He rolled over on his back, not bothering to wait for the lotion to dry. “Do you think no one has speculated about us?” he asked. “After all, we do live together. You’d be hard pressed to find a normal, healthy man willing to live with a woman and not be boffing her.”
“Let them think whatever they want,” I said, getting off the bed.
He looked up at me. “You’ve never thought about it?”
“No. I haven’t.”
“Overkill,” he said, folding his arms behind his head.
“What are you talking about?”
“Overkill,” he repeated. “You stress over and over what you don’t want, but I think you’re trying to convince yourself, not me.”
I didn’t respond and tried not to look him in the eye. He knew. He could tell how attracted I was to him.
“You’re trying so hard to be who you think you should be, you’re denying who you really are,” he said. “You want to be a good girl, like your sisters. You want your father’s approval. But the truth is that you’re a strong, passionate woman. You need to give your passions free rein.”
“Thanks for the psychoanalysis, Dr. Freud.”
He looked at me, frowning. “You do deny yourself the things you really want, don’t you?” he asked.
15
Connor
I stood at the bathroom sink the next morning, taking my medication and wondering what it was going to take to get Lynne to finally say yes. I knew she had feelings for me—strong feelings. I sensed it every time I was near her. I knew she wanted me as much as I wanted her. Past experience, however, was proving to be an effective barrier.
To my surprise, I found myself reluctant to be one more man to leave her emotionally scarred. For the first time in my life, I was concerned with someone other than myself. But in the end, I wanted what I wanted…and she was what I wanted.
“You have feelings for her.”
The voices…again. “I don’t know how to feel,” I insisted.
“You don’t want to feel. There’s a difference. You want to be able to have a physical relationship with her and still be able to walk away. You wish to prove to yourself that you’re still in control.”
“I am in control.” I capped the prescription bottles and put them back in the leather case in which I always stashed them.
“Are you, now?”
“Yes.”
“What, then, do you feel for her?”
“Horny.”
“If that were true, you could be with anyone.”
“She turned me down. No woman’s ever said no to me before,” I rationalized as I combed my hair.
“And that is all?”
“Of course.”
I caught sight of my bare back in the bathroom mirror as I was putting on my shirt and stopped short.
The sunburn was gone.
16
Caitlin
“This is nuts,” Jack said.
“What?” I asked, distracted.
“Sadowski.” He stared at the computer’s monitor, having spent the past three days searching for a possible connection between the late scientist’s bizarre experiments and the missing children. What he'd discovered was the last thing we expected to find. “He apparently got himself into hot water and lost his tenure just before his death for claiming he could clone Jesus Christ.”
I looked up. “Whaaat?” I thought he was joking.
“Yeah. He said he if he could obtain enough DNA, from the Shroud of Turin, for example, he could clone Christ and prove, once and for all, whether or not he was really divine.”
“Might have been interesting,” I conceded.
“Yeah, in a Prozac Nation kind of way.”
“They caught two of Sadowski’s people,” I said, looking over his shoulder at the computer. “One in Mexico, the other in the Caymans. Maybe we can ask them if he ever tried.”
“So how many are still out there?”
“Six—but the one who would be most likely to know Sadowski’s deepest, darkest secrets would be his former second-in-command, a Dr. Stewart. Then there’s Sadowski’s ex-wife Dorothea, and their son.” I continued to stare at the screen.
“What do we have on Stewart?” he asked.
“Not much. The guy was as low profile as it gets. To be any lower, he’d have to be a mole,” I said. “Probably a good thing, working with a man whose ego was as big as Sadowski’s.”
“Anybody looking for the ex-wife and son?” he wanted to know.
“Nobody’s seen or heard from the son in at least two years,” I said. “He just dropped off the face of the earth. The ex-wife was last known to be living somewhere in Italy. No address that I could find. The divorce shocked everybody who knew them, partly—and this is the interesting part—because Mrs. Sadowski was such a devout Catholic.”
He laughed. “A devout Catholic, married to the man who wanted to clone Jesus Christ. There’s irony in that.” Then he posed another question. “Do you think they actually did it, Blondie?”
“Did what?” I asked.
“Cloned a human being.”
“We know they did. The guys from the FDA found the embryos, remember?”
“I’m not talking about embryos,” he said. “I’m talking about a living, breathing, fully developed human being.”
I frowned. “Get real, Goober. Cloning is still in its infancy. If there were a living clone, he or she would be a small child at best.”
“You sure about that?”
“What are you getting at?”
“Sadowski and company were into a lot of different things. Accelerated growth hormones, for one thing. Suppose they did successfully clone a human and used that to age him—or her?”
“You’ve been reading too many sci-fi novels, Goob.” I dismissed the possibility.
He reached for his root beer. “Look what they did with the Bionic Racehorse.”
“Right. They’ve created a superhuman who can leap tall buildings in a single bound. Get real, Farlow.”
