“You and I can have our discussion now,” von Brutten breathed. “Dr. Kinkaid will be staying.” His pale eyes gazed mildly at me as if to say, Indefinitely.
“Then I just have one more question for Dr. Kinkaid,” I said. “Does the wire you’re wearing have a recorder?”
“What?” Rick sounded offended. To his credit, he didn’t sound scared.
Von Brutten smiled his frosty smile. “A detail, I must admit, I was wondering myself.”
“Stand up,” I said.
“Please do,” von Brutten invited.
“Homeland Security may know about von Brutten’s plans for the orchid,” I said, “but do you honestly believe they’d be able to catch him at it? With a wire?”
“Jessie,” Rick said in a low voice. “I can’t believe you’re involved in this.”
“Why not? You’re working for Cradion.”
“Not the way—”
“You lied to me. I told you why I wanted the orchid. I was the one telling the truth.”
Rick took a single step toward me. “Yes, I worked for Thompson. But he didn’t send me to the Amazon for the orchid.”
“Bullshit.”
“The moth, Jessie.” His deep brown eyes begged me, but for what I couldn’t tell. “I went for the moth.”
“Touching but irrelevant,” von Brutten murmured.
“Cradion—the real Cradion—wanted the moth for their research.” His glance cut to the vial of poison sitting innocently on top of the fake formula. He raised his chin, daring me to believe him. “It was important.”
“Unbutton your shirt,” I replied.
While Rick did, von Brutten said, “Modern theaters and concert halls have started installing a special material in their walls and ceilings to block wireless signal transmissions. I’ve put it to a similar use here.”
The wire and transmitter strapped to Rick’s rib cage made him look like a hot-bodied cyborg. Von Brutten stripped the transmitter from him. No recorder. Then anger crept over me as von Brutten’s hand lingered on Rick’s chest. Rick’s face was a study in granite. A single long lock of hair had fallen over his forehead and he was suddenly bad boy without even trying. “You’re definitely staying with me,” von Brutten murmured.
“I don’t think so,” I snapped. I didn’t care if Rick was working for Shoemaker just to save himself some jail time. I didn’t want to see him hurt. “Rick leaves. Now. Unharmed.”
Von Brutten’s brows tipped up in surprise. “I thought you were through with him. Don’t you have a habit of throwing them back once you’ve had them? Oh, don’t be angry, Dr. Robards.” He stepped away from Rick and balanced his cigarette on the ashtray’s lip. “You and I are very alike in that way.”
“I’m nothing like you,” I grated.
I dug my cell from my jeans pocket and tossed it to Rick, never taking my eyes off von Brutten. “Get downstairs or to the roof and hit Redial. Shoemaker’s boys shouldn’t be far away.”
“Jessie—”
“Please do it, Rick.”
I heard his footsteps on the rug, then the elevator door shush open. Von Brutten’s pale eyes flickered with something like respect.
“Just like Dr. Harrison,” he breathed. “Working for two masters.”
“Not anymore. That’s something else I wanted to tell you.” I reached into my shoulderbag and pulled out Harrison’s microcassette player, its wheels turning on a fresh tape. “I quit.”
Von Brutten’s face faded from pale to ghostly. “Well, Dr. Robards, I certainly didn’t expect this disloyalty.”
“I’m a mercenary,” I admitted, setting the recorder on the desk’s edge, “but there are some things I won’t do for money.”
“Or for love, presumably.”
“No,” I replied, thinking about Scooter, and Marcello, then Rick. “Not even for love.”
Von Brutten took a deep breath. “Then perhaps you are right. We are not very alike after all.”
He reached behind himself for his cigarette and came back with a black-tipped arrow in his fist.
Curare.
He stabbed, lightning quick, at my chest.
I twisted to avoid the razor-sharp point. My left hand grabbed the arrow’s shaft dangerously near the head. Von Brutten angled the arrow toward me at the same time he kicked out with his right foot, connecting with my calf. The muscle spasm threw me off balance, but I held on to the arrow and managed to get my right hand on the other end of it.
He braced his legs like a defensive lineman. Breathing hard, we leaned against each other, struggling for control. He was a small man, but he was still stronger than I was. I was going to lose.
