Duby's Doctor (17 page)

Jean was gaining on the car. He ran full
tilt, pounding the pavement, splashing through rainwater, wiping
water from his eyes. He was obsessed with catching that limousine,
but Mitchell’s knee was not holding up. With every slam of his left
foot on the pavement, the pain in his leg jumped three levels in
intensity. Blood from his wounded shoulder washed down his shirt
and pants.

The limo was nearly within his reach when it
cleared the Arts Festival congestion, turned onto an empty street,
and sped off through the storm, hopelessly fast.

“Carinne!” he yelled. “Carinne!”

He ran with everything in him, but the knee
collapsed, sending him rolling like a runaway barrel through
gravel, mud, and puddles. He still didn't know that someone more
important to him than Carinne was in the departing limo.

It was nearly half an hour before Jean
returned to his booth, bloody and sore, on a friendly bicyclist’s
handlebars. The rain had stopped. Jean eased himself off the
bike.

“
Merci, mon ami
,” he told the
cyclist, then he limped toward the booth.

“Any time,” was the cyclist’s reply. “You
sure you’re okay?”

Jean waved off the concern, so the cyclist
merely shook his head and departed.

When Jean made his way to the front of the
crowd surrounding his booth, he was horrified to see it cordoned
off with yellow crime-scene tape. The canvas curtains still hid the
interior.

“Michel? Michel!”
he called, forcing
past the yellow tape and uniformed police officers and into his
carefully constructed festival booth. The booth seemed smaller with
Frank Stone and two burly police officers crowded into it.

Frank Stone turned from examining the rear of
the booth. He met Jean in the center of the floor and stopped his
forward progress with a hand in the center of Jean’s chest.

“I’m sorry,” Stone said. “I tried to warn
you—”

Jean’s look of hatred stopped further
explanation and caused Stone to back away a step.

“You!” Jean snapped. “You caused this.” He
pushed past Stone as if Mitchell must be hiding in the rear of the
booth.
“Michel!”
he called.

He thrust Stone and another police officer
aside as he looked under the tables. “Where is she?” he demanded,
rounding on Frank Stone.

Stone was bold enough to approach Jean slowly
and quietly. He laid a hand gently on Jean’s one not-bloodstained
shoulder. “Listen, Du—Johnny. The bad news is: Averell has
Mitchell. Good news: no blood. Looks like they haven’t hurt her.”
He didn’t say, “yet.”

Jean fists clenched involuntarily, and a
muscle rippled along his jawline. Stone kept a hand in place on
Jean’s shoulder as if to steady him.

“The other good news is: Averell has made a
big mistake this time. This is kidnapping. In front of hundreds of
witnesses. Now, I can go after him. This time, nobody’s getting him
off the hook. Nobody.”

“Take your hand off me,” Jean said far too
softly.

Stone, who was not a complete fool, dropped
his hand to his side and backed away. “There’s a team of paramedics
outside, Johnny. I think you better go with ‘em. Gotta take care of
Mitchell’s knee, right? She’d want that.”

Jean wiped his face with trembling hands and
brushed rain-saturated hair from his eyes. He straightened his
shoulders and began to limp out of the tent.

“Johnny—” Stone began.

Jean silenced him with a look and limped
across the booth and out onto the sidewalk.

Frank Stone entered the hospital emergency
room a while later, in his rumpled raincoat, looking like a
low-rent, high-calorie Peter Falk, and wove a path through rushing
interns, nurses, orderlies, and aides, past a waiting room filled
with patients and their families.

At the admitting desk, a nurse pointed Stone
toward treatment rooms at the rear, where curtains were drawn
around a cubicle. When a young resident physician emerged between
the curtains, Stone nabbed him. It was almost a replay of the day
Yves Dubreau had been pronounced dead, and Jean Deaux had been
“born.” Except, this time the physician was not Mitchell Oberon,
but a young man Stone had never met.

“Is he talking?” Stone asked the
physician.

“Not to you!” Jean shouted from behind the
curtain.

The physician started to direct Stone back
toward the waiting room, but at the flash of a badge, a flint-hard
look, and an imperative gesture from Stone, the young resident
relented and moved away.

Stone pushed between the curtains and into
the cubicle.

