Forty-Four Box Set, Books 1-10 (44) (37 page)

And Ty.

As I thought about him, I felt even sadder. I hoped Kate had gotten in touch with him and that he didn’t think I was a flake. I liked Ty. I liked him a lot. And it hurt to think that he might believe that I had just blown him off.

Heavy drops fell on my face. The storm was becoming serious as it pushed up on the land and into me. It was time to head back to the house.

As I turned around, I glanced over at the grassy hill behind the beach. It was being whipped in the wind, looking like an ocean of grass.

And that’s when I saw it.

Half buried in the weeds.

My escape.

CHAPTER 10

It wasn’t that far from the shore, but it had been completely hidden in the tall grasses. If it hadn’t been for the intense wind, I would have walked right by it.

An old kayak.

My heart beat uncontrollably as I looked to make sure no one else was around. I raced up to it, running my fingers over the cold fiberglass.

I couldn’t believe it. A sea kayak stuck in the grass, beaten up and abandoned and flipped upside down. The hull was barely noticeable and full of sand and dirt. It looked like it could have been out in the weeds for years.

I wasn’t sure, but I was betting Nathaniel and his staff had no idea that it was out here. It was too old and neglected for his taste. I checked over the entire hull to make sure there were no puncture marks, no holes. It seemed solid.

I turned it over and my excitement grew when I saw an old paddle inside. 

Someone was looking out for me.

“Thank you,” I whispered into the wind, and felt hope for the first time since the kidnapping.

I was confident that I could do it, paddle those miles across the strait, over to that island I could see out the bedroom window. There had to be someone there who would help me.

It would be better to go at night, even though the thought of being out on the water in the dark frightened me, bringing up those icy memories never submerged too far below my consciousness. But Nathaniel terrified me even more. There was no choice. If I had any chance of making it across, I had to make a run for it at night so I wouldn’t be spotted.

I looked up at the sky. I would have to wait until the storm passed.

I turned the kayak back over and pushed it up a little farther into the weeds, making sure it was again out of sight. On the shore, I collected a few sticks of driftwood and stacked them in a small pile in the sand to mark the spot where I had to turn up off the beach when I returned.

It was a miracle that I had found it. I couldn’t wait to tell Jesse.

I headed back to the house, thinking of what I would need to bring for my escape. My rain jacket, a little water, maybe one of Simon’s muffins. It wouldn’t be easy, but I could do it. I could cross the long stretch of open water and escape from Nathaniel.

CHAPTER 11

There was a knock on the door at eight. I opened it, expecting Simon and I was startled when I saw that it was someone else.

“Hello, Abby,” he said. “My name is Phil.”

He was taller and heavier than Simon and wore glasses.

“Dr. Mortimer is expecting you to join him in the library this evening,” he said coldly.

“I’ll be down in a minute or two. I can find my way.”

I pulled out some jeans and a button-down shirt. It still gave me the creeps, wearing clothes that someone else had picked out, but I did my best not to think about it. It wasn’t like I had a choice.

My hair was still a mess from the walk in the rain earlier. As I ran a brush through the tangles, I thought about how the room was full of all my favorite things and how Nathaniel must have been expecting me to stay a while. A long while. On the plus side, that probably meant he didn’t have immediate plans to kill me.

I opened the door and walked downstairs.

I didn’t have any trouble finding the library but when I got there, I lingered in the doorway for a moment. The lamps were dimmed and it was darker than it had been the night before. Most of the light in the room came from the fire, the glow of the flames moving around the walls and ceiling.

Nathaniel was sitting in the same chair, perfectly still, like a snake in hibernation. I tried to catch my breath. Just the sight of him gave me goose bumps.

He suddenly stood up, aware that I was there.

“Abby,” he said, smiling, his eyes finding me. “Please, come in.”

He was wearing his usual attire, everything black, well-made, tailored. As I walked over, I noticed his shoes were long and thin, a style that was popular among European soccer coaches.

