by Kira Peikoff
“I’m okay, Dad. It’s okay.”
Her mother kissed her forehead, clutching her hand. “Is it really you?”
Zoe smiled, seeing she had to be the strong one. “It’s me. I’m home.”
They looked older than she remembered. Her mother’s face was lined and drawn, and the creases around her father’s eyes had deepened.
“Thank you so much,” he told the cop. “You have no idea how grateful we are.”
“Just doing my job, sir,” he said, giving a little bow. “You all take care now.”
As soon as they closed the door behind him, Zoe turned to her parents in the foyer and braced herself. The truth had to be stated. There was no time like the present.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I put you through hell and I feel terrible, but I chose to go. I was never kidnapped, and I was never harmed. I didn’t tell you because I knew you wouldn’t understand.”
Her parents exchanged glances, and then her father surprised her by taking her hand. “It’s our fault, too,” he said. “We were treating you like a child.”
“That wasn’t fair of us,” her mom said. “We promised ourselves that if we ever saw you again”—her eyes watered—“well, we’d do things over. We’d let you run your own life.”
Her mom’s gaze wandered to the stack of newspaper clippings on the hall table, and Zoe inferred from a few of the headlines that they were all stories about her disappearance. A fresh wave of guilt choked her up, but her mom quelled it with a tender smile.
“All that matters is that you’re home,” she said, as though reading her daughter’s mind. “From now on, we never want you to feel like you can’t talk to us.”
She looked back and forth between them, her mouth hanging open. “Seriously?”
They both nodded.
“You’re the boss,” called a gruff voice behind them.
She felt her heart leap into her throat. Her parents stepped aside.
There, leaning heavily on his cane, stood Gramps. His hair was thinner, the bags under his eyes darker, his wrinkles deeper—but an ecstatic smile was plastered across his face.
“C’mere, sweetheart.”
She dropped her backpack and ran to him, choking down a sob. The fresh lemon scent of his soap filled her nostrils as she threw her arms around his gaunt frame. “I thought you were gone!” she cried, then lowered her voice. “I tried to send you a letter.”
“Oh, I had quite the adventure myself,” he whispered. “Want to take a walk?”
She turned back to her parents, who were holding hands, unable to stop smiling. “We’re going to go outside for a bit,” she said. “I need some fresh air.”
“Whatever you want,” her dad said.
She linked her arm through Gramps’s. “We’ll be back soon.”
It took him longer than usual to walk the few blocks to Riverside Park, but she was happy to go as slow as he needed. There was no rush.
“I was worried sick,” she admitted once they were outside. “Where were you?”
“That makes two of us. I went after you.”
“You what?”
“I didn’t know if these folks in the Network were safe—I knew you trusted them, but how would I know? The media was making such a fuss about you being kidnapped, so I started to doubt them. Then your parents and I had this big fight—they thought I had something to do with it—so I . . . well, I pulled a Zoe.”
“You just took off?”
“Yep. I took a train to Ohio, where your black Civic had been found in a ditch. It was all over the news. I figured I could go there and ask around, talk to the police myself. But when I got there, no one knew anything. I stayed in one hotel after the next for a month, hoping to stumble on someone who was in the Network. But eventually I ended up in the hospital, exhausted. I’m sure all the nurses thought I was losing it.” He shrugged. “They called your mom and she came and got me. Your parents figured out pretty fast that I wasn’t to blame.”
She shook her head. “I can’t believe you. And all this time, I was dying to tell you that I was okay.”
“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “We’re together now.”
They approached a bench that overlooked their favorite garden. The roses and gardenias were in full bloom despite the early autumn chill in the air. Soon only their shriveled stems would remain—but today, they were still beautiful. As Gramps lowered himself to sit, he leaned back and closed his eyes. She admired his restraint in not pressing her for details right away. That kind of respect was a gift. Taking a seat beside him, she lifted her face to the early morning sun. Neither spoke. So this is peace, she thought.
“I have so much to tell you,” she said. “I don’t even know where to start.”
“Start anywhere. Or nowhere. I’m just happy to have you home.”
“Do you want to see my souvenir?”
“Sure.”
She reached into her sweater pocket and pulled out a tiny docile mouse. Gramps gave a start and scooted away.
“What is that?”
She stroked its pink back with her fingertip. It shivered with delight and curled into a tight ball, barely opening its eyes.
“It’s a long story.”
“I’ve got time.”
She bit her lip. Time was exactly what he did not have. Not for much longer—and there was nothing she could do about it. The human trials with the aging treatment would take years to begin, and that was only after the Network could rebuild. But then she thought again—of Theo, of Galileo, of Natalie, even of Les—and realized that there was something she could do. If knowing them had taught her anything, it was not to take the present for granted. Because no matter how much time you thought you had, you never really knew.
“You look so serious,” Gramps said. “You okay?”
“I think so.” It was true. She was.
She looked down at the mouse. Its tiny feet were twitching in dreamland.
“He’s just a baby,” she said. “He sleeps all the time.”
“Does he have a name?”
“Not yet. But he might be stuck with it forever.”
