In Love and Rescue: When love is the perfect rescue... (28 page)

“How are you feeling?” He asked her, pressing his stethoscope against her ribcage.

“I’m doing alright,” Wren quickly answered, trying not to wince as he pressed ice cold hands to her skin. When he arrived at a tender spot on her abdomen, he tsked.

“Did they do an X-ray on you, Ms. Tapley?” He asked.

The agent stepped forward. “They tried to, but she refused.”

Wren shot him a look. “I just wanted to get out of there,” she explained. “When they told me that my sister was still alive, I didn’t want to stay in that hospital another moment.”

Dr. Lindholm put both hands on her shoulders and smiled. Wren found that she liked his pleasant demeanor, and his smile made his deep blue eyes even more endearing.

“I think you have some bruising in your ribs,” he told her. “I need to get you set up on an IV and a pain reliever so that I can continue the examination.”

Wren’s shoulders sagged. “Is that really necessary?”

He smiled once more. “You do want to get better, don’t you? I wouldn’t want what that heinous man did to you to cause any permanent damage.”

She glanced at Larke who smiled as bravely as she could. Really, it pained her to see her sister in any sort of pain, and it only made it worse when she thought about where that pain had come from.

“Okay,” Wren conceded
, and a few seconds later, a second agent wheeled in a bag of saline solution. The doctor then started the IV and injected the medication. As it began to take effect, Wren felt her limbs begin to tingle.

“Where are you from, Dr. Lindholm?” she asked, feeling unusually stiff.

“Me? I’m Swedish,” he answered, standing over her.

“Makes sense,” Wren answered. “Because your eyes are so deep blue that they almost look…purplish.”

The minute that the final word left Wren’s mouth, Larke’s stomach leapt. She searched her brain for where she’d heard that before, that someone’s eyes were purplish. As Dr. Lindholm bent to tend to Wren, she zeroed in on the side of his face. Twila. It was Twila that had used the word “purplish.” But what had she been talking about?

He turned to face her briefly, and her mind
finally made the connection. Twila had said that the doctor who had delivered the news of Taina’s death had purplish eyes.

As she examined his face further, she realized that she was staring directly into the face of the man that Doug had said was new on the radar, but unidentified. The man that had been working with
Delgano…and therefore had been working with Eddie Jarvis.

“Dr. Lindholm, I can’t move,” she heard Wren say. “My arms and legs. I can’t move them.”

Larke tried to rush towards her, but one of the agents placed a hand over her mouth and effortlessly pinned both of her hands behind her back with the other. She felt the sharp sting of a needle going into her neck, and Wren’s cries soon became farther away. Her body went limp, and she fell into the agent’s arms before succumbing to darkness yet again.

*****

“What do you mean, Joni’s dead?” Desmond asked.

Doug joined Desmond on the sofa. “We called her to come in for questioning and she agreed that she would, but then a few minutes later a return call came from her phone from Senator Dillinger. Apparently, she and the Senator had been having an affair for about a year. He was the one who told us that she was dead.”

Desmond decided to ask the obvious. “Did Jarvis kill her?”

“He did. Shot her right there in Dillinger’s cabin. But that’s not all the Senator gave us. He gave
us the entire rundown on Jarvis’ operation. There’s a call-center that he has in Jamaica that acts as a cover-up for a basement full of workers. What happens is, he has the drugs shipped in from Colombia to Jamaica where he then cuts them down to make them weaker. That way, it’s almost guaranteed that people will get hooked. After they’re cut down, they’re smuggled into the 90-North warehouse in Miami through children’s toys. A warehouse raid turned up drugs in hollowed out rocking-horses and kids’ blocks, and we even found oxy in the double-stitched lining of a teddy bear. The teddy bear’s ear was tagged to go to a boy at the Arkansas Children’s Hospital after the drug was removed, but imagine what would have happened if they missed a toy and one of those kids got their hands on the actual drug.”

