by Kira Peikoff
Immediate protests sprang to her lips: what about her family, her television show? Remaining here would derail her whole life. But then again, her killer had done a pretty good job of that already.
“So?” Galileo raised his eyebrows. “What do you think?”
“Could I leave any time?”
“Of course. We don’t hold anyone hostage. But once we part ways, you’re on your own.”
She touched the sore bruises dotting her collarbone. The dull ache was a reminder that her life wasn’t the only one at stake—and her death wasn’t the only one to avenge. In Richard Barnett’s heavy scrapbook of obituaries, how many were victims? How many unwitting clients were still alive, about to be next?
His existence on earth was like ink stuck to paper, bleeding an ever wider circle of carnage. He and his accomplices needed to be found—and destroyed.
“I’ll stay,” she said. “But only on one condition. And it’s a big one.”
CHAPTER 20
The Investor
Location Unknown
The phone in his hand felt like the weight of the world. Any second the call was going to come that would start to fix everything. The door to his office was locked tight. His body was rigid in his chair, his eyes bleary from a sleepless night spent imagining the scene taking place thousands of miles away.
The bitch who cut off her breasts to spite him was going to get what she deserved. Then he was going to collect the hush money that would go a long way toward securing his freedom. The person he’d once trusted with his biggest secret was threatening to go to the feds if his capital wasn’t released from the fund ASAP. Polite requests were turning to shouts. Excuses could buy him only so much time.
It was running out fast.
The life he’d worked so hard to create was teetering on the brink. Create was an accurate term; he was the star of a most realistic type of performance art. The theater was so elaborately built that the set dissolved into the background for every other character involved. To succeed fully was to intoxicate himself into belief, too. He lived for those moments when even he forgot it was all an illusion.
But the recent economic collapse had shattered his buzz. The spiraling layoffs, the mortgages going unpaid, the houses being foreclosed, entire financial institutions vanishing overnight—all unthinkable a year before. His own debts were piling up frighteningly fast. If his panicked partner wasn’t now trying to cash out everything at the same time that he needed all the liquid assets for himself, no “lives” would need to die. That wasn’t how he liked to do business. It was messy. He hated leaving any room for error in his carefully constructed world. And it went against everything he believed.
But when you were alone in the wild, with your back against a wall, you did what you needed to survive. Surely Isabel Leon, the golden goose of all his “lives,” understood that better than most.
The phone vibrated in his hand. He brought it to his ear and spoke softly, so no one outside the door could hear.
“Is it done?”
The gruff voice on the line sounded proud. “Yep. Just as you wanted.”
“No witnesses?”
“Impossible. We were underwater.”
“She’s definitely dead?”
“Some EMTs tried to revive her but they gave up. An ambulance took her body away. I stuck around to make sure.”
“Good. I’ll transfer the rest of your payment now.”
“Pleasure doing business with you, sir.”
“Believe me—the pleasure is mine.”
CHAPTER 21
Joan
New York
Joan raised her fist to knock on the door of Greg’s study. It was their last Sunday afternoon at home for the foreseeable future. In just a few days, they were moving into a one-bedroom rental on a dingy street twenty blocks north. A venture capitalist who’d just gotten divorced was going to sublet their furnished penthouse, easing the burden of their $10,500 monthly mortgage.
Though she acted relieved for Greg’s sake, she was crushed. Leaving their home was a major sacrifice for not enough benefit. Sure, it helped to downsize, but they were still responsible for the mortgages on the vacant luxury apartments in Hawaii and Florida that had always brought in so much reliable income. Not to mention the astronomical credit card debt. The interest they owed was replicating every day at a cancerous pace.
Yet none of that was her prime concern. Even Adam’s fury was not top of mind. A much more dangerous and timely debt needed to be addressed: Some shadowy investor owned Greg’s death.
And there was no one he could turn to for help—except her.
She tapped on his door. “Honey,” she called, “I’m going out.”
“Okay, bye.” From inside the study, his voice sounded tense. “Be careful.”
The phrase had become his mantra. His eyes roamed the streets when he left the apartment. He worried about simple errands like grocery shopping—the crowded aisles, the blind corners. His paranoia was swelling like a tumor. It was painful to watch, yet she couldn’t blame him.
“I will,” she called back lightly. Oh, I will. Little did he know the risk she was about to take. If she told him, he would try to stop her. Like any good investigative reporter, she knew when to keep mum.
The cab ride to Roosevelt Hospital was a quick shot down West End Avenue to 63rd Street. The building was an imposing white concrete structure that stretched the length of an entire avenue. Whining ambulances came and went from a side entrance in a loop of perpetual crises. The incessant sirens made her plug her ears as she approached the front sliding glass door. A red sign above it read in all caps: EMERGENCY ROOM.
Despite her apprehension, she felt a burst of pride knowing that Greg saved people’s lives here three times a week. She almost wished she could tell the staff who she was, just so she could bask in their respect. After the excruciating mess he’d caused at home, some outside positive reinforcement would be gratifying.
But that wouldn’t get her very far.
