by C. J. Lyons
“Getting close to me got Jess killed,” he reminded me, a warning in the way his lips tightened.
“Jess wasn’t killed because you loved her, Devon. Distancing yourself from Esme might keep you safe—you don’t have to worry about what a hard job it is being a good father, you don’t have to stay up nights trying to decide what’s best for her future—but if your enemies want to find your weak spot, sooner or later they will find her, Flynn or no Flynn. Isn’t it better she knows she has a father who loves her, a home she can find joy in, friends she can trust? Don’t you want to give her everything you and Jess never had?”
I was treading on dangerous ground, and we both knew it. But he didn’t flinch. Instead, he considered my words.
“I have enough money to buy her the world. But you’re saying being with a man like me, a guttersnipe street runt with blood on my hands, that’s what she needs?”
The light changed, and we moved forward. “I think any girl would be lucky to have you as a father,” I assured Devon. “Now, want to tell me about this house call I’m making?”
He shifted in his seat as if uncertain. “The Lees—they run one of my restaurants. Their grandson is sick. None of the doctors at the clinic can figure it out, and they asked if I could help, so I thought of you.”
“I’m an ER doc, not a pediatric specialist.”
“I know. I thought they were just overanxious grandparents and you could reassure them.” His voice trailed off.
I sat up and turned to him, my curiosity piqued. “But?”
“But today, I was talking to people in the Tower to see if anyone saw anything with Tymara. And I found there’s more kids from the Tower getting sick. I’m worried it has something to do with what Daniel left behind in the tunnels.” The Kingston family owned the tunnels that ran beneath the city streets from Millionaire’s Row to the river. They’d been built during the Cold War as an emergency shelter, ready to evacuate the state government in case of a nuclear attack.
“What kind of symptoms?”
He frowned. “All sorts that make no sense to me. But they reminded me of what’s going on with you, so—”
“What I have is inherited. And even then it’s a one-in-a-hundred-million odds of getting it.”
“I know. But more I look into Kingston Enterprises, more I find that makes me suspect—no, you’ll think I’m crazy.”
Devon and I might not share the same moral compass, but he was probably the least-crazy person I knew. “Tell me.”
“Best I can decipher, Kingston Enterprises—well, one of their biotech subsidiaries—had an effective treatment for Ebola ten years ago, but never brought it to market.”
“A lot of drug companies do that. It’s too expensive to do all the FDA testing and get approval, so they hang on to valuable treatments until it’s profitable to move forward.”
“Daniel wasn’t big on documenting the motives behind a lot of what he did, but—” He paused. “This is where it gets crazy. He set up what he called monitoring units all over the world. They knew about the Ebola epidemic in West Africa before any other authorities.”
“You mean he didn’t tell anyone?” I shouldn’t have been surprised; I knew how ruthless Devon’s father was, but condemning tens of thousands of people when they could have saved them? “Ryder said he was a psychopath.”
“Oh, he is,” Devon agreed amiably. “But I was wondering. Is there any way…Could he have somehow caused the Ebola epidemic? Because if I’m reading these records right, they went into production with their treatment almost a full year before the first case was documented. That’s how they were able to get the WHO and CDC contracts and walk away with billions—with the CDC ushering them through the FDA application process, saving Kingston Enterprises millions of dollars.”
I stared at him. “Do you have proof?”
“No. At least nothing I can interpret. You’re the only person I can trust with this.”
I nodded, still digesting the Machiavellian conceit behind what he’d suggested.
“But, what I’m more afraid of is what else he might have planned—plans that might already be in motion.”
“You mean the PXA that Leo was working on.” Leo had been working to develop PXA as the perfect torture agent to sell to the DOD or highest bidder.
PXA created the same brain-wave pattern that my fatal-insomnia-messed-up brain could communicate with. Last month I’d entered the mind of one of Leo’s victims as she died from PXA. That had pretty much been the worst hell I could ever imagine. That is, until Leo had injected me with PXA.
