by Cach, Lisa
Tom had had plenty of experience with neurotoxins; the sea krait had been the least severe of the encounters he’d had with venomous creatures, chief amongst them being the multitude of jellyfish in the oceans. He himself had been stung several times by the notoriously deadly box jelly, and endured excruciating, days-long pain even with the administration of an antivenom. At least two divers he’d known had not been so lucky, and had died.
Whatever toxin Velazquez had injected into Angelica might lead to the same fate: death. The toxin’s effects seemed to be growing stronger with time, not weaker; God only knew what chain of reactions was going on inside her body. Angelica might die without an antivenom, assuming one even existed! His heart dropped into his stomach at the realization that there might not even be an antidote.
Be the jellyfish, he reminded himself as he felt the adrenaline surging in his veins. Fear was acceptable, but panic was not. The jellyfish projected graceful calm even while trailing ten meters of toxic tentacles, destroying all in its path. Be the jellyfish, and think! If there was an antidote, the information would be in Dr. Velazquez’s files. If there wasn’t an antidote, then the only hope of creating one was also to be found in the good doctor’s office. They needed to know how Velazquez made Phi-Tox.
He got the women and their entertainment magazines installed in Mr. Toad, then jogged back to the grocery store and started throwing candy into his basket to keep the women mobile. A better idea suddenly hit him. He dumped the candy out of his basket and ran to the baking aisle. A minute later he’d emptied the shelves of corn syrup.
“Here,” he said when he got back to the truck, popping the lids off a couple Karo bottles and handing them to Angelica and Karen. “Drink up!”
Both women stared in dismay at the offering he’d put in their hands. “They werrrre out of Junior Mintssss?” Karen complained.
“Yup.” He nudged Angelica’s hand towards her mouth, silently urging her to drink. He’d give her an IV of corn syrup for the next thirty years of her life, if that’s how long it took to find the antidote. “Bottoms up!”
Angelica’s first sip was reluctant, but then some force beyond her control seemed to take over her body and she tilted her head back, chugging the entire twelve ounces and then holding the bottle above her open mouth, waiting for the last slow dribble to leak out. She turned to him with eyes showing a glimmer of returning brightness.
“Good?” he asked, as he crammed himself into the tiny cab with the women and started the car. Angelica legs were parted around the gearshift, and the sides of his hand rubbed against her inner thighs as he fought for reverse, his hand brushing up against her crotch as he finally got the truck in gear.
“It’s good,” she said throatily, throwing him off for a moment, until he realized she meant the corn syrup, not his hand in her private parts. “But I’m going to pack on five pounds a day at this rate.”
“Don’t worry. That’s just more ass for me to grab!”
From the other side of Angelica, Karen piped up. “Angelica, you have to keep him. Those are the words of a good man!”
Tom waited to hear Angelica’s response, his jaw tight with hope as he drove out of the parking lot and onto the main street. Her answer came slowly.
“I might have kept him, if things were different. But to me, a ‘keeper’ is by your side through thick, thin, and everything in between. I want someone I can count on to be there for me, every day. I don’t want an absentee boyfriend. I’d rather be single than pining after someone I could only see once every year or two.”
“You’ll pine for me if I leave?” he asked, catching the one small spot of brightness in her words. She was pressed up against his side, her left leg tucked beneath his right calf. She looked up at him, so close he would only have to bend his head to kiss her.
“If?” she asked, a spark of hope in her voice.
His tongue, unfortunately, got ahead of his brain in his answer. “I don’t know why I said ‘if.’ I meant ‘when.’”
“Oh,” she replied, disappointment leaking out of the vowel sound like air deflating from a tire. She turned to look out Karen’s window.
Tom winced, cursing himself. Couldn’t he have left it at ‘if’? The jellyfish would have been cool with that.
Conversation died as he took Mr. Toad up the entrance ramp to the freeway; the noise of road and wind made talk impossible. Between handling the squirrelly truck and speculating on the formula for Phi-Tox, a small part of his brain became obsessed with ‘if.’
