Troy reacted quickly. He reached over and grabbed both of her hands firmly and made her stop pounding herself, with tears pouring from his eyes. He tried to put his arms around her, but she pushed him away.
She had to be dreaming all this. But here was Troy, in her kitchen, bleeding, and looking completely crushed. Strong, solid, confident Troy; serene, enlightened, mystical Troy; leveled to a lump, with a torrent of tears flowing from those beautiful eyes, and his voice cracking, as he said over and over again, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry … I’m so, so sorry.”
It took at least twenty minutes for Tobi to stop crying, and then she felt empty. She shouldn’t have, since nothing had essentially changed. She had thought Reuben was dead and he was dead. But all the years she could have spent time with him, talked to him, made up with him … and Ben! He had needed a reliable man in his life to role model. They had both been ripped off. She couldn’t decide who she was angrier at, Reuben or Troy.
Once she had calmed down, Pantelaymin came over and climbed into Tobi’s lap. Tobi didn’t know how long she had been close by watching, but her lap certainly hadn’t been approachable until she had composed herself. The cat circled once and settled, facing outward at Troy like a challenge. Troy reached over to pet her and she hissed at him.
“Good girl, Panni,” Tobi said.
Troy pulled his hand back. “Please get up off the floor,” he pleaded. “I can’t stand seeing you on the floor.”
“That’s funny,” Tobi snarled, “you didn’t seem to mind it years ago.” She regretted it immediately. She watched as Troy’s face turned crimson, matching the blood that still oozed from his scalp.
“We need to call the police,” he said. “I need to make sure this guy won’t try to hurt you again.”
Tobi pet Pantelaymin again and kissed her on her nose, then put her aside and got up. She said nothing but changed her gloves and washed the wound again with betadine and then removed the betadine with alcohol. She grabbed the sterile, prefilled staple gun.
“Hold still,” she said. “This is going to hurt a bit.” She stapled the laceration closed. It was really more of a puncture wound and only took two staples, but she could tell it was tender. He looked cold even in the warm kitchen, but he did not move or say anything more.
“That’s going to bruise, just warning you. You’ll be purple there for a few days. Did you fall on your head and do you take aspirin or any blood thinners?” The doctor script never slept. He shook his head “no” to both.
She washed her hands and made him a cup of hot tea. “Just so I don’t have to learn what you know when you tell the police, how did you know someone was going to try to hurt me, and what, if anything, does it have to do with Reuben?”
Troy sipped at the tea. “Do you remember Reuben’s last job?”
Tobi shook her head. “Not really. We weren’t actually on great terms. Every conversation came back to Mom. ‘We should buy her a new kitchen table,’ or ‘she needs a new car’ … it was such stupidity. All I remember is he talked about doing an electronic health record for some company that was paying him beaucoups of money, and he left Cray Research for it. It’s funny, I thought he was nuts, and now it’s the big thing. I never gave him credit for being so savvy, but he anticipated so many advances … it’s too bad he didn’t play the market.”
Troy nodded. “Yes, well, there was a reason they paid him so much. I don’t think they expected Reuben to figure them out, but he told me—”
“Why you and not me?”
“Because … I could get him out of the country and help him disappear. He never intended to ‘play dead.’ That just sort of happened.”
“How does that just happen? You’re not making any sense!”
“Then stop. Listen. Let me tell you.”
Tobi tucked her right leg under her on the seat at the kitchen table. She had changed into navy sweat pants, heavy socks, and a gray Colorado hoodie sweatshirt when she had gotten home, and that should have been downright cozy, but her spine tingled. She considered moving into the living room and onto the much more comfortable Natuzzi sofa, but she didn’t want him to get the idea she was welcoming him back into her life. She sat up and looked at him and waited.
“Reuben discovered that the EHR program he was writing for these people under the guise of Financier, Inc., was not to advance patient care but to uncover medical secrets of politicians so they could be blackmailed.”
“What kind of secrets?”
Troy cocked his head at her. She used to love it when he did that.
“If you give me a chance, I will tell you. It’s not a two-
minute read.”
“Okay, okay, I’m sorry,” she said.
Troy proceeded to spin a barely believable yarn. She was still in shock at seeing him and stressed to her limit by her newfound paranoia, or she might have told him he was full of it. But the Troy she used to know would never have played with her like that, so she listened and tried to digest it all.
Troy’s tea was gone but he still held the cup in his hand like he was trying to warm his fingers and Tobi wondered if she should offer him more or something to eat. The Jewish mother instinct to take care of him was strong, but it was battling with her anger and her fatigue, and for once, it was losing.
“Reuben didn’t figure out exactly who these guys were, only that they were Russian. Probably the new oligarchs who were privatizing the country at the time, but I actually have a lead from an inspector in Port Douglas. He found a connection to an insurance company whose market is high-risk medical and charges huge premiums, but their patients aren’t living long enough to get the benefits.”
“What do you mean?”
“The patients continue to pay exorbitant premiums up until the time they need to start using the insurance, and then they have some mishap—a car accident—something, and they die. The insurance company gets to keep the premiums and never has to pay out on the surgery.”
