Panacea (14 page)

She gingerly rubbed her tender jaw. “He didn't need one.”

She looked at her attacker. His right sleeve had ridden up, revealing a tattoo on the underside of his forearm. From here it looked like
DXXXVI
.

The stranger shrugged. “Didn't know what else to do.”

“I'm glad you came along.”

“Just hope I don't get in trouble for this.”

“How could you get in trouble for stopping a mugging?”

“The law never sides with guys like me. This jerk'll probably sue me for pain and anguish or some such.”

“Not while I'm around.”

“I mean, calling and waiting for the cops wasn't exactly an option.”

“Listen, you did just fine. But I think I should call them now. Oh, wait.” She pointed to her attacker, still lying atop her bag. “It's under him.”

“I'll do it.”

He whipped out his own phone and tapped in three numbers. After a brief wait he said, “Hello, I'd like to report—”

Behind him she saw her attacker leap to his feet and start to run off.

“He's getting away!”

The second man spun and took off after him but the attacker had a good head start.

Damn! Her rescuer took his phone with him.

But then she noticed her shoulder bag crumpled on the ground. She darted to it and pawed through the mess within for her iPhone. Where was it? She dumped the contents on the hood of her car but no phone.

He'd left her wallet but run off with her phone.

What the—?

Just then a car pulled up to the curb. Laura recognized it in the wash from the security lamp.

Steven … her ex. With all that had been happening, his weekend with Marissa had been pushed to the background.

Sandy haired, tall and lanky, he unfolded himself from the car and swung a small overnight duffel over his shoulder.

“Laura?” his tone was light. “What are you doing outside?”

She felt a lump form in her throat, but she swallowed it.

“I … I was just mugged.”

“Jesus God!” He hurried up to her. “You're serious?”

She nodded. The lump was back.

“Are you hurt?”

She shook her head. She couldn't remember being this glad to see him in a long, long time. She held out her arms. She needed a hug. He didn't hesitate. He dropped the duffel and wrapped her in a tight embrace.

It seemed before the divorce all they'd ever done was fight. Now, after years apart, they got along better than ever. They could never be husband and wife again, but they could be friendly parents.

“Did you call the cops?” he said after a few seconds.

“He took my phone.”

He released her and pulled his cell from a pocket. “Let's get them rolling right now. You're going to have to call all the credit card companies and—”

“He left my wallet. All he took was my phone.”

“That's weird.”

“Maybe because that other guy didn't give him time to—”

“Wait. Other guy?”

“I'll tell you after you call the cops.”

That other guy … where was he? And
who
was he?

 

STAHLMAN

 

1

“Toad in the hole!” Marissa cried as her father dropped one onto her plate.

“Well done, right?” Laura said.

Steven's mouth twisted. “Cooked through and through. I'm on board with the program, you know.”

Of course he was.

“Sorry for being a pain.”

With Marissa's immune system in a precarious state since the stem-cell transplant, Laura was taking no chances. Anti-contaminant kitchen routines were followed to the letter—fresh items scrubbed, cutting boards changed frequently, everything steamed or cooked to at least 160 degrees. She bought organic eggs but still worried about
salmonella
if they were undercooked. Long odds, she knew, but no sunny-side-up or over-easy in this house.

Steven slipped a three-egg Western omelet onto her plate.

“There you go.”

She wasn't hungry, still hadn't bounced back from the mugging last night. She would have liked to have shielded Marissa from the scary truth, but with the cops around, asking for a statement, she'd had to tell her. The swollen bruise on her jaw was an ugly reminder. So was the pain. She was glad for the omelet. It hurt to chew.

“Looks great. As soon as I finish I'm off.”

Steven smiled. “I'm not kicking you out.”

“And I'm not going to hog your time with Marissa.”

Laura took a bite—delicious—and looked around. Marissa digging into her egg-inside-toast combination, Steven at the stove, whipping up another omelet for himself. She couldn't remember the last time the three of them had had breakfast together. Their usual routine didn't accommodate that.

