by Pike, JJ
“Chinese.”
“And the last one?” Alex was thinking, hard, but waiting on the final piece of the puzzle.
“Common and garden backhanders.”
Jim sighed. “Hardly news.”
“In the millions. Government contracts. I mean…like you wouldn’t believe. Money out of this pocket and into that one and that one and that one. This g…” She prevented herself from saying guy or gal. “This person has fingers in every pie in Washington. You’re going to be stunned at the sheer balls on this one. I mean, truly. It’s staggering.”
Both men sat quietly, rolling the scant facts she’d been able to feed them.
“We use the Chappaquiddick reveal first,” said Sam.
“I thought that, too, when I heard it, but we might want to go at all three of them at the same time.”
The three agents looked at each other, agreed on one thing: they’d bitten off the biggest chunk of history anyone had ever seen and they were in no way prepared to deal with what came next.
The general’s aide—she had to ask the young man’s name—knocked on her window. “The general requests permission to join you.”
Jo shrugged. They had so much thinking to do and no safe way to talk, they might as well sign off their video call. As she reached for the camera she remembered that tiny detail that had popped into her brain and popped right back out again hours earlier: namely, was the Ella of the news show traceable to their Eloise? “Any update on the search for Eloise Farmanday?”
Sam shook his head. “We haven’t had time. There’s a guy in a corner somewhere, scribbling out names, but I haven’t talked to him in forever. I’ll track him down for you, if you like.”
Jo nodded and shut the camera off. She stepped out of the car.
“Mizz Morgan!” Hoyt was back to his regular, upbeat self. “I’ve had some time to think over your proposition that we create a draft. If we might walk this way and ask Christine what she thinks?”
The two of them walked 15 feet apart. Jo went to the back of the transport and asked the professor to step out and join them.
The general and the professor. It was sweet. An autumnal romance tinged with tragedy and possible death.
Jo gestured to the general. “You have the floor, sir.”
“Has Mizz Morgan told you of Alice’s plan?” he said.
“The draft?” said Christine. “She hasn’t, but Fran has and I think it an excellent idea.”
“You believe in this genetic immunity then?”
“General…” Christine laughed. It wasn’t an unkind laugh, but it did sound as if she was indulging a 6-year-old. “As a scientists I don’t ‘believe.’ I have facts or theories. In this case, we have a superfluity of data, which is still woefully shy of a fact. I was in Manhattan for days. As was Fran. She was even in the East River for a time. Can you imagine that? She was swimming in MELT for a good fifteen minutes before she was picked up by a passing boat.”
“This is what you’re basing your theory on? The fact that the two of you remain healthy?” he said.
“We’re a tiny sample set, Patrick. If MELT infected everyone who’d been in Manhattan and has since spread out across the Northeast, we’d have virtually no one left standing.”
“We won’t be able to find those people. They are, as you say, scattered. How are we going to draft them?” He’d bought it. There was going to be a draft. But, as he said, how? How would they manage to find people?
“All I need is a simple laboratory. A mouth swab, some buccal cells, and a supply of MELT-plus.”
Jo shuddered. They were doing it again, inviting MELT into their immediate environment when all she, and every sane person who walked the planet, wanted to do was run the other way.
Duty first. Always. Or at least before fear. She’d never walk away because she was afraid. It wasn’t in her. She’d stay to the bitter end if there was the slightest chance they might save a single person. Cory’s death had given her that gift: she’d never be able to know death was near and do anything other than walk towards it.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Hedwig didn’t even stop for a glass of water or a snack. As soon as Betsy told her what their errant pediatrician had done she was raging back down the driveway, determined to detain him.
Betsy didn’t want to think too hard about what Fred would do when Hedwig found him. His fate was in his own hands. If he was compliant he’d walk away with his life. She didn’t even need him to apologize, they were beyond that now. If he was greedy, well…his choice. It really was a simple case of “you made your bed, now you get to sleep in it.”
Nigel was already back inside the house checking on Paul.
Sean had gone to see if Aggie needed any assistance with Midge just as she’d asked them to. If everyone did as they were told they could be on the road within the hour.
Jim was with Bryony on the back porch. It hurt her heart to look at them. Their world, or at least the world they’d built for themselves in the Adirondacks with peaches and pie and peace, was ending. In place of all the things she loved she had one thieving doctor, two sickly children, three cold cadavers…She didn’t have time to pause and relax with Jim and Bryony. She had places to be, people to organize.
Jim held up his notepad, stopping her in midstride. He’d drawn a picture of her as a young woman. Her heart jammed itself in her throat. Had she really looked like that or had he conflated her with the actress Dana Delaney from her China Beach days? She couldn’t see the likeness, but Jim always said she was the spitting image of his favorite screen crush.
“You have that look about you,” he said.
