Die Again Tomorrow (12 page)

CHAPTER 20

 

T
he phone in his hand felt like the weight of the world. Any second the call was going to come that would start to fix everything. The door to his office was locked tight. His body was rigid in his chair, his eyes bleary from a sleepless night spent imagining the scene taking place thousands of miles away.

The bitch who cut off her breasts to spite him was going to get what she deserved. Then he was going to collect the hush money that would go a long way toward securing his freedom. The person he'd once trusted with his biggest secret was threatening to go to the feds if his capital wasn't released from the fund ASAP. Polite requests were turning to shouts. Excuses could buy him only so much time.

It was running out fast.

The life he'd worked so hard to create was teetering on the brink.
Create
was an accurate term; he was the star of a most realistic type of performance art. The theater was so elaborately built that the set dissolved into the background for every other character involved. To succeed fully was to intoxicate himself into belief, too. He lived for those moments when even he forgot it was all an illusion.

But the recent economic collapse had shattered his buzz. The spiraling layoffs, the mortgages going unpaid, the houses being foreclosed, entire financial institutions vanishing overnight—all unthinkable a year before. His own debts were piling up frighteningly fast. If his panicked partner wasn't now trying to cash out everything at the same time that he needed all the liquid assets for himself, no “lives” would need to die. That wasn't how he liked to do business. It was messy. He hated leaving any room for error in his carefully constructed world. And it went against everything he believed.

But when you were
alone in the wild
, with your back against a wall, you did what you needed to survive. Surely Isabel Leon, the golden goose of all his “lives,” understood that better than most.

The phone vibrated in his hand. He brought it to his ear and spoke softly, so no one outside the door could hear.

“Is it done?”

The gruff voice on the line sounded proud. “Yep. Just as you wanted.”

“No witnesses?”

“Impossible. We were underwater.”

“She's definitely dead?”

“Some EMTs tried to revive her but they gave up. An ambulance took her body away. I stuck around to make sure.”

“Good. I'll transfer the rest of your payment now.”

“Pleasure doing business with you, sir.”

“Believe me—the pleasure is mine.”

CHAPTER 21

 

J
oan raised her fist to knock on the door of Greg's study. It was their last Sunday afternoon at home for the foreseeable future. In just a few days, they were moving into a one-bedroom rental on a dingy street twenty blocks north. A venture capitalist who'd just gotten divorced was going to sublet their furnished penthouse, easing the burden of their $10,500 monthly mortgage.

Though she acted relieved for Greg's sake, she was crushed. Leaving their home was a major sacrifice for not enough benefit. Sure, it helped to downsize, but they were still responsible for the mortgages on the vacant luxury apartments in Hawaii and Florida that had always brought in so much reliable income. Not to mention the astronomical credit card debt. The interest they owed was replicating every day at a cancerous pace.

Yet none of that was her prime concern. Even Adam's fury was not top of mind. A much more dangerous and timely debt needed to be addressed: Some shadowy investor owned Greg's death.

And there was no one he could turn to for help—except her.

She tapped on his door. “Honey,” she called, “I'm going out.”

“Okay, bye.” From inside the study, his voice sounded tense. “Be careful.”

The phrase had become his mantra. His eyes roamed the streets when he left the apartment. He worried about simple errands like grocery shopping—the crowded aisles, the blind corners. His paranoia was swelling like a tumor. It was painful to watch, yet she couldn't blame him.

“I will,” she called back lightly.
Oh, I will.
Little did he know the risk she was about to take. If she told him, he would try to stop her. Like any good investigative reporter, she knew when to keep mum.

The cab ride to Roosevelt Hospital was a quick shot down West End Avenue to 63rd Street. The building was an imposing white concrete structure that stretched the length of an entire avenue. Whining ambulances came and went from a side entrance in a loop of perpetual crises. The incessant sirens made her plug her ears as she approached the front sliding glass door. A red sign above it read in all caps:
EMERGENCY ROOM
.

Despite her apprehension, she felt a burst of pride knowing that Greg saved people's lives here three times a week. She almost wished she could tell the staff who she was, just so she could bask in their respect. After the excruciating mess he'd caused at home, some outside positive reinforcement would be gratifying.