No. I was not going to lose. I had the outside grip, von Brutten the inside. All I needed was to break the damn thing. I eased off the pressure, then abruptly shoved forward. The arrow shaft snapped in von Brutten’s hands. The arrowhead, suddenly freed from resistance, dug through his suit coat and into his right shoulder.
I let go and backed off, panting. Von Brutten’s breathing exploded into panicked heaving. A pained whimper escaped him. He gripped the little bit of shaft sticking out of his shoulder and pulled, stared at the reddened tip like he couldn’t believe what had happened. The arrowhead dropped onto the floor.
“Ten minutes and counting.” I kicked the arrowhead safely away as von Brutten collapsed, gasping, on the floor.
“Jessie!” Rick pounded back into the study, my cell in his hand, his open shirt waving.
“He’s been cut,” I said. “Call an ambulance.” Before I’d finished the words, Rick was dialing on the landline.
I rolled von Brutten onto his back. He stared into space as though his brain had overloaded. Sweat sheened his graying face. I really wanted the bastard to live. I wanted to see him go to prison for all this mess. And the mess he’d wanted to make. My hands shook as I loosened von Brutten’s impeccable jabot, but I didn’t know whether it was from frustration that he’d gotten poisoned or relief that it hadn’t been me.
“They’re sending an ambulance,” Rick said, putting down the landline handset.
“They’d better haul ass,” I muttered. “But they probably won’t have anything to treat him with. It’s like he’s taken a megadose of Tuberine.”
Rick paused his shirt buttoning. “Skeletal muscle relaxant?”
“Yeah, but the curare won’t stop at that. It’ll paralyze the muscles and then he’ll die of asphyxiation.”
Von Brutten blinked. His goatee trembled.
“And you’ll be awake the whole time,” I told him. “Until you stop breathing.”
I climbed to my feet and faced Rick’s eyes, dark with concern. “Did you call Shoemaker?”
“Yeah, his guys are on their way up.”
“Bully for them. How long for the ambulance?”
“I will not die,” von Brutten gasped.
He levered himself to his stomach, then to his knees. He anchored his elbows on the desk and pulled himself along it. What was he after? Another poisonous arrow?
“Better give him room,” I said as Rick moved to help him. “He may want to take us with him.”
Von Brutten’s shaking hand lurched and grabbed the shaman’s vial sitting on top of my fake formula. His ghastly smile stretched his thin lips thinner in his white face. He wrenched the cap from the vial.
“No!” I shouted, leaping forward.
He threw the liquid back like a whiskey shot as I caught his hand. His pale eyes glittered. He swallowed.
“We have to get him to puke,” I said to Rick, then realized it was too late.
Von Brutten slid to the floor, back against the desk, his eyes still locked on mine. One hand clutched feebly at his chest. His mouth opened slightly.
He was dead.
“Damn,” I muttered. “Damn.” When no words came from von Brutten’s mouth, I elaborated. “I wanted you to pay.”
“He did pay,” Rick said softly.
“No, I mean I wanted him in prison. A bunch of peop
le are going to die because of him. He should pay. At least for Scooter.”
Body-armored men piled into the room, weapons drawn. Three of them spread out in the study, facing us, their guns pointed at our chests. I resisted the urge to raise my hands like a criminal. The adrenaline that had started draining from me surged again. I heard other men searching the condo, rousting out a protesting Not-Sims.
Another minute and Shoemaker strolled in, his revolver holstered. He surveyed the scene, studied von Brutten’s body, the bloodied shoulder and the hand still clutching the empty vial, and turned to me.
“Poetic,” he drawled. He looked at Rick. “You okay, son?”
“I’m fine, sir.”
“Edwards!” Shoemaker barked. “Take Dr. Kinkaid to headquarters for debriefing. Dr. Kinkaid, I sure do appreciate all your help. I’ll see you a little later.”
So Rick hadn’t been working off jail time after all? He was innocent in some way I hadn’t figured out yet. The good man who would never forgive me for setting him up. Twice. Once at the airport and then here, when I’d practically told von Brutten he was working for the feds. The good man who’d tried to tell me he was innocent even while I was exposing him to von Brutten. The good man who’d asked for all of me when everyone else had been happy with what little I’d give.
