White Mountain (18 page)

Time ceased as Jack’s awareness centered on the woman in his arms.
 
Not even the bulk of her sweater could disguise her fragility.
 
He pulled her close, and as he did, the weight of her hair on the backs of his hands was like warm silk against his skin.
 
He felt her sigh and then shudder.
 
Instinctively, he braced himself, readying for her collapse, but it didn’t come.

Her fingers dug at his back, clutching the knit fabric of his pullover for leverage as her breasts pillowed against his chest.
 
He felt her inhale deeply, then pause, and he caught himself holding his breath, waiting for her to exhale.
 
When she finally did, his breath flowed from him in unison.
 
He laid his cheek against the crown of her head.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

The she answered, her voice so soft he had to bend his head to hear.

“Everything is coming undone.”

Thankful she couldn’t see his expression, he slid his hand beneath the hair on her neck, gently massaging the strip of skin between her hairline and her sweater.
 
If she knew what was really going on, she would know it was already undone.
 
The only question that remained was whether there would be anything left of her life to fix when jack’s investigation was over.

“Not really,” Jack said.
 
“It’s only changing.”

Isabella stilled and then slowly lifter her head.

“Changing?
 
That’s an understatement, don’t you think?”

Resisting the urge to brush the hair from her forehead, he had to be satisfied, instead, with the scent of her perfume.

“Nothing ever stays the same, Isabella.
 
We’re born.
 
We live.
 
We die.
 
And if you think about it.
 
We are thrust abruptly into a world without warning, torn from the relative comfort and safety of our mothers’ bellies.
 
Then we struggle through the business of living, rejoicing in the highs and weeping through the lows, and just when we think we’re about to get the hang of it, we find ourselves at the end, looking back over the years and wondering where the hell the time went.
 
My Philosophy is to try and cram as much into the living part of it as possible, so that when the dying comes, my regrets are few.”

Isabella stared at him, absorbing the way the moonlight and shadows lay soft upon his face, and hearing the tenderness and empathy in his voice.
 
Finally she spoke.

“How old are you?”

Jack was surprised by the question but answered without hesitation.

“Thirty-eight.”

She nodded thoughtfully, repeating what he’d said.
 
“Thirty-eight.
 
Your wisdom seems more suited to someone of my father’s era.”
 
Then she smile.
 
“I will say this.
 
My father would have like you.
 
He would have like you a lot.”

Before Jack could answer, Isabella rose up on tiptoe and brushed a kiss across his mouth.

“Thank you,” she said.
 
“For everything.”

She walked away then, leaving Jack alone in the moonlight with the taste of her strong on his lips.
 
Unwilling for the moment to end, her turned abruptly to call her back, but she was already inside and out of sight.
 
He leaned back against the retaining wall around the terrace, his shoulders slumping with defeat.
 
He was getting in over his head with this woman.
 
The problem was, if it came to choosing her welfare over his duty, he wasn’t sure what his choice would be.

Frustrated, he cast one last look at the surrounding area, noting absently a faint light in an outbuilding on the edge of the grounds.
 
He stared at tit for a moment and then shrugged off the momentary concern as he stepped off the terrace and headed into the shadows.
 
Thinking of the killer who’d used a dead man’s plane ticket, he started to circle the hotel, expanding the perimeter of his search as he walked.
 
It wasn’t much, but right now, it was about all he could do.
 
If they only knew why Frank Walton had been murdered, then they would have a place to start looking for clues.
 
As it stood, there was, literally, nothing to go on but false identities and assumptions.

A short while later, satisfied that all was well at Abbott House, Jack went inside and up to his room.
 
He needed to check his e-mail for the information the director was going to send, then go back over the notes from the interviews he’d had today with some of the citizens of Braden.
 
One way or another, he had a job to do, and the sooner he got at it, the better off they would be.

Rostov sat cross-legged in the middle of his bed with the diary in his lap.
 
An empty soup bowl was on the end table by his bed, as was a partially filled and melting glass of iced tea.
 
Thanks to his ruse at playing sick, he’d been served supper in bed.
 
But as soon as he’d finished the soup, he’d resumed reading the diary, convinced that it was going to be his ticket to a new life and identity in the United States.

He turned the page, noting the date as well as the brevity of the entry, and frowned.

January 31, 1973

One Isabella dies.
 
Another Isabella is born.

That would be about the right age for Isabella Abbott, the woman who’d hired him.
 
He’d seen the painting in the hotel lobby, but he’d assume it was the same woman.
 
If it was her mother, instead, then he supposed that she’d died giving birth to her child.
 
He shrugged.
 
It wasn’t uncommon, especially in his country, where medical attention was not the best.

His gaze slid to the opposite page, and his frown deepened.

February 3, 1973

Isabella was buried today.
 
Samuel is distraught, blaming himself needlessly.
 
There was no way to foresee the complications of childbirth, but his is not dissuaded.
 
He spends night and day in the laboratory, leaving his baby daughter to the care of others.
 
