Death's Door (26 page)

A slow smile crept across his handsome face. “Good. It’s about time.”

Which is better: a dog’s sense of smell or its hearing?

S
LIVERS OF MOONLIGHT FOUND
their way through the slats of the plantation shutters and cast a pattern across the limestone floor. Madison stared at them, unable to fall asleep. Paul didn’t have the same problem. He was stretched out beside her, sound asleep, snuggled close, his comforting arm curled across her lower back. The pressure of his arm was so male, so protective.

Despite the possibility her life was in danger and the fact that her best friend was dead, her finances were a wreck and her mother still hadn’t called, Madison felt strangely calm. Wyatt had insisted on paying for a security guard to patrol the grounds around the guesthouse in the evening. He’d even called Paul’s father to insist a man be sent out within the hour.

She doubted such extreme and expensive measures were necessary, but Wyatt and Paul had insisted. Paul was still on leave; he would take her to work and pick her up. He was operating on the theory that the killer wouldn’t do anything violent. He’d try to stage an accident. Giving the fewest number of people access to her would be her best protection.

If she didn’t like Paul so much, she wouldn’t put up with all the restrictions because she wasn’t convinced she was in danger. But she did like him.
Admit it,
she thought.
You’re falling in love with him. Just take it slow. Don’t have the same lapse of judgment you had with Aiden.

After Wyatt had left they’d gone to bed and had taken their time making love. He seemed to know just where to touch her, how to touch her. He asked her what she liked. Aiden had never once said much more than “Are you ready?”

She turned so she could see Paul’s dark head against the white pillow. She was conscious of where his warm flesh touched hers. A shiver of excitement rippled through her. How could she have wasted so much time on Aiden? She brushed a gentle kiss against Paul’s stubbled cheek, careful not to wake him.

Madison’s throat felt as if she’d swallowed sand. She needed a drink of water. Gingerly, an inch at a time, she lifted Paul’s arm and slowly slid out from under it. She rose from the bed, taking care not to step on Aspen. Ever alert, the dog awoke, scrambled upright and followed her.

She stopped to grab her robe off the chair where she’d tossed it earlier. Paul liked to sleep in the buff. Another contrast with Aiden, who preferred silk pajama bottoms and insisted she wear Victoria’s Secret nightgowns. She wouldn’t need them now. But she shouldn’t prance around naked with a security guard just outside.

Halfway across the great room, going toward the kitchen, Madison remembered she hadn’t checked her cell phone. It had been off all evening because she didn’t want to be interrupted at dinner. She found her purse on the table by the sofa. The phone was in the side pocket. She took it out and saw that she had several messages.

What if she’d missed her mother’s call? She might sail off, just leaving a message, and Madison wouldn’t have the opportunity to ask her why her name was on New Horizons’ records. She checked voice mail. Three calls were from Rob; he’d wanted to take her to dinner.

He must be lonely and missing Erin. They’d split some time ago, but evidently, he was grieving. Who could blame him?
Even though Rob and Erin had no longer been together, he had loved her.

“I miss you, Erin,” Madison whispered into the darkness. Aspen swished his tail in response. She bent down to his ear. “Good boy,” she said softly.

Another message was from Dr. Miller. Evidently her test results were back. She’d call him in the morning. No doubt she would breeze through the preliminary tests. She expected to be eliminated later.

She wasn’t sure what to tell Rob. If she had dinner with him, Paul would insist on coming and she hadn’t even mentioned him to Rob. It would be awkward, but she didn’t want to desert him when he was missing Erin as much as she was.

Erin. What Wyatt had told them came back to her with an unsettling jolt. Could Erin have known she was a donor-conceived child and not told Madison? Did anyone ever really know another person? They’d shared a past full of childhood memories that seemed to bond them, but Erin had always held back a little bit of herself from everyone, even Rob.

He was such a nice man, she thought, putting the cell phone back in her purse. He’d called to ask her to dinner about two weeks after Aiden walked out on her. She told him she wasn’t up to going out even with a friend. What a mess she’d been.

