No Time to Die (16 page)

“We're almost there,” Galileo announced. “Tonight we're staying at the home of Julian Hernandez, a wonderful friend of the Network who's volunteered to host us. Once we arrive, we'll all eat and shower and rest. We've got another big day of driving tomorrow and will be starting out at dawn.”

“Not in this cop car, right?” she asked.

“No, the officer needs it back, so he'll be dropping off a clean rental later tonight. No one looking for you will have any lead to it.”

She didn't protest, despite her anxiety over going somewhere unknown. Last summer, it had been intimidating enough to make the move to Northeastern, only a few hours away. But she wasn't a little girl. She could handle it.

She lifted her arm to roll down the window for some fresh air—

Her arm stayed still.

She tried again, but it was as stiff as cement, and the stiffness was spreading rapidly. She could feel it propel through her like venom, the all-too-familiar symptom of her worst nightmare.

Help
, she gasped.
Get my pills!

The thoughts were clear, but no words came out. Her tongue flapped uselessly as her limbs started to flail. She tried again, struggling against the blackness that was engulfing her.

My pills!

Theo's distorted voice reached her ears from far away, as though he were shouting into a well.

“She's having a seizure!”

His hands clamped down on her wild arms.

Then the world went dark.

Washington, D.C.
8:03
P.M.

L
es knew something was very wrong. After he'd landed back in Washington, D.C., he'd learned that the black Honda Civic, NY license ADL 4671, had been spotted along Interstate 70, near Wheeling, West Virginia, at 5:15
P.M.
A cop car left the nearby station at 5:18
P.M.
to find it—and hadn't been heard from since. The Civic had also vanished—no other sightings had been reported, even though the
AM
BER Alert continued to flash on every major highway along the East Coast.

It was now just past 8:00
P.M.
, and the sky was darkening along with his mood. The sunset he normally enjoyed through his office's west window now seemed repulsive, as if the sky's colors were bleeding upon the open wound of the horizon.

He couldn't stop pacing across his office in the committee's headquarters. Zoe and Natalie were in that Civic, he was sure of it, along with the mysterious driver who had to be one of Galileo's underlings. Where could they have gone? He'd lost track of how many times he'd called the police dispatcher to check on the missing cop car, but there was no news. It frustrated him that the small-town precinct in West Virginia—from which the cop had originated—had not yet retrofitted their squad with internal GPS trackers, so that missing car could not be traced. The more time went by, the farther away the fugitives were getting.

His only hope was the clue Zoe's parents had given about her medication. Her mother guaranteed, with tears in her eyes, that she would suffer a seizure within hours unless she took it. Les had spent the entire day spreading an alert, with the help of the FBI's Science and Technology division, to every major hospital and pharmacy within five hundred miles to watch for either the admittance of a girl matching Zoe's description or the prescription call-in of the rare medication she required.

Every time the black phone on his desk rang, his heart leaped. Every time, he pictured the face he now knew well, though had never seen in person—her cornflower blue eyes, her freckled nose, her pink lips. Was she wise enough to be afraid, he wondered, or clueless about the dangers that awaited her in the grip of the Network? Despite her restricted capacity, she had to know that the potential for exploitation of her body was staggering.

He was her only hope of rescue. But as to what he was planning to do when he found her—a grim possibility was already crossing his mind. This was war; not just between Galileo and him, but between man and nature, hubris and restraint, future destruction and present salvation. Sacrifices would have to be made. He thought of all the future people whose lives would turn freakish, who would suffer untold consequences for agreeing to try an experimental drug if one were wrought by Zoe's DNA. It shocked him when he really thought about it, the suffering that scientists could carelessly inflict on others under the auspices of good.

It would be simple to divert the blame.

The phone jingled, piercing the stillness of the office. He sprinted to it and pounced before the second ring
.

“Hello?”

“It's me.” Benjamin Barrow, the committee's second-in-command. “Any news?”

Les sighed. “I'd call you.”

“Still no sign of the Civic?”