Desmond’s brows narrowed. “But aren’t there regulations around this sort of thing?”

“Like you wouldn’t believe,” Doug answered, “and that’s the biggest part of it. Eddie’s got his hands in the entire gamut. We’re talking from Congress to Customs. His operation has been going on for the last seven years, yet no one had been on his trail until now.”

Desmond leaned back into the seat cushion. “Damn.”

“Damn is right again,” Doug added. “The Marshals moved the Senator’s family into protective custody and Dillinger’s being treated for a bullet wound that skated off the side of his head. Unfortunately, Jarvis’ primary defense attorney was found dead in his study this morning. His wife said that she found him unresponsive after he’d had his morning cup of coffee, so his cup was likely laced with something. It’s like Jarvis knows that he’s going down, so he’s trying to take everyone with him.”

Desmond held up a hand. “So, Joni was
n’t involved after all then?”

“
To a small degree. Turns out, she knew about Jarvis’ plans because she overheard the details while hiding in the Senator’s closet. Dillinger claims that she didn’t know that they were serious about killing Larke, but she still agreed to go to Larke’s the same night the two men showed up to make sure that she stayed in. She was also the one who leaked the disappearance to the FBI, no doubt to assuage the guilt she felt for being involved in the first place.”

They both paused for a moment to allow the information to saturate.

“How was Eddie disseminating the drugs in the US then?” Desmond asked.

Doug chuckled. “I can’t believe I left out the best part. Eddie distributed through these low-income clinics that are really cover-ups for pill-mills that have been popping up all over the country. He acted as the primary financial backer to fund the clinics, but you’d never guess who the actual owner of the clinics was?”

Something in Desmond’s head clicked. “The mystery man that popped up on your radar.”

Doug smiled and pressed a fist into the seat cushion. “Yes. You had your Wheaties this morning, Harding. Turns out that this guy used to be one of the best neurologists in Sweden. In the world, even. He specialized in neuropharmacology, mainly Alzheimer’s research, and specifically the delivery of medication across the blood-brain-barrier, and ways to reduce the stress of intrathecal administration of drugs to the patient.”

Desmond blinked.

“Oh, sorry,” Doug apologized. “Basically, he specializes in drugs that can get to the brain without putting a needle directly through the skull. Several years ago, he was close to being considered for a Nobel Prize because he created a drug that helped to slow the progression of Alzheimer’s disease by reinforcing the barrier between the blood and the brain, which prevented a specific Alzheimer’s-related protein from getting to the brain. He was also pioneering a mechanism to regenerate damaged brain cells to stop Alzheimer’s from getting worse. However, about three years ago, his wife and eighteen-month old son died in a car crash and after that, they said he went crazy. As he fell further off the deep end, funding for his research was cut off. When the funding was cut off, another source stepped in.”

“Jarvis,” Desmond
stated.

“Yes. Once Jarvis started funding him, his research started up again, but in private.
Then came the human trials, which relates to that form Larke found in Taina’s stuff. Unfortunately, the drug, the Trovodine, had a major side effect. It wiped out people’s memories, sometimes upwards of fifty-percent. But, the impact wasn’t permanent. The minute the person underwent any sort of traumatic event, the memories would start to come back. So, I guess it’s like putting all of your bad memories into one folder and forgetting that they’re there, but then something else bad happens, you grab the folder to put away the new bad memory, and end up remembering the ones you put away in the first place.”

Desmond
thought back to the men standing over Larke at her apartment. After he’d taken them out, he’d scooped her up and placed her on the sofa, threw a bag together, and left the house. As he was walking out, he briefly spotted an open black bag in the kitchen.

“That’
s why it didn’t make any sense,” Desmond realized. “Larke didn’t suffer any head trauma significant enough to cause that kind of memory loss. The men at her place did give her something. That drug. But, why would Jarvis want to erase her memory?”

