by Kira Peikoff
There, on the couch, lay his beloved wife—eyes closed, face white, the gun he bought for protection resting in her unmoving palm.
Her nightshirt was soaked through with blood.
CHAPTER 52
Greg
He stared dumbstruck at the screen.
The woman on the couch had Joan’s blond bob and olive skin and delicate bone structure. She had the same brown mole above her lip, the same long eyelashes, the same petite figure. She was even wearing Joan’s favorite silk nightshirt and pajama pants.
But this woman looked dead. This woman could not be Joan.
“Let me see,” Isabel said. Her shoulders wriggled as she tried to free herself from the chair. “What is it?”
He looked up in surprise, having almost forgotten she was there. He blinked. Words deserted him. Sound dimmed and space receded, stranding him on his own silent plane of agony. The unbearable image flashed before his eyes no matter where he looked.
His expression must have revealed the news, because her face crumpled in horror. “No. No.”
He turned the phone to show her.
She let out a cry of anguish. “Oh my God.” Her eyes squeezed shut. “I never should have told her . . .”
A sliver of Greg’s consciousness urged him to go on a rampage, to crush her skull between his bare fists, this stupid bitch who had destroyed everything instead of dying weeks ago like she was supposed to—but he was too shaken to do anything except flip the phone back around to stare at his wife’s lifeless body. The red stain was dark and wet against the soft cloud of her nightshirt. He could almost feel its silk between his fingers, he knew those pajamas so well, had caressed her in them countless times over the years.
Isabel’s lowered chin jerked up. “Let me see that again.”
Too shaken to resist, he obliged. The time warp in his mind was dragging out each moment to an insufferable hell. If only he could call Joan, she would know what to do.
“Closer,” Isabel instructed. He inched the screen toward her face.
She studied it for a few seconds before looking up at him, her eyes suddenly blazing with excitement. “It might not be too late—it looks like she bled out from her stomach, but that could be repaired in surgery if she gets treated in time!”
“In time for what?” he cried. “She’s dead!”
“Yeah”—Isabel flicked her bound ankle at him—“and you’re holding the drug that could save her!”
In his trembling left hand, the clear fluid splashed up the insides of the vial. He gaped at it, and at her. If she was right, then everything he knew about emergency medicine and the permanence of recent death—everything he’d learned thirty years ago in medical school about brain hypoxia and the limited scope of resuscitation—was wrong.
But she had to be right. She herself had survived.
“The X101 stops the death of neurons,” she said, as though reading his mind. “If we can get it to her ASAP she might still have a chance.”
Greg felt his heart banging inside his chest. “Do you just inject it straight into her brain?”
“No, she needs this whole precise protocol, I don’t know all the details, but it involves cooling her body down, detoxifying her blood, injecting lines into her shoulders and knees—”
“But this ER isn’t equipped for that!” he interrupted. “No one will know what to do!”
“It’s okay,” she said, “I can get her to the doctors who saved me. They work on a ship docked in Chelsea Piers. They have everything she needs, including their own ambulance. I can call right now.”
She tried to wrestle her hands free, but they were still tied behind her back.
“What’s the number?” he demanded.
“I have to do the talking,” she said, “or else they won’t cooperate. But first you have to release me.”
In a striking flash of clarity, he saw his life collapse. There was no way he was going to hand over the drug as payment for Yardley now, no way he could escape the wrath of the feds and the inevitable prison sentence. Which meant Isabel’s existence no longer posed a threat. She was beside the point. His freedom was beside the point.
The only point, the only thing that mattered, was Joan.
He reached into the front pouch of his white coat, deposited his phone, and withdrew his sleek little folding knife. Flipping open the sharpest blade, he lunged at Isabel—she gasped in alarm—but he avoided her altogether, slicing instead through the knotted cloth that bound her wrists to the chair.
“Thank you,” she said gratefully, shaking out her arms as he also freed her ankles. “If you let me live, I swear I won’t tell anyone that you’re Robbie Merriman. I just want to go home.”