Tobi stared at him. He was still the same Troy. His eyes were deep set, with a few more little crinkle lines at the temples and that same little bump on his chin, and his left brow still bunched up near his nose when he was serious. His forehead was starting to swell and turn colors, but there was no further bleeding. She really should get him some ice. She was so focused on Troy, she almost didn’t put it together.
“Wait,” she said. “What’s the name of that insurance company? I have a patient whose father just died in a car accident the day before he got his kidney transplant. Except they only made two payments.”
“He said it was called Kordec. Does that ring a bell?”
“I don’t know. I don’t usually get involved with the carriers. Maybe. I don’t think they expected to locate a new kidney so soon, either. Come to think of it, my friend Chloe might have mentioned being approached by them, but they didn’t sign up. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“You never saw him like this, Tobi. I could barely believe it was Reuben. He was completely panic-stricken. He begged me to help him, and then ….” he raised his hands helplessly. “Tobi. He made me promise. He made me promise never to tell you where he was or that I even knew. He was afraid you would have looked for him, and then these people would have gone after you and Benny.”
“Of course I would have looked for him, he was my brother! But if you’d told me what happened, I would have been discreet. I would have waited. It would have been enough for a while just to know he was okay.” Tobi stared at him defiantly. “You had no right to stop me.”
“You’re right, but I gave him my word.”
“And you never told me, even later, when he was safely hidden? So, you didn’t trust me, is what it comes down to.”
“No, Tobi—”
“And that still doesn’t explain how he ‘turned up dead.’ He just happened to find a body lying around that looked like him, to substitute?
” Tobi felt her anger rising again. It was too much to swallow after all these years.
“It was the guy scheduled to be terminated before his heart transplant. When he died, Reuben ran, and he tossed the guy’s wallet in the river. And of course, he left his own wallet in the apartment—he couldn’t use his own name or cards anyway. I think whoever identified the man couldn’t tell for sure because he’d been … decomposing for a few days.”
“That would have been his friend Ken. They wouldn’t let me see him, they wouldn’t let me—I would have known!” Tobi put her head in her hands and cried again. “I wanted to see him, I needed to see his body.” She looked up into Troy’s eyes. “I didn’t believe it, it didn’t feel right, and they wouldn’t let me!” She sobbed and Troy inched over to her and put a cautious hand on her elbow. The next thing she knew, she was crying on his shoulder and his arms were wrapped around her.
“Why didn’t you tell me? Why wouldn’t you spare me that? And … why did you leave? I needed you so much back then.”
“I couldn’t tell you,” Troy whispered. “I believed Reuben, I believed it would put you in danger. These people were—are—too powerful. And I left because I couldn’t lie to you.” He rested his head on top of hers, his tears dripping down his nose and into her hair. At that moment, she felt like they were the only two people alive in the universe.
It was a familiar feeling, her head on his shoulder. She felt warm and protected in a way she hadn’t experienced in an eternity, but she recalled her current reality and pushed him away.
“Why did you come back now?”
“Because I think Reuben had been hacking into these guys’ program from an independent server before he died six weeks ago in a diving accident. I went to Port Douglas when I couldn’t reach him. Someone from this Russian group went looking for the hacker and figured out who he was, and then two other people were killed. One was a friend of ours and Reuben’s dive shop partner, and the other was one of his friends.”
Tobi put her hand over her mouth reflexively.
“And so I come back to make sure you’re okay, and I find some guy trying to mess with your car and break into your house. What was he going to do?” Troy started rubbing his hands over the sides of his face and back over his head, flinching as his hand touched his swollen forehead. Tobi remembered he used to do that when he was agitated, which wasn’t that often.
“It’s 9:45 p.m., we have to call the police,” Tobi said. “Why didn’t Reuben do that? Or go to the FBI?”
“Reuben found that some US senators and FBI agents had been blackmailed. He didn’t know how many were in on it or who could be trusted.”
“Geez, and I thought I was the suspicious one.”
“I did get some help from the inspector in Port Douglas. He found the name of the murder suspect from facial recognition and gave me the name of this insurance company. It’s still all speculation, but it makes sense.”
“Wow, how’d you get the Australian police to share with you? Just flashed that rapturous smile of yours?”
Troy blushed. “He wouldn’t have, not until his secretary outed me as the CEO of the foundation. Let’s call the police. Hopefully, that’s not a mistake at this point in time, but doing nothing is unacceptable.”
Chapter 47
It was nearly midnight by the time the police were done taking statements. Tobi was grateful she wasn’t scheduled to work the next day because she wasn’t sure she could have managed. The police looked at them both skeptically when Troy told them he’d followed the prowler into the development by dodging the gatehouse, and then Officer Tarman asked Tobi if she wanted to press charges against Troy for intruding. She had glanced at him wickedly and he blanched, but she declined and said she was glad he had come, that he had probably saved her life.
