Lynne didn’t respond.
“Could it be your expectations are unrealistic?” I asked then.
“Meaning?” she asked carefully.
“That perhaps you need to rethink your priorities, reconsider what’s most important to you,” I suggested. “Bearing children doesn’t require a husband. My mum didn’t even know who my father was.”
Lynne put her mug down. “I was brought up to believe you had the husband first, then the kids,” she said, avoiding his eyes. “I had the husband, he didn’t want kids. I left him, end of story.”
It was well past midnight when I logged onto my laptop in the privacy of my bedroom. I stared at the monitor for a long moment, ambivalent, rereading the e-mail I had just completed.
SHE WANTS A CHILD BUT HAS LOST HOPE. WE
DISCUSSED ALL OPTIONS. SHE HAS ACTIVELY
PURSUED THIS. SHE IS QUITE SERIOUS ABOUT
IT. I HAVE OFFERED MY ASSISTANCE. SHE
IS RELUCTANT, BUT I BELIEVE SHE WILL
EVENTUALLY ACCEPT.
I took a deep breath, then hit “Send”.
13
Caitlin
“The child was a girl, two weeks shy of her sixth birthday,” Jack said, reading the information from his notebook computer. “Name, Samantha Peterson. Parents, Catherine and James Peterson. They’d been trying to conceive for almost eight years when they opted for the in vitro route. The OB-GYN’s name, Dr. Peter Feinberg. The in vitro was performed at the Small Miracles clinic in Palo Alto, California.”
“Did you cross reference the other missing children?” I asked. For the past three months, we’d been hitting dead ends, and my frustration was growing with each passing day. I was a perfectionist. I didn’t take failure well.
Jack nodded. “And that’s the weird part.”
I perked up. “Weird how?”
“There were ten child abductions in that area in the past year,” he started. “Of the ten, only three were in vitro babies, and those three were all age six or younger. All of them were conceived at the Small Miracles Clinic.”
“What have we got on Small Miracles?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Nothing yet, but I’m working on it,” he said.
“Work faster,” I ordered.
“I realize this is difficult for you, Mrs. Peterson,” Jack said patiently, “but we really do have to ask these questions.”
Clarice Peterson was visibly upset. “I don’t understand,” she said, dabbing at her eyes with a ball of used tissues. “We’ve been through this so many times already. How is this going to help us find our baby?”
“We have to explore every possibility,” he explained.
“Mrs. Peterson, why did you choose to use the Valleyview Clinic?” I asked.
The question seemed to surprise the other woman. “What has that to do with Samantha’s kidnapping?” she asked.
I was impatient. “Please, just answer the question, Mrs. Peterson,” I said sharply. Jack regarded me with annoyance. “I’m sorry,” I said in a low voice.
Clarice Peterson nodded slowly. “It wasn’t our choice. It was our doctor’s,” she recalled. “He said he sent all of his patients there.”
Jack and I exchanged a look. “Was the birth normal?”
Clarice Ryan nodded. “No complications at all. She was a beautiful baby—beautiful, healthy. Perfect in every way.” She paused. “Really perfect. She was amazing.”
“Amazing in what way?” I wanted to know.
“She never had any of the usual childhood ailments,” Clarice remembered. “Not even colic. She was so beautiful, and so bright. She walked at nine months, talked at eight. She could read when she was barely two. My husband used to joke about it. He’d ask when the mothership was coming back for her. He said she was too perfect to be ours.”
“Mr. and Mrs. Anders, I’m Agent Caitlin Hammond and this is Agent Jack Farlow,” I told the parents of the second missing child.
“Have you found Randy?” the woman asked anxiously.
“No, ma’am, I’m sorry, we haven’t,” Jack said apologetically.
“That’s why we’re here,” I said. “We need to ask you some questions about your son.”
“We’ll tell you anything we can,” Ross Anders said.
“Did your son have any medical issues?” I asked.
The couple looked puzzled by the question. “No,” Ross Anders said after giving it a moment’s thought. “As a matter of fact, Randy was never sick.”
“What about developmentally?” Jack questioned. “Normal?”
Linda Anders shook her head. “No.”
Jack and I exchanged looks.
“He was far above average. That’s why he was attending a school for the gifted,” she went on. “He walked and talked early. He had superb coordination, even when he was just starting to walk. Ross had hopes he’d become a professional athlete.” She started to cry.
Her husband comforted her. “It’s been almost seven months since he disappeared. Do we dare hope he’ll be found alive?” he implored.
“Mr. Reynolds, we realize this is difficult for you,” I said as we all sat down, “but if we’re to find your wife’s killer and locate your son, we have to have as much information as possible.”
He nodded numbly. “I understand.” Then: “It’s been months. Do you believe he’ll be found alive?”
“We’re doing everything we can,” Jack assured him. “What can you tell us about the procedure your wife underwent?”
“The in vitro?” He was obviously puzzled by the question. “We had been warned that it could take a long time. We could spend thousands of dollars and still not have a baby in the end—but Linda conceived on the third try.”
“Your wife’s doctor sent you to the Humboldt Clinic?” I asked.
He nodded. “He said it was the best in the country.”
