by Kira Peikoff
He kept his job at Roosevelt all along because it was his only on-the-books source of income to the IRS. The rest was all cash from the Cayman Islands offshore account, in the name of SkyBridge Asset Management. Greg opened an office near his apartment under the auspices of his charity, but he used the privacy of the space to handle the fund’s business. He hired an assistant to oversee the actual charity, which the naïve young woman had no idea was a façade. He and Yardley were the only two people who knew the truth. Together they were masters of the universe; it was about damn time.
That was until six months ago.
The crash of the economy abruptly changed everything. His own U.S. bank went under, for God’s sake. The savings account and stock investments he shared with Joan were wiped out practically overnight. Donations to the charity dried up faster than dead skin. The vacation properties he rented out went vacant, leaving him stuck with mortgages he’d never had trouble affording before, not to mention the mortgage on his luxury New York penthouse. The thousands in debt he’d casually run up on his credit card came due, along with Adam’s fancy college and law school loans, Joan’s credit card that she maxed out every month, in addition to the $100,000 donation he’d recently pledged to the Harvard Medical School Alumni Foundation, so his snotty former classmates would know just how successful he’d become. No way in hell was he about to back out.
Rather than face financial ruin, he’d turned to the one pristine source of cash at his fingertips: the fund. He drained it of all its liquid assets—about $2.2 million—and paid off his immediate debts. There was one little issue, though: He didn’t consult Yardley. He was hoping that by the time Yardley found out, some of their walking “lives” would have died and replenished the fund.
Unfortunately, it hadn’t worked out that way. Yardley needed money, too, badly. On top of the financial crisis that had similarly depleted his savings, he was going through a divorce that was draining him dry. With all the legal fees and alimony payments and a dwindling estate to divide with his ex-wife, he was just as desperate for cash. To add insult to injury, their beleaguered hospital cut back both of their ER shifts and reduced their salaries accordingly.
When Yardley found out what Greg had done, he was so furious he almost went to the feds. But Greg promised to come up with some of the money right away, even though all the remaining assets were tied up in “lives.” That was when Mrs. Ruth Bernstein came in; she was the easiest target, old and blind, without any close relatives. No one would demand an autopsy. Her death was a necessary evil that had tided Yardley over with a $500,000 cash infusion.
But now Yardley’s impatience was peaking again. Greg had wronged him, and now he was demanding his rightful half of the fund’s total investments, about $4.5 million to him, so he could walk away from their partnership made whole. He didn’t care how Greg went about getting the money as long as it was recouped.
But if he didn’t get it by Sunday—just three days away—he was really going to rat out the whole setup to the feds this time.
Vindictive asshole.
Since Greg’s charity was the money-laundering vehicle, all the blame would fall squarely on him. Yardley’s participation had no paper trail. There was no way to prove his involvement and they both knew it.
If Greg didn’t come up with the money, his life was over. Plain and simple. Joan would leave him. His son would never speak to him again. He would end up in jail, penniless and disgraced and alone.
But that wasn’t going to happen.
First of all, Isabel’s death was finally going to bring in a desperately needed $2 million. That wasn’t enough, but it didn’t matter, because that was only the prelude to the much, much bigger cash cow he hoped she would lead him to: the drug that could defeat death.
He knew such a drug was in the works. Everyone in emergency medicine did. Seven years ago, at a conference of the American Medical Association, the renowned Dr. Horatio Quinn had announced his groundbreaking development of a compound that could delay the death of brain cells in rodents. The tantalizing research had the whole medical community buzzing. But then Quinn succumbed to a scandal, something about stealing a colleague’s intellectual property, and was fired. After that, he disappeared from the public eye. Greg and Yardley used to speculate about what had become of him and his miracle drug. There were rumors that he had gone to work for a covert organization that recruited cutting-edge researchers. So it was very possible that he was still alive and that his work had progressed.
Since Isabel had been miraculously resuscitated—but not in any known hospital—Greg wondered if there might be a connection. Could she have been saved by the long-lost scientist and his drug?
If so, and if he could get his hands on it, then all his problems would be solved. Yardley could take it and sell it to the highest bidder in the pharmaceutical world. No one else had deeper pockets. Then that greedy jerk would have all the money he’d ever want for the next ten generations. He’d shut up forever. At this point, Greg didn’t care about missing out on such a windfall. He just wanted to walk away with his life—and his marriage—intact.
Beside him in bed, Joan had not budged for the last hour. She was an enviably sound sleeper. So he didn’t worry about waking her when he got up and tiptoed to the bathroom clutching his cell phone. The goddamn call still hadn’t come.
What the hell was happening with Isabel? He knew his guys were loyal, though; they couldn’t be blowing him off on purpose. One of them had been a gunshot victim of a gang turf war whose life he’d saved in the ER last year. At the time, the grateful thug offered to repay him however possible. Now, for once, Greg was glad to have operated on a violent criminal. It was funny how life could come full circle.
He shut the bathroom door and dialed the number he knew by heart. The sound of the repeated rings tormented him. He resisted banging his fist on the wall.
Come on, pick up!
But the phone rang and rang, unanswered.
