by Kira Peikoff
That story about gambling debt hadn’t been a complete lie, but the game he played wasn’t found in any casino. The additional lie about selling his insurance and fearing for his life had been a stroke of genius. She’d long suspected that the unregulated hedge funds who bought up people’s life policies were up to no good. By playing into her embedded fears and making her pity him as a victim, he’d built up her sympathies and made it impossible for her to leave. And he was a victim, in his own way. He was a victim of circumstance.
The problem was that she cared too much about protecting him. She had taken it too far, faking those heart pains and then going to the hospital to investigate on his behalf. The nurses knew nothing, but she’d come face-to-face with Yardley—Yardley!
He’d had to scare her away somehow, so on the night of the gala, he’d rushed home between his shift and the fund-raiser, making sure she’d already left by the time he arrived. In the closet, he found an old bat they saved from Adam’s high school baseball days, one their son had used to hit a winning home run. Then he took it and smashed the front window to pieces. Not the sweetest message he’d ever left for his wife, but it was a critical one:
Back off.
Before she got too close to the truth.
CHAPTER 39
Isabel
Isabel stared at Galileo in shock. He was panting in the doorway of apartment 4B, his broad face rimmed with sweat. A gash above his left eye trickled blood. One sleeve of his black trench coat was torn at the cuff, and red scratch marks raked across the inside of his wrist. The skin of his knuckles was shredded raw. Behind him, on the floor, lay the two semiconscious thugs.
“How did you . . . ?” she began.
“Come on.” He grabbed her elbow, closing the door behind him. “Let’s get out of here.”
“But what about my family? This wasn’t allowed to happen!”
“They’re fine,” he said. “Come, I’ll explain.”
Then he jogged to the stairwell she had exited only minutes earlier.
She remained rooted to the spot. “Where are they?” she demanded. “I want to know exactly where they are.”
He threw a weary glance over his shoulder. “They’re being moved as we speak. You’re going to have to learn to trust me. Let’s go.”
He disappeared into the stairwell. She had no choice but to follow him down the four concrete flights, skipping steps to keep pace with his brisk clip.
“But they weren’t supposed to leave the safe house!” she cried. “That guy watching will see them go and he’ll get my brother deported!”
Galileo didn’t so much as slow his step. “It’s all been taken care of.”
His nonchalance infuriated her. Did he not realize how much was at stake?
“Deported,” she said again, in case he didn’t grasp the weight of the threat. “The feds will find him eventually, and then what?”
“Let’s just get in the car.”
They exited the stairwell into the trash heap of a lobby, and then out into the bitter cold night. A mixture of rain and snow drizzled from a bank of foggy clouds overhead. The hooded guys she had passed before were still standing in a cluster smoking a joint. She stuck close to Galileo, who at six foot five dwarfed not only her, but also them. They eyed her as she scurried by, but a hard stare from Galileo prompted them to look away. His height combined with his cut-up face and assured stride made him a man no one wanted to mess with.
On the curb, a yellow taxi was parked without its light on. He opened the door for her.
“It’s been waiting for us,” he said, in answer to her look of surprise. “Get in.”
She obeyed. He climbed in next to her and directed the driver to Chelsea Piers on 39th Street and 12th Avenue, where the ship was docked in the Hudson River. As the cab gunned up to speed, he turned to her.
“Do you remember when we met, what I told you about myself?”
She thought back to her first moments after death, when she’d regained consciousness only to find herself surrounded by medical personnel on a ship. Then he had cleared everyone out and explained to her about the existence of the Network. But he’d been less than forthcoming about himself.
“You’re on the most-wanted list,” she recalled. “Though no one knows your real name or who you really are.”
“That’s true,” he said. “But I did give you a hint about my past. I’m ex-FBI.”
“Right. You’re a criminal and a crime fighter in one.”
He seemed amused. “Something like that. Anyway, I still have a lot of friends in the Justice Department, old colleagues who think I’m retired—many of them the same people who tried for years to dismantle the Network. In fact, I used to be in charge of the effort.”
She raised her eyebrows. “That’s crazy.”
“It was completely intentional. That way, I could keep my researchers safe while directing the officials to false leads. Eventually I led the government to conclude that the Network had fallen apart on its own, so they closed their investigation. That way, I could retire and focus on it full-time.”
Despite her confusion, she had to give him points for sheer brilliance. But he hadn’t yet proven that he’d pulled off the most critical feat of all, the one that was more important than all his scientists’ breakthroughs put together.
“Okay,” she said, “but what about my family? What about my brother?”
“I was just getting to that. When we got the threat from Robbie Merriman last night, I knew I had to get to work exploiting my connections. I spent all day making phone calls and calling in rush favors.” His lips tightened. “It’s times like these I remember to be grateful for having worked in our illustrious government.”
Her heart sped up in spite of his sarcasm. “What kind of favors?”
“These.” He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper. She opened it up—and gasped. What she was holding could not be paid for. It existed only in fantasy. It was a scanned printout of two formal documents: a U.S. Social Security card and a U.S. birth certificate, both in the name of Andrés Enriqué Leon.
