A Heartbeat Away (26 page)

41

“Where should we go?” Phin asked, tapping his fingers against the steering wheel.

Tori shrugged. “Just drive. Let's take the Bay Bridge-Tunnel.” The Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel was a marvel, with long sections of bridge extending over open water between man-made islands that served as the entry points to the underwater tunnels.

She opened her phone and scrolled through her contacts to the Virginia Commonwealth University Hospital operator and pressed “call.”

She asked for Dr. Paul Griffin, a resident in surgery, to be paged.

After five minutes, she had him on the phone. “Paul, this is Dr. Tori Taylor.”

“Dr. Taylor, how are you? Are you back at work?”

“Not exactly. Listen,” she said. “I need some information. Remember the night we went down to Legend Brewing Company?”

“Boy, do I. We need to do that again. My treat this time.”

“Thanks, but I'm not calling to suggest we grab a beer. You told me something that night that I've relied on, something that has turned out to be bad information.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You knew I was trying to find the identity of my heart donor, right? And I asked you about a particular woman who had jumped from a window to escape a fire. I asked you if that was where my heart came from. And you said yes. But now I find out that the woman actually survived the jump. So what gives?”

“Dr. Taylor, you showed me an article from the
Baltimore Sun
about some jumpers who escaped a fire. You asked me if that was where your heart came from and I didn't lie. That is where your heart came from. But it wasn't from a woman. You got the heart of a young male.”

The realization struck her like an ocean wave.
Dr. Christian Mitchell.

Of course.

She mumbled a thank-you and closed her cell phone.

Phin touched her arm as she sat in stunned silence. “Well?”

“Christian Mitchell,” she said. “I assumed when they indicated my heart came from the jumpers, that it had come from Dakota. But it came from Christian.” She sat still except for nodding her head and occasionally murmuring. “Aha.”

“What are you thinking?”

“Just that it's all starting to make sense. I saw the face of Emily Greene. It wasn't the face from a mirror. It was through Christian's eyes. The love I feel for Emily must be from Christian. He loved her. The number was something she must have given to him to memorize. My intuition about Mike's cancer diagnosis was because Christian treated him in the free clinic. He knew all about the cancer.”

She opened her phone again.

“Who you calling now?”

“Gene Davis.”

She called and explained what she had learned about her heart donor. Gene said “Hmm” about ten times through the conversation. Finally, she asked him what he was thinking.

“Obviously, Captain Ellis and his men don't know this. They took your word for it that Emily was dead.” She heard a pen clicking against a hard surface. “We can use this to our advantage.” He paused. “I've got an idea. Yes, this just might work. Yes, I like this,” he said.

“What?”

“Let me check a few things out. Are you still in the area?”

“Going over to Norfolk tonight.”

“Fine. Lay low another few days and this will all be over. I'll call you.”

A few minutes later, she looked out over the expanse of water as it extended to the horizon from her vantage point on the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel. Gingerly, she touched the front of her shirt, laying her hand over her heart. She needed time to process this new information. She didn't have Dakota's heart. She had the heart of Christian Mitchell.

So what was he like?

She rolled down her window and let her curls fly in the wind.

She exchanged glances with Phin. “You're quiet.”

“Just thinking about Christian Mitchell. I'm trying to digest all this.” She halted and inhaled the salt-laden air. “What was he like?”

Phin didn't answer.

After a few minutes of silence, she spoke again. “I like the idea that he was a pediatrician.”

Phin nodded. “Someone who cared about children.”

She nestled into her seat, comfortable with letting the silence hang between them. Finally, she squeezed his hand. “Let's go over to the Norfolk Omni. I'll treat you to dinner. We can go over to Virginia Beach and stroll the boardwalk.”

“Wow,” he said. “I could get used to life on the lam with you.” He grabbed her hand. “Lucky my supervisor back at VCU is understanding.”

Forty-five minutes later, they lifted their suitcases from the trunk and let the valet at the Omni Hotel park their rental car.

At the desk, they used Phin's card. When he asked for two rooms, he looked over at Tori. “I wouldn't trust myself in the same room with you,” he whispered.

“Why?” she whispered back. “I trusted you in the bathtub, didn't I?”

He rolled his eyes. “Deadly smoke is such a turnoff.”

She smiled.

They took the elevator to their floor. “Now let's see how Gus packed.”

“Let's go over to the beach and walk,” he said. “We have a few hours before dinner.”

“Sounds great.”

A few minutes later, Tori had changed into a pair of khaki shorts and shed the long jeans. She kept on the white blouse. She marveled that Gus had added some lipstick and mascara.
He must be married.

When Phin joined her, he lifted the Gideon Bible from inside the dresser drawer. “Here,” he said. “I found a verse for you.” He turned to Ezekiel, paging over to chapter 36. “Here it is. Granted, I'm taking this out of context, but when I read this, I thought about how much you've changed, how new and open your heart is toward God. Look what he says here. ‘And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.'”

She nodded, blinking back tears. “Yes, so much has changed. It's amazing my old heart of stone had any rhythm at all.” She sniffed before starting to list some of her changes. “I cry a lot.” Then she laughed. “And I am more open. To love,” she added. “For God,” she said. Then she turned and put her arms around his neck and added, “And you.”

