by Diane Noble
The three of us stood staring at each other, and then Zoë said, “What’s going on? Max said you’d had an accident.”
“I did. I’ve had some close calls lately—one that almost killed Max and me. Today’s was more a cruel trick to scare me off.”
“What’s that got to do with me?”
I glanced at Max who got the hint and moved away so that Zoë and I could speak privately. He walked along the row of small planes, kicking tires, and fiddling with flaps and ailerons.
“Zoë, we don’t have much time. That’s why I asked Max to bring you here.”
“What are you talking about?” Her look was defiant, and my heart fell. I’d hoped she had softened. I didn’t want to think too long about her mental state or her reaction to what I was about to say. All I could think about was getting to the abducted girls before it was too late.
“The sacrificial ones,” I said, “that you told me about. They don’t have much time to live, do they?” She didn’t answer, so I went on. “Their lives are being sacrificed—their blood, their marrow—to keep your friend alive. You admitted to this. You also said you wanted it to end. Do you still, Zoë, do you want it to end?” My voice was low, urgent, as I spoke.
She swallowed hard and nodded slightly.
“Does Nicolette ever plead with you … plead with her father … to let her go?”
She gave me a sharp look. I knew I had hit a nerve. I led her closer to the plane, and we stood in the deepening shadow cast by the wing. “What is her life like, Zoë?”
“She is bedridden now—but once the cure is found, she’ll be back to … good health.” Tears filled her eyes.
“Does she know about the others, about those who are giving their lives for her?”
She shook her head. “I promised I wouldn’t tell.”
“You promised her father?”
She hesitated slightly, then said, “Yes, of course. Dr. Baptiste. Who else?”
“I told you I planned to go there—go to the island.”
“You went yesterday.”
“And found nothing because no one knew where to look.” I paused. “You’re the only one, Zoë. You’re the only one who can stop the sacrifices, stop choosing the ones who give their life’s blood to keep Nicolette alive. I’m not going to ask you how you got the right blood type or genetic markers, how you chose exactly which girls would be abducted, but I think I know.” This wasn’t the time to bring up Chip’s involvement.
She stared at me. Silent. I couldn’t fathom what was going on behind those thick glasses, behind those large gray eyes. But I thought there might be an equal measure of regret and defiance.
“You’re the only one who knows the dark secrets of the island. Please, Zoë. Come with me.”
She looked up at the Skyhawk. “You know how to fly this?”
“I’m a certified pilot, yes. And I’m familiar with this aircraft. I flew one just like it for more than twenty years.”
“I’ll take you there,” she said. She glanced at Max, now at the end of the runway. “But not with him. I’ll take you if no one else comes. No cops, no Interpol.”
“The girls are being held on the island, is that right?”
“Yes,” she whispered, already looking like she regretted her decision.
“And they are still alive?”
She looked away from me.
“Zoë, are they alive?”
Her voice was barely a whisper. “They’re very sick.”
My heart twisted; I didn’t want to think about their suffering. “But alive?”
She turned back to me. “I don’t know … I don’t know.”
I fought tears as I signaled Max to come back to the plane. He trotted toward us, blond hair blowing in the wind.
“Yo,” Max said when he arrived.
“We’re flying to the island.”
“Can I go?”
“No.”
“You’re flying this thing?” He watched me open the doors and motion for Zoë to sit in the right-hand seat. “Way to go, Ms. M.!”
Zoë climbed in, and I stepped back to the ground. “I need to ask a favor,” I said to Max.
“Shoot.”
I handed him the records I’d taken from the file cabinet. “See to it that these are taken to Monica Oliverio. Place them in her hands only. No local police, got it? They’re too enamored with their own celebrity. Tell her where I’ve gone and who I’m with. We finally have the proof we need. And we have a witness.”
He stared at me solemnly as I climbed back into the plane. “What if it’s a trap, Ms. M.?”
I motioned for him to get away from the plane.
“Clear!” I yelled and started the engine.
I adjusted the engine rpms and taxied to the end of the grass runway. My fear was so intense my knees were shaking as I checked the instruments and adjusted for altitude.
I looked over at Zoë. “You ready?”
She nodded solemnly.
“Let’s do it then.”
We raced down the runway. I said a little prayer. The airspeed hit sixty-five. Seventy-five. Eighty-five.
Another little prayer.
Then I pulled back on the yoke, and the Cessna rose into the air. The ground fell away below us.
We climbed to six thousand feet heading due east, for a short time at least, facing away from the sun. For that I was grateful; this was difficult enough without the sun in my eyes, glaring off the ocean, blinding me. The minute we lifted off, all those old flying instincts came back to me. My knees still felt weak, but the sick feeling in the pit of my stomach had passed.
I scanned the skies for other aircraft, but so far we were alone at our altitude. I kept a vigilant eye on scattered clouds to the southeast, worried they might build into something I didn’t want to deal with. I kept watch behind us as well; I remembered the feeling of being watched and didn’t quite trust that I had foiled any attempt to tail us.