His energy was dark, but stagnant. He wasn’t agitated in the least, wasn’t upset, which made me think that no one knew about my discovery of the kayak earlier.

“Thank you for joining me this evening. Looks like quite the stormy night out there.”

I entered the room and walked over to the chair that I had sat in the night before, staring at the large panes of glass being splattered by the rain.

“Yeah,” I said.

“What can I offer you?” he asked. “We are stocked now with Cherry Coke. We should have had that for you last night. My apologies. Would you like some now?”

I nodded. He poured me a large glass with ice cubes and walked over and handed it to me. I took it, not looking directly at him. He got himself a drink and sat down, crossing his legs.

“Before we begin, I want to know how your day was here at the house. Did you get a chance to explore the island?”

I nodded again.

“Good,” he said. “It appears that your adventure agreed with you. Your complexion looks healthier. There’s more color in your cheeks. You seem happier, more relaxed. I’m glad.”

I took a long drink of the soda and stared at the floor, hoping there wasn’t a subtle message in there somewhere. It was true. I was happier. Happy that I had seen Jesse. And happy that I found the kayak.

“I wanted to mention to you as well not to forget about the basement. There are quite a few activities down there that I’m sure will please you. A wide variety of entertainment. You may do whatever you wish in these next few days.”

“None of this is what I wish,” I said sharply.

“I am just asking you to be a little patient, that’s all. And in the meantime, I want you to consider this house your own.”

“I have a house,” I said. “Back in Oregon.”

He picked a piece of lint off his dark shirt.

“So when can I talk to Kate?” I asked.

“Remember that talking to Kate is contingent on these little chats down here in the evenings,” he said. “That you answer my questions to the best of your ability. That you don’t hold anything back.”

“Yeah, okay. So let’s say you’re happy with my answers. When can I talk to her?” I said.

“Soon. If the next few nights go well.”

I nodded.

“Okay,” I said. “Let’s go. What do you want to know?”

He smiled.

“I appreciate your enthusiasm for wanting to move this along, Abby. But don’t you want to know about my day? Aren’t you a little bit curious about what we are doing here, what we are discovering in the laboratory?”

“Sure,” I said. “What have you found out?”

I didn’t really care, but I didn’t mind killing some time listening to his rambling. I rather him do most of the talking anyway.

“Well, your tests have all come back and we’ve determined that you are perfectly normal,” he said. “And this is exciting news indeed. The serum I injected into you that night almost two years ago has not changed your chemistry one bit, although it does remain active in your system. This is good news. A foreign substance has been introduced into your body and it has been accepted. Your white blood cells have not tried to attack it, which is quite rare.”

I glared at him as he talked about me. It was hard not to feel like Frankenstein’s monster.

“Great,” I said.

“It really is great,” he said. “It’s nearly impossible to introduce a foreign material into the human ecosystem and not have it attacked. It’s the most perplexing part of our study so far. We are very excited about this. Thrilled, actually.”

“So you’re saying that your serum is still in my body?”

“Indeed it is,” he said.

I was quiet for a moment, thinking about how Dr. Mortimer had assured me that Nathaniel was insane, that he was wrong in thinking he had saved my life.

“It doesn’t matter if it’s in my body. It’s not what saved me,” I said. “Whether you injected your magic potion into me or not has nothing to do with why I’m alive. Your brother, the real doctor, saved me. I wasn’t saved by some concoction you created in your lab.”

He took a sip from his drink.

“I appreciate what you’re saying. Really, I do, Abby. In fact, any scientist worth his weight is always a skeptic. So good. Good for you. I must confess I felt the same way at first. That’s why I needed to stay in Bend and continue to test it on other subjects.”

I held back my thoughts, didn’t say anything. Nathaniel was calling the innocent people he had killed “subjects.”

“Come now, Abby,” he said. “It was necessary.”

He must have read my face. It was too hard to hide my disgust.