Why had he said ‘if,’ anyway? Maybe part of him was considering staying here. He could leave the manager he’d hired in charge of the business in Micronesia and get a boat going here, running overnight dive trips to Catalina and the Santa Barbara Islands. But diving around Catalina was not in the same league as diving in the South Pacific, and living in Los Angeles was a slow death to anyone who thrived in a natural environment. Was love worth that big a sacrifice?
He was surprised he was considering staying. He knew himself better than to think it would be a good idea. How long would it be before he started chafing at life here? How long before he started to resent Angelica for being the reason he stayed? He couldn’t change his wants to suit those of another.
He glanced at Angelica, feeling his heart contract at the beauty of her face. He’d been asking her to change her wants, hadn’t he? He’d tried to make her want the footloose, precarious life of a traveling artist, even though she’d told him that what she valued was stability and security. No wonder she’d rejected him.
He urged Mr. Toad up to fifty-five, the little truck rattling and howling, giving voice to the frustration in his own heart. There might not be much hope for him with Angelica, but it didn’t change this one sure thing: he would lay down his life to deliver his Angel from evil.
Chapter Eight
“Thissh issh all I have accessh to,” Karen slurred, as the appointment book came up on the computer screen at her desk in Dr. Velazquez’s front office. The monitor cast a blue-white tone over the girl’s immobile face, and Angelica thought it made her look eerily like a stone sculpture. Karen had been sipping at a bottle of Karo, but every few minutes she’d seem to forget it was in her hand, and she’d murmur, “Junior Mintsssh…”
Angelica had been nervous about entering the building, a Beverly Hills low-rise with a security guard stationed in the lobby. The guard had recognized Karen, though, and Tom’s nose tubes made it clear enough that he was a patient. Karen had assured her that there were plenty of late-night comings and goings in the business of plastic surgery; stars didn’t want to be seen walking into a clinic in the broad light of day, and walking out again with bandages on their faces or groggy from anesthesia.
“You can’t get into the medical records?” Tom asked.
“Nuh,” Karen grunted.
“But you can go back in the sssschedule?” Angelica asked, wincing inside at the sound of her voice. Tom cast a worried look at her. She took a hit of Karo. “Look for the namesssh.” She spread both tabloid covers on the desk.
Karen slowly started typing.
“Where are the medical records kept?” Tom asked.
Karen pointed at the door into the clinic proper. “They’re digitizshed. Eash exam roooom hash a computer, and sho doessh Vewashquesh’sh offish. I don’t have pashwordz.”
“If the employees here are like most others, they’ve written them down somewhere convenient. I’m going to go check.” He headed toward the door.
“Tom, wait!” Angelica said, alarm thumping through her. Digging through medical files in the office was different than accessing the appointment records that Karen was already allowed to see. If they were caught right now, the worst that would happen was Karen being fired. If Tom was caught in an exam room, digging through records, he’d be arrested. “If you’re caught…”
“Karen, you said Velazquez was at a movie premiere tonight?” Tom asked.
“Yesh. Date with actresssh. Go to partiessh aft
er.”
Tom grinned at Angelica. “See? No problem. He won’t surprise us.”
The worry-wart part of her was only slightly soothed. “The appointment book should tell us enough to bring to the policshe.”
They both looked at Karen. “Firssht name, no luck,” the girl said. “Now for second name.” Her fingers slowly found the right keys.
Tom met Angelica’s eyes. “Even if she finds the names, we need more than that. We need the Phi-Tox formula. You stay here with Karen; I’m going in.” He pulled open the door.
A whimper of nerves strummed in Angelica’s throat as she looked from Karen to the door closing behind Tom. Curse it! She couldn’t let him take all the risks alone, not when coming here had been her idea. She chased after him, fear thrumming in her blood.