He dug into his carton of Chinese takeout. He handled the chopsticks easily, while I, having given up the fight after a few failed attempts, fished a plastic fork from the previous meal’s takeout bag. It always bugged me that he could eat with chopsticks, but I couldn't. That's why he ordered Chinese takeout whenever we worked late. He did it to irritate me.
“Nothing about Sadowski’s family life adds up,” I said then.
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve been doing some personal background research on him,” I started. “His marriage wasn’t exactly a great love match. In fact, it’s been confirmed, supposedly by Mrs. Sadowski herself, that the marriage was never even consummated.”
He was surprised. “Hard to believe, unless he was a eunuch or something. So did they adopt the kid?” he asked.
I shook my head. “Listen to this. According to sources, he was a young Polish immigrant with brains and ambition but no resources,” I began. “He’d come to the States with a plan that didn’t materialize, and he was about to be deported. Dorothea Wilhite was the plain, mousy only child of wealthy parents who desired an heir to the family fortune, a legacy for the family’s future. They were desperate to find a suitable husband for this girl who’d never even had a date. They decided they’d have to buy her a husband. They paid for Sadowski’s education and financed a solid start in the marriage for the young couple. In return, he had to be a dutiful husband and produce an heir.”
“Yeah, so?”
“He was not in the least attracted to her. Never touched her, according to my sources. There were rumors that he had a thing for young women, beautiful, well-endowed young women.”
“The guy looked like a toad. How could he get hot babes to put out for him?” he wanted to know.
“He supposedly targeted his female students—girls who were failing his classes and couldn’t graduate without a passing grade from him.”
“So one of those girls gave him a baby?”
&nb
sp; “Nope. The deal was that the heir had to be a legitimate blood heir.” I shook my head. “Mrs. Sadowski gave birth, all right.”
“And how did he get her pregnant?”
“In vitro fertilization.”
He laughed. “Are you saying the Sadowskis’ only child was a virgin birth?”
“Exactly.”
“This man who claimed he could clone Jesus Christ? Talk about irony!” he hooted with laughter. “Did he really have a coronary—or did lightning strike him?”
“They were married what—thirty years? She was obviously willing to be married to a man who didn’t love her, who had never been attracted to her, never touched her. So why, after all those years in a loveless marriage, did the devoutly Catholic Mrs. Sadowski risk excommunication by the Church by divorcing her husband? And why did she walk out on her own child?”
He finished the contents of his carton and put it aside. “Maybe she found out the kid wasn’t hers,” he suggested, only half-joking.
I rolled my eyes. “Be serious, Goober.”
“I am serious,” he insisted. “Think about it. Can you picture Dr. Toady jerking off to porn in some fertility clinic’s bathroom? The man was a scientist. This was his area of expertise. If the rumors are true, and he was getting it from all those young women, maybe he knocked one of them up and transferred the fertilized egg from a girl he couldn’t afford to have pregnant, to his wife, whose pregnancy would net him a fortune. How would the Mrs. have any way of knowing the embryo wasn’t her own?”
I shook my head. “What must it have been like for her—Dorothea, I mean? Knowing she was so undesirable, her parents had to buy her a husband—one who wanted no part of her sexually? If your theory is correct, and she gave birth to a baby that wasn’t even hers—”
He grinned. “You’ll never know how she felt, Blondie,” he said. “Men would line up to marry you. For free.”
“Interesting coincidence,” I said thoughtfully, ignoring his comment.
“What?”
“This e-mail from Lambert,” I said. “If Sadowski did ever seriously plan to clone the Almighty, he had the opportunity. Seems he was part of the STURP team back in ‘78.”
“The—what?” He stopped eating.
“STURP—the American Shroud of Turin Research Project,” I explained. “A group of scientists went to Italy back in 1978 to test the Shroud, to find out what had made the image on the cloth. Joseph Sadowski was on that team. They extracted blood samples from the Shroud at that time. If he wanted samples for cloning purposes, he could have obtained them then.”
He raised an eyebrow. “The question is—did he?”
17
Connor
I woke abruptly, at first unsure where I was. I sat up in the darkness, gasping, struggling to catch my breath. I was shaking uncontrollably.
It was the dream. Again.
I’d had it countless times over the past fifteen years. The first time was when I was fifteen. It was always the same: I was drowning. The sea was dark, turbulent. There was a storm, a violent storm. I was exhausted, struggling against the undertow. It was cold—I felt as though a thousand knives were lashing into my flesh. I was barely able to keep my head above water. There was a light. A boat. It was several hundred yards away. If I could swim to it, I’d be all right. I summoned up every ounce of strength I could manage and pushed forward.
I could still see the light. I was getting closer. There was a woman on the deck. She was leaning over the railing, calling to me, reaching out to me. I tried to call out to her. I saw her face in the flashing light, just for a moment, before the current pulled me under.
It was Lynne….
It didn’t make sense. I’d had this same dream for years. Years before I’d even met her. I’d seen her face a thousand times, always assuming, until now, that the face of the woman I saw on the boat was simply a product of my subconscious. A psychiatrist would no doubt have made something significant of a fifteen-year recurring nightmare, had I consulted one. I pulled on my clothes and went outside, breathing in the cool night air. My heart rate slowly returned to normal. This is insane, I thought. How could I have been dreaming all these years about a woman I hadn’t yet met?