He kissed her gently and then eased away and caressed his finger against the top of her scar, sending chills down the back of her neck. “I don't understand just how much the change has to do with this new heart or whether God just did his work in you with the furnace of adversity.” He paused. “I don't really care. All I know is how I feel toward you.”

She kissed him again and grabbed a sheet of paper from a pad on the desk. She wrote 316 in block letters the way she remembered the paper Emily had given her in the memory. She wanted to mark the verse in the Bible so she could reread it later that night. She held it above the open Bible and dropped it, but it skidded off and twirled to the floor. She picked it up again, turning it from upside down to right side up again.

“Wait a minute,” she said slowly, drawing out her words. She turned the paper upside down, staring at the paper and repeating, “Wait a minute!”

“What?”

“Phin,” she said with excitement. “I think I know where Emily hid the evidence.

42

It was eight o'clock and the day drawing to a close as Christian sat in his car watching the apartment. He had become obsessed with finding and helping Emily and now thought of little else. Maybe it was the challenge of her apparent rejection. Maybe it was the hope for a rekindling of their teenage romance. And maybe it was because she appeared so
lost
and he couldn't stand to think of her that way.

Regardless, he sat watching, sometimes praying, and always wondering what was really going on with this woman who now called herself Dakota.

He saw her a few minutes past the hour. She was carrying a sack of groceries and heading toward the building next door. He jumped out and followed her, thinking this might be his chance to talk to her without others around.

She punched some buttons on a panel to unlock a door. She swung it open. Christian had come up silently behind her and leaped forward just in time to catch the door. He climbed the stairs quietly a flight behind her, following her footfalls. She exited on the fifth floor. He came out of the stairwell and saw her standing next to a door, the sack of groceries on the floor as she fumbled for a key.

“Emily.”

She looked up. This time, her expression was softer. She looked down the hall past Christian and then over her shoulder the other way. When she saw no one, she motioned and whispered, “Christian.”

He followed her into her apartment. Things appeared to be in disarray. Boxes. Two suitcases by the door. “Are you leaving?”

She nodded.

He continued to scan the room. It was sparsely furnished, a far cry from the luxuries of a girl who drove him to school in a BMW convertible. “What has happened to you? What's going on?”

She looked at him and shook her head. She went to the window and looked out and shut the blinds.

“Are you in some kind of trouble?”

“I'm a cop,” she said. “I'm working undercover.”

“That's why you denied—”

“Yes, that's why I treated you the way I did.” She continued to pace, as if she was looking for something.

“We are in danger,” she said. “I've been doing some digging and I've come up with some pretty tough stuff. It involves my own department. I don't know who I can trust. I think someone is trying to set me up to look guilty.” She hesitated. “Either that, or they'll just kill me so I can't say anything.”

“Can't you go to the FBI or someone outside the department?”

“I'm going to. I had to put the evidence together.”

“Evidence?”

She nodded. “A money trail and a trail of drugs that comes right through that clinic I saw you in. That one and a dozen others like it.”

“They're collecting narcotics from dead patients. I saw them.”

“That's just one strategy. I'll bet they have you writing for large numbers of narcs, don't they?”

“The director told me it was necessary for the palliative patients. They have a big tolerance and need more drugs.”

“Yeah, I've heard it all.” She went back to the window again and looked out. She stiffened, then cursed. “Oh no. You've got to leave.”

“What's happening?”

“A cop is coming up here.” She frowned. “If he sees this stuff, he'll know I'm onto them. He'll know I'm planning to run.” She pointed. “Help me with these suitcases. Put them under the bed in the back room.”

When he came out, she whispered, “Too late. He's at the door.”

“We can go out the fire escape.”

“No, there's another cop in the alley.”

She ripped a piece of paper from a small pad. “I've collected a lot of evidence. If I die, someone needs to take it to the Feds.” She wrote something down on the paper, but Christian was nervous and dropped it as she handed it over. “My locker. Memorize it.”

He picked up the paper, turning it in his hands.

“Memorize it,” she yelled. “It's the proof. I want to make that bastard pay.”

He shoved it into his pocket just as the door burst open, evidently kicked in by the bulldog of an officer who now faced them.

He grabbed Emily by the neck and slammed her against the wall. Christian ran toward him, but the man sidestepped and crashed his fist into Christian's nose. The man dragged Emily screaming into the back room.

Christian's world was spinning. He crawled to his feet and started to follow the sound of shouting voices. He heard breaking glass. As he entered, he watched in horror as the man threw Emily against the window. It offered little restraint. Her body tumbled outward, her leg tangling briefly in the window before her shoe flew off and she slipped through the jagged opening.

The uniformed man snarled. “You're next.”

Christian held up his hands, but his mind was still cloudy from the first hit he'd taken in the other room.

Strong hands hoisted him up and through the window.

Briefly, he was weightless, flying.

And then nothing.

Tori slept late the next morning, curling herself in the fresh memories she was making and successfully warding off memories of fire, evil men, and abuse. She awoke and thought about the walk she'd taken down the beach with Phin. Hand in hand, enjoying the warmth of the Virginia Beach sand between her toes. The evil still lurked, but she was quickly learning to whisper a prayer. “Deliver us from evil.”