“It doesn’t matter anymore. It is what it is.” He slipped the knife back into his pocket and shoved the phone at her. “Just make the call.”
She wasted no time getting through to whoever was on the other end, described Joan’s emergency in a few words, and told them to send the ambulance to 214 West 104th Street, apartment 1B, stat.
“I’ll meet you there with it,” she said into the phone. “Yeah, I have it . . . I will.”
When she hung up, she leveled her gaze at the vial in Greg’s left hand. Her tone grew stern. “Be very careful with that. She needs every last drop.”
He tightened his grip around the cool thin glass. Nothing short of an army could make him part with it now. “No shit. Are they coming?”
She nodded. “They’re on their way. Let’s go.”
He turned on his heel and practically sprinted to the door. She trailed behind him, pausing at the threshold to glance back at Richard, who was still fast asleep.
“Come on,” Greg hissed to her. “We have to go.”
They rushed through the empty corridor, down four flights of stairs rather than waiting for the elevator, and out through the lobby into the freezing windy night. He barely felt the cold, but Isabel buried her chin in the collar of her wool coat as he hailed the first yellow taxi that drove by.
She jumped into the backseat and scooted away from him to the far window. He stepped in carefully so as not to jostle the vial too much, even though its cap was tightly secured, and commanded the driver to gun it to his address.
“It’s an emergency,” he panted. “Please, as fast as you can.”
The car zoomed away from the curb. It was after 4 A.M.—the streets were empty except for a few other stray cabs and the streetlights stayed green for an eternity. He and Isabel didn’t trade a single word. Each stared out their respective windows at the dark buildings outside. His own impatience spiked with each passing block.
“I said to hurry,” he snapped to the driver after three minutes. “Come on, man.”
The guy hit the gas and the car accelerated faster up West End Avenue, a straight shot to 104th Street, before finally pulling up next to Greg’s dingy townhouse.
With his free hand, he grabbed a twenty from his wallet and flung it through the gap to the front seat. Then he darted out of the cab and scrambled to his front door, Isabel following a couple steps behind.
“Where’s the ambulance?” he demanded, looking up and down the street.
“I’m sure it’s almost here,” she said. “They’re not that far.”
He unlocked the building’s door, rushed down the short hallway to his apartment, jammed the key into the lock. He felt his throat tighten in anticipation, wasn’t sure he could bear the sight, but knew he had to go in and try to stanch the bleeding, try to stay calm, try not to completely break down . . .
He pushed open the door.
And came face-to-face with a strange, grim man. A man holding out handcuffs.
Behind him, wiping a dark red smear off her stomach, stood Joan.
Joan, on the verge of tears, very much alive.
CHAPTER 53
Isabel
A few feet behind Greg, Isabel watched his final moments of freedom unfold.
He stood rigid in the doorway, still holding
the vial he was so sure was the X101, but was really just 2 milliliters of ice water. Galileo never would have let her remove the real vial from the safety of the ship.
Greg stared at Galileo’s unsmiling face, then at Joan’s. No one moved. The air felt too stifling to breathe. The steady tick of a clock could be heard from somewhere inside the apartment. Each loud second was a testament to Greg’s complete and utter shock. Isabel wondered if he had ever been rendered so speechless in his life.
Galileo stepped forward to cuff him right as he snapped out of his daze and flung up an elbow to delay the inevitable.
“I can’t fucking believe you,” he spat at his wife. “How could you do this to me?”
She looked him straight in the eye, her voice shaking only a little. “I’ve been thinking the exact same thing.”
“But I gave up everything for you!” he cried.
“All right buddy, time’s up.” Galileo advanced, dangling the silver cuffs. At six foot four, in his black trench coat and heavy combat boots, he possessed the severe authority of a general at war. The smile that lived behind his eyes was gone. Isabel had never seen him look so intimidating.
Greg brought the vial close to his chest. “Who the hell are you?”