Doug shrugged. “
If I had to guess, I’d say that the best way to sneak up on your prey, would be to find a way for them not to know you’re the predator.”

Desmond
picked up the folder that he’d been looking through. “So, this doctor, how did he get on the scene?”

Doug shrugged again. “Funny thing is, as credentialed as Dr. Lindholm is, I can’t say for certain that we would have ever been able to identify him without Dillinger’s confession. This guy’s pretty low radar, and has done some amazing things medically outside of his operation with Jarvis. But,
once Jarvis gave him the funding, he was basically at the sociopath’s every whim. It’s like everyone can be bought and sold these days.”

Desmond looked up at him. “Dr. Lindholm? I’ve heard that name before.” He stood and began to pace around the room. “What’s his first name?”

“Mark.”

Desmond’s pacing stopped as he lunged for the pa
pers lying on the sofa cushion. “There was a note in here. I think I saw the name Lindholm on it. Maybe one of the agents was on the right track but stopped searching when the trail went cold.”

Doug helped him search through the tall stack of papers.
“Here it is,” he announced, “and it does say Dr. Mark Lindholm, but there’s also a number on the bottom.”

Desmond took the note and began to piece together the information. “There were two
FBI agents at Wren’s bedside at the hospital. When Wren heard that Larke was alive, she refused any further care against multiple doctors’ orders, so one of the agents suggested that the family bring in a private physician. Lindholm must have been the private physician they picked, and then wrote the number down to give to Wren’s family.”

All of the information abruptly came together in Desmond’s
head. He dropped the papers and dashed up the stairs to the main room where Larke’s family was sitting around the fireplace. However, neither Larke nor Wren were with them.

“Everything okay, Des?” Jay asked, standing. Desmond couldn’t believe how happy even he was to see Larke’s family again.

“Larke and Wren, where are they?”

Doug finally appeared behind him with a phone to his ear.

“They’re back there wi
th the Doc,” Jay answered, walking towards the room. Desmond quickly darted past him and down the hallway. When he pushed open the door, he found Wren lying awkwardly still on the bed with an orange foam rubber ball stuffed in her mouth. The room was frigid due to the cold blast of air coming in through an open window, and Doug closed the window while Desmond gently pulled the ball from Wren’s mouth.

“What happened?” he
asked, wrapping a blanket around her body and pulling her up into a sitting position. Her limbs, however, remained limp.

“The doctor,” she began, coughing, “he works for that guy. That Eddie Jarvis guy. He came in to examine me and said I had bruised ribs and would need medication to continue the exam. He injected something in
my IV, some sort of paralytic, then he and the two agents that were with me at the hospital took Larke.”

Desmond’s voice filled with anger. “They took Larke?”

Grief contorted Wren’s face. “Yes. Somehow, she realized that the doctor was working for the Jarvis guy, but one of the agents grabbed her and stuck a needle in her neck. She passed out, and all four of them went out through the window.”

Behind them
, a medical team rushed into the room while Jay, Heather, and Thomas watched on as the horror enveloped them again. Desmond released Wren to allow the team to tend to her, and then walked to the window. Outside, he could make out impressions in the snow, but those would probably be gone within the next hour or so. It was also highly likely that the men weren’t going to remain on foot for very long.

The veins in his arms and neck pulsated, and his jaw clenched in response to his ire. After all of this, after everything they’d gone through, Jarvis had been able to slip in and scoop La
rke from the place where he’d intentionally left her alone because he thought that she’d be safe. And now, as he looked into the white particles drifting from the sky and piling into small mounds outside, he had to accept the fact that she’d been taken and that he had no idea where to even begin looking to find her.

“Des,” Doug
called from somewhere far off. He turned and caught the coat that was being thrown at him.

“My guys j
ust flew in with Delgano Richards and they’re at the field office in Milwaukee. If we can get him to talk, he might be the only way to find out where they’ve taken Larke.”