“Forever, huh?” Gramps lifted an eyebrow, intrigued. “Then you’d better pick a good one.”
The first ideas that came to mind she rejected—no way could she name a mouse after anyone she knew. But it had to be something special, some way to pay tribute to the spirit of wonder and adventure that made his existence possible—the spirit that united her with the people she loved.
“Well?”
Then she grinned. “Your favorite poem. The Tennyson one.”
“What about it?”
“This little guy is the knowledge beyond the sinking star. Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.”
Gramps cocked his head and smiled. “Then I guess we know his name.”
The mouse lay in her palm, the picture of contentment. She leaned forward and brushed her lips against his delicate ear.
“Hey, Ulysses,” she whispered. “Welcome to the world.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Contrary to popular belief, writing a book is not a completely solitary endeavor. I am grateful to many people whose expertise, advice, and support helped me along the way.
To my agent, Erica Silverman, for her trusted guidance, friendship, and belief in my work.
To my editor, Michaela Hamilton, for her wise insights, dedication, and cheerful confidence.
To Dr. Richard Walker, a leading expert on the science of aging, whose generosity is matched only by the depth of his knowledge.
To the late Dr. Michael Palmer, whose close mentorship I was lucky to receive for three years. He will be forever missed.
To the late Brooke Greenberg, whose mysterious failure to age inspired the character of Zoe.
To Dr. Cristina Rizza and Dr. Michael Peikoff for answering my questions about the clinical signs of aging.
To M.J. Rose, whose creative brainstorming was indispensable in helping me develop the init
ial premise.
To Brad Garrett, a former FBI agent who kindly found time for a phone call that rescued me from plot gridlock.
To Josh Jaffe, a computer science expert, for explaining the ins and outs of cyber security.
To Rebecca Wallace-Segall of Writopia Lab, for her flexibility with my employment and her enthusiasm for my writing goals, and to my students, for reminding me always to take joy in the creative process.
To my dear friends and my wider network on social media for their interest, encouragement, and word-of-mouth support.
To Andrew Gulli, for the epigraph.
To my early readers: Susan Breen, my classmates at Gotham Writers’ Workshop, Jacqueline Berenson, Lisa VanDamme, and my parents.
To my first reader, Matt, for being my favorite inspiration—a triple threat of musician, comedian, and philosopher. All my love, always.
Don’t miss Kira Peikoff’s next compelling thriller
DIE AGAIN TOMORROW
Coming from Pinnacle in 2015
Keep reading for an exciting teaser excerpt—featuring
the return of Galileo!
1 Minute Dead
Her body undulated in the sea. It swayed with the waves, rising and falling, a rag doll in the froth. Seaweed clung to the dark tangle of her hair. Facedown, she floated on the crest of a swell, then plummeted with the breaker. Her slender limbs splayed out, strangers to pain. She was nothing now but a marionette at the mercy of the tide. White foam engulfed her body and carried it express to the shore.
It washed up on the beach. The tide receded. Her cheek lay against the sand, her eyes swollen closed. Her mouth hung open. Salt water trickled out.
The first person to notice was a little boy digging for crabs. He scooted over and squatted in front of her face.
“Time for wakey,” he said. He planted his chubby thumb and forefinger on her eyelid, pried it open, and gazed into her unseeing pupil.
“Wakey,” he said, frowning. He poked her limp arm. Nothing happened.
He started to cry. A woman jogged toward him but stopped short.
Then she screamed.
7 Minutes Dead
Two ambulances arrived at the same time. A pair of emergency medical techs jumped out of the first one and raced to her body, where a crowd of about ten sunbathers had gathered. Some were taking turns trying to deliver chest compressions while others stood to block the nearby children from view. The second ambulance waited at the curb; its purpose was to preserve the organs of a corpse for harvesting and donation in case attempts at resuscitation failed. With Key West’s popular opt-out program, everyone who died in the city was assumed to be a consenting donor unless indication was given otherwise.
As the two EMTs approached the body, they saw right away that her skin was waterlogged and turning bluish. Frothy salt water spewed out of her mouth as if from an erratic hose.
“Out of the way,” the older one commanded. His voice carried an air of authority that matched his jaded expression. The younger tech followed on his heels with a case of equipment slung over his shoulder. He looked to be in his late twenties, about the same age as the drowned woman.
The crowd parted and stepped back.
The first EMT dropped to his knees and grabbed her wrist. No pulse. He flung her disheveled hair off her face and opened her eyelids. Despite the bright morning sunlight, her pupils were fixed and dilated.
The younger tech urgently placed defibrillator pads on her body and attempted to shock her heart. When nothing happened, he switched to giving her chest compressions, hard and fast, about one hundred per minute. Salt water tainted with blood kept dribbling out of her mouth.
“She’s flatlined,” the older tech said after two minutes. “We should just declare her.”
The other man kept on pushing, though his arms were tiring. “No, let’s—give her a—chance,” he sputtered. “She’s so young.”
His colleague looked skeptical, but nodded. “Let’s switch, you do the line.”
The young tech rolled off her chest and tried to inject a peripheral line with epinephrine into her arm, but her skin was so mottled that he couldn’t find the vein. He cursed under his breath and moved on to the next last-ditch step.
