Gilbert knew he should be angry, and he certainly had been, but now all he could do was pity her.
Caroline took one last look at the house, turned and walked to the curb, where she had parked her Volvo SUV across the end of the driveway. She got in behind the wheel and drove away. Calmly. No spinning of wheels. She even used her turn signal when she got to the end of the street.
Samantha asked, “Where do you think she’s going?”
Gilbert shook his head. “As long as she doesn’t come back, I don’t care.”
Fifty-Eight
New Haven, CT
“This is kidnapping. You can’t hold me here against my will. I’ll call the police.”
Miles tossed a cell phone to Dr. Martin Gold. It was the one Charise had taken off him earlier. “Go ahead. Call them right now. Let’s tell them everything.”
Gold seemed to sink into the leather couch in the living room of Miles’s home. He looked from Miles to Charise, who was standing nearby, arms crossed, ready to throw him back onto the couch if he considered making a run for it.
Once Miles had returned from Fort Wayne, he’d had Charise drive him back to the ReproGold Clinic. When the doctor turned out not to be there, they went to his home, but a block before they reached it they spotted the doctor behind the wheel of his Lexus, headed in the other direction.
They followed.
They trailed him to the Mount Vernon bridge, and were puzzled, at first, when he stopped his car in the middle of it. But his intentions soon became clear.
“Oh, my God,” Miles had said. “He’s going to jump.”
Charise had not waited for instructions. She’d bolted from the limo and run onto the bridge, then grabbed Gold, hauled him off the railing, and sat on him so he could not get away.
She had then whispered in his ear that if he did not come back to the limo with her, she would do something so horrible to him that he’d beg her to let him try jumping off the bridge again to make the pain go away.
After she had him in the car next to Miles and was back behind the wheel, Miles had said, “That was amazing.”
Charise had said, “Compared to what I used to do, sir, this was like subduing a five-year-old girl.”
Miles had wondered, briefly, whether they should be taking a suicidal man to the hospital, but believed getting some answers from Gold took priority. They could get him the help he needed later. So Miles had directed Charise to take them to his home.
Dorian was waiting at the house when they got there, and reported that a call had been made to the FBI’s Lana Murkowski. So far, she had not called back.
When Gold did not call Miles’s bluff and call the police, Miles took the phone back. He handed his own cell to Charise and asked, “Can you keep trying Chloe?”
Dorian said, “I can do that.”
“No, it’s okay,” Miles said. He had not looked Dorian in the eye since they’d returned. To Charise, he said, “Chloe has to turn her phone back on at some point.”
“Chloe,” Gold said. “The girl who was with you before.”
“Yeah,” Miles said. “So, you were going to jump. Why?”
Gold took a moment to answer. “I’ve had enough.”
Miles perched himself on the coffee table, in front of Gold, and said, “Why does someone consider taking their own life? Depressed, surely. Or maybe to avoid something worse than death. What have you done, Dr. Gold? Tell me what you’ve done.”
Gold couldn’t look at him.
“Tell me about Caroline Cookson,” he said.
Gold’s head jerked. “Who?”
It was a shot in the dark. Miles didn’t know if Caroline had a connection with Gold, or whether the stunt she’d pulled was in any way related to everything else that was going on, but he wanted to see the man’s reaction when asked. Miles repeated the name.
“Who’s that?” Gold said. “Cookson? A relative?”
“Sister-in-law,” Miles said.
“Did she come to my clinic? I don’t know the name.”
Miles believed him and went in another direction. He told Gold what had gone down in Fort Wayne, the attempt to kill someone whose mother had been to Gold’s clinic years ago, before moving to Indiana. As Gold listened, he grew increasingly agitated.
“Why would someone want Travis Roben dead?” Miles asked. “Or the girl in Paris? The student in Maine? All children of women who came to your clinic.”
Charise waved the phone in the air and said, “Still no answer, Mr. Cookson.”
Miles leaned in close to Gold, close enough for the doctor to feel his breath on his face. “You told me I had no idea what I was getting into, who I was dealing with. It’s time you explained what you meant by that.”
When Gold said nothing, Miles turned to Charise. “Back in your wrestling days, was there a favorite move you used?”
Charise thought for a moment. “We had something we called the tombstone piledriver. It was actually so dangerous we weren’t supposed to use it. You turn someone upside down, then drive his head into—”
“I think we get the idea,” Miles said. He turned his attention to Gold again and waited. Gold raised his head and looked into Miles’s eyes. There was the sense of a dam about to burst.
“Pritkin,” he said.
“Pritkin?” Miles said.
“Jeremy Pritkin.”
“The Jeremy Pritkin?”
Gold nodded. “It’s him.”
“What do you mean, ‘it’s him’? What’s ‘him’?” Miles was aghast. “Pritkin? You’re not serious.”
Gold’s head went up and down.
It all came out, in a rush. A man who hours earlier was ready to end his life evidently no longer felt a need to keep secrets.
Gold related how Jeremy believed he was a superhuman being with an extraordinary genetic profile, and he wanted his sperm implanted in women who were, essentially, unwitting test subjects. He wanted to try it with ten women, but one miscarried. Miles’s donations were discarded, but his name went on the files.