Troy described the fat man with dark skin and beard and his car, license plate letters SLZ, and Tobi told them that Dr. Ismar Rufini and his car fit the exact description, although she didn’t know his plate number, and that he had been asking her questions about whether she lived alone or not. Officers Tarman and Weston said they would go to Ismar’s house on Centre Island, and they left. No one but Troy could corroborate the story of an intruder and his own presence in the community at that exact moment was spurious.
***
At nine in the morning, Tobi’s next-door neighbor knocked on the door, and Tobi invited her in.
“Are you alright? I saw the police were here all night, what happened?” Laila was dressed in black slacks under a forest green winter coat and ankle high boots, her long blonde hair cascading over the hood of her jacket.
“I’m sorry it kept you up,” Tobi said. “Someone tried to break in.”
“The gatehouse let someone in without checking? You know, sometimes our nighttime staff is not what it should be.”
“No, he slipped by on foot. It was … personal, I think. Sounds like it was the regional lead physician where I work.”
“Oh my God, did you get in touch with the company? They should know about this.”
“I plan to, just wanted to wake up first.” Tobi’s last conversation with Steve had made her uneasy.
“Is there someone upstairs?” Laila looked up as the sound of running water stopped.
“Yes, that’s kind of a long story ….”
Laila winked at her. “Good for you, Tobi.”
Tobi blushed. “No, it’s not what you think. He slept on the couch in my study.”
“Okay, no problem.” Laila was grinning mischievously. “But if you need anything, let me know. I’m heading out to work.”
Troy came downstairs just as Laila left.
His wet hair was combed back away from his face and he was fully dressed. Tobi wasn’t sure if she was disappointed or relieved. Maybe both. He had retrieved his Jeep with his suitcase and clothes late last night, and it was now parked on the street in front of her house. The phone rang and she jumped.
“Hello Dr. Lister, this is Officer Tarman. Just wanted to let you know we checked out Ismar Rufini, and he has an alibi. His wife says he was home all night last night from 5:00 p.m. on, so we can’t arrest him without more to go on. Are you sure it wasn’t one of your neighbors? Looked like the gatehouse keeps a log of everyone who comes onto the premises.”
Tobi paled. “I’m sure it wasn’t. Troy saw him follow me home from my office, and the description and the car match him perfectly. I even showed him a picture of Rufini that I pulled off Facebook, and he said that was him.”
“The partial plate was a match, so we’ll keep an eye on him nevertheless, but if you have any other information that can pin him down, or whoever hit your ex-boyfriend, come down to the station and we can talk.”
“Okay, thank you, officer.” She turned to Troy. “That was the police. Ismar’s wife covered for him.”
Her phone rang again, this time the president of her homeowners association.
“Hi, Jeff.”
“Hi, Tobi. I hear you had some activity at your house last night. The police were asking the guard a lot of questions. First off, is everybody okay? I heard there was an injury.”
“Yes, thanks. An old … friend of mine came by and stopped someone from prying my back door open, but he was hit with a wire cutter or something. He’s okay, I fixed him up.”
“Good, it’s nice to have a doctor on the property. Do you know who did it? The guard told me he didn’t let in anyone who was going to your house. If he’s not doing his job properly, we have to fire him.”
“No, no Jeff. This guy snuck in on foot, on the outgoing side of the gate.”
“Hmm … he should have had his eyes open. Why would someone do that? Do you know who it was?”
“I think so—well, I thought so, but the police just told me his wife vouched for him.”
“Well, I hope they catch whoever it was soon. I’ve asked
security to double their nighttime rounds. You know, we have an unmarked car that drives through the community every shift. If you have any trouble, call 911 of course, but call the gatehouse too, and they’ll summon our private security as well.”
“Thanks, Jeff, I appreciate it.”
“You bet. We’ve got to keep you safe, doc. And the rest of our residents too. Let me know when they catch him.”
“Will do.” She hung up. Geez, the last thing she wanted was for all of her neighbors to get wind of this bizarre situation and be frightened.
Troy was in the kitchen and had found the Keurig coffee maker that Tobi kept just for Ben and had prepared a cup of Organics Special Blend. “Since when do you drink coffee?” Tobi asked. “That’s not the healthy sustenance you used to endorse. I don’t think I can ever remember seeing you drink coffee.”
“I started in Port Douglas. I don’t know, the world had turned upside down, and me with it,” Troy said. Tobi almost felt bad for him.
“Tell me, who else knew about my brother?” She purposely used the possessive adjective rather than calling Reuben by name. He had been Tobi’s brother before he ever was Troy’s friend.
Troy turned to her, and she was forced to look him in the eyes. “No one,” he said.
“Seriously? No one? Not a soul? You expect me to believe you never told a single person?” She realized she was using anger as a shield to keep from losing herself in those eyes.
Thankfully, he looked down as he shook his head. “I didn’t even tell Mack. How could I tell Mack when I hadn’t told you?” He did look bereft, but Tobi wasn’t going to fall for it.
“I wanted to tell you … so many times,” he whispered. “Reuben was dead set against it. You know how stubborn he could be. And then when I thought it was safe, and I was going to do it anyway … I got scared. I thought you’d hate me and wouldn’t hear me out.”
“Smart boy,” Tobi snapped.
Code Blue Page 22