Deadly Design (9780698173613) (25 page)

“They are?”

“Number one, Edward Bartholomew wasn't going to find anyone more intelligent than you are.”

Dr. Rubenstein taps his nose like we're playing charades, and I've gotten his first clue right.

“Number two is the fact that you're so young.”

His brows lift. “And why would that make me a good candidate to rid the world of 401(k)s, breakfast discounts, and the increasingly popular undergarment that old folks can do their business in?”

“Because fifty seems like a long way off to you. Other doctors he was considering probably are fifty or over. They're dreaming about how much they'll enjoy their retirements, so it would be harder for them to imagine killing off people their own ages. They can't see the big picture because they're
in
it. But you're not.”

“The Mensa membership goes to. . . Kyle McAdams.” He applauds, then stops. “What's your third reason?”

“He knows his sister doesn't like you, so it was his last chance to stick it to her, because he thought she was a bitch too.”

He laughs and heads for the door. “And the prize goes to Mr. McAdams! Yeah! The crowd goes wild.”

“What's my prize?”

He thinks for a moment. “Food. Anything you want.”

Other than the soup I had two days ago at Gene's house, I haven't eaten for two months.

Everything sounds good.

“I could send out for Chinese food if you want. A pizza, double cheeseburger?”

I think about what my mom would say if she heard him. “Shouldn't I be eating a little healthier than cheeseburgers?”

He shakes his head. “If we get you a new heart, you're going to live a long time. But remember, you're not bulletproof or car-wreck-proof. The sequence for longevity, I assume, will only protect you from aging and diseases associated with getting older. And considering how long it's been since you've eaten and the fact that there is that chance you'll die no matter what I do, you might as well eat what you want.”

It's exactly what Cami would say if she were here. “Ice cream. A banana split.”

“God, I haven't had one of those for like . . . a week. Maybe I'll have one with you. I'll just find one of my minions to go and fetch a couple. You want nuts or no nuts?”

“No nuts,” I say.

“Whipped cream?”

“Hell yes.”

“Double whipped cream.” His eyes do a little dance. “And double cherries. I shall return shortly,” he says, performing a weird sort of bow as he approaches the door.

“Did he pick the right doctor?” I ask, before he can disappear into the hall.

“You want to know if I plan on carrying out his evil plan?”

“Yeah, I do.”

He leans against the door frame, his arms crossed over his chest. “We just established that you are very wise,” he says. “So being that you are wise, you have to know that I'm going to tell you what you want to hear, whether it's the truth or not. Right?”

I nod.

“So the answer is . . . of course I'm not going to use his research for evil. I have only the greatest of respect for humanity and would never dream of doing anything to cut any human's life short. Now it's up to you to decide if my answer is A: sincere, or B: total bullshit. I'm guessing you'll go with A, because let's face it, you need someone to trust right now. Am I wrong?”

“No,” I say, because I do need someone to trust.

He turns toward the hall. “You can trust me, Kyle.” He points to his shirt again and grins. “I'm Superman.”

“I
t's amazing, isn't it?” Dr. Rubenstein says, coming up behind me in the lab. “See these?” He points to the four plastic tubes running into each section of the heart that's suspended in fluid. “These are delivering endothelial precursor cells, cells that usually make up the lining of blood vessels and are, in this case, going to make heart muscle cells.”

The theme song from
Star Trek
starts playing. Rubenstein takes his phone out of his pocket, looks to see who's calling, and presses Ignore. He's about to put the phone back in his pocket when he notices me staring at it.

“You want to call your folks,” he says. Then he tucks the phone in his pocket because I can't call them. “Last month, I had your parents followed,” he says. “My guy—I have a guy, a few guys, actually—followed your parents to the cryogenics facility in Nebraska. They were going to visit you. Well, visit the long cylinder they thought your body was being stored in. I knew immediately you weren't there. There was no way Claudia was going to freeze you. Not with what you have locked inside you. But your poor parents had no clue. That was when I knew they were a dead end to finding you. But I kept trying. I had people watching Dr. Bartholomew's movements, where she traveled, who she talked to. But she was so careful. Then you called me.
You
found
me.
” He puts a hand on my shoulder. “With you on the loose, you know she's watching them. I guarantee your mom can't drive to the grocery store without someone following her. And no doubt there are people listening in on every phone call on the chance you'll try to contact them. Then, of course, there's the matter of their safety.”