Jean was sitting on the treatment table,
shoulder bandaged, with his knee packed in a beehive of ice and ace
bandages. His ruined clothes were a wet, shredded, bloody heap on
the floor. He wore only his briefs and a drafty hospital gown three
sizes too small, though it was probably the largest size they
had.

“Whattaya mean ‘not to me’?” Stone said.
“Mister, I’m the only guy on this planet that you do want to talk
to right now.”

“You are wrong.”

“Yeah? Name one person you need more than me
right this minute.”

“
Michel
Oberon. Now, go away.”

Stone only stepped closer. He stepped very,
very close. “You don’t mean that.”

Jean backhanded Frank Stone with all the
strength remaining in his good arm. Stone nearly went down, but he
caught the sturdy metal drapery frame and, after a stunned second,
hauled himself upright. Then he smiled. Jean’s mind may not
remember everything it learned as a special agent, but Jean’s body
seemed to have retained enough muscle memory to be dangerous even
when he had been physically wounded and emotionally
traumatized.

“Averell,” Stone said. “You remember that
name? You remember how I told you he keeps getting arrested, but he
never goes to trial, he never goes to jail? Remember?”

“I don’t care.”

“Averell,” Stone said, “has taken Doctor
Oberon. And he’s gone too far this time, with way too many
witnesses. I can get a warrant, and I can get the support I need
from my department, now. But, if we want to get into Averell’s
compound without shots being fired and hostages getting killed, I’m
gonna need your help.”

Jean did not respond.

“They killed Yves Dubreau, Johnny. And he
wasn’t the first, or the last. They won’t hesitate to do the same
to Mitchell Oberon. Or worse.”

Jean flinched, and Stone knew he had found
the chink in Jean’s armor.

“Why did they take her?” Jean asked. “She
never did anything to them. What do they want?”

“You. They want you.”

“Then, they will have me. I will go to
them.”

“Exactly!” Stone said with a grin. “And once
you’re inside, we can spring our trap.”

“You said you sent them an invitation. You
knew they would come, because they wanted me. I was the bait for
your trap, but your trap did not work, Frank Stone. They did not
take me, the bait. They took
Michel
. And now,
Michel
is the bait.” Jean’s lip curled in disgust. “
Michel
was
wrong; even if you are a sort of policeman, you are not a good man.
You are no better than this man, Averell. You will use
Michel
, you will use me, you will use the daughter of
Averell, you will use anyone to get what you want.”

“Fine. Then, when you’ve finished with
Averell, you can come after me.”

“
Merci
. I will. I promise you.”

“We’ll get started soon as you’re back on
your feet again,” Stone said, then he went in search of the
doctors.

In Carinne’s suite of rooms at the Averell
mansion, Mitchell rifled purses, closets, dresser drawers, even
trash cans, but couldn’t find what she needed. She moved into the
dressing room and searched every drawer in the vanity table.

Carinne entered behind her, dressed in a
bathrobe. Still Mitchell continued searching, rummaging through
every nook or cranny.

“You won’t find anything useful,” said
Carinne. “My mother taught him to be very careful.”

Mitchell stood erect and looked at Carinne,
then turned and went into the bathroom, where she rattled through
the contents of the medicine cabinet.

“No pills, no razor blades, no belts, no
pantyhose, no nothing,” said Carinne from the other room. “Even the
hot water has a regulator on it, in case you should try to scald
yourself to death in the shower.”

Mitchell burst out of the bathroom, enraged.
“I have no intention of taking my own life,” she snapped. “I just
want to get out of here. What am I doing here? I’m nothing to them.
Why are they keeping me?”

“Duby,” Carinne said. “They thought he was
dead. We all thought he was dead. And, trust me, he will be, when
he comes to get you.”

“That makes no sense whatsoever,” Mitchell
said. “I was kidnapped in broad daylight! Half the world saw it
happen! Shots were fired, for Pete’s sake! So, where are the
police? We should be hearing sirens by now. Surely, they’ve
identified the owner of that car. With all the computers they
have?”

Carinne nodded. “Oh, trust me, they
definitely know it was my father’s car. That’s why I wouldn’t hold
my breath waiting for the police to break down the door.”

“No police?” Mitchell said in a very small
voice.

