by Kira Peikoff
“Jesus Christ! Do you hear yourself?”
There was a sigh. “Maybe I am just a paranoid old crank. I don’t know. You have been good to me over the—”
At that moment, the ship jerked so violently that Isabel cupped a hand over her mouth to suppress a cry. At the same time, a violent crack sounded overhead, like a heavy branch snapping. The shelf above her and Chris groaned under the weight of textbooks sliding. She squeezed her eyes shut, hoping the door wouldn’t pop open. That was when she caught the first whiff. With her senses on high alert, the smell was unmistakable.
Smoke.
CHAPTER 29
Isabel
The Atlantic Ocean
Isabel charged out of the closet with a shout.
“Fire! We have to get out!”
Galileo and Quinn spun around to her in shock. The faint scent of smoke was getting stronger by the second.
Galileo stared back and forth between her and the closet as if trying to make sense of the inexplicable. Quinn’s wizened face scrunched up as he looked past Isabel to regard his protégé. Behind her, Chris was reluctantly rising out of his crouched position underneath the shelf.
“Chris?” Quinn said tentatively. “What in God’s name—?”
“No time,” Isabel cut him off. “Don’t you guys smell that? Let’s go!”
She dashed out of the lab. Where was the smoke coming from? The hall looked fine. It had to be on another deck. That crack, the ship’s shudder, the smoke—it could only have been lightning. She recognized the pattern too well. While filming one episode of Wild Woman, during an electrical storm in Fiji, she’d watched a crooked white beam strike the tallest tree. Its branch had snapped off in flames.
The mast, she realized. It had to be the mast.
She bounded into the stairwell, racing up three flights until she reached the top deck. The men followed on her heels. Then she hurried as fast as she could through the glass-enclosed former nightclub to the open-air prow. It was an exposed triangle of about 150 square feet at the very front of the ship. Out here, the smoke hung thick and heavy on the salt air. She looked up, fearing the worst.
The mast was ablaze. Crackling yellow flames shimmied down its wooden beam toward the ship. Isabel threw her arm over her face as black ashes fluttered down. Heat stung her eyes and the inside of her throat.
She was bent over, coughing, when Galileo, Quinn, and Chris caught up to her. Half a dozen other people streamed out of the stairwell with them, their voices pitching and shouting over the roar of the thunder and the sea.
They all stared in horror at the fire, many dropping to their knees as the ship teetered precariously up and down. Only a waist-high metal railing around the perimeter separated them from being flung overboard into the crashing waves below. Freezing cold water splashed up over the sides, spraying droplets everywhere. Isabel shivered, trying to keep calm amid the panicked yells around her. If she knew one thing, it was that survival depended on a clear head.
She squinted through the chaos of ashes and rain and lurching bodies to scan for Galileo by the light of the fire. Surely he would know what to do. But she couldn’t spot his tall form anywhere. The violent swaying of the ship dizzied her. It was hard to walk straight, let alone think straight. All the while, aggressive flames were devouring the mast at a frightening pace, inching ever closer to the deck itself.
Coughing fits erupted all around. Orange embers rained down, singeing hair and skin. Isabel sank to all fours and crawled on the slippery wet floor back toward the stairs inside, to the captain’s quarters just one deck below. There had to be a fire extinguisher there.
But just when she reached the door, Galileo burst out of the stairwell, holding up a bright red extinguisher like a trophy. His expression reminded her of a warrior’s—fer-vent and resolute. He brushed past her, cutting a path through the crowd as close to the mast as he could. Isabel ran interference for him.
“Back up!” she yelled. “Everyone inside!” If they went beneath the deck to where the air was uncontaminated, it would help the coughing and prevent injuries from smoke inhalation.
But it was impossible to order the chaos, not when the flames were close enough to blister skin and the ship swayed relentlessly and the thunder drowned out her screams anyway.
