“Did you know that I receive monthly printouts of all of the university research accounts in our department?”
He’s checking up on us, Ethan thought. He doubted whether the administrator was inspecting the activities of his colleagues with the same rigor. Then the previous night’s events in the library replayed in his head. Was his fear about the NAF correct? Did Houston suspect where the true source of their project’s funding came from? Did he know about Elijah’s history?
“Two days ago, after I’d already suspended your project, twenty thousand dollars was wired out of the Logos account.”
He felt his breath catch in his chest. He gripped his thighs so that his hands wouldn’t fidget as he remembered the error in his own account. He’d meant to call the bank to check on the mistake that morning, but then the discovery of Elijah’s note and the strange man in Sterling Library had caused him to forget about the deposit. The extra money in his account had been twenty thousand dollars.
“Where did that money go?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Technically, his reply wasn’t a lie. He didn’t know how the extra money ended up in his account, and until that moment, he hadn’t known that the same amount was missing from the Logos account.
Houston eyed him over the top of the paper for a full minute of uncomfortable silence and then slapped the bank statement onto his desk.
“From the beginning of this project, I’ve been concerned about the corners you and Elijah have cut. Rest assured, I’ll get to the bottom of this.”
“I’m not sure that there’s anything to get to the bottom of. The bank probably made a mistake.”
And how did that mistake result in the money ending up in my account? He tried to control his breathing so as not to betray his racing pulse. If the university discovered that some of the project’s money had ended up in his personal account, he would be through for good. Not only would he lose his job, the case would also be turned over to the police on charges of embezzlement.
But how did this happen? The question revolved in his head as he half-listened to Houston explaining the importance of controls, the reasons they had so many paperwork requirements, and the liability the university faced. The irony of the matter was that money wasn’t important to him. Between the patients he saw and his university salary, he made more than enough to support his simple lifestyle. He did what he did not for money, but for the love of knowledge and the thrill that he and Elijah had been on the cutting edge of their field. They’d had the potential to change the way people viewed the brain and religious experience. But now his very freedom was in jeopardy.
He rose from the chair, causing it to screech against the wooden floor. Houston stopped mid-sentence.
“I’m sorry, Sam, I have to go. I swear I don’t know how the money was transferred out of the account, but I can assure you that I will look into it and get it resolved.” Without waiting for an answer, he turned and walked out the door.
CHAPTER 30
NEW HAVEN
Rachel stepped out of the shower, grabbed the towel resting on the toilet lid, and began to dry her hair. She was late. Her roommates had already left for the dinner. Normally she would have been excited to spend time with her friends, but at the moment she wished she were with Ethan, especially after the intimate moment they’d shared that morning. Thinking of him brought up a cocktail of emotions within her: an equal mixture of attraction, compassion, and frustration.
She knew that having a relationship with a professor was inappropriate, but from the first time she’d heard him lecture, she’d been intrigued by the tall doctor with the dark, shaggy locks. She’d sensed that he had no idea how many of his female students found him attractive, which just made him all the more desirable. In each class he exuded such passion for his work as he explained the inner workings of the mind. Too many people today lacked passion, she thought, and passion was sexy. Anyway, he was only in his early thirties—not terribly older than she was, and it wasn’t like she was an undergraduate.
Her heart went out to him. His mentor had been murdered, his graduate student was out of town, and his research had been shut down. He was alone, and she wanted to comfort him. But this professor with the brilliant mind had the emotional openness of a stubborn child. How could she help him if he wouldn’t let her in?
As she wrapped the towel around her body and turned on the hair dryer, she replayed the day she’d spent in CapLab after leaving the coffee shop. Since the experiment with the Logos, Anakin had grown increasingly erratic. Her frustration with Ethan extended to his dismissive attitude about her monkey. He was so invested in the outcome of his research that he was blind to the problem. He’d only been looking to see if the monkeys experienced an epileptic incident; they hadn’t, but he refused to consider the possibility that his machine might have other negative psychological effects on the animals.
Most of the professors who dropped by to run experiments on the capuchins suffered from the same shortsighted perspective. They saw the creatures as glorified lab rats. But she understood each monkey’s distinctive personality. With Anakin, she’d sensed immediately that his reaction to the Logos was different from the others’. What she couldn’t put her finger on was why. Observing him take food from one of the larger males, something bothered her but she couldn’t articulate what it was. The answer was there, just on the edge of her thoughts—she just couldn’t quite reach it.
She clicked off the hair dryer and picked up a lipstick from the basket underneath the sink. On the rare occasions she wore makeup, she concentrated on her lips and eyes. She chose a dark hue.
Then she heard a noise.
She cracked the door. Cold air invaded the humid bathroom. Had she imagined the sound? She thought she’d heard the front door open—it was notoriously squeaky, but with the fan going it could have just been the old house creaking, as it did whenever the temperature changed. The four-bedroom, two-bath townhouse was small, and sound echoed across the hardwood finishes. She was on the second floor.
“Julie, Anneliese, Connie?” she called.
Nothing.
She shrugged and turned back to the mirror. She leaned in and examined her brows. When she reached in the basket for her tweezers, she heard the stairs creak. She froze.