I should have died—but I had my fatal insomnia to thank for saving my life. Not only did the PXA wear off faster than in someone with a normal brain, it had also enhanced the weird side effects from my fatal insomnia while mitigating the catatonia that left me frozen and helpless when I had a fugue spell. That combination had allowed me to save Ryder’s life and overcome Leo.
“Did you find more PXA?” I was horrified that the drug might hit the streets again.
“Not in the tunnels. Although, several Kingston subsidiaries are investigating the drug. But, I was wondering. All these sick kids live in the Tower…”
“You think Leo might have been experimenting with more than the PXA?”
He nodded grimly.
“Let’s start with the basics before we go zebra-hunting,” I said, using the timeworn medical theory that hoof beats most often come from horses. “You’re doing a lot of renovations in the Tower. Could it be environmental? Maybe Daniel used lead paint or something like that?”
“I hadn’t thought of that. Is that treatable?”
“And easy to test for. Let me see what’s going on with the kids first.”
He parked the car in the alley between the rear of St. Tim’s and the north side of the Tower. Lazy drifts of flurries floated through the night sky, cradling the light from both buildings like silent ghosts. I got out, grabbed my bag, and turned toward the door leading into the Tower.
“No,” he said, nodding instead to the church. “They’re waiting at St. Tim’s. In Sister Patrice’s old clinic.”
“Down in the tunnels?” I was glad the dark hid my shudder. I despised those damn tunnels. They had entrances scattered throughout this side of the city, including beneath St. Tim’s. There was even one in the basement of Good Sam’s, conveniently close to the hospital’s incinerator—well, convenient if you were a serial killer like Leo Kingston.
“No. The church basement.” Devon heaved open the heavy door leading into the church. He led me through the sanctuary to the side corridor where steps led down to the church basement. Here, there were rooms used for storage, two decorated for children’s Sunday school, and one larger assembly area that had a silver tinsel Christmas tree in the corner, decorated with paper chains and lopsided cut-out snowflakes. About a dozen folding chairs filled the floor space, all occupied by worried parents and their children.
“Only five families could come tonight,” Devon said. “I’ve made a list of the others.”
“Only five?” I turned to him, aghast, praying he was wrong. After all, he had no medical training. But Devon had been raised on the streets, and the two things that had kept him alive were his instincts and his ability to see what others dismissed. I trusted him. But…I didn’t want to believe him.
“How many?” I asked.
“Nineteen that I know of. All with the same symptoms.”
Chapter 20
FLYNN JERKED AWAKE, rolling silently out of bed, her knife in her hand. Crouched on the floor, she listened. Her house was still—her house; she was still getting used to the concept—but someone stood in the hall. She could feel it.
Normal background noise filtered through the darkness as she focused on the one wrong thing that had woken her. A floorboard creaked, followed by the tiniest whisper of breathing.
Flynn relaxed and put her knife away. Not a wrong thing.
Her heart had barely sped up. She almost never ex
perienced the adrenaline rushes that normal people did, not unless she was in a fight for her life. Daniel said that was one of the reasons why she was so good at her job. Well, her old job. This new one…she wasn’t at all sure she was equipped for it. What the hell did she know about taking care of a ten-year-old girl? Especially one as traumatized as Esme?
“You have to stop sneaking out of your room at night,” Flynn said into the darkness beyond her open bedroom door.
“I can’t sleep there,” the darkness replied, separating itself from the shadows and stepping into the room as a girl, slightly on the small and skinny side, skin almost as dark as Flynn’s, braids swinging above her shoulders. “Can’t I stay with you?”
Flynn sighed and drew back the covers on her queen-size bed.
Daniel had taught her that power didn’t come from age or brains or money. No, he’d said during one of their nightly training sessions after he’d rescued her from the street, power comes from body language. Primates are conditioned to respond to nonverbal clues. Walk in like you own the room and you don’t need to say a word to get what you want.
To her surprise, he was right. It was how Flynn, despite not even being eighteen, passed for the twenty-four-year-old newly minted guardian of her “little sister,” Esme, and had bullied her way past the authorities at the fancy school Devon had arranged for his daughter.
