through, she was extremely conscious of betrayals. So: not a drop. It was maddening to watch the camera guys tipping back canteens, but it was
also galvanizing.
Deep down, though, she knew her motivation had nothing to do with the viewers or her bastard ex. It was about trying to prove to herself that she really was the independent survivalist she played on TV, and not the helpless girl who had failed her father so horribly at the end of his life that she stumbled around shrink-wrapped in guilt.
But her determination to survive on her own in the rainforest proved futile. After three days, her dehydration grew severe enough for producers to call off the shoot and fly her to the nearest hospital in a remote village. There she spent six hours hooked up to an IV with fluids, berating herself for failing, until a doctor who spoke no English pronounced her “volta ao normal.” Finally she could go back and finish the job. She hoped the producers would edit out the past few days like they’d never happened; if only they could do the same with the past year.
But first, since she was near a computer for the first time in days, she rushed to check her e-mail. It was the only way she’d been communicating with her mother between breaks in filming.
Now that her dad was gone, Isabel worried daily about her mom, who’d already endured enough for any lifetime. Thirty years ago, she escaped from the tyranny of Castro’s Cuba on a raft with nothing but a few days of water and bread. When she reached Florida, she fought to build a life as a bookseller away from the sharp eyes of the immigration patrollers. Isabel was born after her mom met and married an American soldier whose ruggedness belied the softness of his heart. Their home life was cheerfully modest, filled with frequent camping trips, nature excursions, and quiet nights reading together in the family room.
Then, when Isabel was eighteen, her mom’s younger sister—who had gotten detained in Cuba years before—tried again to escape, this time with her husband and their one-year-old son. The worst happened. The aunt and uncle she’d never met drowned in a storm, but her young cousin survived the crossing. Upon arriving in Key West, he was sheltered by her parents, raised as her brother, and called Andy instead of Andrés. Ever since, her family had lived with the omnipresent tension that he was at risk for deportation if the authorities ever figured out the truth.
When Isabel was off shooting Wild Woman, her mom’s e-mails were her only reassurance that they were okay. A week had passed since her last log-in, so she was hoping for several messages of pretty pictures, lighthearted gossip, and new book recommendations—the usual fare.
When she logged in, just one e-mail was waiting.
The subject line was in all caps: CALL ASAP.
The message in its entirety read: “This isn’t something to discuss over e-mail. I love you.”
It was dated four days earlier.
Without wasting a minute, she tracked down the crew’s satellite phone and dialed home. To hell with the expense and permission.
“Mom?” she said as soon the line picked up. Her heart was firing bullets.
“Izz?” It was Andy. He sounded small and scared, not at all his unsentimental thirteen-year-old self.
“What’s wrong? Are you okay? Where’s Mom?”
“She’s in the hospital. She found a lump . . .”
Isabel felt a rush of heat to her face. “How bad?”
“Stage four. Spread to lymph nodes under her armpit. She had surgery yesterday and the doctor said something about good margins. I just . . . I wish you were here.”
“I’m coming.” The calmness of her voice barely masked the strain she was trying her best to hide. “Don’t worry about a thing until I get there.”
As soon as she got home, she learned that the situation was both reassuring and dire. Her mother’s prognosis was shockingly good: 90 percent chance of complete remission. But that was only if she went on a sophisticated new chemotherapy drug, Braxa, that specifically targeted diseased cells, rather than wiping out her whole immune system. Her recovery would be easier, faster, and practically guaranteed.
Yet Braxa was only available through the one pharmaceutical company that had developed it. Since the drug’s recent FDA approval, intense global demand had caused the price to skyrocket. For the required three months of her mother’s treatment, it was going to cost upward of $300,000. Of course, she needed to start immediately.
But her cheap health insurance refused to cover it, claiming that the standard regimen with the older drugs was the only approved treatment. If she went that route, according to her doctors, her prognosis would drop to 15 percent, given how aggressively her breast cancer had developed and spread.
An 85 percent chance of death; Isabel couldn’t even contemplate it. This was her mother, the indomitable woman who had risked her life for freedom, who had taught her that any goal was attainable with enough creativity and discipline. There was no way Isabel could walk away from her predicament, especially not after what had happened with her father.