CHAPTER 41
Joan
A shadow blocked the morning light on Joan’s face. Her closed lids sensed the change from pink to black, but it didn’t wake her. She hadn’t been sleeping to begin with, even though she’d feigned slumber when Greg came home around 1 A.M. In fact she’d lain awake all night as her unnerving encounter with Isabel Leon looped over and over through her mind.
Now her eyes fluttered open. Greg was standing by her bedside, blocking the window’s rays. He was naked except for a towel around his waist, and despite his exhausted expression, he looked as striking as ever. His face was freshly shaved, and his muscular body smelled of pine. Her first instinct was to reach for him. But her memory pierced a stake through her desire. She stared up at him as if at a stranger.
He put a hand on her shoulder. She stiffened.
“It’s after ten,” he said gently. “You never sleep in this late.”
She pulled the covers up to her chin. “I’m sick,” she mumbled.
She shut her eyes again and rolled away from him.
“Do you want anything?” he asked. “I’m off until tonight, so I can take care of you.”
His tone was so sweet that she felt the sting of tears. How was it possible that her adoring husband, the father of her son, her partner for thirty years, could be involved in anything sinister? It made no sense.
Yet maybe, horrifyingly, she wondered if it did. The act of speculation alone made her feel like a traitor. But if she forced herself to be as objective as any decent journalist, she saw that her reflexive dismissal of his guilt was a defense mechanism. Sometimes it was difficult to acknowledge incongruous facts when they conflicted with the ones you wanted to believe.
Like the fact that his colleagues had seemed ignorant of a dangerous scheme that pitted Greg as the victim of a ruthless investor—even though Greg had told her that this very rumor was swirling around the hospital.
Like the fact that the front window of their new apartment had been smashed in only a few days after their
move. She could accept that someone actively pursuing Greg could have discovered their new address. But now that she was reconsidering everything, an unsettling detail about the incident jumped out at her. There were two windows on either side of their building’s front door. The left one was theirs, apartment 1B, and the right one was their neighbor’s, apartment 1A. Even if a stranger knew their apartment number, how could he have known which window was theirs? They’d never hosted any guests in the new place, not even Adam. So how could anyone but Greg himself know it was that window? Could he have smashed it in? Maybe to scare her away from investigating the truth?
Then there was the fact that they had become flush with cash suddenly about five years ago. At the time, Greg explained the windfall as a boon from the consulting gig he did on the side for a hedge fund. But was there any vaguer job description than consulting? She never drilled him before because the details didn’t interest her. All that mattered then was that he was making good money, better than he’d ever made at the hospital. He didn’t want to leave the ER, though, because he told her he was “a healer” and “his patients needed him.” No matter how rich he got, he wasn’t about to quit his passion. And for that, she’d fallen in love with him a little more.
And what about the so-called fact that he’d sold his life insurance policy to help cover their debts? Sure, when people got desperate, they leveraged every asset they had. In recent months, with the crash of the economy, they’d gotten hit hard enough that the notion of Greg selling his own policy had seemed logical to her.
But now that she was pondering it, she realized he wouldn’t make a very attractive candidate to a buyer. He wasn’t sick or elderly, and his family history was spotless—no cancer, no stroke, no heart disease. He came from hearty Russian peasant stock. Good old-fashioned age had killed his parents in their nineties. With their genes, Greg might live another forty years—not exactly a quick turnaround for an investor. It didn’t take a financial whiz to see that his policy wouldn’t raise much cash.
The more she thought about his claims, the less sense they made. But then what was the root of all the fear and worry he’d been suffering with these past weeks? He acted like he was a target waiting to be attacked. If she knew one thing about him after thirty years, it was how he handled stress. And he was genuinely freaked out.
She uneasily thought back to the incident their son had gotten so bothered by a few years earlier—Greg’s strange outburst of rage when Adam surprised him with a visit to his charity office. It was like he was a different person, Adam had told her at the time—a melodramatic assessment she’d easily shrugged off. But now she wondered: If he wasn’t the person they knew and loved, who was he?
His hand on her forehead startled her out of her thoughts.
“You’re cool as a cucumber,” he said. “Do you feel feverish?”
“Not really,” she muttered. “I just want to go back to sleep.”
“You need fluids. Do you want some tea?”
“Okay.”
“English breakfast with a squirt of lemon and half a Splenda?”
He knew her so damn well. How could she barely know him at all?
“Thanks,” she mumbled into her pillow.
As he headed toward the kitchen at the opposite end of the apartment, she watched his handsome figure recede. A few drops of water from his wet hair trickled down his smooth back. On a normal day, she would have found herself coyly telling him to lose the towel. She liked seeing his naked body across a room, teasing her by staying just out of reach. She liked seeing his crooked smile and the hunger in his eyes when he couldn’t stand it anymore, when he raced over and pinned her to the bed, his mouth on hers.
But today was not a normal day.
There was one more inescapable fact. It was heavy and beautiful, and it was sparkling on her finger. She slipped off the ruby and stared at the date inscribed in the gold band: 7-6-57. That was the day of his parents’ wedding in Lincoln, Nebraska. The ring had to be a family heirloom.
So how in the world could Isabel Leon have known the date?