Galileo ignored it all. He kept his balance like a pro, spraying a powerful stream at the fire. The kickback of the extinguisher wasn’t strong enough to deter his aim. Illuminated by the flames, his figure stood silhouetted against the sky. Isabel could see the tense knot of his shoulders, the ropy muscles of his arms, the way his drenched hair clung to his forehead with rain and sweat.
The extinguisher’s forceful torrent at first seemed no match for the hissing fire, but soon she saw that Galileo’s determination was winning out. The flames curled in on themselves as if trying to escape his spray. The crowd surrounded him, transfixed, shouting encouragements over the wind and waves. When the last orange lick died out and only the blackened mast remained, a cheer rose up. Amid the storm, it sounded weak but triumphant.
Isabel wiped the water off her face and breathed in. The air was still choked with smoke, but it was already starting to dissipate. She searched for Chris among the group of drenched, huddled people, wanting to plant a kiss on his lips right then and there. His thick, burly frame shouldn’t have been hard to spot even in the dark, but he was nowhere in sight. Instead, pushing through to the outskirts of the crowd, she found herself face-to-face with Richard. He was clutching his elbows, trembling and pale in the moonlight. A dark smattering of ash stained his cheek. When their eyes met, she felt a fresh stab of fear. He looked not just shaken, but horrified.
“Are you okay?” she said.
“I am, but . . .” He trailed off, nodding in the opposite direction of the crowd, toward the very edge of the prow some yards away.
That was when she saw Chris. He was crouched down, leaning over a man’s twisted limp body splayed at his feet.
It was Dr. Quinn.
What happened next was a blur—rushing to the scene in disbelief, only to be met with Chris’s sobbing moans—he slipped and hit his head, nothing I could do. A pool of dark blood was leaking out of the doctor’s scalp, staining the deck. His bluish lips were parted, his eyes open and staring. Unblinking.
Richard stood next to her, staring hard at Chris.
“Is he—dead?”
Chris’s lowered gaze told them the answer.
“Then do something!” Isabel shrieked. “You know what to do!”
“It doesn’t work in all cases,” Chris muttered. “He could have a subdural hematoma . . .”
Galileo caught up to them then, the gawking crowd close behind him. When he caught sight of Quinn’s body, all color drained from his face. In a split second, he was on his knees, ripping off his shirt and tying it around Quinn’s bloody head.
“I can’t believe this,” Chris was saying over and over. “I just can’t believe this.”
“Pull yourself together and get him to the OR,” Galileo commanded.
“But if he has a brain injury, the protocol might not work . . .”
“Figure out a way.” His voice shook. “There has to be a way. You’re the best person to know.”
“I’ll try. We need a neuro consult stat.”
Together, they lifted the doctor’s slight body and staggered through the crowd. Isabel stayed behind, watching them recede into the glass lounge, to the stairwell, down into the bowels of the ship. Richard stood silently beside her. She became aware of an icy feeling on the back of her neck, and not from the rain or the wind.
It was dread.
Her alert senses had picked up on something that only now was breaking through to her consciousness. In her mind she replayed the interaction with Chris from moments before. His face had been scrunched up in distress, the epitome of crying anguish.
But something was wrong. There were no tears in his eyes.
She was about to confess her realization
when Richard spoke first.
“I saw what happened.” His tone was flat. “With the fire, no one else noticed.”
He didn’t have to explain; they both shared the same hyperaware side effect of the X101. Just that night, over dinner, they’d commiserated about how pungent and loud and close the world now seemed.
“What happened?”
He hesitated. “I don’t want to cause trouble.”
“Just tell me.”
“Quinn didn’t slip. He was pushed.”
CHAPTER 30
Joan
New York
The call came in the middle of the night, but Joan wasn’t sleeping. Since the window-smashing incident, a guardedness kept her and Greg constantly on edge. They’d filed a police report, installed a camera alarm system, and bought a 9 millimeter handgun to keep in the safe, but peace of mind proved elusive. It was impossible to rest when you knew you were targets in your own home—targets of some mysterious psychopath who wasn’t afraid to bully you with force.