Instead she clutched her chest and scrunched up her face into a look of agony. Then she trudged inside, purposefully tripping a little over her leather flats. Only a few people were sitting in the waiting room—a teenager holding a skateboard with a cut above his eye, a drunken homeless man muttering to himself, and a woman texting on her cell phone in no obvious distress.
Joan’s lingering hesitation evaporated. She wasn’t about to displace any patients in need of immediate care. However questionable her actions, as long as she wasn’t hurting anyone, she could plow full steam ahead.
She stumbled to the receptionist’s station, where a sour-faced woman was sitting behind a shield of Plexiglas.
“I think I’m”—Joan winced, squeezing her eyes shut—“I’m having chest pains. Please.” She lifted the back of her hand to her forehead. “I need a doctor.”
The receptionist perked up and reeled off some code into a microphone. In what seemed like seconds, two nurses shot to her side with a crash cart, helped her onto a stretcher, and wheeled her down a sterile hall into a triage room filled with medical equipment. She lay on her back, still clutching the spot above her left breast.
“When did the pain start, ma’am?” one nurse asked as the other one snapped a black cuff around her upper arm and a clip on her index finger. A broadcast of steady electronic pings filled the room. The square heart monitor at her side showed a jagged green line rising and falling.
“Um, about an hour ago,” she said. “I was, uh, reading the paper and I just got a crushing feeling in my chest.”
“And you didn’t call 911?”
“I live close. My doorman got a cab right away.”
“Hmm.” The nurse on her right, who was taking measurements, frowned at a dial behind Joan’s head. “BP’s normal. Heart rate’s 82. I don’t think you’re in cardiac arrest. Do you ever have panic attacks?”
“No.” Joan whimpered as if an unbearable pain was pulverizing her chest. “It hurts. Please. C
an you get me Dr. Yardley?”
Dr. Ellis Yardley, Greg’s colleague who often worked nights with him in the emergency room, whom she’d never met. He was the one who had confirmed Greg’s fears about a suspicious scam winding up in deaths framed as accidents.
The nurse on her left, who was writing in a chart, raised her eyebrows. “Do you know him?”
“No, just heard he’s the best.” She gulped a shaky breath. “Is he here today?”
The nurse consulted a chart on the wall. “Looks like it.”
Of course he is. Joan had called in advance to make sure of it.
“Thank God.” She grabbed the woman’s gloved hand as though overcome by another spurt of pain. “Will he come fast?”
“I’ll page him now. Do you have anyone else you want us to call? Family?”
“No,” she said quickly. “My husband’s out of town.”
“Okay, well, the doctor should be in soon.”
The nurse extricated her hand from Joan’s grip to go out and make the call, while the other one remained by her side watching the monitors.
Joan curled into the fetal position and buried her face in her arm so she wouldn’t have to keep up interactions. The bleeps of the heart monitor were the only sound for several minutes, until a man’s figure darkened the doorway.
She rolled onto her back as she heard his footsteps approach her stretcher. She looked up with a suitably anguished expression when he reached her. He seemed about midfifties, same as her and Greg, but unlike her husband, this man sported a receding hairline and a band of flab under his white coat. Red lines snaked across his corneas from having been on call all night.
“I’m Dr. Yardley,” he said. “I understand you’re having some chest pains?”
She nodded, squirming for good measure. “Thank you for coming so fast.”
“Let’s see what’s going on.” The remaining nurse read off her oxygen saturation, blood pressure, and heart rate, while Joan lifted her silk blouse for the doctor. He placed a cold stethoscope on the skin above her breast and listened. After about five seconds, he moved the stethoscope to other spots on her chest and her upper back.
“Does it hurt more when I do this?” he asked, gently pressing two fingers to her chest.
“I think so. A little bit.”
“Well, you can’t make heart pain worse by pressing on it. And I don’t hear anything wrong. Your vitals are perfect.”
Behind him, the was nurse eyeing her with a hint of annoyance.
“Oh, well, what could it be? I mean, it really hurts.”
“Probably just a musculoskeletal spasm, nothing serious, but I’ll send you for a chest X-ray just in case. You’ll want to follow up with your regular internist.”
He wrote a comment in her chart, then turned to leave.
“Wait,” she said, “can I talk to you for a second? Alone?”
He followed the line of her gaze to the nurse, who was still hovering beside the heart monitor. The woman muttered something under her breath, but bowed out and closed the door behind her.
“You seem better,” the doctor noted. “You’ve stopped writhing.”
“It’s starting to lessen, I think.”
“That’s great. See, nothing serious.”
“Here’s the thing,” she said, dropping her voice to a low tone. “I think there is something serious going on, besides this.”
He frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Well, about a month ago I sold my life insurance policy for cash. I used an auction site, so I don’t know anything about who bought it. Ever since, I’ve been feeling like someone’s watching me. Then, the other day when I was crossing the street, some jerk pushed me so hard I almost fell in front of a cab. I don’t know if it’s connected, but I’ve been having a lot of anxiety about it—maybe that’s where the pain is coming from?”
She watched his face carefully for signs of recognition. After all, it was the same story Greg had confessed to him.