Then commercial DNA testing came along.
“It wasn’t enough that they die,” Gold said. “They had to be erased.”
“I set out to find children I thought were mine to help them, while their true biological father set out to destroy them.”
Miles had to get up and walk. He paced the room, went to the window, and looked out into a nearby wooded area.
“It’s unthinkable,” he said. “How could one person be that—”
Gold said, “He’s not who he appears to be. When you get a look behind the curtain, you see what he really is. He makes the devil look like Mr. Rogers.” He paused. “And that’s why I was on that bridge.”
Gold said to Charise, who was still holding Miles’s phone, “You still haven’t reached her, have you?”
Charise shook her head.
The doctor looked at Miles. “After you came to the storage locker I … I called him.”
“What did you say?” Miles asked.
“That you and Chloe were putting it together.”
“What are you saying?” Miles said. “You think he’s got her? You think he’s killed her?” He became unsteady on his feet, placing a hand on the back of a chair to steady himself.
Gold said, “I don’t know. I think he’d try to find out what she knows first. To find out if he’s vulnerable. Exposed.”
Dorian rushed to Miles’s side in case he lost his balance or collapsed, but he pushed her away. Dorian looked as though she’d been struck.
Miles said, “Where would she be? If he has Chloe where would it be?”
Gold said, “Probably at his place, in Manhattan. It’s massive. Two or three brownstones joined together. He could easily keep her under wraps there. He’s protected. He knows everyone. Cops, judges, politicians. No one’s going to go busting in on him unless they’re really sure he’s done something wrong. And even then, who knows? He’s had me in his pocket for two decades. God knows what he has on every
one else.”
“Are you saying if we call the police, he’ll be tipped off?”
The doctor shrugged. “Maybe. And you have to know, once he’s done with Chloe, he’ll be coming after you.”
Miles handed Gold’s phone back to him. “Call him,” he said.
“And say what?” he asked, his voice on the verge of squeaking.
Miles considered the question. “Tell him … no, first, find out if he has her. If he does … shit, let me think.” He walked away, started pacing again. “We have to find a way to stall. To buy some time.” He turned to Dorian and spoke to her for the first time since they’d all been in the room together. “Still nothing from Murkowski?”
“No,” said Dorian. “And if he’s to be believed, even she could be compromised. Or if not her, whoever she brings in on it.”
Miles put his hand to his forehead. “Jesus.”
Gold said, “I have an idea.”
Miles waited.
“I tell him, if he has her, I need … I need to get a DNA sample from her.”
“Why?” Miles asked.
“Because, because …” Gold struggled for a reason. “Because I need to compare her against some other adult children. That I may have made a mistake with the filing, there might have been more than nine women impregnated with his sperm. That he might have more children out there he needs to track down.”
Miles was skeptical. “Does that even make any sense? Why would you need her DNA? Wouldn’t a sample of his suffice? What about—”
“Shut up!” Gold said. “Just … shut up. It’s the best thing I can think of right now. I know the science better than he does. I might be able to bluff my way through.”
Miles looked like a man who had run out of options.
“Do it,” he said.
Gold entered a number on the phone and waited. Finally, he said, “It’s Martin. I need to speak to Jeremy.” He was put on hold. “Waiting,” he said, looking at Miles.
“Put it on speaker,” Miles said.
Gold tapped the screen, held the phone a few inches in front of his mouth. The wait went on for the better part of a minute before there was the sound of someone at the other end.
“Jeremy?”
“No,” a woman said. “Dr. Gold?”
“Yes. Who is this?”
“Roberta.”
“Roberta, I need to speak to Jeremy.”
“He’s busy,” Roberta said.
“It’s urgent.”
“What’s it concerning?”
“The Swanson girl.” He paused, and lowered his voice conspiratorially. “Is she there?”
“Why would you think that?”
Gold’s eyes danced while he tried to think of something, and Miles shuddered inwardly. Why would Gold think that? How would he have been tipped off?
Gold decided to go with a version of the truth, since it would sound the most credible. “Cookson called me. The girl’s disappeared. I’m just connecting the dots.”
“Suppose she were here,” Roberta said. “What’s that to you?”
“I wanted to discuss an issue with Jeremy.”
“Discuss it with me.”
Gold took a breath and said, “I need a DNA sample from her. I need to run a comparison between her profile and some others. It’s rather complicated.”
“You think I wouldn’t be able to understand it?” Roberta asked.
“No, no, not at all. But it makes more sense for me to explain it to Jeremy directly.”
There was silence at the other end. Charise and Miles exchanged glances, wondering if maybe the signal had been lost.
But then Roberta spoke.
“You’d have to come here to do this, of course?”
“Yes,” Gold said.
“When?”
“Tomorrow?”
Another moment of dead air. When Roberta came back on, she said, “That would be too late. I’m sorry, Dr. Gold, but we’re not going to be able to accommodate you on this.”
“But you see—”
“Goodbye,” Roberta said.
“Hello? Don’t hang up. Are you there?”
She was not.
