Die Again Tomorrow (18 page)

“The thing is,” Galileo said, “your bodies will completely metabolize the drug within fourteen days, and it's already been about a week.” He ran a hand through his hair and she saw that his nails were bitten raw. “Which means we only have about seven more days before it's gone for good.”

CHAPTER 32

 

W
hen Joan got home from the hospital, she was so humiliated about the confrontation with the nurse that she didn't notice the distraught look on Greg's face. He was hunched over the kitchen table staring at his laptop.

“I met the baby,” she said as she walked in and hung up her coat. “He's absolutely perfect. But you'll never believe what happened.”

Greg raised his eyes from the screen. That was when she noticed they were bloodshot, as though he'd stayed up all night. He was clearly heartbroken over missing the birth.

“Oh, sweetie.” She raced to his side as he closed his computer. “I'm so sorry. It kills me, too.”

Greg shook his head miserably. The corners of his lips were cracked with dryness. Crusts of sleep clung to his eyelashes and stubble pricked his chin. White plaque clogged the spaces between his usually clean teeth. She hadn't really looked at him in days, but now she realized how run-down he'd become.

He rubbed his eyes. “I can't believe it's come to this.”

“I know.” She plunked onto a chair and told him about the incident at the hospital. “I have no idea how to explain myself to Adam. And now that I can't investigate, I'm at a dead end.”

Greg sighed irritably. “I already told you not to poke around there. All we need is you getting arrested.”

“I was just trying to help. But now I don't know what to do.”

“The warnings are pretty clear: Stop looking for trouble.”

“But I can't just give up! Someone out there wants you dead. We can't just ignore that!”

“No, but we also can't ignore our debt.” He buried his face in his hands. “It's worse than I thought.”

“How so?”

“I tried to refinance the mortgages on the vacant Hawaii and Florida properties. But no one will give us a new loan. It's sucking us dry.” He looked down, avoiding her gaze. “Plus I still have forty thousand on the credit cards to pay off.”

“Oh, Greg.” Neither of them would utter the word
gambling
, as though it were the name of his mistress.
Poker
and
blackjack
were similarly taboo.

“You must hate me,” he said flatly.

He looked so pathetic slumped against his chair, searching her face for reassurance. Yet he was still the man she loved. The man she vowed to stand by, for richer or poorer, in good times and in bad. One day, she thought, they would look back on this period and shudder at how close they'd come to the edge. One day, their lives would be safe from poverty and danger, their marriage would be strong, and their family would be whole. Because that was the only acceptable outcome.

She spread out her left hand. Her three-carat round diamond ring glittered a rainbow of light with every twitch of her finger. For thirty years, it had been a permanent fixture on her hand, her most prized possession, a family heirloom passed down from her mother to Greg, so he could propose in style back when he was broke, in medical school. She'd only ever taken it off to clean it and check its prongs. But it was just a symbol. It wasn't love itself.

In one quick pull, like ripping off a Band-Aid, she yanked it off.

Greg gave a startled cry. “What are you doing?”

“Take it.” She handed it to him. At the base of her finger was a deep white groove.

He stared at the ring in a panic. “Are you leaving me?”

“Honey,” she said, “I'm helping you. Sell it. It's the most expensive thing I own.”

CHAPTER 33

 

Isabel nervously stared out the window as the yellow taxi zoomed north along the Hudson River. It was 4:47
P.M.
on D-day, as she thought of it.

Drop-off day.

Inside the pocket of her Windbreaker, the corners of the ring box pressed into her sweaty palm. She ran her finger along its blunt edges. A hurricane of worries flattened her thoughts. She was on a survival mission, true to her alleged specialty. But real survival was about the art of self-reliance, which she had never needed to perfect. This time, the crew was nowhere to be found. The jungle was concrete. And the danger ahead was the scariest kind, neither nature nor beast. It was human.

The ship docked in New York City right on schedule that morning after the whirlwind three-day voyage. The only consolation of Isabel's current errand was that she got to escape the pressure cooker. Since Dr. Quinn's death and subsequent funeral, the mood on board was swinging between hysteria and despair. The days were ticking down faster than anyone wanted to acknowledge. Chris had less than a week left to reverse engineer the drug from the traces in her and Richard's bloodstreams.

Three times a day, they dutifully sat for blood draws in Chris's lab. Three times a day, they pretended to have a friendly rapport with him, because what other choice did they have? Everyone else was treating him like a hero in the making. Food was delivered to him on request, even in the middle of the night. He leeched whatever he wanted—Galileo's attention, sole use of the gym, extra supplies from other researchers. His suddenly elevated status hovered between boy genius and royal heir, and Isabel suspected he was relishing every minute of it, even under the gun of the deadline.

It was all she could do not to run off the ship the minute it pulled into the harbor, just to distance herself from his subtle smirk and the coldness in his eyes. It sickened her to remember she'd ever been attracted to him, so disembarking had been a kind of relief.