"Your mother never told you anything at all about your biological father? " Lynne asked. I wished she'd just drop it, but that was unlikely.
"No."
"How did she meet your stepfather? "
"She worked for him," I recalled. "She was a student at the time. He'd been interested in her from the start, but it wasn't mutual. He was old enough to be her father. He offered her a better position—but then she got pregnant."
"It's not possible he's your father?" she asked.
"I wondered about that myself," I confessed as I opened my bottle and took a drink. "But several years ago, I ran a paternity test. Edward and I are in no way biologically connected."
"Did he love her, or—"
I shook my head. “My mother was quite beautiful. Edward had been widowed for a number of years, and was feeling the need for a woman.”
Lynne was silent, waiting for me to continue.
“He wanted my mum. Like most rich men, he was used to getting what he wanted. She didn’t love him, mind you. He didn't love her. He bought her. I received a rather large, irrevocable trust fund the day my mother became his wife,” I said. “I’m a very wealthy man today because my mother was such a hot piece of arse.”
“Not something I would do,” she admitted, “but I’m sure she did what she did because she wanted the best for you.”
“I didn’t care about the money,” I said, the old, pent-up anger surging to the surface along with the unpleasant memories. “I needed my mum. The day she died, I stopped needing anyone.”
“You resented her for dying?” Lynne asked.
“I resented her for leaving me!” I snapped.
“What about your stepfather? Have you ever had a good relationship with him?”
I was pragmatic when it came to that relationship. “Edward gave me a good education and that fat trust fund, and in time I grew to understand that most marriages are nothing more than business deals anyway. From that viewpoint, my mother had made quite a good deal for us.”
“You sound pretty down on marriage,” Lynne said, sounding somewhat disappointed.
“I don’t believe love and marriage go hand in hand, if that’s what you’re suggesting. Marriage is a business arrangement. Sex is currency.”
“What about love?” she asked.
I shrugged. “I’m not sure I even know what love is.”
Lynne was quiet. I could tell this entire conversation was making her acutely uncomfortable, even though she'd started it.
“Love’s a word that gets tossed around far too easily,” I continued. “I haven’t said it to anyone since Mum died, and I won’t, unless I mean it.”
“That automatically puts you ten rungs higher on the food chain than most of the men I’ve known,” Lynne said, looking down at the floor.
I looked at her, filled with an unexpected sadness. “He really did a number on you, didn’t he?” I asked. “Your ex, I mean.”
She didn’t answer immediately. “It’s exes. Plural,” she said finally. “There have been two men in my life—two I was serious about—and both relationships ended badly. The first was my archaeology professor, my mentor. His name was David Masters. He was older, a worldly man, larger-than-life. I was innocent compared to my female friends. David singled me out from the start. He chose me to go with him on a dig in Jordan, my first dig. The week before we left, he seduced me. We were lovers that entire summer. Then I discovered I wasn’t his first and wouldn’t be his last. He chose a different girl every summer.”
“And your ex-husband?” I asked.
“I met Phillip Darcy when I was working on my PhD. I should have known better—not only because of what I’d been through with David, but because this man had already been married and divorced twice. Darcy had grown child
ren he never saw or heard from. Trouble was, I was feeling pretty inadequate by that time. He pulled out all the stops, romanced me in a big way. He wanted me, and I wanted to be wanted.”
“And?”
“The romance died the moment the ring was on my finger. Darcy and I never argued. I tried, but he was never around long enough for that. He’s a photojournalist. He was away most of the time—his career always came first,” she said. “When he was home, he only wanted one thing from me.”
“Sex,” I guessed.
“When I left him, I promised myself I’d never go through that again.”
I tried to smile but didn’t quite succeed. “It would seem you and I are actually quite a bit alike. We’re both damaged goods. Perhaps that makes us a match, after all.”
“How do you figure?”
“You want a child. I want sex,” I stated bluntly. “We can accommodate each other’s needs without unrealistic expectations. No illusions. If you don't want anyone to know I knocked you up, you can just tell them to look for three blokes on camels and a bright star in the east.”
She made a face. “I don’t think so.”
I regarded her intently. “Some years back, a group of climbers set off to conquer Everest,” I began. “They encountered one obstacle after another until they could not go any further. Totally discouraged, they turned back. Only after they returned to their base camp did they find they had been only a hundred feet from the summit when they gave up. Would you want to give up if you were so close to getting what you wanted?”
“Do you have a photo of your mother?” Lynne asked, curious.
“This is the only one I have with me,” I said, pulling my wallet from my pocket. I removed a small photograph and gave it to her.
The picture was my favorite of Mum, taken when she was young—she was smiling, with long, unrestrained red hair. Lynne looked at the photo, then at me. “She was beautiful,” she said. “You have her eyes.”
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