by Diane Noble
He turned to her, hands outstretched in supplication. “Honey, you don’t know how to shoot a gun. Who do you think you’re trying to scare with that thing?”
“You don’t think my gramps taught me how to shoot?” She smiled at him. “One more step, and I’ll show you.” She waved the gun again.
She looked brave, but I could see her knees shaking. No doubt Baptiste saw it too.
“You’ve got my gun, an automatic,” he said, “and you’ve probably never seen a gun like that.” He took another step closer. “And you’ve never shot a man. I don’t think you’ve got the guts to pull the trigger. “
Zoë hesitated, a quick frown crossing her brow. In the silence I thought I heard a noise. At first I could barely make it out, then the noise grew louder.
Neither Zoë nor Baptiste seemed aware of it. They stared at each other as Baptiste moved closer. Step by step, cautious at first, then with more confidence, he moved toward her.
“Get back! I’m warning you. I’ll shoot.” The hand holding the gun trembled. Tears trailed down her cheeks. “Get back!”
Baptiste lunged for her, and time seemed suspended.
They struggled. I heard Zoë cry out. Baptiste grunted. Then the gun went off, with a concussion that made me jump.
It echoed through the night.
Then all was quiet. I stared, afraid to move. Afraid to breathe. Two bodies down. A cry. A moan. And blood. Too much blood.
I ran to Zoë and knelt beside her. Sobbing, she threw herself into my arms.
Just then a jackhammering whump seemed to rise up from the sea behind us.
I wrapped Zoë in my arms as the helicopter landed. The troops rolled out. FBI, Interpol, or Costa Rican law enforcement? I couldn’t tell in the dark. And it didn’t matter.
Monica Oliverio, in full uniform, ran toward us. Immediately behind her was a couple I assumed to be Kate’s parents. And Tangi Lowe. The troops spread out across the compound.
Monica knelt by Baptiste’s body, looked at the sobbing Zoë, then met my eyes. “The girls are here?”
The others waited expectantly.
“Yes,” I said. “Inside, through the double doors, and down the hallway. First two doors on your left. They’ve been sedated, and they’re extremely weak, but they are alive.”
Tangi started to go, then turned, knelt down and wrapped her arms around both Zoë and me. “Thank you,” she said.
“You’d better get in there. I think Carly’s expecting you.”
She grinned, blew me a kiss with both hands, and ran for the hangar.
The following morning I was just beginning to pack my Underwood in its hard case when I was interrupted by a knock on my stateroom door.
It was Max.
“Hey, bud.”
“Ms. M.” He smiled. “You okay?”
“None the worse for wear. How about you? Did they hurt you?”
He shook his head and plopped down on the little sofa. “A bit of duct tape here and there, nothing serious. I could’ve taken the guy, but the others helping him surprised me. After the accident and all …”
“By the way, if Baptiste’s thugs nabbed you before you reached Monica Oliverio, how did you get word to them about where I’d gone?”
He grinned. “I have my ways.”
“Seriously.”
“I had a backup plan, thanks to Chip.”
“Chip helped you?”
“He didn’t know he did. He was hangin’ with Zoë at the Clipper when I got back to the ship. Showing off a satellite phone he’d ripped off from somebody in Playa Negra. It was cool—did everything from—”
“Hey, back to the story,” I said.
He laughed. “I sort of borrowed it from his backpack before Zoë and I left for port. Neither of them knew I had it.” He shrugged. “With my luck these past few days, and knowing you had something big planned, I thought it’d be a good idea to have it along. As soon as you took off, I got through to some main number for Interpol. Said it was an emergency. They connected me to Monica.”
“You’re a good guy, Max. You saved some lives yesterday.”
“Aw shucks,” he said, his cheeks coloring. Then he looked up. “How’s Zoë? She’s been through a lot.”
“She’s been taken into custody and will eventually be returned to the States for trial.” I told him what Baptiste had told me about the donor list and the chilling reasons for the abductions.