The ring was “a tool,” she’d said, to catch a violent investor who went by the pseudonym Robbie Merriman. So there really was a dangerous investor out there—and somehow Greg was involved. But maybe not in the way Joan thought. A horrific idea popped into her mind unbidden:
Was it possible that Greg could . . . be Robbie Merriman?
She recalled the terror in Isabel’s face: He buys up life insurance policies and then goes after victims for their death benefits. I was one of them.
But the man she knew was a healer. The man she knew would never hurt anyone.
Unless the man she knew was a lie.
The piece of paper with Isabel’s cryptic phone number was crumpled at the bottom of her purse, though she had the digits memorized. They burned in her mind like a taunt: Do you want the real answers?
There was nothing else she wanted more. But what if they unraveled her life as she knew it? She wanted to save her husband, not lose him. The caring doctor and the doting husband threatened to vanish forever if she called that number.
Maybe it was all a big misunderstanding. Greg would be redeemed, the actual criminal caught, and an explanation found to satisfy all her suspicions.
From the kitchen, she heard the teakettle start to whine. Any minute, he would return with a cup. She needed more time.
“Honey,” she called across the apartment. “Can you make me something to eat?”
He stepped into the living room so she could see him from the bedroom. He had a knife in one hand and half a lemon in the other. The silver blade glistened with droplets of juice.
“Sure,” he said. “Toast with almond butter and some sliced papaya?”
She flashed him a tight smile. It was her favorite breakfast. “Thanks.”
He went back into the kitchen. She heard cabinets opening and closing.
It was now or never. He would be home taking care of her the rest of the day. She hopped out of bed, grabbed her cell phone from the nightstand, and tiptoed into the bathroom.
Then she dialed the digits. She expected to hear Isabel pick up, but instead an older man answered hello. The timbre of his voice was deep and resonant, like a wooden bass.
“This is Joan Hughes,” she said softly. “Isabel Leon gave me this number. I understand you’re investigating my husband?”
“Joan,” the man said. “I’m glad you called. We were hoping you would.”
“I’m ready.” She strained past the lump in her throat. “I want to know the truth.”
CHAPTER 42
Greg
Three more days. That’s all Greg had until Yardley went to the feds. And Isabel—the miraculous survivor—had survived again. She’d escaped the projects unharmed. He could hardly believe his bad luck. Some might call it karma, but he didn’t buy into that mystical crap. This was called getting screwed at the worst possible time. He’d never been more enraged—or afraid—in his life.
He worked on slowing his breath as he buttered Joan’s toast in the kitchen. She was sick in bed today and he was staying home to take care of her until his ER shift in the evening. No doubt her immune system was weakened from all the stress he’d already put her through. God, if she knew what was really happening . . .
After an agonizing night of waiting, he’d finally gotten through to his guys in Harlem. Impossibly, unbelievably, they had gotten the shit kicked out of them by some martial arts–trained asshole who’d shown up in Isabel’s place. Now one of them was in the hospital with a punctured lung, while the other was hurting from a broken nose, two knocked-out teeth, and a scratched cornea. In the meantime, Isabel had disappeared. Even her family down in Key West was gone. They’d left in the middle of the night, despite the threat of the boy’s deportation. The hired thug who’d been watching their house reported that they were hauled away in the back of some slick Dodge Viper that gunned them out of there “faster than a shot out of hell.” The thug
had no chance in his hulking Ford SUV. He’d lost track of them somewhere along the highway.
If only Greg could get rid of Yardley that easily.
As he sliced up a fresh papaya the way Joan liked it, in square chunks, he imagined each cut of the knife sinking into Yardley’s squishy flesh. But that bastard was untouchable. He’d warned that if he or any of his relatives were harmed leading up to the deadline to deliver the money, his lawyer would be prompted to send a sealed letter to the authorities detailing Greg’s fraud.
Sweat was forming on his brow. His mouth was dry and his heart felt like it was beating too hard. He set down the knife and counted a slow inhale. One two three four. Then out. One two three four. He groped for the pillbox he kept hidden at the back of the utensil drawer and popped three Vicodin. Their soothing warmth kicked in after a few minutes.
But his high was an illusion and he knew it.
Now that Isabel was gone, how was he going to find the drug? Without it, he had no chance in hell of raising $3.5 million by Sunday. Slaughtering a bunch of people whose deaths he owned would be far too complicated and messy, not to mention a perversion of his real identity as a healer. Isabel was one thing. She was the golden goose of all his “lives,” and she’d wronged him by cutting off her breasts. Mrs. Ruth Bernstein’s death could also be excused. Old and decrepit, with no one to mourn her, she’d practically been a walking corpse. But killing multiple innocents was taking it too far.
He loaded up a tray with Joan’s toast, tea, and fruit, and carried it in to her, but the bed was empty. She’d gone to the bathroom. He put the tray on her nightstand and waited. A faucet was running. Maybe she was drawing a bath.
Above all else, he wanted to preserve her ignorance so she would never leave him. He wished he could spirit them away to some remote island across the world from the coming explosion. But he was the bomb. No matter where he was, Yardley was going to detonate it and she would discover the truth.