But that wouldn't get her very far.

Instead she clutched her chest and scrunched up her face into a look of agony. Then she trudged inside, purposefully tripping a little over her leather flats. Only a few people were sitting in the waiting room—a teenager holding a skateboard with a cut above his eye, a drunken homeless man muttering to himself, and a woman texting on her cell phone in no obvious distress.

Joan's lingering hesitation evaporated. She wasn't about to displace any patients in need of immediate care. However questionable her actions, as long as she wasn't hurting anyone, she could plow full steam ahead.

She stumbled to the receptionist's station, where a sour-faced woman was sitting behind a shield of Plexiglas.

“I think I'm”—Joan winced, squeezing her eyes shut—“I'm having chest pains. Please.” She lifted the back of her hand to her forehead. “I need a doctor.”

The receptionist perked up and reeled off some code into a microphone. In what seemed like seconds, two nurses shot to her side with a crash cart, helped her onto a stretcher, and wheeled her down a sterile hall into a triage room filled with medical equipment. She lay on her back, still clutching the spot above her left breast.

“When did the pain start, ma'am?” one nurse asked as the other one snapped a black cuff around her upper arm and a clip on her index finger. A broadcast of steady electronic pings filled the room. The square heart monitor at her side showed a jagged green line rising and falling.

“Um, about an hour ago,” she said. “I was, uh, reading the paper and I just got a crushing feeling in my chest.”

“And you didn't call 911?”

“I live close. My doorman got a cab right away.”

“Hmm.” The nurse on her right, who was taking measurements, frowned at a dial behind Joan's head. “BP's normal. Heart rate's 82. I don't think you're in cardiac arrest. Do you ever have panic attacks?”

“No.” Joan whimpered as if an unbearable pain was pulverizing her chest. “It hurts. Please. Can you get me Dr. Yardley?”

Dr. Ellis Yardley, Greg's colleague who often worked nights with him in the emergency room, whom she'd never met. He was the one who had confirmed Greg's fears about a suspicious scam winding up in deaths framed as accidents.

The nurse on her left, who was writing in a chart, raised her eyebrows. “Do you know him?”

“No, just heard he's the best.” She gulped a shaky breath. “Is he here today?”

The nurse consulted a chart on the wall. “Looks like it.”

Of course he is.
Joan had called in advance to make sure of it.

“Thank God.” She grabbed the woman's gloved hand as though overcome by another spurt of pain. “Will he come fast?”

“I'll page him now. Do you have anyone else you want us to call? Family?”

“No,” she said quickly. “My husband's out of town.”

“Okay, well, the doctor should be in soon.”

The nurse extricated her hand from Joan's grip to go out and make the call, while the other one remained by her side watching the monitors.

Joan curled into the fetal position and buried her face in her arm so she wouldn't have to keep up interactions. The bleeps of the heart monitor were the only sound for several minutes, until a man's figure darkened the doorway.

She rolled onto her back as she heard his footsteps approach her stretcher. She looked up with a suitably anguished expression when he reached her. He seemed about midfifties, same as her and Greg, but unlike her husband, this man sported a receding hairline and a band of flab under his white coat. Red lines snaked across his corneas from having been on call all night.

“I'm Dr. Yardley,” he said. “I understand you're having some chest pains?”

She nodded, squirming for good measure. “Thank you for coming so fast.”

“Let's see what's going on.” The remaining nurse read off her oxygen saturation, blood pressure, and heart rate, while Joan lifted her silk blouse for the doctor. He placed a cold stethoscope on the skin above her breast and listened. After about five seconds, he moved the stethoscope to other spots on her chest and her upper back.

“Does it hurt more when I do this?” he asked, gently pressing two fingers to her chest.

“I think so. A little bit.”

“Well, you can't make heart pain worse by pressing on it. And I don't hear anything wrong. Your vitals are perfect.”

Behind him, the was nurse eyeing her with a hint of annoyance.

“Oh, well, what could it be? I mean, it really hurts.”

“Probably just a musculoskeletal spasm, nothing serious, but I'll send you for a chest X-ray just in case. You'll want to follow up with your regular internist.”

He wrote a comment in her chart, then turned to leave.

“Wait,” she said, “can I talk to you for a second? Alone?”

