by Tom Grace
“Help me get him off the grill,” Nolan asked Peng. “And Roxanne, shoot him if he even looks at you funny.”
Each taking a side, Nolan and Peng carefully lifted Palmer from the grill. Palmer’s head sagged, chin to chest, as they pulled his torso up. Blood and vitreous humor oozed from his ruptured right eye, the orbit and cheekbone shattered. Palmer coughed weakly and spat gouts of blood. Nolan moved behind Palmer and grabbed him beneath the arms to support the dead weight of the man’s body. Palmer gurgled a pained moan.
“Get his weapon,” Nolan said.
Peng unclipped the Beretta’s strap and removed the submachine gun from Palmer’s chest. Nolan stepped back and gingerly laid Palmer on the kitchen floor. He patted him down and found the keys to the van. He tossed them to Roxanne.
“Kirk Young is still in Palmer’s van. Have Deena and her father take a look at him, see if they can find some kind of medical patch on his skin. Hole up in one of the rooms on the other side of the house—I don’t want any of them to see this.”
“She’s a doctor—shouldn’t we have her look at Palmer?” Roxanne asked.
Nolan shook his head. “I’ve seen this kind of thing before. Palmer has massive internal injuries. He’ll bleed out before she makes it across the house. She should look after the boy—he’s her son.”
Roxanne left Peng and Nolan standing watch over the dying Palmer. The man’s breaths came in shallow, pained gasps.
“Are you alright?” Peng asked.
“Yeah,” Nolan sighed. “Better than the last time we met.”
Peng nodded, recalling the effort to win a Chinese bishop’s freedom that nearly cost the American his life. The two men first met while investigating the illegal deployment of a weapon in orbit above the Earth. Their paths crossed again, on opposite sides, during Nolan’s clandestine foray into China the previous fall. Though tied to rival nations, both found in the other a man of honor who served the truth.
Palmer’s skin paled to an ashen gray and his gasps grew less frequent. Then he stopped breathing entirely. Nolan placed a pair of fingers on his neck but found no pulse. Byron Palmer was dead.
“That’s that,” Nolan said. “Let’s see if we can’t get the lights back on.”
Peng set the Berettas and spare magazines on the kitchen counter. Nolan located a flashlight in a wall charger, and the two went in search of the house’s main-floor electrical closet. They found it near the garage, in close proximity to the emergency generator. Palmer had tripped both the main breaker and the shunt-trip breaker for the generator. Nolan reset both and the house filled with light and the dull hum of equipment powering up. He and Peng then joined the others in the sitting room.
The boy known as Kirk Young sat beside Deena Hawthorne, wrapped in a blanket, her arms tightly around him. He looked up nervously at the new arrivals.
“Don’t be scared. These are my friends,” Deena assured the boy. “They’re the good guys.”
The boy recoiled in her arms as Nolan approached.
“I probably look pretty scary, huh?” Nolan asked.
Kirk Young nodded.
“Pretty stinky, too?”
The boy pinched his nose.
“Yeah, well I had a little accident in the kitchen. I spilled a pan with a lot of meat juice in it—made quite a mess. Don’t go in there.”
“He cleans up well,” Roxanne offered.
“How are you doing?” Nolan asked.
“I’m hungry.”
“I think we can do something about that. You like noodles?”
Kirk nodded his head. “Mac’n’cheese is my favorite.”
“Mine, too. What they got here isn’t mac’n’cheese, but it’s really good. I had it for dinner. It has bacon in it.”
“I like bacon.”
“Then we’ll get along just fine. I’ll go heat some up for you.”
A digital phone chirped as the VoIP server rebooted. Nolan picked up the wireless handset and checked for a dial tone.
“And now that the phones are back on, how would you like to call your mom and dad?”
The boy took the phone, then noted the time on its LCD display. “It’s really late.”
“Yeah, but I still bet they’d love to hear from you.”