Something wasn’t right.
A feeling of unease descended over her. The old house could be spooky when she was alone—that was why she had three roommates. But this feeling was more intense than usual. Although the bathroom was warm, she shivered. Stop it, she thought. Ethan had recently lectured on how powerful the mind was in creating realities that were not, in fact, real. She leaned closer to the mirror, blinked to focus, and raised the tweezers.
A movement from of the corner of her eye sucked the breath out of her chest.
She reacted on instinct. Without knowing what or who she saw, she dropped the tweezers and slammed the bathroom door closed. A howl of pain pierced through the wood panels. Four male fingers twitched inside the door-frame at the level of her nose. They blazed an angry red. The door shook violently. She shoved her shoulder against it, planting her feet by the tub.
Curses of pain and frustration came from the other side. She didn’t know how long she could hold off the violence that seemed to shake the house. Then the door bucked inward with such a force that she was almost thrown into the tub. Somehow she managed to keep her weight against it. Then the door slammed shut completely. The man had jerked his fingers out.
She grasped for the lock, but her hand seemed to move in slow motion. She knew that in any moment the man would overpower her and be in the room. She found the silver knob and twisted it.
Panting, she slid to the floor. She kept her back to the door and her feet against the base of the tub.
“Get out of my house!” The words came out more forcefully than she expected. She’d never been more terrified in her life. Tears begin to sting her eyes. Don’t cry! she scolded herself. Think, if you want to ge
t out of this.
“Ms. Riley”—the deep voice with a note of pain in it came from the other side of the door.
He knows my name.
Before he could finish the sentence, she blurted out, “I’m calling the police right now.” She searched the bathroom, her eyes darting from counter to floor. Her purse, with her cell phone in it, was sitting on her bed in the other room.
“Ms. Riley, I am the police. Officer Simms.”
She hesitated. Could it be true, or just a ruse to have her open the door?
“If you’re the police, why are you inside my house?”
She glanced over her shoulder at the small knob that was the old lock. It wouldn’t withstand a hard kick. But he wasn’t trying to force his way in anymore. Maybe he was telling the truth.
“Your door was unlocked. I came by because of your roommate. I called from the front door, but you must not have heard me. When I walked up the stairs to see if anyone was here, you slammed the door on my hand before I could say anything.”
“My roommate? Is there a problem?”
The voice sounded reasonable, but her pulse still pounded in her ears.
“She’s just been taken to Yale-New Haven Hospital. Hit and run on Park Street, just behind Davenport College.”
Her heart sank—that was only a couple blocks away. Please, not Julie, she prayed. Not that she wished an injury on any of her roommates, but Julie was the closest friend she’d ever had.
“I need to get some information about how to contact her family,” the official-sounding voice continued from the other side of the door. “If you would please unlock the door, I can show you my badge and write down her parents’ phone numbers. The doctors have to speak to them.”
She rose to her feet and reached for the lock, but stopped just short of turning it. The man sounded believable, but something still wasn’t sitting right with her.
“Which roommate?”
“Huh?”
“I have three roommates. Which one was hit?”
“Let me see. I have to check my notebook.” The silence that followed lasted too long.
Damn! Why don’t I have my phone with me? She decided to bluff.
“Um, yes,” she said as if she was talking on a phone, “I need the police to come to my house immediately. I have a man here who claims to be an Officer Simms.”
When she paused, as if listening to the response from the nonexistent 911 operator, the door exploded inward. Splinters from the wood burst into the air. The force of the door followed by the man’s body behind it tossed her like a ragdoll into the tub. A flash of pain shot through her legs when her shins collided with the porcelain. Shampoo bottles tumbled over her head as the wire tray hanging from the showerhead crashed to the floor. Scrambling to get her hands underneath her, she rose to her knees.
That’s when she noticed she was naked. Her towel had fallen. A huge man with a crew cut and orange sunglasses stood in her bathroom, surrounded by the carnage that had been the door. Although she couldn’t see his eyes, she knew they were roving her body.
Oh, God . . .
She crossed her arms in front of her chest and opened her mouth to scream. But before she could get a sound out, he lunged toward her, shot out a hand, and grabbed her throat. His fingers tightened, cutting off her air. As her lungs heaved in a vain attempt to breathe, a wave of panic coursed through her body. Both of her hands flew to his, her fear of suffocating outweighing her modesty. She tried to pry his fingers from her neck, but his grip was too strong. For the first time since she moved to Africa six years earlier, she wished she had longer nails. She tried to jerk her body away, but the man’s strength was overpowering.
Just as her world began to darken, he eased his grip without releasing it. She sucked in a lungful of air that cleared her head.
“Stop struggling, don’t scream, and I won’t hurt you.”
The man from the library! she realized. Finally able to breathe, she noted how the buttons on his striped shirt strained at the slabs of muscle across his chest and shoulders. He matched Ethan’s description precisely.
“Please don’t hurt me.” The words came from her involuntarily. She hated to show weakness to a man, but her fear seemed to possess her body.
