by Kira Peikoff
Still, she knew better than to say too much.
“I didn’t catch your name,” she said as she turned to go.
“Joan.” The woman blinked at her in a daze. “But you can’t just go. I don’t understand . . . aren’t you going to explain . . . ?”
Isabel took a few steps back, considering what more to say. Nothing that could compromise the investigation or put Galileo and the Network in danger. As she was about to apologize, she caught sight of a framed picture on the wall behind Joan’s head. It was an action shot of her with a striking man in his fifties who had salt-and-pepper hair and the kind of chiseled bone structure that would make a sculptor swoon. They were on some white-sand beach, and Joan was laughing at the camera while her grinning husband carried her in his arms toward the surf. They looked like the Platonic ideal of a carefree married couple.
But the real Joan in front of her was far from happy. She glanced over her shoulder to see what was transfixing Isabel.
“That was last year.” The ache in her voice was palpable. “Maui, for our thirtieth anniversary.”
Isabel was about to reply when a realization hit her:
She had seen that man before.
The day she went to Riverside Park to drop off the ring. He was sitting on a bench, typing on an iPhone. Like the other strangers in the vicinity, he had appeared not to notice her. But she remembered his face. It was too handsome to forget.
There could be no doubt now: he was involved with Robbie Merriman. Hell, he could even be Robbie Merriman.
“What?” Joan demanded. “What’s wrong?”
She must have looked stricken. “I can’t . . . here.” She opened her clenched fist, which held the note she’d scrawled earlier with Galileo’s phone number. It wasn’t enough to compromise his safety or location. But it was a way to connect with Joan again. There was a chance that if she were innocent and willing, she might be able to help.
“Call this number,” Isabel said, “if you want to know the truth.”
Then she turned and scrambled out of the building, ignoring Joan’s pained shouts to wait. There was no time to waste. She thought of Andy asleep in bed, totally unaware of the danger that threatened him and why. She thought of her mother, who also knew nothing. What good would it do to warn them, when they would inevitably try to escape? According to Robbie’s warning, that would trigger the creep who was watching their house to call in the fatal tip. The tip that would send Andy away to the place he feared the most.
She jumped into the cab, whose meter was now over $50. The driver raised his eyes from his e-reader and glanced at her in the rearview mirror. His black turban wound around his head like a coiled snake.
“Where to?” he asked in his thick Indian accent.
“1844 Lex,” she panted. “In East Harlem.”
He raised his eyebrows. “The projects?”
“Yeah. I’m, uh, meeting someone. Can I borrow your phone really fast? I . . . left mine at home.”
He gave her a sympathetic nod and handed over his cell. Whatever she was doing there, he seemed to know it wasn’t good.
The taxi squealed away from the curb as she dialed Galileo. His phone rang and rang unanswered. When the message machine beeped, the words tumbled out in one breath: “I went to the ring’s address and found a woman wearing it in apartment 1B, Joan Hughes, said her husband Dr. Greg Hughes gave it to her, and get this—I saw him in Riverside Park when I dropped it off, he has to be involved somehow, I don’t know about her, but I gave her your number . . .” Isabel paused to breathe. “It’s almost midnight. I know you said not to, but you know where I’m going now. I have to. I’m sorry. You don’t need me anyway, since you have Richard. I just hope—”
A harsh tone cut her off and a robotic voice droned: “Message limit exceeded.”
She closed her eyes. I just hope I come back in one piece.
The building that housed the projects was a beige brick monolith that spanned the length of an entire city block. A few scattered streetlights cast a wan glow on its crumbling paint and thin vertical windows. Their look reminded Isabel of a jail—which, she supposed, wasn’t far off.
A couple of guys in hooded sweatshirts and baggy jeans were loitering near the unattended front door, smoking. As she hurried by, a distinctive odor engulfed her, and it wasn’t cigarettes. Cold stares bored into her back. She felt about as conspicuous as a gazelle in a lion’s den.