“Were there any complications in the pregnancy?”
Roger Reynolds shook his head. “She had an uneventful pregnancy,” he recalled, “but even so, she was so closely monitored, she complained that she felt suffocated by the clinic staff.”
“Suffocated?” Jack asked.
“The nurses were what my wife called dictatorial,” he said. “She had to write down everything she ate or drank. They read her the riot act if she ate anything not on her diet. That was rough on Linda—she had cravings for burritos and pasta. Exercise was also restricted. She could do yoga, nothing else. She was ordered to get at least ten hours sleep every night.” His smile was sad. “That was the one thing she didn’t mind.”
“Seems unusual,” I said.
He sucked in his breath. “Yeah. Her two sisters both had kids, and neither of them had to go through that shit when they were pregnant. When she mentioned this to her doctor at the clinic, he brushed it off—said her pregnancy was different because of the in vitro. She had to be careful and all that. And now she’s dead and our son is gone.”
“Bingo!”
“You have something?” I asked, looking up from the notes I’d been making on my smartphone.
“The common denominator.” Jack was staring at the images on his notebook computer. “All of the fertility clinics in question are connected to GenTech Laboratories. It's a research facility in Massachusetts. All of its funding comes from the private sector.”
He had my attention. “Do tell,” I urged, perching on one corner of his desk.
“All of the clinics’ success rates for helping infertile couples are impressive. GenTech’s cutting-edge research has supposedly made that possible. No previous record of any problems with any of them—no malpractice suits, not even a red flag. Just a lot of satisfied customers.”
“Not all of them are satisfied,” I disagreed.
Jack pursed his lips and rubbed his chin as he turned the thought over in his mind. “As for GenTech, there’s very little information available on them,” he started, going for the keyboard again. “They’re more secretive than the NSA.”
He raised an eyebrow.
“I ran our missing child cases through Interpol,” I said, waving the file in my hand. “They have twenty missing kids in seven countries, all in vitro babies, all the same age, all considered gifted kids.”
Jack turned his attention back to the computer for several minutes. “Okay, GenTech’s based in Boston,” he said. “Genetic research. The facility used to be run by a hotshot geneticist named—are you ready for this—Joseph Sadowski.”
“Sadowski?” I asked. “Wasn’t he—”
“The mad scientist who dropped dead as the FDA was about to bust his ass. The same Sadowski who got caught tampering with a racehorse. He claimed he didn’t do it, of course, but that’s what they all say.”
I thought about it for a moment. “I wonder what else he tampered with?” I speculated.
Jack’s laugh was tinged with sarcasm. “This whole thing is so fishy you could serve it with fries and hushpuppies.”
14
Lynne
“You know, sometimes I wonder where a skinny guy like you puts all that food,” I chided Connor as I cleared the dinner dishes from the table. “Think you’ll have room for the cake?”
“Cake?” he asked.
“Um-hmm.” I removed the cover from a cake plate, revealing a lopsided cake topped with six mismatched candles I’d gotten from Isabella, who had leftovers from her three kids birthdays. I placed it in front of him and lit the candles. “Happy birthday, Merlin.”
He looked up at me, puzzled. “How did you know—”
“Your birthdate’s on your passport, remember?” I reminded him. “I saw your passport when we were in Customs.”
“You didn’t have to sneak a peek. I’ll show you any part of me you wish to see,” he said with a wink.
I gave his shoulder a little slap. “Get your mind out of the gutter, Mackenzie, and blow out the candles sometime before your next birthday.”
He looked at the cake again. “There are only six candles,” he observed.
“I thought if I put all of them on, we might risk starting a fire,” I said. “Besides, you might have trouble blowing them all out, and then you wouldn’t get your wish.”
He leaned forward and blew, taking out all six in one attempt, then looked up at me again. “As for my wish, you tell me—am I going to get it?”
I turned away for a moment, pointedly ignoring his question. He had no idea how much I wanted to grant that wish, and I wasn't about to tell him. “I have something for you,” I told him, taking a brown paper bag off the counter. From it I took a small, wrapped gift and handed it to him. “I wasn’t sure what you’d like, so I went for symbolic. After all, what does one get the man who already has everything?”
He opened the box and drew out the gold chain and medallion. “A religious medallion?” he asked, perplexed.
I nodded. “St. Jude,” I said. “Patron saint of lost causes.”
“You’re trying to tell me something here,” he guessed, amused.
“You say you’re a lost cause. I say you’re not,” I said.
He looked at me for a moment. “Maybe you should practice what you preach, Raven.”
“Your birthday, your gift, your hang-up,” I said tightly.
He tried to put the medallion around his neck. “Would you give me a hand with this?” he asked when he couldn’t manage it on his own.
I took the chain and drew it around his neck, fastening it. The movement put my arms around his neck and my face too close to his. He kissed me. I didn’t resist. I didn't really want to. Truth be told, I liked it. He kissed me again, his arms enveloping me. After a few minutes, I broke the embrace. “Cake,” I said, moving away quickly. “We should eat the cake.”
“I’d rather have you,” he said honestly.