He followed the line of her gaze to the nurse, who was still hovering beside the heart monitor. The woman muttered something under her breath, but bowed out and closed the door behind her.

“You seem better,” the doctor noted. “You've stopped writhing.”

“It's starting to lessen, I think.”

“That's great. See, nothing serious.”

“Here's the thing,” she said, dropping her voice to a low tone. “I think there
is
something serious going on, besides this.”

He frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Well, about a month ago I sold my life insurance policy for cash. I used an auction site, so I don't know anything about who bought it. Ever since, I've been feeling like someone's watching me. Then, the other day when I was crossing the street, some jerk pushed me so hard I almost fell in front of a cab. I don't know if it's connected, but I've been having a lot of anxiety about it—maybe that's where the pain is coming from?”

She watched his face carefully for signs of recognition. After all, it was the same story Greg had confessed to him.

But the only expression he let on was wide-eyed bafflement. “That's bizarre.”

“Do you know if—have you heard of anyone else experiencing something similar after selling a policy? I just wonder if I'm not alone . . .”

She cast her eyes down, waiting for his reaction. Now her heart was racing, its frantic pings echoing from the monitor. On the screen, her blood pressure was spiking to 145 over 90.

Was he going to give her a crucial lead? Or leave her in the dark? Only her husband's life hung in the balance.

His blank stare told her the answer.

“I'm sorry,” he said. “I've never heard of anything like it.”

CHAPTER 22

 

“I
'll only stay,” Isabel said to Galileo, “if you agree to put my mom and brother up in one of your safe houses until my killer is found. No way am I leaving them behind alone.”

She heard the defiance in her voice and worried it might sound ungrateful—after all, he was offering to take on a dangerous mission to help her. But instead of chiding her, his lips spread into a kind smile.

“Naturally,” he said, as though all she'd asked for were fresh clothes. “I have just the place in mind. A condo right near the Key West naval station. It's in a gated community.”

“With a security guard?” She knew she was pushing it, but she didn't care.

He chuckled, setting her at ease. “That can be arranged.”

“Thank you.” She let out a breath she didn't realize she was holding. “They're all I have.”

“Not true.” He rose from his perch on her bed and brushed off his khaki pants. “Now you have us. Deal?”

So what if she had to become a lab rat in the trade? Her mom and Andy were alone and vulnerable. “Deal.”

Galileo's capable hand gripped hers in one firm pump.

“They must be worried sick,” she said. “Can I go home for a few minutes to see them and get my things?”

“Of course. I'll have Chris escort you. I don't believe you've properly met.”

Galileo pulled a black pager device from his pocket and punched in a code. He held it near his mouth. “Chris to deck five, room twelve.”

“He was there when I was dead, right? That's why we haven't met ‘properly'?”

An awkward pause ensued. She stared at Galileo, expecting him to offer condolences that were bound to feel stilted. There was no social protocol for responding to someone's temporary death.

Instead, with a straight face, he said: “You made one hell of a first impression.”

For the first time since waking up, she laughed. “Fair enough.”

His blue eyes shone with amusement. “Chris actually assisted in your resuscitation. He's Dr. Quinn's protégé, and he drives the ambulance, so he can take you home and back.”

“Great.”

“I think you'll like him. He's very—”

A knock on the door cut him off.

“Competent. And there he is.” Galileo took two steps and swung it open. At the threshold stood an attractive bear of a guy about a decade older than her. He wore teal surgical scrubs and a face mask around his neck. He was almost as tall as Galileo, but thicker through the chest and arms, like a bouncer. Blond scruff dotted his chin, lending him an endearing ruggedness.

“Hey,” Galileo said to him, “am I interrupting your lab work?”

“Quinn can handle it. We were just synthesizing the X101. Supply's real low.”

“Ah.” A momentary shadow darkened Galileo's face. “Well, if you can spare a little time, Isabel here needs you to take her on a quick errand.” He glanced at her, back to business mode. “I'll make some calls to arrange the safe house so your family can go there today if they want.”

“Thanks.” Isabel tightened her cloth gown around waist. “Nice to meet you,” she said to Chris. She swung her legs over the edge of the bed to stand, but when her feet touched the floor, her knees buckled.