The hall beyond the door was dark and quiet, its carpeted floor absorbing sound. A dim light came from an open doorway straight ahead, at the end of the hall: Velazquez’s office. Tom had headed straight for the source.
She found him pulling out drawers and lifting the blotter on Velazquez’s big antique desk while the computer booted up on a built-in mahogany counter behind him. He’d turned on the dim, under-cabinet lights above the computer.
“Ha!” he declared, peering in the back of a drawer. “Found it!”
Angelica came over to look. Inside the drawer, stuck to its side near the back, was a stick note that said:
Login: diego
Password: infanta
Angelica was impressed by Tom’s quick success. This breaking and entering seemed almost too easy.
“Nice of him to label them for us, wasn’t it?” Tom said, turning back to face the monitor that was now displaying the login page. “Wonder what they mean, diego and infanta?”
“Diego, as in Diego Velazquez, the Spanish painter. The ‘Infanta’ was his most famous work. Dr. Velazquez is descended from him, and feels he inherited the family talent.”
Tom snorted. “No man with a true appreciation for beauty would spend his life carving up women, trying to ‘improve’ them.” He typed in the password, entered the system, and started poking around.
“You don’t think some women could use a tweak here or there? Smaller thighs, bigger breasts?”
“If a skin and bones woman wants bigger breasts, she should gain twenty pounds,” he said dryly.
“It’s not that easy! On some women, extra weight goes straight to the thighs. No one wants to be shaped like a pear.”
“Why not?” he asked with half his attention, as he opened and closed files.
“B-b-because!” she stuttered in shock. “Pear-shaped! Bad!”
He shrugged, clicking open a different icon.
“Guys don’t want women who look like pears!” she insisted.
“Hey, I can’t speak for all guys, but give some of us some credit,” he said, scrolling down a page. “I’d rather have a pear-shaped babe willing to do the nasty in broad daylight—on the deck of an open boat—than a self-conscious Barbie doll who wants the lights off and spends all her free time and money on grooming herself.”
“Really?”
He clicked the file closed and opened another. “I’d say most guys would rather have someone who enjoyed herself as she was than someone who tortured him with insecurities about the size of her butt. Act like you have a great butt, and we’ll believe you! Happily!” He glanced up at her. “You know what they say: it’s not the size that matters, it’s how you use it.”
“I don’t think they’re talking about women’s butts in that.”
“Same difference. You want me asking you if my dick’s big enough?”
“No!”
“See?”
“But…,” she started, as he looked back at the screen. “Don’t you think the women who do take such pains with their appearance are more beautiful?”
Tom broke his attention away from the monitor to look at her. “Angelica. The women in L.A. look like freaking plastic monsters. They make my skin crawl. They aren’t real. You’re real. You’re beautiful.”
“I’ve got small breasts…,” she started weakly, wanting to believe him but doubting his words.
“And you’ve got a big butt and a hooked nose; yeah, I know. And I love them. I love every part of you.” He grabbed her hips, turned her around, yanked down her pajama bottoms, and planted a noisy kiss on her butt cheek. Angelica squeaked in surprise.
“Every part of you,” he said again, pulling her PJs back up. He turned back to the monitor. “Which is why we’ve got to find out more about Phi-Tox.”
Angelica turned slowly around to watch him work, her mind a welter of thoughts and emotions. He thought she was beautiful! He loved every part of her. Did that mean he loved her, Angelica, the sum of her parts? He’d asked her to marry him, sure, but he’d never said he loved her. She’d taken his proposal for an impulse.
Angelica had always believed that true love at first sight, that rarest of loves, could only happen if the people were right for each other and subconsciously understood each other’s natures when they met. She’d thought Tom wasn’t right for her, and thus that his apparent attraction to her was not based on anything approaching true love. If she didn’t love him, he couldn’t love her; not really, truly, deeply.