She balked at him. “But these are fake.”
He smiled cryptically. “Perception is often all that counts, my dear. Especially when they’re perceived in the federal database.”
“You did not!”
“I did.”
“This is insane!” She gawked at the printout. “But how did you know his name and birthday?”
“I called your mom. Once the documents were finally created, I called her back and explained that she and Andy needed to move to a new place, so right now, one of my professional drivers is taking them to a different safe house in the Keys where no one will be able to track them. They’re perfectly fine, and now you guys will never have to worry about his status again.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” she demanded. “I never would have snuck out!”
“I told you not to go anywhere, that I was working on it, but I didn’t want to overpromise something I might not be able to deliver. This was no walk in the park.”
“What did you have to do?”
He lifted one shoulder. “Oh, you know, just greasing the palms of the junior Florida senator, pleading with a couple reps on the House Subcommittee on Immigration, asking my old buddy who runs the Justice Department to turn a blind eye.”
“Damn.” She stared at him with renewed awe. Here was a man who dared to thunder where others pattered. If people were raindrops, he would be a hurricane.
“I have to say, not many folks could have pulled it off,” he said, as though reading her mind. “But when I finally went to tell you the good news, you were gone. I knew there was only one place you could be.”
“Thank you,” she said, looking him in the eye. “I don’t want to think about where I would be right now if you hadn’t shown up.”
“Those guys were bad news.” He wiped a smear of blood off his eyelid. “They weren’t expecting me, that’s for sure.”
“But why go so far out of your way for me?” she asked. “I mean, I’ve caused you so much trouble already. Wouldn’t it have been easier to just . . . let me go?” She winced at her own euphemism. From the look of those thugs and the price of her death, not to mention the drug she wouldn’t have been able to deliver, it was all too clear she wouldn’t have left that place alive.
“And be murdered?” He cocked his head at her. “Yeah, I guess that would have been easier than a bunch of phone calls.”
“Fair enough.” She put her hand on his arm. “Seriously, thank you.”
He nodded. “You missed one other thing.”
“You did, too,” she said, thinking about her encounter with Joan Hughes. Now that she was out of immediate danger, a belated thrill kicked in. The lead about Joan’s husband wasn’t a sure thing, but it was a definite step on the path to unmasking Robbie Merriman.
“You go first,” she said. “You look too excited about your thing.”
He smiled. “Chris was able to use traces of the compound from your blood to complete a crucial step in the reverse engineering process. He’s really getting somewhere, but he needs another sample from you as soon as possible.”
She frowned. “What about Richard?”
“It seems his blood contains an excessive clotting factor that’s partially obscuring the compound. His concentration may be higher than yours, but it’s much more difficult to isolate. So now is when we need you the most.”
“Great,” she muttered. “I’m there.”
“Chris couldn’t do this without you. It’s just such a damn shame it happened this way.” He glanced out the window at the starless sky. “I still can’t believe Horatio is actually gone.”
She bit her lip. Just when she was starting to believe in his competence, he had to go and remind her of his mistake. Since the rapport between them had grown more comfortable, she was tempted to tell him again about Chris. But he’d already dismissed her accusation once. If he hadn’t admitted his error by now, he wasn’t going to. Hopefully, she thought, the whole ship wouldn’t have to pay the consequences.
Upon her return, she found Richard pacing anxiously outside her cabin as Captain the dog nipped at his heels. At the sight of her coming down the hallway, both of them sprinted toward her at full speed. Captain stood on his hind legs and covered her hands with enthusiastic kisses; Richard was slightly more restrained, but no less thrilled.
He drew her into his arms without hesitation. “You’re okay! Thank God.”
She rested her head in the crook of his neck. “Thank Galileo.”
Richard tilted her chin up with one finger, and then out of nowhere, his mouth was on hers. It felt so natural that she forgot to be surprised. She kept her face upturned, reveling in the tenderness of his lips. That was when she realized she’d been wanting to kiss him for days. It was as clear to her now as the sky after the storm.
After he gently drew back, they stood in a quiet embrace while Captain frolicked around their feet. Exhaustion crept into her muscles. She let her body sag against his chest. For the first time that night, she noticed how bone-tired she was.
“What happened?” he asked after a few moments.
“So much,” she said. “And so much that didn’t.”
“I have time.”
“Sadly, I don’t.” She nuzzled closer into him to escape the duty that was pressing on her. “I’m supposed to go to the lab right now to give Chris another sample.”
A guttural noise in his throat expressed the disgust she felt but couldn’t confide to anyone else. And the fear. As much as she wanted to feel safe on the ship, with Galileo in control, it was impossible when a killer remained at large.
A killer who needed her blood.
CHAPTER 40
Greg
Greg lay awake next to Joan, listening to her steady, rhythmic breathing. It was after 1 A.M. and still—still—his phone had not rung. His repeated texts remained unanswered. What the hell? His guys never failed to get back to him.