“Hey, pretty mama,” one of them crooned after her. “Slow down, we ain’t gonna bite.” There was a note of menace in his voice that kicked her adrenaline up a notch. She ignored him and quickened her step.
She was ready to fight. All her fitness training, her experience facing down savage environments, her accrued mental toughness—she was counting on every survival skill in her arsenal to make it through this night. Though she looked petite, she knew enough karate to wipe out an attacker. Her calves twitched to act. She mentally ran through the deadliest self-defense moves her father had taught her: a side kick to the throat, a knee drop to the heart, a back kick to the groin. Yet her years of practice in martial arts and the intensive training for her show had never been tested in a real-life assault situation, and she still wasn’t up to peak strength since recovering from—well, from death. Damn, did that take a lot out of you. It wasn’t like a bout with the flu.
She hovered anxiously outside the front door, keeping one eye on the huddled guys who were watching her. On the wall was a list of apartment numbers and corresponding buzzers. She pressed 4B. It was 11:59 P.M.
Maybe no one would answer. Maybe she would wake up from this nightmare and be back in her cozy double bed at home in Key West, with Andy snoring in the next room and the sound of her mom’s television trickling in from the hall.
But then the buzzer sounded. She pushed open the door and went in. There was barely a lobby to speak of, just a bank of old elevators next to a stairwell. A few crushed beer cans were piled atop an overstuffed garbage can in the corner that reeked of rotting food. Yellowed cigarette butts littered the floor around it.
The button to call the elevator didn’t light up, but after a few seconds, the doors screeched open. Inside the steel car was a putrid mess of what looked like dog piss. Or human piss. She took the stairs. With each flight, her heart pounded harder—more out of mounting fear than exertion. Who was inside 4B and what were they going to do to her?
She could still go back to the ship. She could climb into bed next to Richard and let herself be held. On the top step of the fourth floor, she paused. The temptation beckoned like a siren song. It wasn’t too late to turn around. But poor Andy—what would he do if the feds showed up to wrench him away? How could she live with the consequences, knowing she could have done something to prevent it?
She grimaced and kept going, out of the stairwell, down a sparse hallway with about ten doors on either side. From one apartment she could hear the angry shouts of a man and woman arguing. She fought the urge to knock on their door and plead with them to watch her go into 4B. But that wouldn’t accomplish anything. The most they could do would be to call the cops, which was strictly forbidden. There was only one option.
She stopped in front of the plain brown door of 4B. No noises came from within—no chatting, no voices, no nothing. But inside, she knew someone was waiting for her.
She knocked. Heavy footsteps plodded toward her and then the door swung open. The first thing she saw was the crumpled limp body on the floor. A man’s body. He looked like a thug, with multiple black tattoos sheathing his biceps and a thick gold chain around his neck. A wifebeater hung off his shoulder and his oversized pants sagged. He was curled on his side, knocked out, mouth open. A massive bruise was darkening his puffy eyelid.
Isabel felt a scream rise in her throat as she looked to the left. There, on the ground, another thug was writhing. His front teeth were bashed in. A stream of blood dribbled over his lips and down his chin, pooling on the wood floor where his cheek was pressed. His eyes see
med to roam in and out of consciousness as he let out an anguished moan.
Before she could make any sense of it, a third powerfully built man stepped out from behind the door and fixed his severe gaze on her.
He was Galileo.
CHAPTER 38
Greg
Dr. Greg Hughes smiled modestly as he strode out of the operating room to hearty applause. The surgical staff and the dozen residents watching from the balcony broke into cheers as soon as he repaired the torn aortic valve of the gunshot victim on the table. It was a tricky surgery with no room for error, and once again, he’d proved his coolness under pressure.
He acknowledged the adulation of his colleagues with a mock salute. Then he tore off his gloves and headed out to tell the victim’s distraught parents that their son—an accidental victim of a drive-by shooting—would make a full recovery.