At night they feigned sleep for the sake of normalcy. And then they lay awake with their eyes closed, listening—to the hum of the fridge, the hiss of the radiator, the rain pounding down overhead—for signs of an intruder.
So when Joan’s cell phone trilled at 3:35 A.M., her eyes snapped open before the end of the first ring and Greg shot straight up as if ready to fight someone.
It was Adam. He sounded breathless.
“Baby’s coming! Meet us at Roosevelt.”
Joan’s heart expanded with joy, temporarily nudging worry aside. At last, she and Greg were about to meet their grandson. She sent up a silent prayer of thanks for the one and only benefit of the crashed economy—Adam’s depleted savings meant that he couldn’t afford a big move out of state, so his family was staying put in New York. That meant Joan got to be a grandmother to little Sophia and now a sweet new boy every day, not just a few times a year.
She grinned at Greg and mouthed: It’s time. His eyes lit up like hers.
“I can’t wait!” she squealed into the phone. “Daddy and I are on our way.”
“Um. Actually, I just want you there.”
If his words were a sword, she would have doubled over. She knew well enough that Adam hadn’t forgiven Greg for his mistakes, but she’d been hoping the bliss of a new baby might smooth over their estrangement.
She leaped off the bed and tiptoed into the bathroom.
“Do you know what this will do to him?” she whispered. Her eyes were already filling with tears. She couldn’t bear to look at her husband. “Please, honey. Can’t you just let it go?”
“No.” Adam’s voice was firm. “I told you both before, he has to earn my trust back. And so far he hasn’t done a damn thing.”
“You don’t understand. Your father’s been . . .”
She trailed off. How could she explain the stress they were under? Adam knew nothing about Greg’s life insurance sale, his close call, the attempted break-in, her suspicions about his colleagues. The last thing she wanted to do was lay all that on him on the eve of his child’s birth.
“He’s been preoccupied,” she said. “Really, you shouldn’t be too harsh.”
“I’ll see you there, Mom. Good-bye.”
Eight hours later, after baby Justin emerged into the world with an earsplitting cry, after the cord was cut and he was weighed and swaddled and placed on his mother’s chest, Joan was ushered into the delivery room.
The fact didn’t escape her that she was at Roosevelt again. Greg’s hospital. That maybe she ought to poke around a bit more after seeing the baby—to hell with any warning. If the staff was suppressing information, she wasn’t about to ignore an opportunity to dig it up. The intrepid reporter she used to be would never back away from the truth. Before wife and mother, that was who she was. She had forgotten for too long.
Inside the delivery room, a shiny blue balloon hung from the ceiling above the bed where Adam’s wife Emily lay beneath a sheet, disheveled and exhausted. She and Adam were gazing in awe at the tiny red-faced infant curled on her chest. An attentive nurse was hovering nearby, waiting to see if the baby latched on to her nipple.
Joan wasn’t prepared for the clashing emotions that overwhelmed her. Tenderness and euphoria—but also devastation. Greg was missing these first precious moments of Justin’s life. All because of some bad judgment and a grudge.
Adam gave her a tired, delighted smile when she walked in. After congratulating him and Emily, she settled in an armchair. Adam scooped up the baby, who stretched from his wrist to his elbow, and rested him in her arms.
“This is your Nana,” he whispered to the boy. “She loves you very much.”
The first thing she noticed was how much the baby resembled Greg. Those long black lashes. The almond-shaped eyes whose corners dipped down ever so slightly. The shock of dark hair and full pink lips. His translucent white skin was softer than down.
“He’s beautiful,” she murmured. “Look at that little pout!”
“Isn’t he perfect?” Adam’s smile was as proud as could be.
Her next words slipped out before she could stop herself. “I wish Daddy could see him.”
Her son’s face hardened. “Not now.”
“He’s a good man,” she insisted. “All he did was make a mistake.”