But now that she was in Manhattan for the first time, on her own, over sixteen hundred miles away from her family, the stress of her own task took center stage. The deal with Robbie Merriman seemed straightforward: she would deposit the ring in person, inside an ancient bronze cannon at the Soldiers and Sailors Monument, and then he would agree to leave her alone.

But why did he want her, specifically, to do it? And what would he do once he learned it was fake? Would the GPS chip in the band allow them to home in on his location before he could retaliate?

She drew a deep breath to anchor herself in the present moment. Outside the window, a cluster of skyscrapers reflected the amber light of the setting sun. She recognized the famous silhouettes of the Empire State and the Chrysler, both taller and grander than she'd imagined. But the iconic skyline captured only a sliver of her attention. It was 4:51
P.M.

She had no idea what to expect from the next hour. At least the drop-off point was a public park—hopefully a crowded one. Afterward, Galileo wanted her to stick around to see who came to pick it up. A hidden camera fastened to her front pocket would relay any sightings back to him for further scrutiny. She also wore her own GPS chip, inside the heel of her Nike tennis shoe, so Galileo could remotely keep track of her, and a tiny, beige earpiece that allowed them to communicate in real time.

“Pulling up,” she muttered into it now, “with one minute to spare.”

“Good.” His voice sounded bizarrely close, as if he were inside her head. “Can you move your hair? It's in front of your camera. Better, okay. Now you can get out.”

She paid in cash and the cab sped away. It felt like her heart was thumping loud enough for Galileo to hear. A crisp breeze rustled the trees as she stepped into Riverside Park. Its scents and sights and sounds assaulted her. The air smelled like decaying plants. Weeds shriveled in the soil where flowers had once bloomed. A canopy of partly bare branches reached to the sky, the last orange leaves of autumn clinging to life. Their more fragile brethren littered the ground in brown heaps.

A woman strolled by walking a shivering terrier in a cable-knit sweater. Another woman in a tracksuit jabbered into her cell phone as she power walked. Isabel was grateful for the presence of these strangers, however oblivious they were to her. After a few days at sea, her legs wobbled as she walked up the asphalt path toward the monument up ahead. Just off the park, a noisy highway supplied a constant hum of traffic. If she closed her eyes and listened, the whooshing cars sounded almost like ocean waves. Like home.

She clutched the ring box in her pocket as she approached the grand stone columns honoring the fallen warriors from the Civil War. The monument perched about a hundred feet tall on a cliff overlooking the Hudson River far below. Several rows of steps at its base led to a promenade, where three bronze cannons were mounted on concrete pedestals. In between each were wooden benches facing the river.

Some people were already hanging out there: A woman with a bundled-up baby in a stroller, a handsome middle-aged guy typing on an iPhone, an older rotund man smoking a cigar, and two skateboarders flipping tricks on the wide paved walkway.

She ambled past the benches to the cannon nearest the monument. Its mouth was about six inches across. She snuck a glance around to make sure no one was watching. But she couldn't shake the creepy feeling that someone, somewhere, was.

“Now,” Galileo instructed in her ear.

She leaned up against the opening and emptied her pocket of the box. Then she squared her shoulders and walked away. There. It was done. Nobody had attacked her. She let out a breath she didn't realize she was holding.

“Good,” came his voice. “Now go sit on a bench. Look casual.”

She obeyed. It was 5:07
P.M.
For half an hour, she waited. The people in the vicinity came and went. She pulled her jacket tight against the biting wind and watched the arc of the sun sinking into the river. It was only getting colder and darker. She wasn't sure how much longer she wanted to sit there, exposed, as the park's patrons emptied out.

And then, when she was starting to fidget, a skinny guy who couldn't have been older than eighteen marched up to the cannon, snatched the ring box, and walked away. Isabel was on her feet running after him before she had time to think.

“Hey!” she called.

The guy turned around. He was tall and bony, with a beautiful coffee complexion and guileless brown eyes. “Yeah?”

“What are you doing?” Galileo demanded in her ear.
“
You're not supposed to get involved.”

She ignored him. She couldn't face returning to the ship, to passive confinement, without more information than she started with. Not when her own life hung in the balance. Plus, the kid's youthfulness emboldened her.

“Do you know what's in there?” she asked, pointing to the box in his hand.

“A ring, I guess. Why, what's it to you?”

She matched his nonchalant tone. “Just curious.” Then she lowered her voice. “My friends sometimes use that spot to, you know, trade stuff. I thought only we used it.”

He flashed her an amused grin. “That's your drug drop?”

She smiled coyly.
Whatever you want to think, dude.

He raised his palms. “Well, I don't know nothin' about that. I'm just doing my job.”

“Oh?” She racked her brain for a cool follow-up that wouldn't sound too interested. But while she stood there, he turned to leave.