Roxanne and Peng followed Nolan as he headed back to the kitchen. The cooler was humming, returning to its proper temperature. Roxanne found a tablecloth and laid it over Palmer’s body. Nolan stepped into the cooler and found the leftover carbonara.
“You were good with the boy in there, really put him at ease,” she said.
“Can’t imagine what’s going through that poor kid’s head right now—at that age I’d be scared out of my wits.”
“Kelsey said that you were going to make a great father. I can see why.”
“Thanks.” Nolan looked at the pan of leftover pasta. “Looks like plenty. You two want some?”
Roxanne shook her head. “An FBI tactical team is less than thirty minutes out. I’ll let them know you have the situation in hand, but I think Peng and I should disappear before any difficult questions arise.”
“I understand—you were never here.”
“I appreciate your discretion,” Peng said.
“Still, I’d love to know why you’re here and how you got mixed up in all this,” Nolan said. “How long are you in town?”
“I believe my assignment will soon come to an abrupt end. Perhaps we three can meet under less challenging circumstances to address any loose ends to our mutual satisfaction.”
“Sounds good. See you both in the city.”
SEVENTY-TWO
“Who’s ready to eat?” Nolan asked.
He returned to the sitting room bearing a bowl of reheated carbonara and a bottle of water. He handed the bowl to the boy who looked at the contents skeptically.
“Kid, you got to have a little faith,” he said.
Kirk gripped the fork in the bowl and poked the noodles tentatively. He found a short piece of spaghetti coated in Romano cheese with small bit of pancetta clinging to its side. He maneuvered the end of the noodle into his mouth and slurped up the rest. After a few chews, his face brightened and he attacked the bowl with gusto.
“How’d the call to his folks go?” Nolan asked.
Deena wiped tears from her eyes. “Waterworks—poor Kirk is all wet from my tears of joy. But I think he’ll get soaked once we get him back to his parents.”
“Oh, yeah,” the boy said between bites. “Mom cries all the time, like at the movies or when somebody has a baby.”
“Then she must have a lot of love inside her,” Nolan said. “You’re a lucky kid. And if you’re still hungry after you finish that, I’ll get you some more.”
Kirk shoved in another mouthful.
“Can you keep Deena company for a little while?” Nolan asked. “Her dad and I have some stuff we need to talk about.”
The boy nodded, chewing. Nolan checked his watch.
“Do you like really cool military helicopters?” Nolan asked.
“Heck yeah!” Kirk replied without swallowing.
“Keep your eyes open. I think you’re going to see one real soon.”
Nolan led Jamison out of the sitting room, past the wreckage in the foyer and the dining room to the butler’s pantry.
“Buy you a drink?” he asked.
Jamison pointed to a bottle of Jameson Rarest Vintage Reserve. “No relation, but they make good whiskey.”
“That they do. Rocks?”
“Neat.”
Nolan poured a couple inches into two glasses and handed one to Jamison. He sipped the brilliant amber liquid slowly and savored the blended notes of fruit, spice, wood, and barley.
“Thank you for saving my daughter’s life,” Jamison said. “Saving my life for that matter.”
“If you really want to thank me, come clean about what you and Toccare did to my father and the other men you blackmailed.”
“I don’t really think that’s what Dante i
ntended when—”
“Bullshit. I know how you did it, and I can prove it. Deena is very bright—maybe Nobel Prize bright. I have serious problems with the ethics of monkeying around with the mechanics of human reproduction and cloning, but I do respect the science. Your daughter helped Toccare’s daughter have a child, and I’m betting it didn’t involve just an egg and a sperm. It worked out well and nobody could tell Toccare’s grandson was conceived in a totally new way. And this gave you an idea. If you could get any kind of cells from a rich man—from a toothbrush, for example—you could manufacture a child that would beat any paternity test. Toccare’s connections provide access to hotel rooms at resorts and conference centers, you provide the surrogate mothers, and Deena performs the real magic with a donated egg and a bit of paternal DNA. Once you extort your settlement, the baby disappears through private adoption and you two pocket an easy five million. The beauty of this scheme is that you use our society’s reliance on science to prove a lie true.”