Breaking the routine, Laura had stayed over last night. She'd been too shaken to travel to Manhattan and hadn't wanted to be alone. Steven had been fine with that. He'd even come tapping at her door, asking if she needed company. She'd known what that meant, and shooed him away. Yes, she could have used a man in her bed, but not Steven. That bird had flown.

 

2

The morning sun was peeking through the trees when Laura wheeled her overnight bag toward her car through the weekend quiet. She couldn't help looking around to make sure no one was lurking. As she slammed the trunk she sensed motion behind her.

A huge, gleaming black van, somewhere between the size of a courtesy van and a touring bus pulled into the curb in front of her house, blocking her driveway.

Really? How did the idiot expect her to get out? As she approached with the intention of asking just that, a door slid open in the side and out stepped a man who reminded her a little of Nathan Fillion but with a thinner neck. Then she recognized him.

Her rescuer from last night.

“You! Where'd you go to last night? I was a little worried about you.”

He shrugged with an easy smile that didn't seem to reach his eyes. She couldn't say his eyes were cold, exactly. More like cold lay
behind
his eyes. Hidden. What did that
mean,
anyway? If someone asked her right now to explain what she was feeling, she'd be at a loss. But something was
there
. Or maybe
not
there. Whatever it was, she didn't feel comfortable with it. He seemed distant. Almost removed.

“No need to worry about me. Tried to catch him but he was fast and had too much of a jump.”

“Well, anyway, I want to thank you for intervening.”

He angled around to her left and peered at her swollen jaw. “Too bad I didn't intervene sooner. Lousy punk.” He thrust out his hand. “Rick Hayden, like the planetarium.”

She shook it. Big hand. “Laura Fanning. And you're dating yourself with ‘planetarium.' These days you should say ‘as in Panettiere' instead.”

“Nah. If people don't get the planetarium ref, I probably don't want to know them. But anyway, no thanks necessary. All part of the job.”

Laura blinked. Did he say—?

“Job?”

“I was hired to watch over you.”

Something in Laura's chest gave a quick, uneasy twist. “Who on Earth would—?”

“Name's Clayton Stahlman.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “He's inside. Wants to meet you.”

“In there?”

“This is how he travels.”

She peered into the darker opening in the black side panel of the van. “I don't know…”

“He's not very mobile. Even if your daughter weren't at risk for infection, your house isn't accessible to a man in his condition.”

“His condition? What—hey, what do you know about my daughter?”

“You'd be surprised what he knows. He'd like a private powwow with you. Would have visited you in your office but he suspects it's been bugged by now.”

“Bugged?”

“Please.” He gestured toward the door. “I'm just the hired help. He can explain it better than I can.”

He … this Rick Hayden, whoever he was, was so casual about it all. She'd never heard of a Clayton Stahlman but he obviously had resources. She couldn't guess how many hundreds of thousands this van must have cost. And he'd hired this man to “watch over” her? That meant he'd expected foul play. Why? Was last night's attack not the random act it had seemed?

Looked like the only way she was going to get answers was to go inside and talk to this Clayton Stahlman.

She took a breath. “All right. But you go in first.”

She wasn't the suspicious type as a rule, but she didn't want this big man pushing her inside from behind and driving off with her. Yes, he'd come to her rescue last night but that could have been a setup.

Paranoid? Maybe. But something weird was going on here.

His smile was almost mocking but he preceded her through the doorway. Then he turned and extended his hand to help her step up from the ground.

“I can handle it,” she said.

She found a railing and pulled herself up onto the bottom step where she stopped and looked around. The interior looked like the lounge area of a luxury airliner.

“Hello,” said a weak voice from her right. An older man sat smiling at her from a wheelchair. A green oxygen cannula circled under his nose. “Doctor Fanning, I presume.”

Okay. This looked on the level. And he looked anything but threatening.