“Which one? My ‘harried and hurried’ look?”
“Nope.” He put the pad on the stool beside him. “The ‘take no prisoners, take no nonsense, do as I say right now this second or forever pay the price’ look. The one that says you’re kicking…” He stole a look at Bryony who was bent over her notepad, coloring furiously. “Kicking you-know-whats and taking names.”
“How is the patient doing?”
“She’s fine. She drew a picture of her favorite person, too.”
Bryony held up a picture of Mrs. Potato Head, with a red nose and huge ears and the earrings Mr. Potato Head had helped her find.
Betsy took the proffered paper and smiled. “She has two eyes! Is this before she adopted the alien children or at the end of the fourth movie, when she gets her eye back?”
“It’s my mommy.”
Jim laughed out loud. “You walked right into that one.”
“Gosh.” Betsy hunkered down so she was at eye level with Bryony. “Your mommy sure does look like Mrs. Potato Head in this picture.”
“No she doesn’t.”
Betsy looked to Jim for help.
He held up both hands in mock surrender.
“Is it because Mrs. Potato Head is so kind? Is that what makes her look like your mommy?”
“No. Mommy doesn’t look like Mrs. Potato Head, Mrs. Potato Head looks like Mommy.”
The three of them laughed. Child logic had a kind of impenetrable seal that defied unpacking. Betsy wanted to keep Bryony talking (just as she wanted Midge to keep talking; oooh, that was a good idea: put the two little girls together and let them natter at each other to keep their spirits up).
“There’s someone I’d like you to meet.” She held out her hand. Bryony took it. Her little hand was soft and pudgy, the way little girl hands were supposed to be. “Would you like to help me get my friend ready for a trip?”
“Is your friend nice?” Bryony hopped down from her chair.
“Very nice. I think you’re going to like her. She’s about the same age as you. Her name is Midge…”
Petra was at the back door, frantically waving Betsy inside.
Betsy’d had two whole minutes of happiness before reality thwacked her over the head for the 100th time since Jo had dropped by to say Bill was on his way to Manhattan to try to find Alice and she’d been left in char
ge of the children, but she might be called away as well and would they step up?
Petra didn’t speak, which was good. Betsy didn’t want Bryony to get agitated. It was one thing when Petra lost it, she only cried and made a fuss; it was quite another when the child was upset. She’d hit her arm so hard she’d broken the skin and that was not an easy thing to do when your skin was so young and healthy.
Betsy handed Bryony off to Jim. “Take her to the spare room to meet Midge. I want them to…”
A thin thread of scab was poking out of the top of Bryony’s bandage.
“Did Nigel see that?” she said.
Jim nodded. “Asked me to keep an eye on it, which I’ve been doing.”
“He told me she was cleared. That she wasn’t infected. That she didn’t have it.”
Jim scowled. Her speech was too plain. Did they have time to cloak their meaning for the sake of the child? Wasn’t there a deadly disease on the loose?
“Has it grown? Spread? Changed?”
“It has not.” Jim’s voice, which was normally a model of peaches and cream, had a sour edge to it.
She didn’t have time to make it right. “You two should stay outside until we have Midge strapped to her stretcher.” She smiled at Bryony whose face matched Jim’s in the scowls department. “You can meet her then.”
Petra rapped on the window.
Betsy took both back steps in one stride and crossed her kitchen in four long, practiced strides. Paul seemed fine. Breathing normal, eyes responsive, everything dandy. “What’s up? What was all the fuss about?”
“I didn’t know…” Petra’s eyes were wide. “He said it was a shame and I agreed and I thought he meant he forgave me, but he was shocked and I didn’t understand what he meant and I told him that it was totally an accident once I realized, but now he’s madder than hell and packing and you have to tell him, Betsy, I had no choice.”
“Slow down. Who said what to whom?” There weren’t many “hes” in the mix and it didn’t sound like a report of a lovers’ tiff. Betsy’s brain ran on ahead, unpacking what Petra had told her.
“Nigel said he’d seen Cass’s body in the garage.”
“Ah.”
“I said I was sorry. He said he was sorry too; that it was a real shame she had to die; but that I shouldn’t say I was sorry, because it couldn’t be helped. I thought he was talking about why she had to be put down, but that’s not what he meant at all.”
“He’s leaving?”
Petra nodded.
“Stay with Paul. No! Hands off! Don’t touch him! Just watch.”
Petra held her hands up. That was twice in the space of 10 minutes that people she cared about had put their hands up in response to something she’d said. Neither of them was surrendering, but it gave Betsy an acidic swirl in the furthest reaches of her stomach. She felt like a loaded weapon, primed and ready to go off. She hadn’t slept in days and people kept dropping around her.