There was truly no better high than the power conferred on a surgeon in an emergency. A pop of Vicodin couldn’t even come close. In the operating room, he was God. He was a hero. And everyone around him knew it. He thrived on their respectful awe, which negated the black crust of his soul: the sinister fragment he had to keep hidden at any cost.
As he stepped into the hall, his ears still buzzing from the applause, he found himself walking straight toward Ellis Yardley. Of all the people in this hospital, why did he have to run into the one person who could bring him down faster than the flick of a scalpel?
Ellis’s balding hairline glistened, as did his trim gray mustache, and there were dark pit stains under his white coat. He was a sweaty bastard. The beer belly didn’t help. Behind his spectacles, his watery corneas were snaked with red lines. He glanced around to make sure no one was watching them. Then his upper lip curled into a sneer.
“If I were you,” he said in a low voice, “I’d wipe that shit-eating grin off my face.”
Greg stiffened. His tongue itched to retort, but he knew it was too dangerous. Their dynamic was as fragile as a diseased heart, and just as prone to a disastrous rupture.
“Tonight,” Greg said. “Everything is going to change after tonight.”
“Just like the last time you promised?”
“This is really it,” he insisted. “I swear. Just give me until Sunday.”
It was Wednesday now. That would leave him four more days to secure his lifeline out of hell. Otherwise, Ellis would burn him alive. If the world found out the truth—if his family found out—he would be abandoned for the rest of his days. The inevitable prison sentence might be bearable—he could find allies, a job, a routine to pass the time. But he could forget his hopes of ever reconciling with his son or knowing his grandkids. And beyond that loomed the thing that scared him the most: life without Joan. Such an existence was impossible to fathom, like a captain without a ship. Her love kept him afloat. Without it, his compass would go awry and the darkness he worked so hard to suppress would engulf him. He might as well be dead.
Ellis blinked, unwavering. He seemed to be relishing Greg’s desperation—the pathetic appeal of his onetime friend who’d always been more talented, more popular, and more attractive than himself.
“Please,” Greg said, his hatred intensifying at being forced to beg. “You won’t regret the extra time. I’ll make it well worth your while.”
Ellis waited for him to squirm, but Greg lifted his chin in a risky act of defiance. He had already stooped low enough.
“Sunday,” Ellis said at last. “By midnight. Not a minute later.”
“Thank you,” Greg said. It took every effort to keep his tone civil.
They parted without another word. Greg’s body felt rigid as stone. His mind darted, as it had countless times throughout his shift, to the event that was taking place a few miles uptown. Tonight, at an apartment in the Harlem projects, the golden goose of all his “lives” was going to come clean about how she survived death.
And then she was going to die again.
Talk about killing two birds with one stone. Tonight was going to be the mother of all double whammies. If she really could lead him to the source of a way to reverse death, the windfall would be copious enough to solve everything. Getting rid of her would be an added quick bonus, providing just enough cash to tide Ellis over until the real prize could be delivered as the ultimate peace offering.
He felt a weak prick of satisfaction at the thought of Isabel Leon’s death. She had cheated him of hundreds of thousands of dollars by cutting off her breasts. Still, he didn’t want to have to get rid of her, just like he hadn’t wanted to get rid of blind old Mrs. Ruth Bernstein, rest her soul. Their deaths were necessary evils. But he had saved so many other lives throughout his medical career, and even again just tonight, that he figured his karma was in the black. Sometimes one or two people had to be sacrificed for the greater good. But it wasn’t his fault. Unfortunate circumstances had prevailed, so he had to react to the forces acting on him. He wasn’t a bad person overall. Far from it.
He was a goddamn hero.
When he arrived home after 2 A.M., his sublime operating-room high was gone. Yardley had killed it, plus there was still no word from his crew uptown. What the hell was happening with Isabel? He had half a mind to swing by and find out, but discretion was key. That part of his identity could never be compromised.