“Not for almost three hours.”

“It doesn't make sense.” Barrow's tone was irritable, bordering on disapproval. The subtle note piqued Les's fury—as if he wasn't doing everything possible, flying to New York and back, meeting the girl's family, making every damn phone call he could think of. And where was his esteemed colleague? Attending some fancy bioethics conference in California, enjoying a bunch of free food and adulation, in the midst of the most serious case of their careers.

“They're going to have to stop for gas at some point,” Les said through clenched teeth. “All area stations have been alerted.” He didn't add the part about the hospitals and pharmacies as well, in case Barrow decided to demean his strategy before it had a chance to work. “When will you be back?”

“As soon as I can. My talk is tomorrow night. Try to keep things under control until I get there.”

“Thanks.” Les didn't even try to conceal his sarcasm.
Jerk.

He hung up before he said anything he would regret.

It was agitating how quickly the phone rang again, as if touching its cradle triggered the ring.

“What?” he snapped, assuming it was Barrow calling back.

“Uh, is this Les Mahler?”

“Speaking.”

“This is Officer Laughlin calling from the Thirteenth Precinct in Columbus, Ohio. We just got a call from the CVS pharmacy on Parsons Avenue that the medicine on the special alert was called in about five minutes ago.”

“Columbus, you said?”

“Yes. You want us to send a SWAT team?”

With a few nimble clicks, Les brought up a map of Ohio on his 27-inch monitor and zoomed in. If the Civic had continued on Interstate 70 going east after passing through Wheeling, West Virginia, at 5:15
P.M.
, it could feasibly be 150 miles away, placing it right around—
yes!—
Columbus, Ohio.

“Get them there
ASAP
,” Les instructed, “and I'll send in reinforcement if need be.”

“You got it.”

Les stared at the map. “You're four hundred miles northwest of D.C.?”

“Thereabout.”

“Change of plans. Let's keep this quiet. I want you to send an unmarked car. Plainclothes cops. Have them trail whoever picks up the drug. One little bee could lead to the whole hive.”

“So no arrests?”

“Not right away,” he said, thinking of the FBI's air fleet at his disposal. “Not until I get there. I'm on my way.”

“You got it.”

Les smirked as he hung up: a certain condescending partner wouldn't learn the news until it was too late for him to share in any of the glory.

Columbus, Ohio
8:10
P.M.

Z
oe awoke to the sensation of a cold wet compress against her sweaty forehead. Her mother's arms tightened around her from behind, hoisting her up. Wait, not her mother. The arms were covered with brown hair, strong and muscular. And then she remembered: Galileo.

“You're back,” he said, in a voice filled with relief.

She struggled to sit up, fighting nausea. She was stretched out against him in the leather backseat of the cop car. Theo and Natalie were in the front, watching her through the divider.

“Slow,” Galileo commanded.

She sank back against his arms, closing her eyes. “What happened?”

“You had a seizure. We couldn't find your medication.”

“Oh my God.” In her mind, she could see the bathroom cabinet where she had forgotten the bottle. A lump clogged her throat.
Stupid, stupid, stupid!
Why was she so absentminded? Why couldn't she be more responsible?

“I have to go back,” she said. “I'm so sorry.” Now everything was ruined. Natalie wouldn't get to do the research, and Gramps would be stuck with his advancing age.

Under her chin, Galileo's hand opened up, revealing an oval blue gel capsule
.
She gasped and turned to face him. This close, she could see that the worry lines around his eyes ran deep, but he was smiling.

“Look familiar?” he said.

“Did we go home?”

He shook his head. “We're still in Ohio.”

She looked out the window. They were in some kind of shopping center parking lot. Across the lot was a wide gray building with a red roof. The words CVS/
PHARMACY
were splashed across its façade. “So how—?”

“I called Dr. Carlyle and he told me what medication you needed. I called it in to the closest pharmacy under a phony registration, and here we are.”

“Wow.” Just the sight of the blue pill rejuvenated her. She took a swig of water from a bottle he handed her, and downed it.