“As long as they think I'm frozen, they're not a threat to her.” Every time I consider calling Cami or my parents, I think about Virginia. She fled her home because of what she feared Dr. Bartholomew would do to her, either as a way to find me or because she knew too much. If my parents find out the truth about Bartholomew, what's to keep them from having a car accident because the brakes failed? Or maybe Cami will be walking to her car after the Sak & Save closes and some masked man will . . .

Dr. Rubenstein pulls up a chair for me to sit down in, then rolls another one over for himself.

“Why?” I ask. “I mean, I get that she wants the longevity gene. She wants to know how to make people live longer. She can make billions of dollars if she can sell it to people.” I lift my shirt, looking at the incisions that are starting to morph into scars that will always be with me. “So this was all for money.”

“Money is a pretty powerful motivator. But for her, I think it's more about redemption.”

“Redemption.”

Rubenstein leans forward, his elbows on his knees. He seems calmer than usual. Maybe it's because it's late evening and he's tired. Maybe it's because being in a lab filled with floating hearts requires calmness. Or maybe he took his ADD meds today.

“I spent a lot of time with Edward Bartholomew before he died. He wanted to get to know me before bequeathing his research to me. So I got to know him pretty well. His father, their father, came over to this country after World War II. I thought it was interesting that your parents knew him as Dr. Mueller, because that was his father's original name. It was changed when he was brought over to the States as one of the many scientists who were divided up amongst the Allied nations. People were horrified by the medical experiments conducted in the concentration camps, but there was also this sense of intrigue about what their torturous work might have yielded. Dr. Mueller was settled in a small town in New Mexico, where the government supplied him with a new set of patients, who were being exposed to radiation. He was young, handsome, intelligent, and after some years in the States, he managed to win the heart of pretty young secretary.

“They married and had two children. Then eight-year-old Eddie got cancer, and his mother started thinking that maybe her parents, who'd been against the marriage, had been right. She decided that Eddie's illness was God's way of punishing her for her disobedience and her husband for his sins. She took the kid. Drove him to some shit hotel in Arizona and told him they were going to stay there until he died.”

Eight years old. I don't want to sympathize with Edward Bartholomew. I won't sympathize with him, but I can't help but feel badly for a sick little kid with a crazy mom and an evil father.

“Daddy came to the rescue. He found them. Brought Edward back. As part of Mueller's working for the United States Government, little Eddie got the best of care and survived. Mom, however, decided to swallow some cyanide. Nothing like a little irony.”

“So what happened to Claudia?”

“She wasn't very happy. The way she saw it, if Eddie had been allowed to die, then her mom would have lived, and what little girl wouldn't choose Mom over her brother? What was most weird was how the two kids came to see their daddy.” Rubenstein's eyes widen. “They both saw him as a hero of sorts. He was a scientist, trying to help mankind. It wasn't his fault that he was given Jews to experiment on. If it hadn't been him cutting away at them, burning them, injecting them with chemicals and viruses, it would have been someone else.”

He laughs. “It wasn't until my little conversation with Eddie that I realized why Claudia hated me so much. I mean, the thought that she was anti-Semitic never crossed my mind. Not in this day and age. But Eddie made it sound like his sister might have a white robe to go along with her white doctor's coat. He said that she blamed the Jews for their father not getting the respect he deserved. That such a big deal shouldn't have been made over a few Jews being experimented on. A few Jews . . .” He shakes his head and clears his throat. “Well, that's when I understood why she had it in for me, besides the fact that she hates that I'm smarter than she is. Anyway”—he drums against the table for a few beats—“as I was saying, Eddie and Claudia went different directions—scientifically speaking.