As the first man continued to deliver fast compressions, grunting and sweating, the other hauled a canister of oxygen and a plastic breathing tube out of the supply bag. Using an L-shaped laryngoscope, he pushed up the roof of her mouth to see down into her throat.
That was when he noticed a piece of what looked like neoprene black cloth lodged inside her cheek. That’s weird, he thought, and tried to pull it out, but it wouldn’t easily dislodge, so he bypassed it. Her throat was extremely swollen and he had to work hard to shove the breathing tube all the way in.
“Should I just put the epinephrine down the tube?” he asked.
“You know—there’s—controversy about that,” the other man huffed, still doing compressions. “It doesn’t—necessarily—help survival.”
“What does she have to lose?”
He seized the drug and pushed 2 mg into her tube. Then he connected her to the oxygen tank, and the men switched positions again so neither tired for too long.
Every two or three minutes, they switched, while one checked her pulse on her neck, her groin. Nothing. Her skin was now a frightening shade of blue.
After twenty-one minutes, the older man pushed on her chest for the last time and rolled off her, sweating profusely.
“We should just stop, I don’t know why you want to save the world all the time.”
The young man glared, but didn’t rush to perform any further compressions. “She had her whole life ahead of her.”
It didn’t help that she was beautiful: he imagined how her cascade of black hair might have draped across her tanned shoulders, how her green eyes might have lit up when she laughed. She had the athletic figure of a swimmer—flat abs, toned biceps, defined calves. With a body like that, he wondered how she could have succumbed to the waves, even in high tide. Some things would forever be a mystery.
“We have to accept it. She’s gone. I’m calling it.” The older tech glanced at his watch. “Time of death: 10:12 A.M.”
A few of the onlookers turned away. One made the sign of a cross over his chest and bowed his head.
The young EMT sighed and radioed to the waiting ambulance to come claim her body. Then he removed her breathing tube and packed up all the equipment. He tried to think of the bright side: a young, otherwise healthy person was a prime candidate for cadaver organ donation; as many as fifty lives could be saved or improved from her body alone.
Within seconds, two bored-looking EMTs arrived with a stretcher and nodded at the pair who had failed.
“We can take it from here. Thanks.”
They lifted her corpse and strapped it in, wasting no time hauling it to their own ambulance. As they tipped the stretcher to load it, her drying hair fell over the edge and glinted in the sun.
Inside an elderly doctor was waiting. He beckoned at the EMTs to hurry. They scrambled in after loading the stretcher, just as the doctor pulled the door shut behind them. Exhilaration radiated from his flushed cheeks, but his demeanor was steady.
He was the famed—some would say infamous—Dr. Horatio Quinn, who had vanished from the public eye seven years prior. Now approaching eighty, his back was stooped, his arthritic fingers gnarled, his white brows permanently furrowed. But behind his tortoiseshell glasses shone an insatiable hunger for truth that kept him as young as the first day he ever walked into a lab.
He placed one hand on the woman’s lifeless forehead and smiled.
“Gentlemen,” he said, “close the blinds. This is when the fun begins.”
33 Minutes Dead
Dr. Quinn lifted a corner of the rubber floor pad and pressed his index finger on a tiny sensor. Together, he and the two EMTs turned to stare at a blank white area on the wall a few inches below the ceiling, near the head of the corpse. They heard a c
lick, followed by a whirring sound. Then four cracks materialized in the shape of a square about two feet across and two feet wide. It was a door. The edges popped out and slid to the left, revealing a secret compartment in the depths.
“Never gets old,” muttered Chris, the tech with the best poker face around.
His new apprentice, Theo, rubbed his hands together in anticipation.
The doctor reached inside the hole and extracted an automatic CPR device—a small round machine the size of a helmet. He put it on the dead woman’s sternum, securing it around her chest with a band pulled tight. Right away the machine started to deliver perfect chest compressions to the highest standards of timing and force—with no chance of tiring. Next, the doctor opened her mouth and inserted a laryngoscope with an attached camera so he could visualize her trachea.
He frowned; a piece of shredded black cloth was stuck between her teeth and cheek. It had a fraying string wrapped around her tooth. What the hell is that, he thought. He yanked it out and flicked it away, then slipped in a breathing tube connected to a ventilator and a portable oxygen tank. He set the CPR device at ten breaths per minute.
“Game on,” he whispered near her ear.
At the same time, while Ty connected her arm to a standard blood pressure cuff, Chris retrieved a black circular pad from the secret hole. It looked like an eye patch, but with a narrow blue tube connecting to a digital display: it was a cerebral oximeter that used near-infrared light to measure the amount of oxygen getting to her brain. He stuck it on her forehead above her right eye. The display quickly lit up with a red number: 5 percent.
“Why is it still so low?” Theo asked at her left side. “Shouldn’t it be coming up already?”
“It will.” Dr. Quinn was standing at her head, twisting his frail body to reach up into the hole. “You’ll see.”
What he took out next looked like a red gun, but with a long needle in place of a barrel. It was an in-traosseous device that could shoot drugs directly into bone, bypassing veins.