Max looked down. “I’m as guilty as anyone. It’s cool to come up with barbs—the crueler, the funnier. I’m pretty bummed about my part in all this.”
“Maybe you should talk to Zoë, tell her how you feel. She’s an emotionally disturbed young woman with a lot of years of recovery ahead. It might help her to hear how you feel. Nicolette, too, if she regains consciousness. But I think this would have happened anyway even if you and the other kids hadn’t done what you did. What began as honest, ethical research had become a megalomaniac’s personal vendetta and experimental lab. He was using human beings instead of mice.”
“Do you think he really was close to a cure?”
“Someday we may find out. I’m not sure who will end up with Baptiste’s research. There may be years of litigation over this. Whatever’s on his computers and in his files may never be read—or used—by other scientists and verified.”
Max took a deep breath. “Meanwhile, little kids die—like the boy at La Vida Pura. What if Baptiste was close? He kept saying he was days away from a cure. What if he was telling the truth?”
I felt the sting of tears and looked away. “Research is going on in other places. South Korea, Europe. I hope researchers who have been following Baptiste’s work will fight to get the records released.”
“That’ll take years.”
“I know.” It was another of those sorrowful things I would push into those hidden places in my heart, but someday—and probably, often—it would hit me afresh: What would’ve happened if I’d waited just a few weeks before blowing the whistle on Baptiste?
I might be standing at my sink washing dishes, walking down the frozen foods aisle to reach for a box of éclairs, or sitting in my Chevrolet at a long stoplight, but I knew my tears would flow again. I had caught a glimpse of him only once—and that was from a distance. But now every time I saw a thin little boy with a shock of blond hair, I would think of Erik. His image was tucked permanently in my heart.
“What about La Vida Pura? Do you think Nolan had any connection to Baptiste?”
“We can assume from what we overheard that Nolan has funded some of Baptiste’s research. Though because of Nolan’s financial difficulties, I wonder if even that was about to come to an end.”
I reflected for a moment on the good Baptiste had set out to do before power and ego got in the way. “We’ve got to remember—even in light of the tragedy here—there is great hope in scientific research conducted in view of the public. But it’s got to be subject to peer review, to the ethical safeguards medical science has set up. I was reading somewhere recently about pluripotent stem cells …”
Max leaned forward, elbows on his knees, hands dangling. His eyes weren’t quite glazed over, but I could tell I’d lost him somewhere between peer review and pluripotent.
“Well, hey, I’m just glad it’s over,” Max said. He paused. “What about the captain? Did he ever apologize?”
I laughed. “You should have heard him. As soon as I boarded, he made a beeline to intercept me. No summons to the bridge this time. And he couldn’t have been nicer, bless his heart.”
Max grinned. “Bless his heart?”
“Oh yes. He’s offered me free passage on any of his ships, any line he might work for, at any time.” I laughed again. “His reputation is pretty shaky in the industry already, and after the cruise being scrutinized by every media outlet around the globe, I have to wonder if he’ll ever get another job as captain.”
“How will you handle the review for your article?”
“With humor and grace, of course!�
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Another knock interrupted us. Max jumped up to get the door.
It was Price, smiling sheepishly. Behind him stood the couples who had gone with us to La Vida Pura—the Doyles, the Browns, and the Quilps.
“You all think you’re going to fit in here?” I laughed and stood back to let them in.
“It’s a party!” Ed Brown declared in his inimitable Oklahoma accent. He held up a bottle of sparkling cider. Behind him, his wife, Betty, was carrying a plate of hors d’oeuvres that looked suspiciously like little balls of SPAM scattered among sliced cucumbers, celery, cherry tomatoes, and mushrooms. “Just a little something to say we’re sorry you’re leaving the ship early.”
“Thank you, but I’ve got plenty of material for my article. It’s time to go home.”
“Of course we don’t know the half of all you were involved in,” Barbara said, “I would bet the rest of the cruise will be pretty boring.” She bit into a SPAM ball and frowned. “I bet this would be better rolled in caviar.”
“Boring is good,” Don Doyle said. “And you’re right about the caviar.” He reached for a cherry tomato.