“Trial and error is always necessary in order to gain any advancement in medicine,” he said.

“That’s a strange definition for murder,” I said. “Those were people you killed, just like me. Your ‘error’ cost them their lives.”

 But he wasn’t listening. It was his turn not to care.

“I wanted you to know that we’re all working hard, very hard, to perfect this,” he said. “It’s going to change the world.”

“Okay, Nathaniel. Explain to me how exactly your serum is going to change the world.”

He stood up and started pacing slowly around the room. First walking over to the window and looking out at the rain, then making his way to the fireplace. He put his glass up on the mantle and clapped his hands together.

“Can you imagine what it will be like if doctors had more time to bring people back to life following traumatic medical episodes? The difference it would make if they had an extra hour to bring subjects back from death? Now, the serum is still in its embryotic form, of course. At this point, we can’t save everyone, can’t save patients suffering from diseases that have destroyed their bodies. It won’t work on them, not at this stage. But it can work on people like you, Abby. You’re living proof.”

I shook my head. It was all such nonsense, but he was so caught up in it, there was no reasoning with him.

“You should feel proud to be a part of it. We will be saving a lot of lives.”

I put my glass down on the table and crossed my arms. I wanted this to move along quicker, wanted to get back upstairs and put a movie in and work out the details of my escape. But I also wanted to call Kate.

“So you’re saying that people can be dead for an hour and you’ll still be able to save them if you inject them with this?”

“Yes. That’s exactly what I’m saying. For about an hour, at this point,” he said. “But I have a very strong feeling that we can even push that. Why not two or even three hours?”

My blood turned to ice at the sudden thought that he might be planning on using me as his test subject for these extra hours. I tried to push the idea away.

“It’s a beginning. Obviously, there are some obstacles, the question of brain damage that we’re trying to address. But we have you. You died and, considering the big picture, experienced surprisingly few side effects. Our theory is that the compounds used in the serum in conjunction with the low water temperature in the lake where you drowned helped prevent severe deterioration of brain function. And that is what we’re building on.”

He sat back down.

“None of this is based on science,” I said. “You don’t have any proof that your
miracle
serum worked on me. Even if I buy into the idea that you injected me with it, it could have been something else that brought me back. What’s certain is that it failed on those four people you killed. And those are just the ones I know about. How many other times has it failed? How many other victims have there been? Nobody’s going to take you seriously as anything other than a coldblooded killer.”

“Oh, but they are taking me seriously, Abby. Look around you. You are sitting in a house that is worth in excess of 10 million dollars, provided by people who are taking my antidote to death extremely seriously. They are as excited as I am about my work here. They know I am standing on the edge of something truly astounding. My serum will change how we look at life and death and the very nature of what it means to be human.”

I shuddered as I looked around the room. If what he was saying was true, that someone who owned this kind of house was interested in his research, then my chances of survival were small.

 I had to get off this island, and soon.

I stared out at the rain. It was good to have found the kayak. Now I just needed for the storm to pass.

“I thought this was your house. Family money, doctor’s salary, that kind of thing.”

He laughed.

“Oh, my, no,” he said. “But I can see where you may have come to that conclusion. While you are correct that my brother and I were raised with a good deal of money, it wasn’t this kind of money. This is another level.”

“Oh,” I said.

“The investors supporting my research have been quite generous,” he said. “Of course, their primary interest is monetary. But I could care less about that. What’s important is saving lives.”

I shook my head.

“How can you talk about saving lives when you’ve killed so many people? Isn’t that one of the first rules of medicine? ‘First do no harm.’ Your brother told me that once. I don’t get it. I don’t get how you two can even be related.”

“The few sometimes must make sacrifices for the good of the many. It’s the foundation of all great societies. Of nature and life itself.”

He leaned forward in his chair, his eyes zeroing in on mine, looking for a reaction.

“So where do I fit in, in this society you’re creating?” I asked, trying to steady my breathing. “Am I just going to be one of those sacrifices?”