But the only expression he let on was wide-eyed bafflement. “That’s bizarre.”
“Do you know if—have you heard of anyone else experiencing something similar after selling a policy? I just wonder if I’m not alone . . .”
She cast her eyes down, waiting for his reaction. Now her heart was racing, its frantic pings echoing from the monitor. On the screen, her blood pressure was spiking to 145 over 90.
Was he going to give her a crucial lead? Or leave her in the dark? Only her husband’s life hung in the balance.
His blank stare told her the answer.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ve never heard of anything like it.”
CHAPTER 22
Isabel
Key West
“I’ll only stay,” Isabel said to Galileo, “if you agree to put my mom and brother up in one of your safe houses until my killer is found. No way am I leaving them behind alone.”
She heard the defiance in her voice and worried it might sound ungrateful—after all, he was offering to take on a dangerous mission to help her. But instead of chiding her, his lips spread into a kind smile.
“Naturally,” he said, as though all she’d asked for were fresh clothes. “I have just the place in mind. A condo right near the Key West naval station. It’s in a gated community.”
“With a security guard?” She knew she was pushing it, but she didn’t care.
He chuckled, setting her at ease. “That can be arranged.”
“Thank you.” She let out a breath she didn’t realize she was holding. “They’re all I have.”
“Not true.” He rose from his perch on her bed and brushed off his khaki pants. “Now you have us. Deal?”
So what if she had to become a lab rat in the trade? Her mom and Andy were alone and vulnerable. “Deal.”
Galileo’s capable hand gripped hers in one firm pump.
“They must be worried sick,” she said. “Can I go home for a few minutes to see them and get my things?”
“Of course. I’ll have Chris escort you. I don’t believe you’ve properly met.”
Galileo pulled a black pager device from his pocket and punched in a code. He held it near his mouth. “Chris to deck five, room twelve.”
“He was there when I was dead, right? That’s why we haven’t met ‘properly’?”
An awkward pause ensued. She stared at Galileo, expecting him to offer condolences that were bound to feel stilted. There was no social protocol for responding to someone’s temporary death.
Instead, with a straight face, he said: “You made one hell of a first impression.”
For the first time since waking up, she laughed. “Fair enough.”
His blue eyes shone with amusement. “Chris actually assisted in your resuscitation. He’s Dr. Quinn’s protégé, and he drives the ambulance, so he can take you home and back.”
“Great.”
“I think you’ll like him. He’s very—”
A knock on the door cut him off.
“Competent. And there he is.” Galileo took two steps and swung it open. At the threshold stood an attractive bear of a guy about a decade older than her. He wore teal surgical scrubs and a face mask around his neck. He was almost as tall as Galileo, but thicker through the chest and arms, like a bouncer. Blond scruff dotted his chin, lending him an endearing ruggedness.
“Hey,” Galileo said to him, “am I interrupting your lab work?”
“Quinn can handle it. We were just synthesizing the X101. Supply’s real low.”
“Ah.” A momentary shadow darkened Galileo’s face. “Well, if you can spare a little time, Isabel here needs you to take her on a quick errand.” He glanced at her, back to business mode. “I’ll make some calls to arrange the safe house so your family can go there today if they want.”
“Thanks.” Isabel tightened her cloth gown around waist. “Nice to meet you,” she said to Chris. She swung her legs over the edge of the bed to stand, but when her feet touched the floor, her knees buckled
.
In a flash, Galileo’s strong arms caught her. “Easy does it. Your body’s been through a lot.” He helped her sit back down.
“Sorry.” Her face burned with embarrassment. She was the most athletic person she knew—and now she couldn’t even get out of bed?
“Take your time,” Chris said from the doorway. “No rush. I’m here when you need me.”
Their eyes met across the room, and Isabel felt a tingle in her chest that she was pretty sure had nothing to do with exhaustion.
Through sheer determination, she forced herself to walk from her cabin to the side plank that unfurled out of the ship and connected to the wooden loading dock below. Her family was no doubt in agony. She wasn’t about to make them wait a minute longer to see her. Wearing a pink cotton dress and Birkenstock sandals on loan from a young nurse, she shuffled down the plank to the ambulance, where Chris was standing next to the passenger door.
When she reached him, he extended a hand to help propel her up the high step.
“No more riding in the back for you, young lady,” he mock-scolded her.
She just shook her head weakly. Once she was buckled in, she slumped against the soft leather seat. Her fatigue was more severe than after any weeklong episode of filming her show. She felt almost detached from it, like an observer of a foreign phenomenon. This body weighs ten times normal, she would report back to the scientists. Its muscles are leaden jelly.
She repressed a surge of anger at what they had done to her without her consent. All those chemicals loaded into her veins—who knew if they had any unknown side effects? But that’s what they wanted to find out by keeping her around. If there were hidden costs of reversing death, at least she could still breathe and feel and walk and think. She was alive in the fullest sense of the word—not brain-dead. That, she reminded herself, was what mattered.
Yet a nagging unease persisted. Something about this version of her body felt different, and it wasn’t the exhaustion. . . Something else she couldn’t quite explain.