Price took a sip of cider and watched me over the rim of the paper cup.
I gave him a playful punch on the arm. “Hey, bud, I haven’t seen you around. You only got in on half the excitement—our first foray into the life of crime.” I told the Doyles, Browns, and Quilps about the boys getting me to shore in the purloined kayaks and then to La Vida Pura in a “borrowed” police SUV.
“Hunh,” Adele Quilp said.
Orris squinted, speared a piece of SPAM with a celery stick, then popped it into his mouth.
“Speaking of boring. Here we thought you were a boring travel writer, not one primed for a life of crime,” Betty Brown said with a laugh. “We should’ve been hanging around you, girl. It would have been much more exciting than being trapped on this ship.”
“We even went into town to shop for the chef’s vegetables,” Max said. “Though now I kinda miss the SPAM sandwiches.”
“Have an hors d’oeuvre,” Barbara said, handing him the platter. Behind her, Ed poured the sparkling cider into paper cups, then handed them around.
“To the best travel writer I’ve ever met,” Ed said, holding up his drink.
“To the only travel writer we’ve ever met,” Betty said, bumping her cup against mine.
“And to the girls whose lives you saved,” Barbara added solemnly.
Don lifted his cup toward mine. “To following your heart no matter how rough the seas. There are some happy parents tonight who are glad you did.”
They all cheered, and I looked at Price, who had been abnormally quiet since entering the room. “So what’ve you been up to, bud? I got sort of used to having you around, paddling for me, that sort of thing, during our crime spree.”
He shrugged. “Homework. Papers due for my onboard classes, that sort of thing.” He paused, looking at Gus’s feeders, which I hadn’t yet packed. He frowned at me. “Hey, did your cat ever come back?”
The pain was still fresh and almost took my breath away. “No. It’s one of those unsolved mysteries.” I explained to the others the circumstances surrounding Gus’s disappearance. “I thought it might have been one of the students, maybe someone whose toes I’d stepped on.” I glanced pointedly at Price, but he didn’t react.
Across the room, Ed Brown gasped. “You lost a cat, darlin’?”
“Yes, I did. A big gray tabby with Elizabeth Taylor eyes.”
“Violet eyes?” Adele Quilp said. “Really?”
“I meant the eyeliner she wore as Cleopatra.”
“Oh, darlin’,” Ed said again and stood, looking stricken. “I’ve got something I need to show you.” He headed to the door. “Now, don’t you move. I’ll be right back.”
I heard a sound outside my stateroom almost before I could wonder. The door opened only wide enough for something small to squeeze through. I didn’t dare hope. I didn’t dare look. I almost turned away.
It couldn’t be.
I stood and moved around the bed where I could better see what had just entered my room. And I held my breath.
A gray, black, white, and rust tabby entered, sat down, and washed his foot. Gus obviously wasn’t as ecstatic about his reentry into my life as I was. With a yelp, I ran to him and scooped him up.
Of course, cats being cats, he would have none of the hugs-and-kisses business. He squirmed to get down, cast a superior look at the others in the room as he headed to his feeders, tail waving elegantly. He sat, his back to me, in front of his empty dish. Waiting.
He’d trained me well. I rummaged around for the bag of sensitive-stomach cat food, poured some in, and waited to see him dive in.
Gus just sat there staring at the dish.
Meanwhile Ed told me how he’d found Gus meowing outside their stateroom several days earlier. He brought him in and fed him scraps from the kitchen, thinking he was the ship’s mouser. Gus had occupied his days outside the stateroom, then showed up every evening for dinner. I tried not to feel jealous.
Gus sauntered over to his dish, took one sniff of the cat food, and walked away, his nose in the air, his tail swishing.
“He seems to prefer SPAM,” Ed said.
When the room was empty, I scooped Gus into my arms and went to stand by the window. Now that I was alone, a strange sense of something unfinished, something I’d overlooked, nipped at the edges of my mind. I should have felt elated that Baptiste was out of the picture, that the girls were safe and getting the medical help they needed. But instead it was as if something I hadn’t thought of, something I’d missed, was out there, lurking, waiting for me.