Could she have really been that stupid? She’d let the divorce throw her whole life off-kilter. She wandered into the kitchen without turning on the lights. Enough moonlight flowed through the windows to guide her. She took a glass from the cabinet, filled it with water and drank. She set it down on the counter. An odd sensation sent a shiver prickling through her. She tensed and another jolt of uneasiness hit her. Had she heard a low rumble?

“Is that you, boy?” she whispered to Aspen.

There was enough light in the room to see Aspen was growling, a low rasp from deep in his throat and his hackles shot
straight up. She stroked his ears. Her pulse skipped a beat, then accelerated. “What is it, boy?”

Dogs had a much better sense of smell than humans and they could detect sounds humans couldn’t. “What do you hear, Aspen? What do you smell?”

He growled another warning, louder this time. Nerves fluttered in her chest. Why was she so jumpy? Must be all Paul’s talk about the murder—and knowing Erin’s murder could also be part of this mess. “Shh! You’re freaking me out,” she whispered to the dog.

Aspen’s nose was pointed toward the French doors that opened from the living room onto the pool area. Maybe the guard was making a pass by the guesthouse and Aspen smelled him. After all, smell was a dog’s best sense, hundreds of times better than man’s. She tiptoed toward the doors, Aspen at her side, still growling.

Evidently, the lights around the house were on a timer. They were off. The only light came from a full moon overhead. The bushes and the palms created patterns of darkness and light.

One large shadow on the far side of the pool seemed to shift. Was it a person or merely a shadow? A surge of something too intense to be merely nerves shot through her. She was so on edge that she wasn’t sure what was real or what she was imagining.

The form shifted again like a ghost and crept closer to the guesthouse. It wasn’t her imagination. Someone was out there!

A man emerged from the shadows. He was moving stealthily, obviously trying not to make noise.
Oh my God!
How had he slipped by the security guard? Surely the guard had gotten here by now. Wyatt had made the call several hours ago.

Raw panic slicked her skin like snake oil the instant she realized he had a weapon in his hand.
Paul’s here,
her brain reminded Madison.
He has a gun.
She was pivoting when the man tiptoed closer. Garrison Holbrook. The thing in his hand
was an envelope, not a weapon. Sheesh! Talk about being a nutcase.

She cracked the door and softly called, “Garrison, what are you doing?”

“I didn’t think you’d be up.” He waved the envelope at her. There wasn’t the faintest trace of emotion in his voice, yet a chill tiptoed up her spine. Something
was
wrong. “I was leaving you a note to call me.”

Aspen was still growling. “Hush,” she told the dog as she stepped outside and closed the door behind her so Paul wouldn’t be awakened. “It’s okay, boy.”

She turned to Garrison; even at this late hour, he looked as if he’d stepped off a page of
GQ.
She could only imagine what she looked like after her night with Paul. “What’s so important?” she asked.

He hesitated, gazing at her with a level, reflective look. The air crackled with tension. Or was she imagining it?

“Your blood tests came back,” Garrison said in a neutral voice, but Madison picked up a serious undertone. He paused for a moment before adding, “I hate to have to tell you this, but…”

“Tell me what?” She knew by his tone that this couldn’t be good news.

“Madison, I’m afraid it looks like you have a disease called Chagas.”

“An illness caused by a single-cell parasite that feeds on heart and gastrointestinal tissues. A leading cause of heart failure in Central and South America.” The rote description came from her mouth as the meaning of his words registered. “How could I have it? Chagas happens in poor rural areas where bugs can easily get into homes. The lab must have made a mistake.”

“I wish that were true, but I doubt it. Dr. Miller uses a reputable lab.”

Something in his gaze unnerved her. “How could I have caught Chagas?”

“Have you had a blood transfusion?”

“No. Did I catch it from somebody? Miami is loaded with people from—”

“It’s a vector-borne illness.”

“Transmitted by insects. You can’t catch it from an infected person.”

“The insect that carries the parasite is moving northward thanks to our friend global warming. All blood banks now test for it. As you might guess, they find quite a few cases in Miami and L.A., but those people contracted it in Central or South America and brought it here. Cases like yours are rare. The doctor said most people who contracted Chagas here were campers or hunters who slept outdoors.”