Apparently, though, Daniel had never tested his theory of power on ten-year-old girls. Esme snuggled into Flynn’s bed, patting the space beside her as if she were the queen demanding an audience. Flynn obeyed, climbing back onto the bed and pulling the duvet up around them both as Esme curled up in Flynn’s arms. “Tell me a story.”
At first, Flynn had been concerned by how well Esme handled the trauma of seeing her mother killed and almost dying herself. She’d been prepared for tears, but Esme’s grief was more insidious, taking the form of night terrors, sleepwalking, weird jerks and tremors, and insomnia. The doctors couldn’t find anything wrong with her; the school psychologist said it was all normal and advised Flynn to set a routine and stick to it.
Flynn knew the girl needed to learn how to sleep in her own bed, but found it impossible to deny Esme’s nightly requests. It was an unexpected weakness, this need to not just guard Esme, but also care for her. Daniel would have been extremely disappointed.
“Once school starts after Christmas break, you need to sleep in your room,” Flynn said in what she wanted to be a stern voice. It emerged more like an exhausted plea. When Esme didn’t sleep, neither did Flynn.
“I hate school. I’m not going back.” Esme’s tone reminded Flynn of Daniel. Certain. Uncompromising.
“You’ve only been there a few weeks. Give it time.”
“No.” Esme flounced on the bed, adamant. “I don’t like those girls, and they don’t like me. They make fun of me, call me names.”
“So what?” In Flynn’s world, no one gave a damn about words. It was the knives and bullets you needed to watch out for. “Call them names back.”
Esme blew her breath out in frustration. “I can’t. Mama said that was rude. Said I have to grow up to be a polite lady.”
“There you go. You’re a lady, they’re not.” Funny, since the girls in question came from the purebred upper tier of New England society. “Ignore them. You’re above it all.”
“I have.” Esme’s voice dropped to a sorrowful sigh. “That’s why I don’t have any friends.”
Flynn pulled her closer, surprised that her heart sped up at Esme’s words. “Don’t worry. You still have me.”
“I wish Mama was here. Or Ozzie. Or my daddy. Then we’d be a real family.”
Devon had wanted Flynn to tell Esme he was dead, wanted his daughter as far away from him as possible, to keep her safe. But Flynn hadn’t had the heart to lie to a girl who’d just lost her mother and had been uprooted from the only home she’d ever known, so she’d told Esme her father was away on business.
Big mistake, she quickly realized. But what the hell did Flynn know about little girls? Not like anyone had ever raised her properly. Before she killed her mother’s boyfriend, Flynn had been used as a punching bag and sex toy. Then Daniel had taken her in, molded her from a rebellious teen who’d gotten away with murder into a stealth weapon, able to blend in with any level of society and do his bidding.
Flynn had no clue what normal was, much less a normal family. But that’s what Esme needed, and she hated that she couldn’t give it to her.
“Story,” Esme insisted.
Before she met Esme, Flynn had no stories suitable for a little girl’s ears—unless she wanted Esme to suffer even more night terrors. But Esme craved stories, they were sustenance to her, so Flynn set her imagination free, giving Esme the fairytale shoulda-coulda-woulda wistful lives neither of them had found in reality.
“Where were we?”
Esme burrowed deeper into Flynn’s embrace. “Princess Rhetta was fighting the dragon to save Prince Ozzie and his kingdom.” Prince Ozzie featured in all of Esme’s stories, even if the princesses varied.
“Okay. How do you think Rhetta defeated a fire-breathing dragon ten times her size?” Flynn had quickly learned that when she had no clue how to twist a story, if she simply asked her audience, the answer would be supplied. Esme had very firm ideas about how a good story should be told. Princesses kicked butt and saved the day, princes rewarded them with kisses and pretty dresses, and the bad guys ended up in dungeons.
“Well…” Esme considered. “Her sword is too short for her to get close enough without getting burned by the dragon’s fire, so she’s going to have to trick it. I think she plays dead and waits for the dragon to open its mouth to gobble her up and—”
Esme went silent, mid-sentence.
