by Kira Peikoff
“Oh, no. I’ve been married to his mom, Natalie, for a decade. She’s a scientist, too.”
“Is she on board?” Isabel mentally scanned through the female researchers on the ship, but none of them struck her as charismatic or sexy enough to attract a man like Galileo.
“Unfortunately not,” he said. “She’s working at a chimp facility in Namibia at the moment. We were planning to set sail there before we met you.” There was no resentment in his voice—just matter-of-factness. “So, a slight detour for now.”
“Oh my God!” she exclaimed. “I totally forgot to ask about your meeting with Joan earlier. How did—”
Just then Richard’s blue curtain whipped back and out stepped Dr. Reynolds, a slight wisp of a man whose tortoiseshell glasses covered half his face. He pushed them up on his nose as he walked toward her and Galileo. On the narrow bed behind him, Richard was sitting up, swinging his legs to the floor. His left eye was covered by a taped piece of gauze. When he refused to look over at her, she knew the news was bad.
Dr. Reynolds grimly pressed his lips together, then addressed Galileo. “The repeated blows to his eye caused his retina to detach. Unless he undergoes emergency surgery in the next few hours, his blindness will be permanent.”
“So what are we waiting for?” she demanded. “The ORs are empty.”
The doctor shifted his gaze to her. “I’m not a retinal surgeon. He needs a specialized procedure to implement a piece of silicon called a scleral buckle around his eyeball. He has to get to an outside hospital—and the closer it is, the better, so we don’t waste time.”
Isabel sprinted to Richard’s bedside and pulled him to his feet. “Let’s go! Come on.”
He rose unsteadily. She could tell the news had left him stupefied. Another surgery, another recovery. A chance of lost vision for life. No wonder he seemed so reluctant to put one foot in front of the other.
Galileo’s commanding voice filled the space. “I’ll have Theo escort you to the nearest hospital in midtown. We’ll get the ambulance ready right now.”
Isabel shot him a grateful look as Richard stopped short, turning to her.
“You stay here. You’ve been through enough for one night.”
“No way. I’m not leaving you.”
His one good eye blinked rapidly. “I’m going straight into surgery anyway. You can come in the morning after you get some rest.” He kissed the top of her head. “Stay. You’re safe here now.”
His firmness left her no room to argue. She stood rooted to the spot as he approached Galileo and Dr. Reynolds. “Here I am,” he said. “Take me away.”
They guided him urgently toward the stairwell.
“First thing in the morning,” she called. “I’ll be there.”
But she couldn’t shake her unease as she watched him slip out the door.
CHAPTER 48
Greg
Greg stormed into the empty on-call room and locked the door. It was impossible to concentrate on his patients after the outrageous scene he’d witnessed over video call. Chris Donovan, his eleventh-hour godsend, protégé of freaking Horatio Quinn, had almost done away with Isabel Leon at last—and delivered the priceless vial that would solve everything.
How had it all gone so wrong, so fast? One minute Chris’s hands were around her neck, and the next he was fighting off some furious intruder, then being wrestled to the ground by a couple of other assholes. Meanwhile, Isabel—living, breathing, two-million-dollar-payout Isabel—watched it all go down from the safety of a corner. Greg saw her on her knees gulping large quantities of air. Then his screen had gone dark. Call ended, read the display . No shit. It wasn’t the only thing ending, either.
He slammed his palm against the wall of the on-call room hard enough to dent it. He didn’t care that he was out of control, that four Vicodin hadn’t even dimmed the edges of his rising panic. He felt nothing but the urge to annihilate. Period. Who or what didn’t matter. In a few short days, Ellis Yardley was going to turn him in anyway, and after that, his glorious future awaited. Jail, disgrace, divorce.
Someone outside the door jiggled the knob.
“Hello?” a woman called. “Everything okay in there?”
“Fine,” Greg yelled. “Be out in a minute.”