“I went camping in the Everglades twice last year. Maybe I caught it then.” She stared up at him, trying to make sense of this. “There must be a drug for this if it’s so prevalent south of the border.”

Garrison’s lips parted in a silent, mirthless laugh. “Drug companies in America expect annual sales of a drug to be over one hundred million or it isn’t worth developing. These are poor countries. They can’t afford the treatment costs.”

“But there is a treatment?” Her voice sounded pathetic even to her own ears.

“What’s going on?” Paul was standing at the door, wearing nothing but a towel. If Garrison was surprised to see Paul, his face didn’t show it.

“Let’s go inside,” suggested Madison.

Inside, Madison flicked on the lights, Paul went into the bedroom and put on his pants. They settled on the sofa with Aspen at their feet while Garrison sat in the same chair his father had occupied earlier. It took a few minutes for Garrison to explain to Paul what Chagas was. Madison couldn’t recall
reading anything about it in the papers or hearing about it on television. It wasn’t surprising that Paul had never heard of the fatal disease. Her trivia-filled brain had dredged up the definition, but she’d known little else.

Of all the godforsaken luck,
Madison thought.
I have a disease that could kill me.
It made everything else going wrong in her life seem less troubling. Surely there was something she could do. She tried to think where she could go for a consultation. She didn’t have health insurance. Total Trivia had chosen not to offer it. Since it was so expensive and she was young, Madison hadn’t thought she needed insurance. It wasn’t a smart decision, but it was too late now.

“Wait a minute,” Paul said to Garrison. “How did you get Madison’s test results? I thought HIPA restricted access to info like this.”

A grim smile formed on Garrison’s lips. “It does. I went to the hospital after dinner to see if Dr. Miller had your results. I knew he was working late. He was rushing out of his office just as I arrived. His son attends Brown and he was in a serious car crash. Dr. Miller is flying there, not knowing if his son will make it.”

“Oh, my. How awful. He’s such a nice man.” Madison had really liked the doctor. He seemed so much more caring than many of the doctors who’d treated her father. “There was a message from him earlier in the evening asking me to call his office tomorrow.”

“He was going to tell you then. When he left me standing near his desk, I confess I couldn’t resist the urge to look at your file,” Garrison admitted. “He’d told me the results were back. He didn’t say anything but there was something in his voice that made me curious.”

“I would have looked, too,” Madison assured him. There was nothing she wouldn’t have done to save her father. How could she expect Garrison to be any different?

“What’s the treatment?” Paul asked.

“I used the computer at the nurse’s station to access the National Health Service database. People being treated now have had the disease for ten, twenty years. It’s a silent killer. The microscopic parasite feeds on heart and intestinal tissues. In your case, I assume it’s been discovered early or it would have shown up before now. The only place to go is Olive View–UCLA Medical Center.”

“Los Angeles? Nothing here in Miami or the East Coast?” asked Paul.

Garrison shook his head. “Nothing. Olive View–UCLA is the only Chagas treatment center in the country.”

“What kind of treatment are you talking about?” Paul asked.

Garrison hesitated. “I don’t know what they’ll do with Madison. The databases referred to the treatment of patients who’ve had Chagas for years.”

“What aren’t you telling me?” she asked.

“Look, I’m not an expert. This isn’t my field. From what I understand, there are two drugs known to be effective against the disease. Neither has FDA approval. Many patients can’t tolerate powerful drugs with side effects seen most often with chemotherapy.”

Stunned, she gaped at him for a second, incapable of speaking. Dread permeated her body, settled into her bones. What was she going to do?

“Aw, hell.” Paul put his arm around her and pulled her closer.

Madison’s thoughts roiled. Going bald. No money for treatment. Traveling all the way across the country. Funding what must be expensive drugs. Drawing a shuddering breath, she grasped the seriousness of the situation.

“Now, again,” Garrison said, responding to what had to be an anguished expression on her face. “This is not my field. I don’t know what they do with a case caught in the early stages.” He pulled an index card out of his pocket. “Here’s the number
of the hospital in L.A. Call them tomorrow and make an appointment. They’re the experts.”