“This is speculation. You can’t prove anything.”
“Thanks to Toccare, I can. All I need is the medical records for his daughter and son-in-law proving that they cannot conceive a child together. That proof coupled with the existence of their biological offspring creates something of a conundrum. Deena resolves that conundrum.”
“You can’t bring her into this—it’ll ruin her career. She didn’t know anything about my business with Toccare. Deena only made the embryos.”
“That’s what you should have said at the start of this. At worst, she’s a full partner in a blackmail enterprise. At best, she was used by a pair of blackmailers. I don’t know where the lines of medical ethics, human experimentation, and federal regulation lie, but I expect there may be problems for her there as well.”
Jamison stared into his drink and knew he had been painted into a corner.
“What do you want?”
“Everything Toccare promised me,” Nolan replied. “Deena can continue her genetic research on animal cells, but she stops making children this way. One has already died, and the health of the others remains in question.”
“I don’t know.”
“Let me put it this way,” Nolan continued. “If you don’t follow Toccare’s final wishes to my satisfaction, I’ll tell his widow and daughter about our little impasse and its potential effect on the longevity of Dante’s beloved grandson. I have to think his family would be deeply offended and quite angry, which might have a negative effect on your longevity.”
Jamison’s shoulders sagged and he nodded his surrender.
“I’ll do as you ask.”
SEVENTY-THREE
“It’s here! It’s here!” Kirk Young shouted.
Nolan and Jamison found the boy and Deena standing by the windows, staring at a Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk. The helicopter circled the main house twice before landing in an open expanse of the front yard.
“Stay here,” Nolan said. “I’ll go out to meet them.”
With Palmer’s van parked in the front door, Nolan went through the garage and opened the door to the first stall. He smiled when he saw the car parked in the number one space was a bright red 1961 Ferrari 250 GT California.
“Que bella,” he said as he ran his index finger gently down the car’s seductive curves.
He remained standing by the Ferrari as the door opened. He was careful to keep both hands in clear view of the FBI Hostage Rescue Team. Several red dots appeared on his chest. Kilkenny smiled and waited. Two men in full tactical gear approached Kilkenny, never taking their eyes or weapons off him.
A man wearing a bullet resistant vest and a baseball cap, both emblazoned with FBI initials, stepped off the helicopter and jogged over to the garage.
“You Kilkenny?” Hunley asked.
“I am.”
“Special Agent Pat Hunley. Your associate Roxanne Tao sends her regards. Palmer’s dead?”
Nolan nodded.
“And the boy?”
“Deena removed Palmer’s patch from his hand and he is recovering nicely. He’s also very excited about your helicopter. You may have to give him a peek.”
“I think that can be arranged.”
Hunley signaled for his men to stand down and secure the property for the crime scene investigators.
“Why don’t you walk me through it,” Hunley said.
Nolan started his narrative with his first encounter with Palmer outside the restaurant in Manhattan the previous evening, and brought it to a close nearly twenty-four hours later with Palmer’s death in Toccare’s kitchen. He carefully omitted Roxanne and Peng’s involvement and the reason for his own presence in New York.
“What I’m not clear on is your connection to Dr. Hawthorne,” Hunley said.
“Let’s just say it’s a personal matter unrelated to Palmer and that I believe is covered by the HIPAA privacy rules.”
“Doctor-patient stuff?”
“It’s best to leave it at that and just say I was in the right place at the wrong time.”
“Right time for Kirk Young and Deena Hawthorne it sounds like. Can you take me to them?”
“Follow me.”
Nolan brought Hunley through the servant’s wing and showed him Palmer’s body before bringing him to the sitting room where Deena waited with her father and Kirk Young.