He recognized her voice as one of the pathetic nurses who always flirted with him. He waited for her footsteps to recede before plunking down on a cot to catch his breath. His fingers tingled with the desire to inflict pain. He knew he had to calm down. The edge of his willpower was eroding—the edge past which his temptations threatened to overpower his rational mind. Then it was all too easy to get sucked into the black hole of his darkest urges. After that, the ugliness inside his core, the rotted part he tried so hard to control, would inevitably burst forth. And then there was no going back. It was frightening to suspect what horror you were capable of—but it was worse not to know at all.
An officious knock on the door came, three loud raps, just as a man’s voice barked: “This room isn’t supposed to be locked.”
Jesus Christ. It was Yardley. His Long Island accent was as grating as his tone.
“I’m busy,” Greg called back. It was almost 3 A.M. The ER was practically deserted, most of the doctors already gone for the night. Plus he was the attending physician. He could lock whatever damn door he pleased.
“Open up!” Three more sharp raps. “Come on, I need to get in there.”
Greg glanced around at the uncomfortable bunk beds, the wicker hamper, the closet filled with clean scrubs, the full-length mirror hanging on the back of the door. There was no way to escape without facing the person he hated most. He stood, ignoring the sight of himself in the mirror, and unlocked the door.
Yardley pulled it open. His pudgy face always reminded Greg of an allergic reaction to a bee sting—his fleshy cheeks appeared inflated, with his eyes, nose, and mouth clustered in the middle. When he saw Greg, his lips edged down.
“I thought that was you.”
No sudden moves, Greg reminded himself. He just had to concentrate on exiting smoothly. Then, after checking on the new admits, he could go home.
“Excuse me,” Yardley said, setting foot in the doorway. “I need to change.” He was wearing a pair of teal scrubs and shoe covers, a surgical mask that dangled around his neck, and a white paper cap over his hair. Greg was still in his scrubs, too, underneath his white coat, but he wasn’t about to hang around changing now.
He stepped aside. “Go ahead.” He unclenched his fists, remembering to breathe.
Yardley strolled past him inside as his obnoxious voice filled the room.
“It’s no use, you know. I’ve already made up my mind.”
Greg closed the door and leaned against it. “What do you mean?”
“I know I gave you ’til Monday, but I’ve waited long enough.” Yardley turned around to glare at him. “I’m calling the feds first thing in the morning.”
“But it’s only Friday! You have to give me the weekend!”
“For what? To bang your wife one last time?”
Greg dug his nails into the door. It took every ounce of his self-control not to smash that fat face into an unrecognizable pulp.
His voice came out like a growl. “To come up with the money.”
“If you haven’t by now, you’re not going to. It’s over.” Yardley snapped his fingers. “Say your good-byes.”
“You little—”
“You did this to yourself, Greg.” Yardley held up his hands as if to absolve himself of responsibility. “You stole our money. I have no other choice.”
The worst part was that he was right. If their roles were reversed, Greg would be lording the same punishment over him. But still, he couldn’t bear the smug bastard’s presence a second longer. Without another word, he walked out and slammed the door behind him. His shift was almost finished. It had been a quiet night—only a few broken bones, two sets of stitches, one nonfatal heart attack, a hypochondriac with a rash. A
s long as there were no new patients needing his attention, he could turn over the reins to the overnight staff and get out of there. If this really was his final night of freedom, he wanted to hightail it to Joan’s side. He would spend every last hour with her until they hauled him away.
A pit stop at the reception desk near the front of the ER supplied him with a list of all the patients who had been admitted in the last several hours. He scanned the spreadsheet of their names, ages, insurance types, and complaints. One line immediately popped out at him: Richard Barnett, forty-three, Blue Cross, retinal detachment.
Richard Barnett.
Greg quickly thought back to the scene he’d witnessed over the video call: Isabel being rescued by a furious man. A man Chris had punched in the eye. And Isabel had come up to New York from Florida with Richard Barnett to deliver the ruby ring.