Rick didn’t look at me as the square-jawed, flak-geared Edwards ushered him out. He didn’t know it, but he took what was left of my heart with him.
“Now, Dr. Robards,” Shoe said, turning to me with a face full of steel and flint, “let’s talk.”
Two months later, I stood under a maple behind Scooter’s trailer and looked down the little rise to the creek that ran through his acreage. Past the creek, the scrub grew slowly into pine forest that climbed stubby hills and shielded the Slapdash from the rare but cold northwestern wind. Here, you could just get a sense of what this land had been like before the farmers came and the oilmen struck it rich a hundred and fifty miles west.
“You picked a good spot,” I told Scooter’s headstone as I had every few days for the past six weeks.
It wasn’t the Amazon—nothing was or could ever be for me—but it’d be home for a little while. I finally understood what Scooter had meant when he said there’s nothing like the first orchid. For me, my first real love was Rick, and he and the Amazon would always be bound up together in my senses, in my heart.
The breeze kicked up, brushed my long, true-red hair over my shoulders. I settled cross-legged on the ground next to Scooter. The dew had long since lifted into the morning. A cardinal gave its distinctive snap of a call, then dipped from a young oak’s lowest branch to the ground to rustle in the underbrush. Somewhere in the trees, his brown mate waited, hidden.
I missed Scooter like hell, but not as much as I thought I would. It was almost like I’d started letting him go that day in San Antonio when he told me he was ready to be let go. Knowing that you make your choices and suffer the consequences, good or bad. I’d cried myself to sleep like a baby for a week. But every day got easier. Scooter’s little girl had finally growed up, as he would have said.
The greenhouse was flourishing, and it helped to be there, in his favorite place, working with his plants. I’d never have his obsession—or his success—with orchid growing, but for now, it gave me something to do. Hadn’t stopped me thinking about Rick, though. Or regretting him. I didn’t suppose anything ever would.
In the distance behind me, I heard car wheels crunching gravel. Doors opened and shut. The steady stream of well-wishing neighbors had just about spent itself, but the good friends, like Hank and Marian, who were up at the trailer now, kept coming around to see if I needed anything. I’d just smile and say no, thanks.
“They told me I’d find you here.” Shoemaker’s voice cut through the clear air.
I turned to look up at him. “I don’t have to check in for another three days, Atlanta. You think I’m going to skip out on you?”
“That whole check-in thing was the judge’s idea, not mine,” Shoe drawled good-naturedly.
“Right. You just want to make sure I don’t take off for parts unknown without you knowing about it. You’ve probably got my mug shot posted all over every airport in the States.”
He chuckled and squatted down beside me. “Here,” he said, handing me an industrial-looking box. “Today I’m a delivery boy.”
The metal container had air holes and “Live Animal” emblazoned on the sides and top. I flipped the heavy-duty catch, lifted the lid. Inside sat a smaller, clear plastic box, also punched with air holes.
Black wings fluttered. Pearlescent black, the creature’s body the size of a small bird’s. My heart leaped. A Death Moth. My breath caught in my throat.
Every moth has its orchid, Scooter would have said, and I knew what this moth meant. Rick was looking for me, if I’d have him. The question was, Would I, after all that had happened between us? Could I forgive him for badgering me to open my heart while he withheld so much of himself?
“That the moth Dr. Kinkaid was looking for in the Amazon?” Shoe asked.
“Yeah. We found it before we found the orchid.” I snapped the lid back on. “Did you catch Thompson?”
Shoe beamed a satisfied smile my way. “Day before yesterday. He spilled a lot more information than we thought he would. Confirmed what we’d already pieced together about Cradion’s involvement.”
“Cradion didn’t know about Thompson’s rogue lab.”
“Nope. They’re about to start Phase one trials on their new heart medication, too, using Dr. Harrison’s good formula. Dr. Kinkaid’s pretty happy about that.”