“I’m the guy taking you into custody.” Galileo clicked open the cuffs. “Thought that was pretty obvious.”
Greg whirled around to face Isabel, still clutching the vial. “You little bitch! You knew the whole time.”
Emboldened by Galileo’s presence, she reached into her wool coat and pulled out the covert wire stuffed into an interior pocket. It wasn’t an actual clumsy wire; Galileo had hooked her up with a more sophisticated device from his time in law enforcement—a radio frequency transmitter with a self-contained wire built into a tiny box with an antenna. The discreet thing was not much bigger than a matchbook. On his end, Galileo had the audio receiver that had recorded her entire confrontation with Greg: His confirmation of his alter ego. His threats to her life and Richard’s. Every last damning word.
She watched the livid realization cross his face. A flush darkened his cheeks, his lips went slack, his nostrils flared. A crazed look crept into his eyes, the look of a man with nothing left to lose. He stumbled back around as Isabel felt her stomach plummet.
She shouted in warning—against what, she didn’t know—just as Greg flung the vial to the ground. The glass shattered at Galileo’s feet, and in the moment that he was distracted, Greg snuck a hand into his white coat and yanked out his folding knife.
Isabel and Joan screamed in unison as Galileo looked up from the broken glass, but it was too late, the razor edge was already tearing through the air, its momentum unstoppable. Galileo had only half a second to register horror before the blade plunged into his stomach. He cried out, doubling over, as Greg withdrew the bloody knife and impaled him once more.
He collapsed to the floor with a sickening grunt.
Greg spun on his heel and ran.
CHAPTER 54
Joan
Joan charged after her husband with a blood-pumping rage she had never before felt. But she had also never witnessed an assault as shockingly brutal. Now the federal agent was sprawled out clutching his abdomen, a dark red stain pooling beneath him, and Greg was storming through the doorway about to barrel past Isabel.
“Stop him!” Joan screamed, three feet behind. “Don’t let him get away!”
But Isabel was already planting herself directly in his path, her pink face scrunched up in fury. With sheer animalistic force, she rammed her knee up between his legs. Greg’s moan was instantaneous. He bent over as his hands flew to his groin. Before he could recover, Joan saw her opportunity.
She grabbed the open handcuffs from the floor where they had fallen, sprung at Greg’s feet, and clicked the cuffs around one hairy white ankle, then the other. By the time he twisted around in surprise, she was rising to face him with the shiny silver key in her hand.
“What the—?” he sputtered.
Joan slapped him so hard that her palm stung. “You’re not going anywhere.”
He tried to lunge at her, but she stepped back and let him trip over his bound-up ankles. With an added shove from Isabel, he crashed to the ground on his hands and knees. He scrambled toward Joan, but Isabel kicked him again in the groin, this time from behind. Grunting, he curled in on himself. Then Isabel and Joan together grabbed his arms and wrenched them behind his back. He flailed against their efforts for thirty seconds before Joan remembered the gun she’d left behind on the couch, a prop for the camera.
She bolted into the living room, got the gun, and ran back into the foyer aiming the barrel at his head. As soon as he saw it, his brows shot up and he immediately ceased struggling. His arms went limp in Isabel’s grip. She shot Joan a look of exhausted gratitude and dashed to the poor injured agent a few feet away.
“If you move,” Joan warned, “I shoot.”
Greg stayed on his stomach and dropped his arms to his sides, lifting his chin off the ground in disbelief. “You wouldn’t.”
She approached him with her index finger on the trigger. “Don’t test me.”
He must have registered the seriousness of her threat because the last shred of defiance vanished from his eyes. He lowered his cheek to the floor.
On the other side of his body, Isabel wiggled out of her wool coat and threw it over his legs to prevent the loss of body heat. At the same time, she was desperately trying to plug the agent’s wounds with her bare hands.
“Get me a phone!” she shouted. “Hurry!”
“I’ll call 911,” Joan said, running backward to grab her cell from the kitchen without taking her eyes—or her aim—off Greg. “Don’t you dare get up,” she warned.