After breakfast, they headed back over the Bay Bridge-Tunnel, and soon they were again driving up the long lane to the Greenes' white farmhouse.

Billy and Carolyn met them on the front porch. “We didn't expect to see you so soon.”

“I'm so sorry for the confusion yesterday,” Tori began. “I found out the truth.” She paused. “My heart did come from Baltimore City Hospital the night Emily was admitted. But my heart obviously didn't come from her. It belonged to Christian Mitchell.”

Carolyn gasped. “He was such a nice young man. He was a doctor, wasn't he?”

Tori nodded. “A pediatric resident at Johns Hopkins.”

Carolyn's eyes glazed. She seemed to be focusing on something on the horizon. “He grew up in Africa. He wanted to return there someday as a Christian missionary.”

Tori nodded.
Yes. That feels right.
She looked at Billy.

“You said you wanted to look in her room?”

“Yes.”

Phin followed her down the hall to Emily's room. There, she took out the bookmark she'd made by writing the block numbers 316. She turned it over and handed it to Phin. “Read it now.”

“Three one—”

“No,” she interrupted. “Read it this way. Upside down.”

“Ninety-one. E.” His eyes widened.

“Exactly,” she said. “Christian must have seen the paper upside down. It was never 316. It was 91E.” She turned to Carolyn and Billy. “You said Emily came to her room the week before the fire. I think she left something here.”

Tori walked to the old high school lockers, the one labeled “91.” She reached for the square locker that bordered the larger full-length one. It was labeled “E.” Inside was a locked metal box.

She lifted it. “Ever seen this before?”

Carolyn shook her head. “Emily must have brought it in her leather satchel. I remember that's all she carried that day.”

“I'm calling Gene Davis. I'm sure he'll want to look at whatever is in here.”

Phin smiled. “How did you—”

“I saw it back at the hotel when I dropped the bookmark labeled 316.” She pointed her head toward the lockers. “And I remembered seeing this.”

She called Gene Davis and told him of their discovery.

“Are you with Mr. Greene now? Could I speak to him?”

She handed the phone to Billy Greene. Tori listened to his half of a several-minute conversation, mostly “uh-huhs” and “yeses.”

He handed the phone back to Tori. “Yes?”

“Stay put, Dr. Taylor. We've got a plan, and I think you'll want to watch. We'll be there in a few hours to set up.”

“Here? You're coming here?”

“Close. We're coming to the rehab facility to see Officer Greene. Tell Billy to wait an hour before he makes the call. He'll know what you mean.”

With that, the called ended.

“Okay,” she said, looking at Billy, “what's up?”

He smiled. “A little trap,” he said. “He's gonna let Emily nail the coffin of the boys who tried to kill her.”

Ellis felt like spitting nails. As soon as Steve Bundrick came into his office, he shut the door to vent. “I can't believe this. Why didn't you check out the doctor's story? How can Emily Greene still be alive?”

Bundrick shrugged. “When the doc said she'd had a heart transplant and Dakota Jones was her donor, I had no reason to believe she was lying.”

“She wasn't lying. She was just wrong.” Ellis stood and paced his office. “I should have checked. I thought the same thing. I assumed you checked.”

“And I thought you did.” Bundrick sighed. “I'd talked to Emily's father just a few weeks before, and he said she'd been in a coma so long that they were asking for additional tests to see if Emily still had brain activity. So when that doc came in here telling me she had Emily's heart, I assumed the tests must have shown that Emily was brain-dead.”

“Who do you think encouraged him to push for the tests?” Ellis shook his head. “I told Mr. Greene that Emily was so full of life she would never have wanted to live like that. He agreed.”

“Still, I should have double checked.” Bundrick cursed. “I should have known that if we hadn't been notified of a funeral, something wasn't adding up.”

“We should have killed her a long time ago.”

“Yeah, well, we didn't.”

He pointed his finger at Bundrick's chest. “You're an idiot.” He huffed. “And you better be glad your little fire didn't spread to the main house. I thought you were going to dump them in the bay.”

“Yeah, I thought about that. But how would it look if the last place they were seen was here and then they disappeared? And I checked it out. The main house was a good thirty yards away. No way the fire could have spread.”

“You'd better be glad I have insurance.”

“Relax. I knew it would be okay.”

“It's not okay. With Emily alive, we still have a loose end.”

“She's in a coma. She can't hurt us.”

“Oh yeah? Her father called me a few minutes ago with the great news that Emily is waking up. He expects them to take out her trach tube soon so that she can communicate.” He stood and paced his little office. “So it looks like we've got another job to do.”

“I'll take care of it.”

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “I'll go myself. I'll need some fentanyl.”

“Sure.” He sighed. “I feel bad about this.”

“Forget it. The sooner we put this behind us, the sooner we can get back on the path of green.”

“When do you need the drugs?”

“I'm leaving in an hour. Tell Clara to lay low for a few weeks. Stop pushing the new doctors so hard. Somebody's going to push back if they get suspicious.”