“Kirk, this is Special Agent Hunley of the FBI,” Kilkenny explained to the boy. “He’s the guy to know if you want a peek inside that helicopter.”
“Can I?” Kirk asked expectantly.
“You bet,” Hunley replied. “I just want to ask if you remember anything, like how you got here.”
“Not really. I was in the barn with my dad and then I was here on the couch with Miss Deena.”
“Anything else?”
The boy’s mouth twisted sideways as he tried to tease a detail from his memory.
“I remember a man saying something about my mother. He said her name was. . . Deena, but my mom’s name is Iris.” Kirk looked at Deena. “Was he talking about you?”
Deena trembled trying to restrain her emotions and nodded.
“But why did he think you were my mother?”
“He was very confused. I’m not your real mother.”
“But I have two,” Kirk said.
“Two what?” Nolan asked.
“Mothers,” he replied. “I’ve got my real mom and a secret mom. I’ve got two dads, too. I’m adopted.”
Tears welled in Deena’s eyes and droplets left wet tracks on her face.
“Kirk, then I guess I’m your secret mom.”
“Was the man who took me my secret dad?”
“He thought he was, but no. He was just a very dangerous man who hurt me, hurt a lot of people. I loved you so much, even before you were born I wanted you to be safe from him. That’s why I’m your secret mom, and you’re my secret son. I didn’t know who you were until today. I am so happy to finally meet you and see what a fine young man you’ve become. I met your real parents today and they love you so much—I couldn’t have wished a better family for you.”
SEVENTY-FOUR
NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK
SUNDAY, MARCH 22; 1:30 PM
The city’s Upper West Side was quiet in the early afternoon as Nolan and Roxanne entered the medical office building and went up to the Hawthorne Fertility Clinic. Deena was waiting for them. She led them back to her office, and the three sat down as they did just a few days earlier.
“My father and I had a long talk this morning,” she said. “In hindsight, it seems so stupid of me, not requiring information about the couples I was helping to have children. I guess I was so caught up in the thrill of my research that I just treated it like some kind of double-blind study. I’m sorry, and I know it’s not much of an excuse.”
“We’re not here to pass judgment, Deena,” Nolan said. “You and your father just have to make things right.”
She nodded then picked up a stack of manila envelopes from the table. She
handed the first to Nolan.
“This is an extract of my lab report on the child used to blackmail your father. It identifies the source of the donor egg, the type of cells used as a template for the paternal chromosomes, and the surrogate mother. Also included is a hospital report of the child’s birth and a notarized statement from my father. It states that your father’s genetic material was acquired without his knowledge or consent, and that the child in question was created for the sole purpose of extracting a monetary settlement. My father acknowledges that he and his partner retained your father’s settlement and placed the child for adoption immediately after payment was received.”
“On behalf of my father,” Nolan said, “thank you.”
“These envelopes contain similar information on the other children conceived as part of my father’s scheme, including the identities of the victims. As requested, these men will be notified that further analysis has revealed that they are not the fathers of these children. My father will make full restitution, with interest, to all of these men. You will be notified when each of these victims has signed off on this revised settlement.”
“Good. And you will cease your human research?” Nolan asked.
Deena nodded. “Zeke Oakley’s death has made me realize that I’ve rushed the science too quickly. I gave up my son to keep him safe, and that was bad enough. I can’t imagine causing the death of a child. For me to continue is too great a risk. I’ll review the complete genomes of all the other children in case there are any anomalies, but my research will be confined to non-reproductive cells.”
“What’s in the remaining envelopes?” Roxanne asked.
Deena handed one envelope each to Nolan and Roxanne..
“These are your—or should I say Mr. and Mrs. Egan’s—medical records. I’ve also removed you from my patient database.”
“For the record,” Nolan said, “I am really glad we didn’t get to the point of doing the biopsy. The thought of needles down there makes me squeamish.”