She watched him scanning through files, his focus so intense that he seemed to have momentarily screened her from his awareness. She hadn’t thought he was capable of such determined concentration; his goofy manner precluded such behavior, Ph.D. notwithstanding. And his efforts now were all to save her, even though she’d given him no hope that they could have a future together. She lifted her hand, intending to rest it on the back of his neck.
“I’m not finding anything related to Phi-Tox!” Tom growled in frustration.
She dropped her hand, an idea coming to her from the depths of her unconscious. “Try hissh web browsher.”
“You want to see what porn he’s been surfing?”
She took a swig from the Karo bottle she’d set on the desk when she came in. “No. Maybe he keepsh hish information in the cloud.”
Tom’s brows rose. “Huh?”
She took a few more glugs of syrup. “Information cloud. Online. Personal computers can be subpoenaed, their hard drives dug through. Maybe he feels safer hiding things online.”
Tom clicked open the browser. “But if his computer says where he’s been, how is the information safer?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it’s not. But maybe he thinks it is, or maybe he has some sort of elaborate security system.”
“Let’s hope not.” She watched as the browser came open. “Check ‘History.’”
The menu opened, and as they both scanned the list of websites Tom started to chuckle. “Porn! I told you plastic surgeons were obsessed with sex! Want me to go to one these sites, to make sure?”
“No! Check his bookmarks.”
Tom shut the history menu and went to Bookmarks. It was full of porn sites, other plastic surgeons’ websites, about twenty sites related to Costa Rica’s rain forests, a bunch of government sites including the FDA and the National Center for Biotechnology Information, and a file called, simply, Testing. Under it was one website: BB. “Click there,” Angelica said.
A pink and white site opened with the banner headline: Beyond Botox! The subhead read: Be young forever, with the super secret new formula developed by the world’s top plastic surgeon: Phi-Tox!
There were several Before and After photos of women’s faces, transformed from scowling prunes to serene Madonnas. The Fountain of Youth has been discovered! the caption declared.
Another photo showed a group of attractive young women lounging around a richly decorated living room, laughing and sipping wine. Arrange for a Phi-Tox party in your own home. Groups of twenty-five or more receive a special discount.
“Why did he put this under ‘Testing,’ I wonder?” Angelica said. “Looks more like a cash-generating machine.”
“That son of a bitch,” Tom gr
owled. “Don’t you see? He’s using the women who sign up for Phi-Tox parties as his lab rats! He’s testing the formula on them in an uncontrolled experiment.”
Angelica sucked in a breath, understanding. “Thatss how he’sh managed to inject sho many women around the schity that L.A. ish running out of candy!” She struggled to make her stiff lips work. “Velashquesh could do a hundred women a day, going from party to party!”
Tom looked at her in concern as she finished off the bottle of Karo syrup. “Angelica, you’re getting worse. We’ve got to find that formula. There’s nothing about it on this computer. He must be doing his research elsewhere.”
“Karen sayssh he hash a big private eshtate in Malibu. Maybe there?”
Tom nodded. “It would make sense. No nurses, no janitors; he’d have complete control over access. Complete privacy.” He glanced at the computer’s clock. “It’s a quarter after ten. Karen said he was going to parties after the premiere; how late do those usually go?”
Angelica thought back to all the office gossip Karen had shared the past couple months about Velazquez’s love life. “It dependsh on hish mood. He could shtay out all night if he likesh hish date, or be home by midnight.”
“We’ll have to risk it.” He spent a couple minutes on Google finding Velazquez’s address, and then pored over the satellite shot of the estate. “Jeez, would you look at the size of this place?” He zoomed in on the sprawling mansion as far as he could.
“What’s that big round dark area on the roof?”
“I’d guess it’s an atrium or greenhouse.” He shifted the screen view slightly. “There’s also a long rectangular run of glass over here, maybe above a gallery or a pool. Velazquez sure likes his natural light.” Tom pointed to an area next to the atrium, where large cubes cast shadows on the roof. “By the size of these units, this must be commercial grade HVAC equipment. I’ll bet this is where his lab is.”