“And then what?” Flynn prompted.
No answer. A warm wetness spread beneath the duvet and sheets. “Esme!” Flynn turned to the girl. Esme’s face was slack, her eyes unblinking, staring into space. Drool slipped from the corner of her mouth, and she’d wet herself.
Flynn couldn’t help herself. She shook Esme, trying to snap her out of her spell. Her breathing was okay, pulse normal. But Esme had simply vanished, leaving only her body behind.
She climbed out of bed and carefully positioned Esme on her side, away from the wet stain, head turned so she wouldn’t choke on her drool. Flynn reached for the phone, then stopped, her hand hovering over it. It’d been less than a minute. Should she call an ambulance? Invite all the questions that would come with an ER visit?
Then Esme blinked. She shook herself and looked up at Flynn with mournful eyes. “It keeps happening.”
“What happened? When did it start? How often?” Questions poured from Flynn as she knelt at Esme’s side.
Esme sat up, one hand slipping on the wet sheets, and looked horrified. “I wet the bed?”
“That doesn’t matter. Tell me what happened.”
Tears slid down Esme’s cheeks. “I never wet the bed. Not since I was a baby. Not even when Mama—”
Flynn bundled her into her arms and carried her from the wet bed out to the living room. At Esme’s command, she’d bought them a real Christmas tree. A first for both of them. It shed needles all over the carpet, kept sagging in the tree stand, and although the pine smell was heavenly, it made Flynn’s eyes itch. But they’d had fun dragging it in, setting it up, and decorating. Esme had even taught Flynn how to make a popcorn garland and the proper way to hang tinsel icicles.
Tonight, Esme ignored the tree, instead curling up on Flynn’s lap, her face against Flynn’s neck. “Tell me,” Flynn coaxed, once the tension had fled Esme’s body and her tears had stopped.
“I knew you were there—I could see, hear, feel everything.” Esme’s voice filled with wonder.
“Has it happened before?”
Esme nodded, her braids bouncing against Flynn’s shoulder. “A few times. Once it happened in school, and I could see the answers sitting on the teacher’s desk while we took a pop qu
iz. Not really, not with my eyes, but I’d walked past them on my way into class, and she’d turned them over before I could see. But then, when I was frozen, I could see, like I could go back in time and flip through my memories, rewind them.”
Esme looked up at her, swallowed, and tried on a brave smile. “It’s kind of cool. When it’s not scary. I’m sorry I wet the bed. You’re not mad, are you?”
Flynn’s pulse buzzed, a wasp beating its way free of a spider’s web. Maybe she wasn’t in the fight of her life, but Esme might be. Because Flynn had seen the same kind of thing happen to one other person…the doctor who’d saved her life.
Angela Rossi.
Chapter 21
NINETEEN KIDS FROM one apartment complex, all with the same symptoms. This was so not good.
“Let’s see what we have.” Somehow, I kept my voice calm, reassuring even. But my mind was whirling with the ramifications and consequences. If Devon was right, I’d have to get the Health Department involved, call the CDC, alert the staffs of all the local hospitals…except…I had no idea what to tell them.
I left Ozzie with the other families while Devon led me into a storage room that Sister Patrice had converted into an examination area. The cement-block walls were as stark white as the sheets on the cot that functioned as an exam table, but colorful, crayoned drawings and finger-painted masterpieces hanging from a bulletin board broke up the monotony. The room smelled of candle wax and antiseptic, a strange mix of faith and function.
A dark-haired boy, maybe five or six, sat on a cot, hunched over a coloring book, his back to me. A young woman, thin from worry, her cheekbones hollowed out and eyes rimmed red, held his hand and stroked his hair. She shifted to stand between me and the boy, while an older couple stood on the far side of the room, the man gray-haired with thick glasses, pressed against the wall as if hoping to melt into it, and the woman, her hair dyed black, regarding me with a fierce challenge. The grandparents.