The Miracle Strain (5 page)

Beacon Hill

Boston

The next morning Tom Carter woke early. He reached across the large bed to Olivia. Only when he felt the cool expanse of unoccupied sheet did he remember his wife was dead. It had been his first waking thought every morning since the shooting, and he wondered if it would continue forever. He opened bleary eyes and watched the clock glowing on the bedside table: 5:16 A. M. Then the second remembered nightmare pierced his consciousness.

How long was a year anyway? Fifty-two weeks? Three hundred and sixty-five days? Eight thousand seven hundred and sixty hours? However he put it he couldn't make it sound longer than it was, and it wasn't long enough. But according to DAN that was all the time Holly had--at the very most. Without a cure she would be lucky to see one more birthday.

When DAN had told him the time horizon he had almost felt a bizarre sense of relief. The deadline was so close there was really nothing he could do. He had every excuse to give in--to concentrate on helping to identify Olivia's killer and ensuring Holly's last few months were as enjoyable and painless as possible. But of course that wasn't his way. He had never been any good at accepting anything passively.

He sat up in bed and shook his head, trying to clear all the jumbled thoughts and fears from his mind. If he was even to begin planning what should or could be done to help Holly he would need a fresh perspective. And he could think of only one way to get it. Before he broke the news to his father and Jack he would talk it through with the one person who had always listened to him in times of crisis and doubt.

Tom swung heavy legs out of the bed and wandered into the connecting bathroom. Olivia's array of shampoo and conditioner bottles sat undisturbed on the table by the bath. Like so many things around this home, which Olivia had created, the bottles were another reminder of her presence. But he couldn't yet bear to throw away even the smallest memento of her.

He set the shower to the power setting and blasted himself awake till his skin tingled. Looking down, he studied the ugly, purple scar above his right knee. The Swedish doctor had told him how lucky he was that the bullet had passed through his leg, causing only minor muscle damage. But few moments went by when he didn't wish every single bullet that had torn into Olivia's body had torn into his instead.

After showering, he toweled himself dry and opened the large wardrobe he had shared with his wife. Olivia's clothes hung emptily from the pegs, her smell still among them. He reached into his side, threw on the first clothes that came to hand, and grabbed the long quilted leather jacket lying discarded on the floor from last night.

On the landing he paused outside Holly's room and put his head around the open door. She was curled up in bed asleep. He crept over to her and kissed her forehead. As he studied her peaceful face, DAN's chilling prophecy seemed a distant--even ridiculous--nightmare. If he wasn't back before Holly awoke, he was sure Marcy Kelley, the housekeeper who lived in the selfcontained apartment on the top floor, would be up by then.

Leaving Holly sleeping, he stole down the still-dark staircase and quietly let himself out of the house. He went out the back door, because he knew the police car was parked outside the front driveway, a few yards down the road. He noticed it had snowed overnight as he climbed into his Mercedes and quietly eased out of the side gate, away from his guardians. He wanted to be alone, and didn't really share Jack's concern that the person who had tried to kill him in Sweden might have followed him to the States. Olivia's killer was probably on the run now and Tom wished the police would concentrate on catching him, rather than wasting time watching over him.

The drive from Beacon Hill through the usually congested sprawl of Boston was eerily quiet. It was not yet six on a Sunday morning and he saw only a handful of moving cars on the fifteenminute journey, including an anonymous brown sedan that overtook him after the snow-capped bridge.

The watery pink of dawn was just breaking when he arrived at the snow-covered fields of the cemetery. The wrought-iron gates were open and he drove to the top of the plot where he could still see the mound of Olivia's fresh grave under the overnight snow. He parked the Mercedes and blowing into his cold hands scrunched across the snow to where she lay. At the grave he sat in the snow next to Olivia, knees hugged close to his chest, and told her what had happened.

Leaving nothing out he started from the beginning. It was as if Olivia was actually there listening to him, as she had done so often when alive.

"So, what should I do?" he asked aloud. "Do I accept the inevitable and make the most of the time left to Holly? Or do I risk missing the precious year she does have left trying to find an accelerated cure?"

As he sat there quietly watching the clear, cold fingers of dawn push back the darkness, he remembered Olivia's favorite poem and he smiled. He couldn't recall all the lines Dylan Thomas wrote to his dying father, but he remembered enough to know he had Olivia's answer. He would not let Holly go gently into any night. He would rage alongside her, using all his skill and resources to hold back the encroaching darkness.

Jasmine would have told no one of DAN's verdict and Tom wanted to keep it quiet. He certainly didn't want Holly to know anything of her imminent illness yet. He'd tell Alex and Jack tomorrow, along with whoever else could help and be relied on to keep their counsel. Together they would work out what the best plan of attack should be. After all, if they couldn't save Holly, nobody could.

It was then, just as the rising sun leaked its angled light on the cemetery that he saw the fresh footprints in the snow. They led his eyes from the grave, across the wide expanse of white to an anonymous brown sedan parked at the far end of the plot, and the broad-shouldered man standing next to it. The man was only a silhouette against the rising sun, but something about his posture told Tom he was watching him.

Tom stood and looked down at the deep prints, following them back to the grave, and for the first time noticed the small cross-shaped wreath of blood-red roses on the snow behind the gravestone. As Olivia would have wanted, he had asked wellwishers to make a donation to their favorite charities rather than present any flowers, so he wondered about the donor. Intrigued, he leaned over the gravestone and picked up the wreath. An envelope fell from the red flowers onto the snow in front of him.