Catastrophic scenarios wormed into his mind, but he steeled himself against panic. They just needed a little more time to get the job done, that was all. They were probably in the middle of disposing of Isabel’s body. They must have gotten all the info they could out of her, and now they were busy cleaning up their tracks.
As he waited, the memory of Yardley’s sneer kept popping into his mind. It was hard to believe how much between them had changed in such a breathtakingly short time. For a decade, they’d been each other’s most trusted confidants. Their friendship had grown organically out of sharing shifts in the emergency room and complaining of the various bullshit that entailed. A wide spectrum of human scumbags constantly marched into their ER with righteous demands to be treated, no matter if they were homeless bums, vomiting drunks, gang members, welfare mothers, or undocumented aliens with no intention of ever paying a cent.
He and Yardley couldn’t legally turn anyone away, no matter how strained their resources or how overburdened their workloads. Being a doctor wasn’t about a glamorous life of money and status like they’d idealized in medical school. It was about sacrifice—sacrifice for society’s least fortunate and least glamorous. It was a perversion of everything they’d wanted. Sure, performing surgery might afford Greg the high he chased, but he was often repulsed to think of who was benefiting from his handiwork. On a given day, he might be forced to treat any number of assholes.
But he was better than that. And he deserved better than his paltry low-six-figure salary. After accounting for taxes, his son’s private school expenses, his Manhattan mortgage, and Joan’s expensive taste, he had to lead a fairly modest life—the opposite of what he’d envisioned. He switched briefly to private practice but that proved no better, because then he’d had to deal with mounds of paperwork and stingy insurance companies telling him how to treat his own damn patients. So he’d reluctantly returned to Roosevelt’s ER, where Yardley welcomed him back with a sorry pat. It felt like a regression. To get through the rough patch, he’d started to prescribe himself Vicodin.
Then he learned of an opportunity to consult for an unusual hedge fund that was buying up “lives” in the secondary market for life insurance. The fund needed doctors to analyze the medical records of the potential patients whose policies they wanted to bid on, in order to then estimate the time frame of their deaths. He jumped at the opportunity to supplement his income. For several years, he shared his analyses with Yardley over beers at the end of their shift. Yardley would never fail to chime in with his own expert opinion. When those opinions proved stunningly accurate, they both came to realize that Yardley possessed a rare talent for assessing a patient’s future mortality. Greg, in thanks, gave him regular kickbacks out of his own handsome fees.
The arrangement was working out fine until the day Yardley cornered him in the hospital’s empty locker room, his eyes shining with excitement.
“Screw the middleman,” he said. “Why don’t we start our own fund? We’ll buy up lives ourselves and split the death benefits.”
“Yeah, right.” Greg rolled his eyes. “Buying up a single policy could run a hundred grand or more. And then we might have to wait years for it to pay off. We have nowhere near the kind of capital we’d need to invest.”
Yardley’s plump cheeks puffed out in a conspiratorial grin. “Oh, but we do.”
“We do?”
“Doctors on the Mend.”
Greg stared at him like he was out of his mind. Doctors on the Mend was the nonprofit charity he had founded to help doctors overcome addiction. He’d recently opened up to Joan about his own reliance on Vicodin—and she was appalled. Starting the charity had been a way for him to prove that he wasn’t a total screwup for prescribing himself pain pills to abuse. As part of his recovery, he was “giving back to his community,” or whatever crap he was supposed to do to show Joan that he was still a decent man. It shocked him when the charity attracted stacks of donor money from hotshot
physicians who understood the perils of addiction and wanted to help other doctors avoid its traps. After a round of local media, his little charity became downright trendy.
But how could it have anything to do with an investment fund?
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Greg said to Yardley, who was standing with his arms crossed, an extension of his smirk.
“You get a shit ton of donations, right?”
“Yeah, but so?”
Yardley lowered his voice. “So why not divert some of them into a separate offshore account just for us? We use those funds to buy up lives, and then we can funnel some of our profits back through the charity as donations. Of course, we also take a nice cut for ourselves—and best part, the whole thing is tax free. No capital gains.”
“Come on.” Greg eyed him to gauge if he was serious. “Money laundering?”
“It wouldn’t hurt anyone. We’d just finally be compensated the way we deserve.”
“What about my consulting fees?”
Yardley pretended to spit. “A drop in the bucket compared to what that hedge fund is making off of us. We’re being used.”
“You greedy bastard.” Greg smiled at him affectionately. “I must say, I like the way you think.”
And so Robbie Merriman, investor extraordinaire, was born. His name was a combination of their middle initials, Gregory Ryan and Ellis Michael. Greg couldn’t tell Joan because she was too honest. She would be horrified. When the “lives” started to pay off, Greg told her it was from bonuses and added work from his consulting gig, which he had in fact left altogether. Now, he was competing with that hedge fund to buy up the oldest and sickest “lives,” the ones that would pay off the fastest. With the death benefits that soon poured in, he moved them to an Upper West Side penthouse suite, took Joan on lavish trips, started a trust for his son, and put a couple cash down payments on beachfront properties in Hawaii and Florida that he rented out when he wasn’t there on vacation.