It turned out excretions from the Death Moth provided the “proper dilution.” The poison overstimulated the heart tissue, but the neutralizer reduced that effect to a constructive level. Ironic. I’d thought I was after a miracle cure but brought back a poison. It’d been Rick who’d brought back the real cure.
My throat closed. “I guess he is happy.”
“Dr. Thompson confirmed a few other things, too,” Shoe said. “He’d been the doctor responsible for administering those trials. He’d seen your uncle several times during treatment.”
Most of my anger had already been grieved away, but I conjured up enough to think, Bastard. “Did he tell you how he knew me?”
“When we got around to you, he said your uncle had gotten talkative one day, flashed some snapshots of family.”
After that we didn’t say anything for a while. The sun raised the scent of hot, dry grass and pine needles while a handful of grackles squawked and screeched in the trees. I balanced the moth’s case on my knee.
“Why Parkinson’s patients?” I asked finally. “Why pick on a bunch of elderly people?”
“They counted on attending physicians to notice the heart disease symptoms and report back. In most of the diagnostic tests, the heart disease looked natural.”
“Untraceable poison.”
“A real world test,” Shoe said.
“There’s a bunch about Harrison that doesn’t make sense. Why he implicated the Cradion lab rather than Thompson or von Brutten. Why von Brutten had him killed.”
“Thompson says Dr. Harrison rolled the lab because he thought he’d get away with being in protective custody.”
“Like von Brutten would say, ‘Oh, Harrison didn’t mention me when he screwed up my plan so I’ll just let this slide’?” I asked, incredulous.
Shoe’s grin flashed, then he said, “I don’t think von Brutten had him killed. I think Thompson knows who did, but he’s not telling.”
“Great. So Thompson was working for yet another bioterrorist?”
“That’s what we’d like to know. Maybe it was someone who wanted von Brutten out of the way.”
“Thinking you’d trace the hit back to von Brutten and arrest him.”
“Or that someone else would get to him first.” Shoe’s eyes, golden like a lion’s in the growing light, glittered. “Thompson clams up on some things li
ke a man afraid for his life.”
“So we don’t know who really killed Dr. Harrison.”
“I don’t know if we ever will.” Shoe stood, then helped me to my feet. “We might have had a chance if you’d called me before you started your one-woman crusade.”
I held on to my moth with one hand and brushed the seat of my jeans with the other. “Come on, Atlanta. He would have smelled me coming a mile away. He did Rick. You know I couldn’t take the chance of him running. You’d never have caught him.”
Shoe just looked at me as we started back to the greenhouse. We’d probably never agree on that issue. I’d paid for my crimes. They’d hit me with a CITES fine that pretty much put me back to zero savings, then told me I’d be watched for the rest of my life, my every international trip scrutinized like a crime scene. But I’d stopped von Brutten, horrific accident that it’d been. Shoe would just have to get over it.
“You never said if you’d come work for me,” he said.
I laughed, for the first time in weeks. It felt good to do that. Freeing.
“Benefits are good, lots of travel,” he persisted. “I’m gettin’ too old to chase orchid smugglers.”
“Jessica Robards, Secret Agent,” I said as we rounded the trailer and stopped at his nondescript brown Buick parked in the drive. “I don’t think so.”
“Yeah, you’ll probably get a better offer anyway.” He jerked the driver’s door open. “I hear Cradion’s hiring.”
That set me laughing again. Right. Like that would ever happen.
“No,” Shoe said, nodding toward the front porch. “I’m serious.”
I turned. Before I even saw him, my whole body went hot. Rick stood on the porch, hair tied back in a short ponytail, hands in his jeans pockets, all lean and hard and sexy. His strong face looked relaxed, serene. As I took my first hesitant step toward him, his lips curved into that slow smile I liked.
He didn’t tell you the truth, I reminded myself. He didn’t have to lie. My grip tightened on the moth’s case.
“Jessie.” His voice was a little deeper, a little softer, than I remembered.
I stopped before I reached the porch. “I got your message.” I set the moth’s case on the old hitching post Scooter had been so fond of. Behind me, Shoe’s car growled back down the drive. “Shoe tells me you’re doing well at Cradion.”
The Orchid Hunter Page 27