Before he opened the front door, he popped four Vicodin from a prescription he’d written for himself. An illegal maneuver of course, but his nasty addiction had come back with a vengeance since the whole crisis started. He paced on the sidewalk while he waited for the suckers to kick in. Four of them ought to be enough to resurrect the high he chased, that feeling of invincibility. It was a compulsion he’d lived with since he was a teenager, a monster that needed to be fed. Sometimes drugs did the trick, or gambling, or operating, but only for so long. Without those crutches, a twitchy edginess set in, and that was when he could become reckless. That was when mistakes could be made.
No one knew the darkness of his inner depths—his twisted delights and his private pain. As a doctor, he operated not for the honor of saving lives, but for the pleasure of domination, of inert flesh at the mercy of his hands to shape and bend as he desired. It scared him sometimes how little he felt if things went wrong, if the patient slipped away on the table. There was always another one lined up. They blurred together like specimens, though he was able to mimic empathy with learned precision like any other surgical feat. Mostly he lived for the glory when things went right. He could never get enough of that. A good day was about pushing his limits—physical, mental, financial, legal—without ever losing control.
But then, back on earth, there was Joan. Oh, Joan. She was the heart he wished he had. She was the solid ground. In her presence, his compulsions diminished, the darkness receded, and he felt something akin to peace. She had enough humanity for them both. It was as natural for her as water from a spring.
After three decades together, he remained in awe of her genuine goodness. She cheered on his victories in the emergency room and felt real pain at his defeats. She was deeply appreciative of heroism—his own and others’—and its various incarnations could move her to tears. She might weep at Supreme Court rulings that granted freedom to the oppressed; at the sacrifices of soldiers; at the bravery of thinkers who suffered for unpopular but righteous causes. On the flip side, she loathed injustice, and had devoted her former career to exposing crime. She raged when evil triumphed, whether it was in the form of a school bully, a terrorist, or a presidential election.
Her authenticity was effortless. There were no errant pieces that had to be beaten into submission to fit the whole. She was also a thoughtful partner, knowing just when to give him space or attention. Hell, she’d given up her career for his after their son was born. He still remembered what she told him the day she announced her decision to quit journalism: I might expose bad guys, but you get to save good ones. You win.
Yet he had won by virtue of having her. Her tenderness as a mother defied his comprehensi
on. During the difficult period after Adam’s birth, she never complained about the baby’s infuriating tendency to cry for hours straight, or the bleary-eyed stupors that seemed never to lift. While Greg nursed a private resentment toward the red-faced creature that had invaded their lives, she nursed their colicky boy with an endless reserve of patience. He might have hated her if he wasn’t so thoroughly hooked on her.
A light rain was falling outside, but he didn’t mind because a familiar warmth was starting to course through his veins. He felt his tense shoulders relax. Everything would be fine. It would all work out. That motherfucker Ellis Yardley was not going to bring him down. Because he was unstoppable.
He went inside. The lights in the apartment were off. Joan was in bed on her side facing the wall, with the covers pulled up to her chin. He undressed to his boxers and climbed in beside her.
“Hi, honey,” he whispered. “I’m home.”
“Mmm,” she murmured, without turning to face him.
He spooned her, pressing his body up against hers. Usually she woke up and kissed him when he got into bed. But this time she remained stiff. He let his hand caress her bare stomach, then venture up to her breasts. God, it had been a long time since they’d had sex. Hadn’t she complained about their dry spell not too long ago? So why was she now pushing his hand away?
“You okay?” he said softly.
“Not feeling good,” she muttered into her pillow.
“Oh, poor boo.” He kissed the top of her head and rested his arm around her waist instead. “You need anything?”
She sniffed. “Just sleep.”
His head fell back on his own pillow. She could never know what he was up against. No matter how much he wanted to confide everything, it was crucial that she remain ignorant. He knew there was only so far her forgiveness could extend. She had already once approached the point of no return. Thank God he’d figured out a way, on the spot, to satisfy her suspicions without divulging the real answers.