With cold-numbed fingers he tore it open, revealing a small card. On the top was a quotation: "The wages of sin is death."Romans 6:23. And beneath it he read the words that chilled him more than the icy cold: "Your wife paid for your sin this time. But your punishment will come." It was unsigned.

At last he felt something. All the anger and grief he had been denied since Olivia's death now came bursting to the surface. With blood pounding in his ears he squinted into the rising sun. Ignoring the pain in his leg he began to run in the direction of the lone silhouette. He pushed his legs through the thick snow as fast as he could, his breath visible in the cold air. But before he had covered twenty yards and been blinded by the sun, he knew that the man had already gone.

Three days later Jasmine Washington sat with Tom Carter and Jack Nichols in the GENIUS boardroom at the top of the pyramid, on the floor which housed all the commercial offices, including Jack's. She was shaking her head in disbelief. She had barely come to terms with DAN's prediction on Holly and now this--

"What I don't understand, Tom, is why didn't your police protection try and catch him?" she asked.

"Because the police weren't there," said Jack, his powerful hands clasped on the black table in front of him. "Mr. Einstein here decided to give them the slip."

"Jack, spare me the big brother shit. Okay?" groaned Tom. "I had enough of a lecture from your friends down at the Bureau."

Jack kept his weather-beaten features impassive. Despite the gray peppering his sandy hair, and the scar on his face, he looked good for a fifty-year-old. Jasmine had known Jack for almost as long as she'd known Tom. As well as being the commercial brains behind the company, the FBI man turned MBA was a "fixer," the pragmatic worrier who bridged Tom's flights of fancy to the real world. Jack had told her once that he saw his role as the protector of their fragile ideas from the "men in suits," as he called the investors. Ever since Tom and he had met twelve years ago at a biotech investment conference in Manhattan, theirs had been a marriage of minds.

Although GENIUS was already proving a success, Tom had been looking to raise additional money for his Genescope idea without losing control of the company. Jack, fresh out of the Wharton School with one successful year under his belt at Drax Venture Capital, was desperate to find a venture to capitalize--ideally one that would change the world. They talked off and on for thirty-nine hours, ignoring everyone else at the conference. And at the end of it Jack had resigned from Drax and joined Tom. Within three weeks he had not only interested six major Wall Street investors in Tom's venture, but by playing one off against the other, he had graciously allowed three of them to put up the necessary hundred and fifty million--on the condi tion that they didn't interfere with the running of the business for at least ten years.

"So what does the FBI think, Tom?" asked Jasmine.

Tom stood up, walked over to the glass outer wall, and leaned back against it. Behind him Jasmine could see the skyscrapers of downtown Boston looming in the distance.

"They think it might be the Preacher," he said.

Her eyes opened wide with shock. "Jeez," she whispered. "Really?"

Jack Nichols stroked the scar on his face as he always did when he was puzzled or surprised. "Are you sure?" he asked.

"That's what the FBI told me last night," said Tom. "I spoke to Karen Tanner down at Federal Plaza and she said the handwriting and the use of the biblical quote are consistent with the Preacher."

Jack let out a small whistle. "If Karen thinks it's him, then it probably is."

Jasmine understood why Jack was impressed. Karen Tanner had been Jack's rookie partner about fifteen years ago. She had helped him put away Happy Sam. Jack's wife, Susan, had almost become one of the psycho's victims, before Karen had helped Jack rescue her. He had got badly sliced up in the process. It was then that he had decided to get out, to spend more time with his wife and two sons, and find a different way to make the world a better place.

And now Karen Tanner was saying that a killer who made Happy Sam look like a Little Leaguer was after Tom Carter. Jasmine wouldn't have believed it if she hadn't seen the way Olivia had been dispatched.

Like everyone else, she'd read the stories. Jeez, there'd been enough of them. The Preacher was supposed to be some religious nut on a warped crusade to clean up the world. It was common knowledge that his victims were mainly high-profile, lowlife scum: mob lawyers, drug dealers, heads of the major crime families--generally any slimeball considered beyond the reach of the law.

Jasmine could still remember reading about the Preacher's first victim some thirteen years ago. The crooked evangelist Bobby Dooley had been found bobbing up and down in the Hudson with his throat cut from ear, and the message "Beware of false Prophets, which come to you in sheep'sclothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves." Matthew 7:15 rammed down his gullet in a plastic bag.

When the next bodies were found, all with similar messages attached to their persons, the press had gone wild with stories about the guy, calling him "The Preacher of Death." But over time interest had waned; the police had got no closer to identifying him, and most of the victims weren't likely to win any Humanitarian of the Year awards. Now, with a worldwide tally of some sixty or so victims, the only media angle was whether the police really wanted to catch him, or whether they let him alone because he "only killed scum" and therefore made their lives easier.

"But, Tom, why are you a target?" asked Jasmine. "You're not exactly regarded as a lowlife. Unless the Nobel committee is completely out of touch."

Tom gave a dry laugh. "I asked Karen Tanner the same thing last night. Her guess is that he doesn't agree with what I'm doing. Her behavioral sciences people at Quantico think that to a religious freak like him, my genetics probably makes me the lowest form of scum around--only a few rungs up the slime ladder from the great Satan himself. And don't forget. Not all his victims have been conventional scum. Remember Max Heywood, the Supreme Court justice?"

Jasmine grimaced. She remembered.