But how could she come up with three hundred grand right away? Her mom took a salary of $50,000 a year from the bookstore if she was lucky. Isabel was getting paid a flat fee of $120,000 from the network, and the show wasn’t going to air for months, so any royalties or commercial offers would be too little, too late. The network itself was struggling in the ratings, so they weren’t willing to advance her any cash. Her father’s death benefits from the army had gone toward paying off her college loans. Their outdated two-bedroom house wasn’t worth that much. Isabel even contemplated selling the family bookstore, The Thumbed Page, but who in their right mind would buy it? It would be like asking for bids on a mule in the era of the steam engine.
She shielded her mother and Andy from the impossibility of the situation. Her mom’s job was to recover from her mastectomy; his was to be a kid; hers was to raise the money. But when she confessed her hopelessness to the chief oncologist, his stern eyes narrowed over the bridge of his spectacles, and she could tell he was a man not often denied.
“She needs this drug,” he said. They were standing in the hallway outside the hospital room, where her mother’s groans were softly audible. “And she needs it now. It’s the only way. I don’t care if you have to sell your soul to get it.”
Neither of them knew then how prescient his words would be.
CHAPTER 2
The Diary of Richard Barnett
5 months, 2 weeks before, Key West
Thursday, May 18. I’ll never forget the date we met. Oh, Isabel. I know how jaded I must have seemed to you that day. After all, I sell death for a living. When I said it with a dry chuckle, you eyed me like I was the Grim Reaper himself. Most people do. I don’t take it personally.
“I promise not to bite,” I said, waving you past the doorway into my office. Your sweeping glance took in my drab carpet, the coffee stains on my desk, the window behind me overlooking the parking lot. Then you plopped into the tired old chair where my desperate clients laid out their need for instant cash. I’d heard it all. Nothing affected me much at that point except for people who wasted my time—the too young and too healthy. You were both.
When you first walked in, with your slender, athletic body and your silky dark hair, I groaned to myself. I had become inured to beauty. You looked more like a pro fitness model than a normal woman, let alone a sick one. Unlike most other clients, you radiated liveliness. If you had just come from running a marathon, I wouldn’t have been surprised.
I thought you might be one of the hypochondriacs who sometimes come to my brokerage. Convinced of their approaching deaths, they want to sell their existing life insurance policies for a quick buck. What an annoying bunch. Don’t they realize that their medical records speak for themselves? I can never haggle a good deal when my buyers see perfect blood counts and hormone levels and not a single diseased cell, not even a rash. Go home, I tell them. Get a life. Like the one you already have.
But you didn’t have a bone of self-pity and that’s how I knew you were something else entirely. You told me about your mother’s illness and why you needed serious cash now. I tried not to let on that I admired the way you looked me in the eye with
out flinching. Most women I see break down in tears by the second sentence.
“How much is her policy worth?” I asked, lighting a cigarette. By force of habit, I was already running calculations in my head. Typically I could negotiate around 12 percent to 25 percent of the death benefits for an instant cash settlement, and possibly up to 60 percent if your mother was terminal and paid low premiums. Then I’d net 10 percent of her settlement. So, if she was worth at least a million bucks dead, I could walk away with sixty grand if I was lucky. I admit I was hoping for this best-case scenario; I was saving up for a new BMW.
“Her policy would pay $250,000,” you said, “but—”
I cut you off, glancing at the door. “You know I’m not running a charity.”
“Mine’s two mil.”
I paused. “What?”
You flashed me a triumphant smile. Your teeth were a dentist’s dream—straight, white, clean. “I work in television for one of those reality survival shows. Before I signed up, I made sure I got one hell of a life insurance policy for my family in case I didn’t make it.”
That explains the teeth, I thought. You proceeded to tell me that in your quest to raise money, your financial adviser informed you that you were sitting on a pot of gold with your policy. You’d never heard of the secondary market for life insurance before, but were fascinated to find out that it was a thriving trade. You could sell it like any other asset for major cash to a buyer who would take over paying the premiums until your death, when that person would receive your benefits. It was morbid, yes, but it was exactly the solution you needed. You were so proud of yourself for figuring it out that I hated to deflate your enthusiasm.