“You okay?” I studied Zoë’s profile. Clearly she was a troubled young woman. Now that we were in the plane I wondered if she might be pushed over that line between reality and fantasy, knowing there was no way to back out now. She already lived in a shadowy land, and I suspected Baptiste had brainwashed her into helping him find his “sacrificial lambs.” Would she sacrifice herself—and me—to save him? And her best friend?
The thought all but stole the breath from my lungs. I whispered a prayer and willed my heart to quit its racing beat.
Zoë had been quiet during takeoff, but now, as if reading my mind, she turned to me and said, “I don’t know what’s ahead.”
“You mean what we’ll find?”
She nodded. “It scares me.”
“Are you worried for your safety?”
“Oh no. I’m Niki’s best friend. Dr. Baptiste would never hurt me.”
I bit my tongue to keep from asking Zoë her blood type. I was willing to bet it wasn’t type O.
She was quiet a moment, then she asked, “Why are you doing this? I heard what Max asked you. What if you’re walking into a trap? You don’t really know me.” Her eyes were large behind the thick eyeglasses. “I could have set it up.”
“So, am I walking into a trap?”
She stared straight ahead.
“To answer your question, because it’s the right thing to do. There is no doubt in my mind about that. And when I feel passionately about something being right, I act. It also has to do with my sense of justice, I suppose. But beyond that, I’m doing it because I care about Carly. Her mom, too. But Carly’s always been special to my own family.”
“You don’t even know Kate, yet she’s part of what you’re doing too.”
“She’s someone’s daughter, someone’s granddaughter, someone’s friend. I know how I would feel if someone abducted my daughter or one of my sons. I would give my life to get them back. I can do no less for these kids—all of them. Even Holly—and I don’t even know her.”
“Holly isn’t there.”
>
“Where is she?”
“She hasn’t been there for over a year now.”
“Where is she, Zoë?”
“I don’t know.”
“Don’t you care?”
“Like all the rest, she probably gave her life so that others might live. No one tells what happens … well, after … you know.” She shrugged and put her head down.
“Oh, Zoë. You can’t mean that! It sounds like someone drilled it into you.” I blinked back angry tears.
“Soon others will give their lives as well.” She turned to me, watching, as if gauging my reaction. “I can’t imagine what that would feel like—to have someone care enough to give her life for me.”
“I hope that’s not what’s required tonight,” I said quietly, adjusted the vector signal, and turned the plane due south. “I’m willing to do it, but I also have a lot of living left ahead of me. I won’t go quietly into the night.”
She smiled wistfully. “My gramps says that a lot.”
“Would you give your life for him?”
She nodded.
“Then you understand.”
“In a way I’m already giving up my life for him,” she said, surprising me. “What I’m doing is for him, too. You know about the transfusions and bone-marrow transplantation, but you don’t know about the rest of it.”
I glanced at her. “The rest of what?”
“The embryonic stem cell experiments.”
“Baptiste said something yesterday about his work to identify a missing genetic marker and plant it within a human egg—but he was talking specifically about the missing gene in CML victims.”
“His plans go far beyond what you or anyone else can imagine. His plans for embryonic stem cell transplantation are already in motion.”
If Baptiste had no qualms about sacrificing the lifeblood of young “donors” to save his daughter, I shuddered to think how he would go about getting the hundreds of thousands of donor eggs for his embryonic stem cells. He was a madman.
“You mentioned your grandfather. What does he have that makes him so ill?”
“Parkinson’s disease—the form that causes its victims to lose their minds.”
“Oh, Zoë. I’m so sorry.” Her grandfather was all she had, and someday he would not even remember her name. She was clinging to another family—to a best friend, who was like a sister, and her friend’s father, who was promising a cure for her grandfather. No wonder Baptiste was able to blur the lines between good and evil.
She turned to me, her eyes hard. “That’s why I still haven’t decided what to do.”
“To let Dr. Baptiste go on with his research—or blow the whistle. Tell what you know so he’ll be stopped.” I tried to remain calm, though my knees were shaking again. The closer we got to the island, the more vulnerable I felt.
“He’ll go to prison if I testify against him,” she said. “Thousands who would be saved will die.”
“I can’t make your decision for you,” I said sadly.
“I know,” she said, her voice sounding very small. “That’s why I’m scared.”
I reached for her hand and held it tight. She smiled, tears filling her eyes. Then she pulled her hand away and wiped her glasses.
I scanned my charts as a group of islands appeared on the horizon. “Do you recognize where we are?”
“It’s the second island from the left. The largest in the group.”
“The chart shows the runway laid out north to south just behind the main complex.”
“That sounds right. There’s a hangar there—just like the one at Playa Negra. It sits parallel to the runway.”
I throttled down to lose altitude. I turned north to keep out of sight of Baptiste’s home, circled back to the south until we were about a thousand feet off the ocean, then turned directly north for a straight-in approach. I scanned for other air traffic in the event Baptiste or his colleagues were taking off or landing.
Everything was quiet. I put down the flaps and cut the power.
The sun was setting now, casting a shadowy pall across the island. A light haze had moved in off the ocean, blocking the view of the harbor side. But high on the cliffs above the harbor, Baptiste’s adobe was in full view. Its gray walls looked squat and thick from above, prisonlike, surrounded by shrubs and plants partially obscured by the same ocean fog.