It is a tragedy.

Rostov turned the page, hoping for something more volatile that the musings of an old man, but it wasn’t until a notation made about six months later that things began to get interesting.

July 29, 1973

We’ve done it.
 
Samuel is ecstatic, as are we all.
 
The woman is pregnant, and with the new method of implantation.
 
We’ll keep track of her progress, of course, but technically, our job is over.
 
The birth of her child will also mark the birth of a new project.
 
If this succeeds as we predict, we have changed the world.

Rostov’s heart skipped a beat.
 
Ah, now it was beginning to make sense.
 
Waller was a doctor.
 
They ran a fertility clinic.
 
His mind raced.
 
How could helping women get pregnant change the world?
 
It wasn’t as if they were the first.
 
This had been going on for years.
 
But the notation was unmistakable.
 
Somehow, they were implanting women in some manner that was life-altering.

He thought back to the days when Hitler had been in power.
 
His desire for a pure and perfect Aryan race had taken him higher than any man in government power had ever gone, although in the end, he had also fallen farther than any man before him.
 
The little he’d been given on Waller’s background said that the old man had been involved in genetic research.
 
So what if they had learned how to manipulate DNA?
 
What if they had implanted the woman with her own fertilized eggs as usual, but changed in some manner so as to create a perfect child?
 
It made sense to Rostov.
 
If any part of this was true, then it was no wonder his country had still wanted the old man back.
 
But if this was so, then why hadn’t the world seen the evidence firsthand?
 
More than enough years had come and gone.
 
This child if it had lived, would be in its late twenties—plenty of time for an exceptional person to make a mark on the world.

He frowned.
 
What if it had already happened?
 
The world was filled with geniuses of all kinds.
 
Men and women who manipulated the computer industry and the Internet as easily as he tied his shoes.
 
And what if it wasn’t just mental superiority that they’d been striving to achieve?
 
There were Olympic medalists and military heroes—professionals of all kinds who were unique in their own fields.
 
And if the men who had created them had a piece of that action, the possibilities were endless.

His frown deepened.
 
Even if this was so—and he had yet to prove his hypothesis—it still remained for Rostov to find a way to cash in on the information.

Quickly he scanned the rest of the diary, noting mention of at least nineteen other “projects,” as Weller had called them, and then in 1992 the entries ceased.

He flipped through the pages, hoping for something to explain the further lack of entries.
 
He found nothing but a single notation on the very last page.

December 2000

In trying to play God we have, instead, created Hell.
 
No one knows why, but Isabella is the key.

Rostov closed the diary and then shove it beneath his mattress before turning out the light.
 
Without bothering to remove his clothes, he rolled over on his side and closed his eyes.
 
He didn’t know what it all meant, but the longer he thought about it, the more convinced he became that he had an agenda of his own.
 
Tomorrow he would make contact with his superiors and tell them the old man was dead.
 
After that, the world was his for the taking—and he was going to take all he could get.
 
And—according to Vaclav Waller—Isabella Abbott was the key to his success.

Isabella slept curled up on her side, her face to the window and the moonlight shining through.
 
In her dream, she was in London, lost on a dark street with no end in sight.
 
As she walked, thin fingers of fog swirled at her feet, yet as afraid as she was, she resisted the urge to run.
 
Behind her, the sounds of footsteps on the cobblestone streets could suddenly be heard, and she turned in fear, terrified of who was behind her.

Someone called her name!
 
Her breath caught between a gasp and a scream as a figure emerged from the shadows.
 
She went limp with relief.

“Daddy!
 
Oh my God, Daddy, it’s you!
 
I got lost and was so afraid.”

Samuel Abbott paused beneath the gaslight, the moisture from the fog heavy on his clothes, his breath coming in quick gasps as if he’d been running.

“You’re not lost, Isabella.
 
Look up.”

Isabella looked.
 
There was a street sign right above her head.
 
Braden, Montana?
 
That didn’t make sense.

“But, Daddy, I thought this was London.”

Samuel shook his head.
 
“You’ve never been to London.”

“But I have,” she argued.
 
“I remember.”

Samuel smile.
 
“That’s not your memory,” he said softly.
 
“Let it go.
 
Let it go.”

Isabella woke with a start, half expecting to see the room filled with fog, and instead got moonlight in her eyes.
 
She rolled over with a groan, bunched her pillow beneath her chin, then closed her eyes, willing herself not to dream.
 
She’d had all the nightmares for one night that she could handle.

Jack lay wide-eyed and sleepless, staring up at the pattern on the ceiling, trying to make sense of what he’d just read.
 
Frank Walton, aka Vaclav Waller, had been involved in DNA research when he’d “died.”
 
Rumor had it that the Russian government had been about to pull the plug on what they considered flawed research and send him to a lab involved in chemical warfare.
 
But somehow he’d wound up on a private plane, on his way to a world-class medical convention in the Bahamas, instead.
 
And the plane had gone down two hours after take-off, with no survivors.