He didn’t.
“No!” Isabel hollered. “Not 911. Just bring me the phone!”
Joan obeyed despite her confusion. There was no time to ask questions. She got her phone and sprinted to Isabel’s side, leaping over Greg on the floor. The poor agent had fallen unconscious. His lips were parted and his face was pale, and the pool of blood beneath him was expanding alarmingly fast. It was seeping into the cracks between the wood panels, staining the knees of Isabel’s jeans, streaking her hands red.
She snatched the phone from Joan and dialed a seven-digit number.
“Get me Theo,” she cried into the mouthpiece. “Put someone else in charge of Chris, it’s an emergency! . . . Hi, no, you need to come right away, Galileo’s been stabbed . . .” She jabbed two fingers against his inner wrist. “Barely . . . Two-fourteen West 104th, 1B. Hurry!”
She set down the phone and returned to trying to stop his bleeding. Without a word, Joan ran into her bathroom and unearthed an old first aid kit from a cabinet. It was ridiculous even to her, but as she was rushing back, all she could think about was how she wished Greg were there to help—the caring, loving Greg he had embodied just for her. He was an ER physician—he would know what to do—but the real Greg remained inert on the ground, silent but watchful, his mouth a thin mean line.
That was when she realized he had never really given a damn about his suffering patients. He was no healer. He didn’t care whether they lived or died. He only pretended to care. And she’d fallen for it. She’d fallen in love with a lie. On her way past him, she restrained herself from spraying a gob of saliva at his face. Her spit was too good for him.
Instead she crouched beside Isabel, opened the first aid kit, and removed a hunk of gauze. It wasn’t much, but she handed it over and Isabel pressed it against the bigger wound. The blood soaked through it in less than two minutes.
“Shouldn’t we call 911?” Joan said. “I mean, he needs to get to a hospital . . .”
Isabel shook her head, trading out the drenched gauze for a new piece. “He will.”
“He will?”
“Yeah.” She hesitated. “He belongs to a . . . group with special facilities. Trust me, it’s better than what he would get otherwise.”
“Oh. Is it
just for top brass or something? He told me he was an undercover agent, but I got the sense that he’s someone really high up.”
Isabel gave a cryptic shrug. “Something like that.”
Joan could see she was trying not to cry, so she quit asking.
Isabel grabbed his wrist again. “His pulse is so faint.”
“How many beats per minute? Here—” Joan held up her wristwatch with its ticking second hand. Isabel stared at it as she counted silently for a minute.
Then, her voice trembling: “I think around twenty-one.”
Right at that moment, they heard the distant wail of an ambulance. Both of them tensed, listening, hoping it was the right one. And sure enough, the siren got louder and louder until it pulled up to the curb outside, lighting up the street blue and red.
“Thank God,” Isabel said. She was still pressing the hopeless gauze against his abdomen. Blood was dripping from her wrists.
Joan jumped to the front window to see two somber men approach the building with a stretcher. She buzzed them in and threw open her apartment door.
“In here,” she called to them.
They ran inside as Isabel stood up to move out of their way. The second they spotted him, limp and unconscious in a frightening amount of blood, their mouths fell open. But after a split second, their professional efficiency resumed—they sprung into action and lifted him carefully up onto the stretcher. As they maneuvered him through the doorway, the audio receiver fell out of his trench coat. The proof of Greg’s monstrousness.
Joan picked it up. “I’ll give this to the cops,” she promised Isabel, who was following in the hallway behind them.
She looked over her shoulder at Joan. “You can take it from here?”
“Yep.” Joan waved her off. “You go ahead.”
“Thank you,” she said. Then she turned and fled to the stretcher and out onto the sidewalk. In a matter of seconds, the ambulance and its flashing lights were gone.
Joan went back inside, almost surprised to notice that the gun was still in her hand. Greg hadn’t moved. She shut the door and walked in front of him so he could see her with it, in case he decided to try anything stupid. But he seemed to have given up.