In a flash, Galileo's strong arms caught her. “Easy does it. Your body's been through a lot.” He helped her sit back down.

“Sorry.” Her face burned with embarrassment. She was the most athletic person she knew—and now she couldn't even get out of bed?

“Take your time,” Chris said from the doorway. “No rush. I'm here when you need me.”

Their eyes met across the room, and Isabel felt a tingle in her chest that she was pretty sure had nothing to do with exhaustion.

 

 

Through sheer determination, she forced herself to walk from her cabin to the side plank that unfurled out of the ship and connected to the wooden loading dock below. Her family was no doubt in agony. She wasn't about to make them wait a minute longer to see her. Wearing a pink cotton dress and Birkenstock sandals on loan from a young nurse, she shuffled down the plank to the ambulance, where Chris was standing next to the passenger door.

When she reached him, he extended a hand to help propel her up the high step.

“No more riding in the back for you, young lady,” he mock-scolded her.

She just shook her head weakly. Once she was buckled in, she slumped against the soft leather seat. Her fatigue was more severe than after any weeklong episode of filming her show. She felt almost detached from it, like an observer of a foreign phenomenon.
This body weighs ten times normal,
she would report back to the scientists.
Its muscles are leaden jelly.

She repressed a surge of anger at what they had done to her without her consent. All those chemicals loaded into her veins—who knew if they had any unknown side effects? But that's what they wanted to find out by keeping her around. If there were hidden costs of reversing death, at least she could still breathe and feel and walk and think. She was alive in the fullest sense of the word—not brain-dead. That, she reminded herself, was what mattered.

Yet a nagging unease persisted. Something about this version of her body felt different, and it wasn't the exhaustion. . . Something else she couldn't quite explain.

Chris gunned the engine and they rolled down the dock to the harbor's parking lot. She had never been in an ambulance before—alive, anyway. The front seats were like thrones, straight-backed and high up. A pane of glass separated their section from the cramped interior, where an empty stretcher was surrounded by emergency medical equipment.

As Chris navigated to the main street with the siren off, she stared through the glass at the place where her lifeless body had lain. She couldn't stop herself from picturing it. Flat on her back. Eyes swollen shut. Stuck with tubes and wires.

She whipped her head back around to stare out the windshield. A shiver tore down her spine and her body gave an involuntary jerk.

Chris reached for her hand. The familiarity of the gesture surprised her, but felt appropriate. He had helped to save her life. It was only natural that his care would extend to comforting her now.

“How you doin'?” he asked. “Okay?”

“Kind of,” she mumbled.

She was grateful he didn't pry. It was stressful enough to anticipate her mother's reaction. They sat in silence for a while, her clammy hand resting in his warm one. She watched the palm trees go by outside. Lazy beach houses with cheerful blue and yellow shutters lined the narrow streets. The sea in the distance reflected the afternoon sun like a piece of smooth glass. Its tranquility calmed her, until she remembered that it had almost been her grave.

She turned instead to glance sidelong at Chris. Having changed from his blue scrubs into a gray T-shirt and jeans, he seemed less authoritative and more like an equal. His rounded, ruddy face looked more angular in profile—his nose jutted out from the soft plains of his cheeks. His dirty blond hair was trimmed short in military style. Resting on the oversized steering wheel, his fingers were long and bony, with short clean nails. Watching him maneuver around the traffic, Isabel thought of Galileo's word
: competent.

“So, what's your deal?” she asked him, partly to distract herself, but also out of real curiosity. “How did you end up in this secret network?”

He smiled coyly, keeping his eyes on the road. “I was recruited like everyone else.”

“How does that happen? Or can you not say?”

He paused, as if calibrating how much to reveal. “Dr. Quinn got me in,” he finally said. “I worked in his lab at Harvard back in the day. We came as a package deal.”

“Two for the price of one?”

“Something like that.”

The effort of making conversation sapped her scarce energy, but she was intrigued.

“So you guys all live and work on the ship full-time?”

“Pretty much.” He pulled his hand away from hers to turn the wheel sharply. Her left palm was sweaty and exposed on the glove box. She didn't want him to think he had to hold it again, so she tucked it under her thigh.