“No police. But, Duby is another story. Rico
wouldn’t have grabbed you if he didn’t think you were important to
Duby. He’ll come for you.”

Mitchell slowly lowered herself into a
sitting position on the huge canopied bed. She nodded to herself.
“You’re mistaken. But, you don’t know, do you; you haven’t seen the
pictures.”

“What pictures?”

“Jea– Duby’s pictures. Dozens of them. Your
face is in every one. He forgot everything else he ever knew; he
even forgot how to talk, but he didn’t forget you.”

As a medical professional, Dr. Mitchell
Oberon could keep her emotions in a lead-lined container in a far
corner of her mind. In that way, she was able to calmly discuss
tragic, horrible situations with patients, their families and loved
ones. It was a valuable, essential skill, and one of many that she,
an experienced surgeon, had honed.

She used that skill now. She locked away
every hope, dream, fantasy or memory about Jean, so that she could
say without emotion: “No, he won’t be coming after me. But, he will
definitely come after you. Either way, he’ll be walking into a kill
zone, and we can’t just stand by and let that happen.”

The room was silent for a minute before
Carinne stepped forward and joined Mitchell, sitting on the bed.
“We won’t,” she said, and there was steel in her voice.

“You have a plan?” asked Mitchell. A tiny
hope raised its head off the floor of her soul.

“I do,” said Carinne. “But you’ve got to do
exactly what I tell you, even if it sounds weird. And, don’t make
trouble. Otherwise, Daddy will call Doctor Heinzman to give you a
shot, and you’ll be in La La Land for a week.”

“Heinzman! That quack?” Mitchell said. “What
does he have to do with all this?”

“He used to ‘take care’ of my mother whenever
she was, let’s say, ‘uncooperative’ with Daddy. She’s dead now.
She, ah, ‘took her own life’ – according to Doctor Heinzman. Daddy
pays Doctor Heinzman very well.”

Mitchell scooted closer to Carinne and
reached out to place a comforting hand over Carinne’s hand where it
rested on the bedspread.

Carinne clasped Mitchell’s hand tightly.

Together they sat, grim faced and
determined.

Carinne broke the silence with, “We only have
a few days before the wedding. You just concentrate on being a
model prisoner, and leave everything else to me.”

Frank Stone haunted the hospital for several
days, annoying the nurses, stalking the doctors, and being a
colossal nuisance. He kept uniformed officers on guard outside
Jean’s hospital room, at the doors to the stairwells, and at the
elevator lobby – as much to keep Jean in as to keep potential
assassins out.

For the first 24 hours, Jean’s doctors had
kept him sedated, for fear he would injure himself or someone else
in his determined efforts to escape the hospital and find Mitchell.
At the beginning of the second day, Jean reluctantly agreed to stay
in bed at least another 48 hours in exchange for the doctors’
promise to discontinue using mind-numbing, nausea-inducing drugs
and uncomfortable physical restraints.

Stone knew enough to stay out of Jean’s sight
until day three, when he entered quietly just before dawn and
tiptoed to a chair near the bed.

“I am not sleeping,” Jean’s voice came out of
the semi-darkness.

“I thought you probably wouldn’t be. Feel
like talkin’?”

“Get me out of here.”

“Maybe I can finagle that for ya, but if I
do, you hafta work with me to take down Averell. It’s the only way
to get Doctor Oberon home safe. You can’t go all Lone Ranger on
me.”

“Just get me out of here.”

“Do we have a deal?” Frank Stone was well
named. His heart might have been made of quartz for all the
sympathy he showed for Jean’s injuries or Mitchell’s jeopardy.
Frank’s narrow agenda was all that mattered to him. He would do
whatever it took to get Kyle Averell, without a second thought for
Yves Dubreau, Jean Deaux, or Mitchell Oberon.

Yves Dubreau would have known this about
Frank Stone, because he was an agent accustomed to doing things
Stone’s way. They had worked together in the nether world of covert
national security operations for years. To Dubreau, someone like
Mitchell Oberon would be merely collateral damage – regrettable,
but acceptable.

Dubreau would not hesitate to fall in line
with Agent Francis Stone, but Dubreau was dead.

Jean Deaux hesitated. A long minute of tense
silence vibrated across Stone’s nerve endings like electrical
current.