Gus purred, and I laughed at myself. I was getting a bit barmy after all. Obviously my overactive imagination, probably because of the excitement and dangers of the past few days, had put my emotions off kilter. It would just take time for me to recover.
I stared out at the harbor. In the distance the tall and beautiful silhouette of Lorenzo Nolan’s yacht caught my attention. From here it looked like a toy rather than the magnificent vessel it was. I wondered about the child and his mother, about Lorenzo himself, the billionaire who was about to lose his empire.
Lose his empire? My breath caught as I remembered the conversation between Nolan and Baptiste that night in the clinic. Baptiste had made reference to funding from Nolan. If Nolan poured money into Baptiste’s research, he’d be looking for more than a cure for his girlfriend’s child, more than the profits that might be had from a cure for CML. To bring the kind of money he needed into his coffers, it had to be something bigger. Much bigger.
I stared at the distant yacht, possibilities flying into my mind.
The dangerous game wasn’t yet over.
At two o’clock I boarded the tender, accompanied by Max who was heading to the airport to meet his parents. Gus was beside me, protesting the hated carrier.
“How do you think Gus got out?”
“Pretty ordinary escape,” I said. “I think maybe the cabin attendant left the door open and turned her back just long enough for him to make a run for it. I don’t know why she didn’t lock up when she finished with my room. Maybe she thought the cat might return.”
We spoke of the remaining days of the cruise, the interruption of coursework, how Shepparton was going to handle the demands for refunds, and the inquiry into Baptiste’s connection with the school.
“My dad’s already talking about me transferring to Florida State next semester.”
“What about you? What do you want to do?”
“I’m still crazy about science—oceanography—and Shepparton’s got a strong program. There are some good people there in spite of this bad publicity Dr. Baptiste has created.” He shook his head. “He was such a cool guy. Who would ever have known?”
“The first recorded blood transfusion—in 1492—was performed on Pope Innocent VII. The blood of three healthy little boys was transfused into the dying pope. The child
ren and the pope died not long after.” We were just pulling up to the wharf, and I paused while the pilot bumped against the siding and tossed the rope to the crew member assisting him. As soon as the tender was secure, I stood and picked up Gus’s carrier. “Guess what the doctor’s given name was?”
Max shook his head as he gathered up my typewriter case and duffle.
“Jean Baptiste.”
“You’re kidding. How do you know?”
I laughed. “Just one of the bits of trivia that has stuck with me.”
We stepped onto the wharf. I tipped the pilot, then looked around for a taxi. Max hailed one that was parked up the street, and a few minutes later we were settled into the backseat, Gus’s carrier between us.
Max looked across at me. “Do you think our Baptiste is related?”
“It was a given name. The last name was Denis—so no relation. I suspect he assumed the name after he went into the field of hematology.”
The cabby drove slowly through Playa Negra, dodging media vans and pedestrian gawkers. With the breaking news from the night before, many stations were giving minute-by-minute updates. Portable satellite dishes—three times as many as before—seemed to have sprouted up like oversize mushrooms after a rain.
“To the hospital,” I called to the taxi driver.
Around us the usual sounds of the bustling seaside village filled the air along with the underlying whine of motorbikes. I shuddered at the memory of my close call with the butterfly bearer on this same street.
Minutes later the taxi pulled up in front of the hospital. I headed to ICU and looked in. My heart caught. Adam’s bed was empty. I almost ran back to the nurses’ station.
“Adam Hartsfield? Can you tell me, por favor, where he is located?”
The nurse smiled and beckoned for me to follow her. Moments later I was shown to the door of a room on the second floor.
“Adam?” I whispered from the doorway.
His bed was elevated, and he was sipping water through a straw. He turned toward me and gave me a weak smile as I entered the room.
“Welcome back,” I said.
“It’s good to be back.” His voice was raspy and soft, as if it was too great an effort to speak.