The corners of his mouth turned upwards, as if he was enjoying her terror. Then she saw something in his free hand, dangling by his side, which elevated her pounding pulse to a deafening level. He’s holding a syringe! The thought sent a wave of nausea through her stomach. She didn’t know if he was planning to rape her or kill her or do both, but she wasn’t going to let either happen without a fight. She forced herself to release the breath she was holding. Think, Rachel. She couldn’t overpower him, and she suspected she only had seconds left.
Then she noticed the razor. She kept it in the wire basket with her shampoo and conditioner, but when the basket’s contents scattered into the tub, the razor had landed by her knee. A rudimentary plan formed in her head. She forced her body to relax by focusing on the physical sensation of the humid air flowing into her lungs. His grip in turn loosened more. Then she dropped her hands from his and crossed her left arm over her breasts. She sensed his gaze following her movement. Her right breast was completely obscured by her hand, but she allowed her left nipple to peak out just above her bicep. She had his attention. His nostrils flared outward like a horse preparing to breed. She would have only one chance.
Without taking her eyes off of his face, she felt by her knee with her right hand. There! The metal handle of the razor was cool. She moved without thinking, sweeping the razor up and across the tender skin on the underside of the wrist whose hand held her throat. The thickness of his forearms provided plenty of surface area to strike. A three-inch-long line of crimson opened across his tanned skin as if she’d drawn on it with a red sharpie.
“What the f—”
Before he finished the thought, she slashed the razor back across his forehead. Blood ran into his eyes. He rocked back on his heels, his hands flying to his face.
“You bitch!” His roar shook the bathroom.
Her strike hadn’t done much real damage to the hulking man, but it had created the distraction she needed. He’d released her and dropped the syringe beside her. Free from his grasp, she snatched the syringe, hurdled out of the tub, and lunged for the splintered bathroom door.
The stairs!
Her attacker was much larger than she was, but she knew that if she could just reach the top of the stairs while he was preoccupied with the blood dripping in his eyes, she could escape. She ran three to five miles a day, and not at a leisurely pace.
When her bare feet hit the bathmat by the sink, she twisted her body to avoid touching the man holding his bloody forehead. The wooden banister that led to her freedom beckoned from just a few feet away. Her vision narrowed to the only thing important in her life at that moment: the path to her escape.
She leaped through the doorway.
Then her head snapped back, wrenching her neck as if she were an unruly dog whose leash had been jerked by its owner.
“You’re not going anywhere!”
He dragged her back into the bathroom and turned her to face him. He gripped her long hair so tightly she worried he might tear it out by its roots. Tears welled in her eyes. His other hand grabbed her right wrist just above the hand that held the razor. His acne-covered face gleamed an angry red almost the same color of the blood that ran down his cheeks. His sunglasses had fallen from his face, revealing jaundiced eyes the color of urine. He pulled her down, forcing her to her knees.
Her breath came in short bursts. The fear in her chest threatened to explode outward. The grip on her wrist was so tight she couldn’t feel her fingers. Whimpers of pain and frustration involuntarily escaped her.
He dropped his eyes down her body. A smirk spread across his tight lips. She felt her nakedness as if her skin radiated its own light. She knew what was going to happen. This man was going to rape her, possibly kill her af
terward, and she was helpless to stop it.
“You’re going to pay for this.” His voice boomed off the white tile.
He twisted her wrist upward while digging his fingers into the tendons on the soft side of her forearm. Her hand opened as if he’d pressed a switch on her arm. She watched his eyes follow the razor’s path as it bounced across the tile.
Then she remembered her other hand.
The syringe!
He’d been so focused on the razor he hadn’t noticed she’d picked up the syringe.
She struck.
She’d given countless injections to the capuchins. She could jab and plunge the medicine into an arm or leg before they knew what was happening. Usually she distracted them for a moment with a piece of banana or slice of orange, but her attacker was already distracted. She had no idea what this syringe contained or what effect it would have on the man, but she had a suspicion it wouldn’t be good for him. She aimed for his bicep, which was the size of both of her legs combined. The problem, however, was that all the injections she’d given were with her right hand. With it she could operate the plunger without looking. In her left hand, the syringe felt foreign.
“Ow! Shit!”
The needle pierced his shirt and sank into hard muscle. She willed her left thumb to manipulate the plunger, but it seemed to move in slow motion.
Suddenly, the revelation came to her. Engaged in a battle for her life, she was shocked that her mind went anywhere except for the task of escaping. The vision was brief. She was back in CapLab watching Anakin interact with the larger, more dominant capuchins, just as she was now fighting off a larger, more dominant attacker. Now she knew what made Anakin different. She understood what was wrong with Ethan’s Logos machine.
She never saw the hand that released her wrist and struck her across the face. The blow lifted her off of her knees and knocked her head into the pedestal of the porcelain sink. Her vision blurred as she sank to the floor. The tile was cold against her back. Her head rang, and she felt the fight abandoning her body. She heard him mutter something unintelligible. Her eyes refocused in time to watch him pull the syringe from his arm. The plunger was still in the extended position.
The Jericho Deception: A Novel Page 17