“And no one knows where you are?” she said. “What about your family?”

“I told my parents I had to go away for a special fellowship abroad. It's not like they think I'm dead or something.”

“What if you want to, like, get married and have kids one day?”

His tone was noncommittal. “If the time comes, I'll feel it out. I'm a spur-of–the-moment kind of guy.”

“Then we're opposites. Before this happened to me, I was on a reality survival show, and I'd always plan my strategy a month ahead.”

He raised his eyebrows. “You mean you're a control freak?”

The way he said it was more affectionate than insulting. “Totally,” she admitted. “I'm not good at being spontaneous.”

“I'll show you.” With a roguish smile, he pressed a red button on his dashboard and the siren squealed to life, howling overhead. It was like being in the belly of a crying wolf. She plugged her ears, but Chris was only getting started.

He slammed on the gas and accelerated through a congested intersection as the other cars dutifully pulled over. She gripped the hanging strap near her window as he careened around a corner. They passed a middle school, where a cluster of cars waiting in line for afternoon pickup scrambled to get out of their way.

“You're so bad,” she yelled over the siren.

“You're in a rush to get home, aren't you?” he shouted back.

She couldn't argue with that. The ride was exhilarating, if a bit dizzying. Chris expertly avoided obstacles on the road, hardly letting up on the gas to swerve around cars and bikes who didn't pull over fast enough.

Her stomach flipped when she noticed they were pulling up to her street. He slowed down to scout the addresses on the houses. She pointed him toward the one-story bungalow at the end of the block, with its leafy oak tree shading the porch. Its faded leaves littered the ground as though someone had forgotten to sweep for a few days.

He turned off the siren as he pulled into the driveway. She was as breathless as if she'd sprinted a mile.

“Do you want me to come in with you?”

“No thanks, it shouldn't be long.”

Already she could see the front door opening and her mother's face peeking out with a look of concern. Ambulances weren't commonly found roaring down their block.

At the sight of her mother's mostly bald scalp, Isabel's heart swelled. Thin strands of black hair were growing back in fuzzy patches, a testament to her recovery, but also to her fragility. In only two days of being away, Isabel noticed how gaunt her cheeks had become. Her eyelids were pink and puffy.

“Mom!” she called, jumping out and rushing up to her, forgetting all about her fatigue.

Her mother's fingertips flew to her lips. She sagged against the doorframe, her face draining so fast that Isabel reached out to catch her.

But instead of collapsing, she grabbed her daughter into the tightest embrace possible. “Oh my God, oh my God.”

Isabel's innermost organs practically squeezed together, but she was grinning. All she wanted was to breathe in her mother's familiar gardenia perfume and never let go.

“Is it really you?” her mom breathed into her hair.

“It's me. I'm okay.”

A shaky whisper came out: “I thought you were dead.”

Isabel gently pulled away. “I was . . .”

Her mother's eyes opened so wide that the whites were visible around her green irises. “What? What happened? I couldn't find you at the hospital, the police had no record, you just completely vanished!” Tears spilled over her lids. “Andy and I thought we might never see you again!”

Isabel hugged her frail body. It was quivering. “I'm so sorry. I can explain.”

“I know you've been hiding something—Oh God, I didn't want to believe it, but . . . honey, did someone really try to kill you?”

Isabel let out a gasp. “How could you know that?”

Her mother ran into the house and promptly returned with a plain red notebook.

“This came in the mail for you today.”

Isabel took it and flipped to the opening page.

In neat cursive, it read:
The Diary of Richard Barnett.

Her lips curled in revulsion at the sight of his name. “What is this? Some kind of sick joke?” She flung it to the ground.

“Hey!” Her mother picked it up, wiping off a speck of dirt.

Isabel was so furious she could barely contain her rage. She wanted to pluck the stupid diary out of her mother's hands and hurl it across the street.

“You don't get it, that asshole was playing me the whole time! He has to be found and arrested.”

Her mom seemed strangely unconvinced. “Are you sure?”

“He disappeared right when he was supposed to help me. Next thing I know I'm being attacked. Clearly he was in on my death benefits.”

“I don't think so.”

“How would you know?”

She thrust the diary into Isabel's hands with surprising force. “Because he's dead. He killed himself for you.”