She called out as she went from the kitchen to the front room then the spare room where Sean and Aggie were talking about how best to secure Midge to the stretcher while Mimi fussed around the edges of the room. “Nigel? Have you seen Nigel?”
Aggie nodded. “He was just here. He took a couple of things off the dresser. Why?”
“Keep working. We’re still leaving. It’s all going to be okay.” She took the stairs two at a time. “Nigel?”
He was in their bedroom, rifling through the drawers.
“I’m sorry,” said Betsy. “Petra told me.”
“I’m taking one change of clothes. I figure I’ve earned that.” He didn’t look at her.
He couldn’t leave. She had to do something to make him stay. “I thought you’d abandon us if I told you the truth.”
“You were wrong. If you’d told me the truth I’d have had a choice. But now I know you’re a liar, I don’t have a choice, do I? Now I can’t trust a thing that comes out of your mouth. Now I have to go.”
She stepped into the door frame to block his exit. “I’m begging you, Nigel. Not for me. I understand why you don’t want to help me. But Midge and Paul need you. Please?”
He pushed past her and into the hall.
“We’re about to undertake a move that might kill one or more of these children…”
“You should have thought of that before you lied to me about Petra killing Cassie.” He took the stairs three at a time.
Betsy tried to match him but lost her footing, slipping and sliding and smashing her coccyx on the last five steps.
He stopped and looked down at her but didn’t offer a hand.
Her legs were jelly under her, but Betsy used the bannister to pull herself up. No breaks, though her spine and seat were going to have a lot to say to her later. “Please, Nigel. You’re a nurse. You know, better than anyone else here, what we’re facing.”
“You only have yourself to blame.” He was by the front door, digging through the coats looking for the box of meds Aggie had prepared for them. Thank goodness she’d had Sean move them earlier.
“Paul is touch and go. If he bleeds again, he might bleed out. I’ll need an anesthetist. I can’t do that surgery on my own.”
Nigel had his hand on the door, though he hadn’t turned the knob.
“Even if he doesn’t rupture anything while we move him, the chances of him making it past the end of the week are minimal. There are thousand things out there that can kill him.”
Nigel turned the door handle and went out into the yard.
Betsy followed. “Midge is only just this side of awake. We both know she’s in as bad shape as Paul. Come on, Nigel. Hear me out.”
He was headed for the garage.
“Mimi’s out of her medication. She’s drinking because she’s scared. Perhaps in pain. The cancer’s back and she’ll be dead in less than three months if we don’t find her meds. Think about what that will do to the kids.”
Nigel pulled open the garage, went directly to the cork board, and selected a set of keys.
Betsy didn’t bother to look at which car he was planning on taking. That was beside the point. “Petra’s pregnant. She’s young and healthy, but we don’t know anything about the baby. We can’t do any screening. The baby could have spina bifida or trisomy or a thousand other genetic or chromosomal abnormalities that we’ll know nothing about until she or he’s born.”
Nigel opened the car door, threw his bag into the passenger seat, and slid into the driver’s side.
“Bryony might have Nefash.” Go in for the kill. Make him feel her desperation. Don’t hold back. “You missed something. It could wipe us all out. You take pride in your work, I know it. Come on, Nigel. Stay. Help me fix this. Do your part.”
He looked her dead in the eye. “That may or may not be true.” He turned the key in the ignition and the car purred to life. “But that’s not the way to make me stay.”
“What then? I’ll do whatever you want. Tell me what it is. We’re desperate here. They need you. I know you feel the same way I do. Your calling is like mine. You have to take care of other people, relieve them of their pain, help them back to health.”
“It’s all about me, isn’t it?”
Betsy froze. She’d done it again, that thing that Evelyn said she did. She’d pushed all her fears and worries out, projecting them on to other people. It was what she did when she panicked. But she hadn’t blamed him. Not directly. Had she?
“Well, there was that little bit where you implied he’d missed Bryony’s illness and accused him of killing you all by proxy.” Evelyn was right. Betsy had been judgy as all get go and had laid the blame squarely at his feet.
“I’m sorry that I twisted things to make them sound like they were your fault. That’s not what I meant. I was using everything I could think of to get you to stay. I wasn’t thinking.” Flattery, bribery, they’re all the same in the end: tools that we use to make someone feel the way we want them to feel, rather than listening to what they’re telling us. She
knew that.
“You still don’t get it,” said Nigel. He pulled the car into the driveway. He was going to do it. He was going to go.
Betsy raged and railed and racked her brains. What was it she was supposed to do? Her mind was crammed with ideas, all of them bleak and blistering. He was abandoning his post, leaving her in the lurch, making her carry the bag. He couldn’t. He was an honorable man. Like Jim. “Come on, Nigel, tell me what it is you want me to say and I’ll say it.”
“If I tell you it becomes meaningless.” He didn’t look at her. He was disgusted.