Adam spoke through clenched teeth, softly enough that their voices would not upset the baby. “He gambled away your money and didn’t tell you for months. That’s not just a mistake.”
“He was trying to recover losses that weren’t his fault to begin with.”
“So you’re condoning his lies?”
“No, but sometimes,” she said, drawing out her words, “you withhold things to protect the people you love.”
“Whatever. I don’t want a liar around my kids. And that’s that.”
Joan leaned down to inhale the baby’s sweet scent to prevent her anger from escalating. A vaguely familiar woman’s voice cut in.
“I thought I recognized you.”
When she looked up, her breath caught. Louisa, the raven-haired OB nurse from the locker room, was staring at her with slit eyes.
Before she could think of anything to say, the nurse put one hand on her hips and marched toward her. Her voice dripped with hostility.
“I tried to look you up and guess what? There is no such nurse. You BS’d us.”
Adam glanced between them with a bewildered expression. On the bed, Emily propped herself up on her elbows with a frown.
“I’m here to meet my grandson,” she said weakly. “Please.”
“Please what?” The nurse aimed a finger at her. “You stole an employee’s uniform and trespassed in this hospital. I could have you arrested.”
Joan handed the baby carefully back to Adam, then stood up and pulled on her winter coat. “I’m going,” she said. “I’m going right now.”
“Mom, did you really do those things?”
She planted a quick kiss on her son’s cheek, too humiliated to stand there a second longer. It was impossible to explain without telling him everything.
“It’s not what it looks like,” she told him. “But I better go.”
With a longing backward glance at the baby, she headed for the door. The nurse called after her a final good-bye:
“Consider it a warning never to be seen in this hospital again.”
CHAPTER 31
Isabel
The Atlantic Ocean
“Galileo?” Isabel knocked on the door to his cabin. It was the morning after the storm. Now the sea was at peace again, and the mast had survived as a charred hunk of wood, but the atmosphere inside the ship was more turbulent than ever. All anyone could speak or think about was Dr. Quinn. Since his collapse, he had been sequestered in the operating room on the lowest deck, tended to by the most senior doctors and nurses aboard, including Chris.
No one else knew what was going on. Was he dead or alive? Did his own drug work to save him? Had he told anyone
the formula? What if he didn’t make it? The speculation was morbid and all-consuming.
The only question people weren’t asking was why he allegedly slipped in the first place. He was a feeble old man with poor balance. Of course the violent storm could have caused him to slip and hit his head on the railing. A tragic conflation of circumstances. Only Isabel and Richard harbored suspicions. And she wasn’t doing any good by keeping them to herself.
“Come in,” Galileo called. His door was unlocked. She went in. His cabin was as unpretentious as the others, which surprised her. She was expecting a master suite for the man in charge. Instead, in a cursory glance, she noted his narrow white walls, twin bed, plain wooden desk. Not enough floor space to cartwheel.
He was hunched over the desk scrutinizing a piece of paper. A ray of light from the porthole shone on his face. She noticed the wrinkles around his mouth and the heaviness of his eyelids. The mischievous smile in his eyes was gone. He looked bereft.
An uneasy feeling settled over her when she realized the extent of her reliance on this man she barely knew—to protect her family. To protect her. To catch her killer. It was tempting to think of him as almost superhuman, the leader of a powerful Network who could accomplish the unimaginable. But no matter how much confidence he inspired, she saw that he was just as vulnerable as anyone else.
“Isabel,” he said wearily. “What can I do for you?”
She struggled to get out her message. Somehow, keeping it to herself made it less threatening, less real.
“How’s Dr. Quinn?” she started.
Galileo gave a little shake of his head, his lips tight. She waited for him to elaborate, but he didn’t.
“Well,” she said, “I don’t want to disturb you, but I thought you should know something about his . . . accident.” She took a deep breath to slow her palpitating heart. What she was about to say could not be taken back. The strange part was that she actually liked Chris. His rebellious spontaneity excited her. But any romance they might have shared was obviously out of the question now.