This patient had to be him. It made too much sense not to be. Roosevelt was the only full-service hospital on the West Side between lower Manhattan and Columbia Presbyterian, all the way uptown. If his injury had occurred anywhere in the vicinity, he would have been rushed here.
Greg stared at the spreadsheet. According to the notes, he’d been admitted an hour and twenty minutes earlier, then undergone emergency surgery. The gold standard treatment for a retinal detachment, a scleral buckle implantation, usually took about an hour barring complications. That meant Richard ought to done in the operating room. He was probably already in recovery. If he’d been accompanied by Isabel, then she could be nearby, too.
Greg’s heart kicked against his ribs. The tingling feeling crept back into his fingertips. He still owned both of their deaths. A total of $3 million in cash payouts. But of course, he owed more than that to Yardley—$4.5 million. Even if he did manage to come up with a good chunk of the money, he knew Yardley wouldn’t be satisfied.
At its core, their dispute wasn’t over the stolen cash. It was over Greg’s act of betrayal. So the restitution had to be all or nothing—and all meant not only offering every penny of reimbursement, but also suffering some excruciating loss of his own. Yardley wanted to feel that he was digging a spur into Greg’s chest before he walked away on top.
Greg could think of no better way to offer him that triumph than to hand over a vial of Horatio Quinn’s famed wonder drug, losing all chance of profiting off it himself. Yardley would understand that the currency of defeating death was worth a hell of a lot more than a few million bucks.
If he could somehow still get his hands on it . . .
A brazen last-ditch plan came together in his mind. He signed out of his shift and wished the receptionist a good night. Then he started toward the door that led to the waiting area and the exit, before stopping with his hand on his backpack.
“Forgot something,” he announced.
The receptionist, a sour woman who presided over her glassed-in station like a police chief, nodded him back toward the interior hallway. Through there, he could access any of the hospital’s multiple wings. He smiled at her and walked quickly to the elevator banks, his rubber soles squeaking over the floor. No one else was around. It was 3:03 A.M.
He took the elevator to the fourth floor, where the post-op outpatients temporarily went to recover after their surgeries. From there, they were monitored for a period of time before being checked out or admitted for longer stays. Because it was the middle of the night, Richard would likely be admitted for a few hours until morning, when the retinal surgeon would return to assess his condition before signing his release.
The fourth floor consisted of a long antiseptic walkway with beds on either side separated by thin paper curtains. Each bed was surrounded by a constellation of beeping machines and flashing displays, so walking down the unit was a little like a tour through a depressing casino, except here the game being played was survival. Everyone was a gambler; some just had better odds than others.
Greg marched up and down, but didn’t recognize Richard in any of the beds. He went up to a harried-looking nurse who was tending to paperwork and asked after his whereabouts.
“Richard Barnett?” she said, consulting a chart. “They just moved him out of recovery. He’s been admitted overnight for observation.”
“So he’s in his own room?”
“Number 403.”
He flashed her a gracious smile. “Thanks.”
Then he strode purposefully down the hallway as though he were still on duty. None of the nurses paid him any attention. Doctors of all specialties came to follow up on post-op patients regularly, so his presence on the floor raised no red flags.
He slipped into room 403 and closed the door. There, in a narrow bed in the center of the tiny room, lay Richard Barnett. Alone. Greg recognized him right away from the video: his lanky arms and legs, his prominent nose and close-cropped blond hair.
He was sleeping on his back with his mouth partly open, an IV stuck in his inner elbow, and a thick gauze bandage covering his left eye from his cheek to his hairline. A square monitor beeped by his side, displaying his blood pressure and oxygen saturation. The numbers looked solid. He didn’t wake when Greg approached his side. The powerful sedatives from his surgery were still wearing off. The curious thing about those particular drugs—benzodiazepines plus Demerol—was that they had an amnesia effect; patients under their spell remembered nothing afterward.