“He’s got her,” Miles said.
Charise said, “I’ll bring the car around.”
Fifty-Nine
New York, NY
Rhys and Broderick had each ordered a beer. They’d taken a booth in a bar on Third a couple of blocks north of Bloomingdale’s.
“Been a while,” Rhys said.
Broderick nodded. “We haven’t talked since my legal problems.”
Rhys smiled. “All seems to have worked out okay.”
Then Broderick smiled. “Could have gone another way if it hadn’t been for you. I owe you one.”
“Kinda why I got in touch,” Rhys said. “I’ve had a little trouble recently. You heard of Jeremy Pritkin?”
“That’s like asking if I’ve ever heard of money.”
“Been doing some work for him,” Rhys said. “Big job, not finished. Things went sideways.”
“Like?”
“Lost a partner.”
Broderick smiled. “So what’s the job?”
“Pritkin has two girls at his place. They’re a liability. He can’t release them into the wild, but they think they’re getting their freedom, that they’ve got an appointment with a lawyer to sign some NDAs, walk away with a substantial cash settlement to keep quiet. That way, they leave the building without trying to make a break for it, and it gets them out of there so we can do what we have to do off-site.”
Broderick nodded. “What’s it all about?”
“Do you want to know what this is all about?”
Broderick shrugged. “Curious.”
“Even I don’t know the scope of it. Pritkin’s needed some people to disappear. Completely. No DNA traces left behind. They’re all over. We ran into a problem in Fort Wayne.”
“Fort Wayne?”
“Yeah.”
Broderick moved his tongue around, poking it into his cheek. “Hadn’t thought of Fort Wayne in a million years and now it pops up twice in a very short period of time.”
Rhys waited.
“Met this woman. Had a scheme to get a fortune that should go to her husband, but he got fucked over by his brother. Got her daughter to make nice with this nerd who was going to come into a lot of money, eventually.”
Rhys’s eyes narrowed. “You got a name for this nerd?”
“Travis Roben.”
Rhys leaned back in the booth and shook his head. “You’re shittin’ me.”
“No.”
Rhys said, “That’s the thing that went sideways.” He gave Broderick the bullet-point version. “Small fucking world.”
“Not really,” Broderick said. “Not a lot of people in our line of work. Sometimes our interests overlap.”
“You know what?” Rhys said. “Bringing you in, it was meant to be.” He raised his bottle and clinked it against Broderick’s. “I got a good feeling about this.”
Sixty
New York, NY
Chloe and Nicky decided to they would do it after dinner, which, as it turned out, was pretty damn good. Veal lasagna and chocolate mousse for dessert.
“This is even better than usual,” Nicky whispered to Chloe. “They probably are getting ready to kill us.”
Their occasional attempts at gallows humor did not mask how scared they were.
Nicky, whispering to Chloe with the television volume turned up, had gone over, several times, how things worked around here. Whenever anyone came to the room, like the maid or Roberta, they couldn’t leave until someone responded to their rap on the door. The man who stood guard at the top of the stairs, a short distance down the hall, would come open it, then return to his station. Like in a prison movie, when the lawyer lets the guard know he’s done talking to his client.
The door was always open for a few seconds. Now that there were two of them, there was a better chance that between them t
hey could keep that door open long enough to escape.
What about the guard? Chloe had asked.
He was big, Nicky said, but that also meant he was slower than them. And the thing was, he wouldn’t be standing where they intended to go.
“You ever play basketball?” Chloe had asked.
“Sure.”
“We fake him out. Look like we’re going one way, he moves to block, we go the other way.”
“He’ll think we’re heading for the front door.”
Chloe said, in a voice loud enough to be picked up by their captors, “Gotta pee.”
She went into the bathroom and closed the door. She grabbed a hand towel, wrapped it around the drinking glass sitting on the shelf above the sink and lightly rapped it on the edge of the porcelain sink until she heard it shatter.
Then she set the towel down in the bottom of the sink and carefully unwrapped the glass, now in several pieces. Chloe examined the shards and picked two larger pieces she believed would suit their purposes. They needed to be large enough to be effective, but small enough to be concealed in their hands. About the size of a book of matches.
She set the two curved pieces next to the taps, then gathered up the rest of the shards in the towel and put them in the garbage receptacle. She wadded up some tissues and tossed them over the glass to hide it. She flushed the toilet, for the benefit of any bedroom listening devices, and rejoined Nicky on the bed.
They were sitting atop the covers, their backs propped against the headboard. Chloe tucked one of the two pieces of glass just under Nicky’s jeaned leg. They were both fully dressed, shoes on.
“It’s sharp,” she whispered.
“Duh,” Nicky said.
The glass briefly caught on the bedspread as Nicky reached down and palmed it. Then, in a normal voice, she said, “I gotta move around.”
She hopped off the bed and began to pace the room, her path taking her close to the door with every lap. The plan was simple. When the maid came back for their tray, Nicky would keep the door from closing while Chloe kept the maid in check by threatening to cut her.
Simple.
Nicky might have tried something like this long before now, but the rest of the escape plan needed Chloe’s skills to be executed.
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