I adjusted the flaps, thankful we’d be on the ground before the fog settled in thick and deep.
“I want to bring the girls back with us,” I said as I lined up with the runway. “We need to get to them fast, get them into the plane, before we’re socked in.”
“I told you, if they’re still alive, they’re too sick. They’ll never make it.”
I peered ahead and adjusted the engine power. We seemed to almost float toward the runway. I kept a sharp lookout for Baptiste, expecting him to run out of the hangar to block us from landing. His Citation was tied down just to the left of the runway, but there was no sign of him.
A crosswind caught us, lifted one wing, then just as quickly changed direction. The little Cessna swerved and dipped precariously. Zoë gasped. I added power and fought to keep it on course, heading straight for the quickly approaching runway. We touched down with a strong bump, followed by another. Then another. I never was great at greasing it on, as Hollis called it. But we were down, and for that I was grateful. I powered back to slightly over idle, and we taxied to tie down near the Citation.
I climbed out of the plane, and Zoë followed, jumping to the ground. Then she stopped and stared, her face white.
Striding toward us was Dr. Baptiste.
Dr. Jean Baptiste moved toward us with the power and grace of one whose self-confidence knows no bounds. The grace of a venomous reptile. His eyes glinted with amused interest as he neared, which frightened me more than if I’d seen anger seething in their depths.
“Well, well, right on time,” he said. “I was worried you would disappoint me, Mrs. MacIver. I’ve been admiring your courage from a distance—via the miracle of electronics, and now I get to experience it up close and personal. And here you are on my little island.”
I remembered the camera in the hangar and glanced at Zoë to see if she was surprised he knew we were coming. She was focused on Baptiste, her expression hopeful.
“Yes, here we are,” I said lamely.
“Ah, I can see you are wondering how I knew exactly when to expect you. I’ll let you in on a little secret. My island is electronically monitored and controlled. No one arrives—or leaves—without my approval.”
“I did assume you had a system of some sort.”
“A system?” He laughed with the same belittling amusement I’d heard in his voice earlier. “How charming, Mrs. MacIver. Utterly charming.”
“I had already determined you are a master of systems,” I said, ignoring his tone. “I’m impressed with the little empire you’ve set up. The systems for capturing unsuspecting young women. Systems for identifying them by blood type and genetic markers—probably by hacking into blood-bank records. And, of course, leaving the final choice of your victims to others so you don’t have to dirty your hands with something as abhorrent as kidnapping.”
“I am as impressed by your powers of deduction as I am by your courage, Harriet. Or should I call you Ms. M.?”
I glanced at Zoë again, hoping she could shore up her own courage and give me some support. But she still seemed as mesmerized by Baptiste as before.
“I came on behalf of Kate and Carly. I want to see them.”
He shrugged. “I suppose it’s a moot point, since none of you will be leaving the island in quite the same way you arrived.”
At this Zoë gave him a sharp glance. “You don’t mean me, Dr. Baptiste, do you?”
He touched her cheek gently. “No, little one, you are the exception. You are too valuable. I have other plans for you.”
Her answering smile was almost worshipful.
He led us to the hangar, and as s
oon as he opened the door, I realized what the inspectors had missed yesterday: the largest, most obvious building in the complex. No one had suspected that the lab and clinic might be housed in the airplane hangar.
I stepped into the state-of-the-art hospital, and my mouth dropped open. Three hospital beds, privacy curtains, heart monitors, defibrillators, IV stations. The works.
“Surprised?” Baptiste said at my elbow.
“Stunned, but where are your patients?”
Zoë had gone on ahead of us and was pressing against the large double doors at the end of the room. They clicked open, and she disappeared inside.
“Obviously through there,” I said and started after her.
But Baptiste reached for my wrist and held it fast. “Not yet.”
“You won’t stop me,” I said. “The authorities know where I am. They know I have a witness.”
“There will be no witnesses by the time they arrive, only the unfortunate news of your demise in a small plane as you attempted to land on my island. Miscalculated the fuel onboard, apparently.” He tsk-tsked, shaking his head. “I will be as horrified by the accident as anyone else, especially because dear Zoë was once my daughter’s best friend.”
Knowingly or unknowingly, he had touched on my greatest fear. I backed away from him, my mind skittering in every direction—but always coming back to dying the way Hollis did: the twisting spiral into the ocean, the jarring slam into the rolling breakers, the surge of water filling the cockpit, the frantic attempt to get out. Doors jammed. Windows unbreakable. Then sinking … sinking … helplessly dragged downward. I had pictured it a thousand times, my dearest Hollis living through those final, horrifying moments, only to die as his beloved plane sucked him into the sea’s murky graveyard.
“You would sacrifice your daughter’s friend? You would let her die after all she’s done for you? She’s given you her soul, and you’ve trampled it. You’ve destroyed what innocence she had left. Now you would take her life as well?” I stepped toward him, my anger replacing fear. “I once gave you credit for saving lives. Though I thought your methods detestable, I thought you were doing it for the good of humankind.”