“They both wanted Daddy to gain some respect. Even with his work at Los Alamos, they saw how people treated him. I think they both wanted to redeem him somehow. Eddie planned on being the savoir of humanity by killing billions instead of the meager millions the Nazis killed. But at least in his head, he had a just cause, and he was willing to kill everyone without discrimination. But Claudia.” He shakes his head. “I can't explain it.” His face twists with disgust. “She's hungry, and there's no delusional higher cause. She doesn't want to help anybody. She wants money, power, prestige. Years.” He stares at me.

I shiver because I know he's right. No matter how she smiled or how she tried to reassure me that I could trust her, there was always something, or a lack of something, in her eyes: compassion, caring.

Cold. They were just cold.

“You know you're safe here, right?” Rubenstein says, wheeling his chair so close, our knees are touching. “I'm a resident at the hospital two miles from here. I have an office and a receptionist and nurses. But this place is off the grid. It's my own special little work space. Only a few select people know it's here, and Dr. Bitch-tholomew is not one of them. And she's not going to find out.” He looks up at the heart suspended by artificial vessels and floating in clear solution. “I'll save you, then we'll call your parents. And then we shove it in Claudia's pinched little face. But after that”—he looks back at me—“you and your family have to disappear.”

T
he smell of Chinese food lingers in my room, along with a bag of microwave popcorn. I've been here almost a week, and every night Rubenstein brings in dinner and watches television with me. Tonight, it's basketball.

“They're going to win,” Rubenstein says. “My Bulls are not losing to the Thunder. No way.” He's standing in front of the recliner I'm sitting in, blocking the television, but it doesn't matter, because he won't be in that exact spot for very long. He never stays anywhere very long. “Get it to Rose! Get it to Rose! Get it to Rose!”

Rubenstein jumps a good six inches off the floor, like it's him making the jump shot. The buzzer sounds, and Rubenstein comes crashing down, landing first on his feet, and then his knees. He lies down on his back, hands over his face, shaking his head.

“Did you see that?” he asks. He's wearing sweats, a Bulls T-shirt, and Converse shoes.

“No, actually,” I say, because I couldn't see through Rubenstein's imaginary jump shot.

“They lost!” Rubenstein gets to his feet almost as quickly as he'd gotten off of them. “He had a clear three, and he missed.” He stares at the television for a moment, like maybe there was a last-minute foul. Then he looks back at me. “Not a big fan?” he asks, when I don't seem to share his level of disappointment.

“Not really.”

“Shit! Why didn't you tell me? We could have watched something else. Some raunchy reality show, wrestling, a sci-fi movie.”

“It's okay. I just appreciate you hanging out with me. I'm sure you've got better things to do on a Saturday night. To be honest, I don't think I could focus much on anything anyway.”

He does this weird thing where he purses his lips together and moves them back and forth. “Seventeen days until your birthday,” he says. “And no more than fourteen until you get your early present.”

I nod, like it's a given because the heart's growing and Rubenstein keeps assuring me it'll be ready. But no matter how many times I visit it in the lab, I can't get used to the idea that the floating skeletal heart, which is supposedly growing day by day, is going to save my life. It still doesn't look like a heart. It looks like what they call it—a ghost heart. It looks like what I'm probably going to become in seventeen days or less—when I die.

“I sense doubt in the young lad's eyes,” Rubenstein says, attempting a British accent.

“Doubt you?” I try to smile. “Never.”

He tries to smile back. “Have you thought any more about what we talked about? Stupid question. Of course you have. Have you decided anything?”

He's talking about disappearing. About spending the rest of my life with a fake name, living, most likely, in another country so that Dr. Bartholomew won't be able to find me and resume her dissection.

“Just my parents,” I say, surprising myself because my voice cracks a little.

Rubenstein sits on the edge of the bed. “You don't want to let her decide for herself?”

I shake my head, my throat filling with emotion. “It wouldn't be fair. She's got her family, her dad, and her little brother. They need her, especially her brother. I can't make her choose between them and me. I can't do that to her.”