I busied myself with cutting the cake, not responding to his comment. My pulse was racing. I was trembling. I didn't want him to see it.
“This has been the best birthday I’ve had since my mother met Edward,” he confided.
I was surprised by his statement. “I would have thought you’d have had some pretty impressive birthday parties.”
“Quite impressive,” he acknowledged. “Large, elegant affairs, best caterers in town, a hundred or so people I didn’t even know, gifts that meant nothing to me. Most of the time I’d go off, feeling lonelier that ever, wondering why I was even there. Tonight, you went to the trouble of baking a cake yourself, picking a personal gift. I’m touched. I am.”
“I’d planned a party with the whole team, but then, you don’t really mingle,” I said.
“I prefer this,” he admitted.
“You don’t care that the cake’s a little lopsided, then.”
“I like that the cake is lopsided.”
I shook my head. “You’re a tough nut to crack,” I told him.
He dipped his finger into the icing on the cake and swiped it across my lips, then slowly licked it off. “Are you going to grant my wish or not?” he whispered.
I slowly extracted myself. “Stick to the cake, Merlin,” I told him.
I watched Connor with concern. “I don’t know why he’s so determined to do this.”
“He’s trying to impress you,” Tim said with a grin. “Haven’t you ever watched any of those documentaries on animal mating rituals?”
I rolled my eyes. “Are you going to start that again?”
“If you can’t see how hot he is for you, you’re the only one,” Tim insisted. “Give the man a break before he drops from heatstroke.”
Connor didn’t tolerate the blazing sun and intense heat well and today was no exception. As he peeled off his perspiration-soaked T-shirt, I could tell it did nothing to alleviate his discomfort.
Though the lab was his priority, in recent weeks he’d begun to take a more active role in the dig. I almost believed he was enjoying it. Almost.
His hair, bleached out by the sun, had grown longer, curling around his face and neck, resembling a lion’s mane. He now sported a neatly trimmed beard. Physically, he seemed to have matured overnight. He was even more attractive to me than he had been that night we met in London. Big mistake, I warned myself. Got to keep a lid on those feelings.
“Big mistake there, Merlin,” I said aloud.
“Just trying to cool off,” he said, using the shirt to wipe his face.
“With that pale skin, you’ll be sorry,” I called out to him.
I was laying out the grid for the dig. Our team’s geophysicist, Elliot Cooper, was making some notations on his PDA. Tim instructed the latest group of volunteers who had arrived that morning. Pam, who used her skills in identifying ancient botanical specimens to date our finds, was digging in the dirt several yards away. When she saw Connor look her way, she smiled seductively. He immediately turned away. Pam never made any secret of her interest in Connor, and I found myself wondering if he would eventually turn to her for sexual gratification.
I stifled a wave of jealousy at the thought of him with Pam. You don’t have the right to be jealous, I told myself. He’s free to do whatever he wants with whomever he wants. You won’t give him what he wants, so why shouldn’t he get it elsewhere?
I realized he was watching me, smiling. Smiling as if he knew what I was thinking. But that wasn’t possible, was it? With Connor, I was never quite sure. I felt as if he could read my mind sometimes.
The thought made me intensely uncomfortable.
“I warned you, didn’t I?" I asked. “You look like a lobster—a fully-cooked lobster.”
He lay face down on his bed while I applied a cooling lotion to his sunburned skin. He was so red, I was certain he was going to blister. “You’re too pale to be baring your skin out here,” I told him. “It takes some getting used to—sunblock with an industrial strength SPF is a necessity.”
“Now the rookie finds out,” he groaned. “Hard to see anything out there, the sun is so brilliant. Te
ll me, where do the vultures wait for their dinner to die?”
“We haven’t lost anyone yet,” I assured him. “If there are vultures, they’re starving.”
I continued to massage the lotion into his skin. He had a good body, lean and hard, a swimmer's body. I found my thoughts going places they shouldn't be going. “Ah, that feels good,” he said as my hands moved down to the waistband of his jeans. “A bit lower, please.”
I was tempted, but no. I wasn't going there. “Don’t move until it dries, Merlin.” I replaced the cap on the tube and placed it on the nightstand.
He twisted his neck so that he could look at me from an awkward angle. “Tell me—how is it that a good Christian girl like you would call me by such an obviously pagan nickname?” he asked, curious.
“Unfortunately, you are a pagan of sorts,” I pointed out, leaning across his back to retrieve a towel. “Hopefully, what you experience here will change that.” I blew an errant strand of hair out of my face as I wiped my hands on the towel.
“Right. We suffer to such an extent that we beg God to take us, is that it?”
“Very funny.” I recapped the lotion and set it aside.
“You know, Merlin the name means ‘falcon’, but it’s actually derived from a title given to the so-called wizards on whom the fictional Merlin was based,” he told me. “The title means, loosely translated, ‘mad prophet’.”
“Then it’s more appropriate than I realized,” I decided.
“Don’t you ever get tired of sleeping alone?” he asked then.
“It beats the alternative.”
“Pleasure?” he asked.
“Pain.”
“For the record, I am not into anything kinky,” he said.
“That’s not the kind of pain I was talking about.”
Chasing the Wind Page 6