Greg smiled down at him. There was a time not that long ago when they had spoken on the phone regularly, though they’d never met in person until now. Greg had even come to respect him. Like any good broker, he drove a hard bargain for his life settlement clients, but he also played straight and fair. Negotiating deals together was a dance they had come to perfect over the years, like longtime partners who knew exactly when to lead and when to step back. Greg was almost sorry their first meeting was happening this way. Almost.
He walked up to the room’s only window and peered out over a dark side street. Then he unzipped his private cell phone from his backpack and dialed the number Richard had given him days earlier to confirm the ring transaction. Greg wondered who, if anyone, would answer the line this time—and if that person could get a message to Isabel.
It rang twice before a man answered sounding surprised. “Hello?”
“This is Robbie Merriman,” he said. “I’m calling for Isabel Leon.”
“What the hell do you want?”
“I want to talk to her about Richard Barnett. It’s urgent.”
There was a long pause. Greg heard a rustling noise and some static, then Isabel’s tentative voice came on the line. “Hello?”
“Isabel,” he said. “A pleasure as always.”
She said nothing. He went on.
“Richard’s nice and sleepy. But if you don’t want him to get too sleepy, then listen up. You’re going to follow my directions.”
Still she said nothing. “You there?” he snapped. “I’m not screwing around.”
“I’m here,” she said softly.
“Good. As soon as we hang up, you’re going to come to Richard’s hospital room at Roosevelt, number 403, and you’re going to bring the vial of Horatio Quinn’s drug. Chris had it on him two hours ago, so you must know where it is now. Then you’re going to leave it in his room. A drop of it will be tested, so don’t even think about bullshitting this.”
“How?” she demanded.
“Your friend Chris shared his little demonstration with the heated flask of hydrogen peroxide and sulfuric acid. If you think those chemicals aren’t all over a hospital, think again.”
She didn’t respond, but he could hear her breathing.
“If the flask doesn’t turn black,” he said, “then Richard will get a little too much painkiller in his IV. So think very, very carefully about your next move.”
“You can’t!” she screamed. “I’ll call the police, you’ll be arrested!”
“Who will?” he said calmly. “A voice on the phone?”
Again the line went silent.
“I’m hanging
up,” he said. “You have thirty minutes. Starting now.”
CHAPTER 49
Joan
Joan could hardly believe what her own hands were doing. She watched with a surreal sense of detachment as they opened her closet door and pushed aside the beautiful skirts and dresses she would never wear again. She crouched beneath their silk hems and groped in the darkness for the safe.
Her ruby ring knocked against it. She felt along its cool surface for the keypad. Its four-digit code made her cringe: it was the date of her and Greg’s engagement in Central Park thirty-one long years ago. She could still feel the tickle of the grass on her ankles and the way her heart sped up the moment he dropped to one knee. Now her heart was thumping just as fast, but for a very different reason.
The door of the safe popped open. She reached inside and withdrew the .38 semiautomatic pistol Greg had bought after their window got smashed in. She’d never shot a gun before, but he’d shown her how to rack the slide to chamber the first round if the time came. Its metal heft felt solid and powerful in her palm. A feeling of disbelief overwhelmed her as she gripped the handle. Was she really going to do this?
But Greg had left her no choice. The only way through was out.
She tried not to imagine his reaction when he came home from his shift to find her. It was already after 3 A.M. and he wasn’t back yet. The shock alone might inflict permanent damage on his psyche. But his well-being was no longer her concern. She couldn’t go on telling herself lies about his innocence. Hope to the doomed was nothing but cruel self-denial.
She walked in a daze to the living room and lay down on the couch. Her sweaty fingers clutched the shaft of the gun. Closing her eyes, she lifted up her nightshirt and pressed the cold barrel into her abdomen. The second it touched her skin, her entire body stiffened. She opened her eyes, breathing hard.
In the corner of the ceiling she spied the camera bulb they’d installed to bolster their security system after the window incident. Except for the bulb’s dull glass eye, she was alone. She thought of broken promises, of justice and deliverance.