“So I don't need to see a doctor?”

“I am a doctor.”

“You are? For real?”

“Boarded in internal and emergency medicine. I'm taking good care of you, don't worry. Do you remember what day it is?”

“Tuesday?”

“Good. Do you remember how old you are?”

She started to say
twenty
but then her eyes narrowed. “Trick question! Not fair!”

He chuckled. “My dear, you're going to be just fine.”

She smiled, shaking her head. “Now what?”

“We go to the safe house for the night, as planned. We'll continue our journey tomorrow after we all get some rest.”

As drained as she was, a thrill zipped through her. Their adventure could continue after all.

“We're so glad you're okay,” Natalie said. “I was really worried.”

Theo didn't say anything. She wondered if he was too freaked out to go near her now, let alone speak.

Soon Galileo was driving them again on a busy road lined by small businesses—a funeral center, a Chinese restaurant, a nail salon. The sky was dimming to a purple twilight. Inside, the car was silent. Zoe was too embarrassed to look at Theo.
So much for a good first impression,
she thought.

The car accelerated and swerved off the main road, pulling into a tree-lined block filled with upscale two-story houses. Zoe caught Galileo's eyes in the rearview mirror as he glanced back. He looked tense.

“What's wrong?” she asked.

“Nothing. I thought maybe there was a strange car behind us.”

She and Theo turned around at the same time to look, but no one was there. Galileo made a U-turn and pulled again onto the main road. They drove for about a mile before passing a gray sedan that had pulled off to the side of the road.

“That car again,” Galileo muttered. “I don't like it one bit.”

He swerved again onto a smaller road that led to another cluster of middle-class homes. Sure enough, the gray car soon appeared, crawling several hundred feet away.

Natalie squinted into the rearview mirror. “Who is that?”

“I don't know, but I don't want to find out. And that's the house.” Galileo pointed out her window at a well-maintained split-level home with its lights on at the end of a cul-de-sac. Running perpendicular to it was a white wall that separated this block from the adjacent one.

“What are we going to do?”

By way of answer, he swung around in a violent U-turn and sped down the street, then turned right, left, right in quick succession, getting farther away from the car and deeper into the suburbs. After three more right turns and two lefts, Zoe felt lost, but Galileo apparently knew his way around. They came to a stop at the end of a block that looked identical to the other one—large houses, manicured front lawns, nice cars parked in driveways. The weird gray sedan was nowhere to be seen.

For a minute, they waited. Zoe chewed on her lip until it bled. Natalie and Galileo kept craning their necks around to inspect all windows and mirrors. Theo's eyes were intent on the rear window, not meeting hers.

“Now,” Galileo said, “let's go.”

They lunged out of the car as if it were on fire. Zoe clutched her backpack close to her chest. Inside the front pouch was a tiny bulge where Galileo had put her pill bottle.

“This way.” He tilted his head to the white wall that was now on their left side. “We jump over and go in through the backyard. Just in case.”

“Do you tend to suffer from paranoia?” Natalie asked, only half joking.

He grimaced. “A hazard of the job. But usually it's nothing.”

Crickets chirped in surround sound and twigs crunched underfoot as they approached the wall, which was dwarfed by the dense tall trees that rose up on either side of it. First Theo lifted himself up and hopped over with no trouble. Galileo hoisted Natalie over, and then Zoe. She felt safe and weightless in his arms, but when he set her down on the wall, its stucco scraped against her calves. To help her jump down, Theo extended a hand and she took it.

Once Galileo scrambled over, he led them through a dense maze of trees and shrubs to a short wooden fence about her height. Even she found it easy to hop over without much help, but she did have to suppress a grunt when her feet landed hard on the dirt. Soon the others were by her side in a private backyard surrounded by rustling trees. The full moon cast their elongated shadows across the grass. Before them stood the two-story safe house, its windows illuminated but obscured by heavy curtains.

“This is it,” Galileo whispered. “Let's go in. But first, a precaution: Everyone turn around.”