“That's me,” she said, climbing the rest of the way in. “And you are…?”

“Clayton Stahlman.” He handed her a card embossed with his name and a telephone number, then indicated one of the sofas set against the walls. “Please, have a seat.”

Laura complied, slipping the card into a side pocket on her shoulder bag. She made a quick assessment of Stahlman: continuous oxygen, moon face, no barrel chest. Probably pulmonary fibrosis. Hard to tell his age. A knitted cap covered his scalp and the tops of his ears; puffiness from long-term steroid treatment had flattened whatever facial wrinkles he might normally have.

“Would you like some coffee?” He cocked his head toward the driver behind the steering wheel at the front of the van. “I'll have James pour—”

“No, thanks. What I would like are some answers, starting with what this is all about.”

He nodded. “Fully understandable. Where would you like me to begin?”

She pointed to Hayden who stood in a stoop, too tall for the interior of the van.

“Call me paranoid, but I never found ‘Someone to Watch over Me' a particularly engaging song. Why was he?”

Hayden dropped into a seat toward the rear of the van and looked bored.

“The simplest, most direct answer to that is ‘because I paid him to do so.' He's an ex–Navy SEAL and very capable. But as to why I assigned him to you, that takes a little background.”

Laura leaned back and crossed her legs. “I'm off this weekend. Plenty of time. I'm listening.”

“First, about me: born at the end of World War Two, a hippy in the sixties, earned an MBA in the seventies, retired with a gazillion dollars in the nineties before the dot-com bubble burst, and discovered a few years ago that the breathing trouble I was having was due to something called pulmonary fibrosis.”

Laura nodded, pleased with the accuracy of her on-the-fly diagnosis.

“You're on high doses of prednisone, I take it.”

“Plus immunosuppressive drugs. I'm almost as susceptible to infection as your daughter, Doctor Fanning.”

Laura stiffened. “I'm not comfortable with you knowing about—”

“Please,” he said, raising a bony hand. “You seem like a rational woman, grounded in reality. Certainly you don't still cling to the delusion that such a thing as privacy exists.”

Laura sighed. “I guess not.”

“I have money, Doctor Fanning. Tons of money. I'll never be able to spend it all. I can't even spend the interest and dividends I collect every quarter, so my principal keeps growing. In short, I can buy anything I want. And one of the easiest things to buy is information.”

He spoke without bravado, appeared comfortable with his wealth. Used to it. Wore it like a favorite old sweater.

He smiled. “I know what you're thinking: Money can't buy health.”

“Something like that. But at least you've got one fewer worry than most chronically ill folks.”

“You said ‘fewer' instead of ‘less.' Thank you. Hardly anyone cares about grammar anymore. But that aside, I have children and I have grandchildren. With an average lifespan I should be able to look forward to ten or fifteen more years with them. But as things stand now, I've got two or three—if I'm lucky. So that's why I intend to buy—or rather,
try
to buy back my health.”

Laura leaned forward. “I hope no one has told you they can cure pulmonary fibrosis.”

“I know it's terminal. I've given millions to research but I've been told that if there's ever going to be a cure, it won't happen in my lifetime. Only something outside the mainstream can cure me.”

Uh-oh.

“Have you been offered some sort of alternative-medicine cure?”

“I don't believe in alternative medicine. When you stick ‘alternative' in front of ‘medicine,' you mean it hasn't been proven to work. Once you can prove it works, it's no longer ‘alternative' and joins the mainstream. Right?”

Laura nodded. “That pretty well sums it up. But if what you're after is outside the mainstream and yet not alternative, what are we talking about?”

His gaze bored into her. “You've heard of the legendary panacea, I assume?”

Laura shook her head. Had she heard right? Panacea? Long-term high-dose steroids could induce psychosis. Had his prednisone made him delusional?

He began to laugh. “Oh, I wish I had a picture of your face. It's precious. Just what I—”