“Hang on,” she called. In a desperate rush, she whipped out most of the wad of cash Galileo had given her in case of emergency, leaving a few bills behind in her pocket just in case. The kid stopped and stared.

She counted out two hundred bucks in twenties. His eyes fixed on the crisp green bills. She fanned them out for maximum effect.

“Humor me,” she said. “Who do you work for?”

“No one really. I just picked up this gig on TaskRabbit.”

“Oh.” She tried not to show her disappointment. That site allowed anyone to assign one-off errands to anyone else. “Well, can you show me the ad?”

“Um, sure.” He pulled out a crumpled sheet of paper from his jeans pocket. She held it up in full view of her camera. It was a printout from the TaskRabbit website.

Isabel stared, flabbergasted, at the last two words. If Robbie Merriman had seen through their bribe all along, he probably suspected some kind of tracking device, too. So why did he agree to take the stupid ring? Why have it brought to Chinatown? There was nothing in it for him. And most unsettling of all: why demand that
she
drop it off?

A sickened feeling pummeled her. She was definitely being watched. But by whom? A few scattered people were nearby, sitting on benches or walking past. A young couple holding hands. A little boy and his dad. No one seemed remotely aware of her.

She handed the boy back the paper, along with the cash, and smoothed her features into an indifferent expression.

“Thanks,” he said. He stuffed the wad into his pocket, baffled but pleased.

“Thank you. I was just headed downtown myself. Hey, there's a cab.” She waved down an empty taxi rolling down Riverside Drive. “You can hitch a ride if you like. I'm passing Canal on my way to, ah, Tribeca.”

Thank God for the city map posted in the back of her first cab. She'd studied it on her way up to orient herself to Manhattan.

The taxi pulled over. She got inside without turning to see if the kid followed, as though his coming along were inconsequential.

He hopped in beside her. “You sure?”

“No biggie.” She crossed her arms over her jacket in case he noticed the little camera eye and got spooked.
Sorry, Galileo.

“All right. I hate the subway at rush hour.”

“Who doesn't?” she said like she rode it every day. The cab jerked ahead and sped onto the West Side Highway headed south.

“What are you doing?” Galileo screeched in her ear. “You don't need to chase this down. We have the GPS going!”

She pushed her long black locks over her ear so the device was obscured.

“Isabel, come back,” he said. “Your job's done. This isn't part of the plan.”

It wasn't like she could argue with him in front of the boy. She couldn't explain her repulsion toward being on the ship now, given all the anxious reverence surrounding Chris. She couldn't explain her fury over Dr. Quinn's wrongful death and her frustration that Galileo had dismissed her suspicions. And she couldn't explain her rattled faith in his leadership, now that he'd proven himself capable of such a mistake.

If she could talk, she might admit that she felt more alone than ever. That she longed for her intrepid crew in lockstep behind her, but in their absence, she was forced to depend on herself. And so she was taking a risk, going against the plan, to learn anything that could lead back to her killer. Because out in the wild, you had to do whatever it took to survive.

“Come back,” Galileo repeated. “You're safer here.”

Am I?
she wanted to retort.
With a murderer on board?

But all she could do was clear her throat in defiance.

When the cab pulled up to 255 Canal Street twenty minutes later, the kid repeated his thanks and jumped out onto the busy sidewalk. Once he disappeared behind a glass storefront, Isabel paid the driver, got out, and slipped into the crowd. The sky was mostly dark now, but the streets of Chinatown were thriving. Cramped hole-in-the-wall stores lined the block, jammed with cheap handbags, sunglasses, and cologne bottles. Some items were stuffed under black plastic bags, attended by shady men who hissed designer names as she passed. The air reeked of cigarettes and cheap perfume.

When she snuck into the store the kid had gone into, she was surprised to see how long and narrow the interior was. It was a world unto itself: a jewelry store—or ten. Separate glass counters glinting with gold and silver stretched back at least thirty feet. Each counter appeared to be its own independent business. The Asian owners called back and forth to one another, conversing in a language she couldn't comprehend. Herds of customers shuffled from one station to the next, examining the selections of bracelets, earrings, necklaces, and rings.

Near the back, Isabel spotted the kid. He was talking to a curvy young woman about her own age who was wearing a tight red blouse. Not exactly a criminal look. Isabel inched her way closer to them, pretending to be interested in the jewelry. Within a minute, the kid was walking back out the door. He didn't notice her hunched over one counter studying a pair of gold hoops.

But the mysterious woman stayed where she was. Isabel saw that she was saying something to an Asian man at a workstation littered with metal tools. He seemed to be some kind of repairman. Isabel made her way closer, thankful for the first time for her heightened sensory awareness. She stopped at the adjacent counter and asked to try on a silver necklace, all the while listening and stealing sidelong glances over her shoulder. The woman didn't appear to notice her.