“That's very noble of you,” he says again with the accent, but while his accent may be fake, his expression is one of genuine caring. “You're a good guy, Kyle McAdams. And on the bright side . . .” He stands. “Maybe someone will drop a house on Claudia.” He looks off toward the ceiling, and I know he's envisioning her sensible, low-heeled shoes sticking out from beneath the house instead of ruby slippers. So am I. “With that thought, I bid you sweet dreams.”

Rubenstein comes toward me, and for a moment, I think he's going to lean in for a hug, but instead he puts out his fist and we fist bump.

• • •

I can't sleep. Rubenstein took the empty cartons of Chinese food and the half-eaten, half-burnt bag of popcorn with him, but the smell is still present, and for some reason it serves almost like a sound, keeping me awake. Cami and I used to make popcorn when we watched movies at her house or mine. We shared boxes of it when we went to movies with Connor and Emma. And then there was that little Chinese place where Mom and Dad liked to get takeout.

If I live, I know Mom and Dad will do anything, move anywhere, to keep me safe and to be together. But I'll never see Cami again, no matter what. I'll never hear her voice. Never kiss her.

Who knows how long we'll have to hide away so Bartholomew can't find me? Years, would be my guess. She won't stop looking. Not when Rubenstein destroyed the research on the longevity sequence.

It only exists inside me. And she'll never stop trying to get it.

I get out of bed and do what I do almost every night—go down to the lab and stare at my heart. This place, Rubenstein's “work space,” as he calls it, isn't very big. There are a few offices and three labs. I'm pretty sure my room was once an office or a storage room that was hastily made into a hospital room of sorts. A bed was moved in, a television, nightstand, and the wonderful machine the nurse, Rosemary, uses to check my vitals.

At night, there aren't many people around, except Rosemary, who assures me that Dr. Rubenstein is never more than a phone call away if I need him. She's young, only twenty-five, and she calls her husband every night at eleven. She has a pretty face and long brown braided hair, and when she's not checking up on me or talking to her husband, she's reading some novel.

Lab techs are everywhere during the day, but only Jerry works the nightshift. He reminds me of a babysitter, watching over the sleeping organs, making certain they're constantly bathed in stem cells so that one day they can grow up and save lives.

“Coming to relieve me?” Jerry says, looking at his watch. It's almost eleven, the time he ducks out for a late-night lunch. He's a little guy, barely over five feet tall, and thin. He's got short brown hair and dark plastic-rimmed glasses—the look just screams “nerd,” and he loves to talk about video games.

“Where to tonight?” I ask, like I have for the last two nights when I couldn't sleep.

“Maybe IHOP. I did Denny's last night. I can bring you back something,” he offers, just like last night and the night before.

“No thanks,” I say. Jerry looks at me like he wishes I would tell him to bring me back a stack of pancakes or a piece of pie because then he could
do
something for the kid who could be dead in a few weeks. And he makes me think of Connor. Connor always wanted to bring me back something if he wasn't dragging me along. And I always said no. I wish I had said yes at least once. I wish he could have handed me a paper sack with fries and a hamburger in it, and I could have thanked him.

Jerry slips off his white lab coat and replaces it with a thick winter coat. “You sure you don't want anything?”

I nod and watch him disappear into the hallway. For the last few nights, I've stood in front of the large round heart aquarium. But tonight I go to Jerry's laptop.

He always leaves it open on his desk, and he never logs off. I go to Facebook and type in Cami's name. I just need to see her profile picture. I know I won't be able to see anything else, since it's blocked, but if I can just see that picture, just one picture.

She's changed it. Her profile picture used to be one of her and Emma pretending to be sleeping, their heads resting on each other's shoulders. Now it's a picture of her and Josh that I took with my phone and sent to her.

They're in a small wading pool in the backyard, splashing each other. Hundreds of droplets of water are frozen around their laughing faces, and I almost laugh, remembering the moment like it was yesterday, because for me, it practically was. But that's what happens when two months of your life are stolen from you.

I stare at the picture, and stare at it and stare at it, until my head gets heavy, and I rest it on the desk next to the image of the girl I love.