The Proteus Cure (38 page)

A jug of strong coffee was her norm for breakfast, but a thirteen-year old would need real food. With her car still in the Tethys lot, plus all this rain and melting snow, no way she could get to the doughnut shop or the grocery store. She’d have to make him something.

She got out of bed and started to walk into the kitchen in her T-shirt and underwear but stopped. Needed more clothes than this. Having a boy stay with her would take some adjusting. She added baggy sweatpants and the outfit was complete.

Sheila ground and brewed some Starbucks and then fished through the cabinet for something Coogan might like. The only cereal she had was shredded wheat. The fridge yielded skim milk, fat free yogurt, some cold cuts, shrimp. She had eggs, so maybe an omelet? When she spied a few brown bananas on her counter she recalled her mother’s staple—banana bread.

The old paperback
Better Homes and Gardens
cookbook with its red-and-white plaid cover was worn and stained, but a corner was folded to page 166.
Banana nut bread.
She scanned the recipe and smiled when she saw she had everything she needed except the nuts, which she always omitted anyway.

Buoyed at having someone to cook for, she got to work mixing. She didn’t bother separating the wet and dry ingredients so it was a messy venture, but fifty minutes later, just as Coogan came down the stairs, the golden-brown loaf was done.

“What’s that smell?” he asked, smiling.

She noticed he was wearing the same T-shirt and jeans as yesterday. Not that he had much choice. Poor kid needed a change of clothes.

“You like it?”

“Smells so good it woke me up.

“Great. I hope you like banana bread.”

“I love it.”

Sheila smiled. “Have a seat in here. I’ve got coffee, but it’s kind of strong. I don’t know if you’d like it. I’ve got milk too.”

“Milk’s great but you don’t have to wait on me. I can get stuff myself.”

“You’re my guest. I’m going to go into work for a while. When I get back we’ll see about getting you some new clothes.”

Coogan blushed and sniffed his armpit. “Yeah. I guess I can’t go home to get anything, huh?”

“Not a good idea. The police might be keeping a watch on your house.” With a start she realized they might be watching hers as well. “I don’t mean to sound paranoid, Coog, but it might be best if you stay out of the living room, away from the windows. The spare room has a TV and bathroom and it’s in the back. I’ll give you a T-shirt and some sweats. They’ll be too short, I’m sure, but they’ll do for now. I’ll throw your clothes in the laundry.”

“Cool. But I’ll do my laundry. Just show me where the machine is. It’ll give me something to do.”

“Okay. The laundry room is next to the spare room.”

“I’m glad you’re helping us like this, helping my dad. You like him huh?”

“Yes, I like him.”

“
Like
like him?”

She laughed. Some terminology never changed. “Yes, Coogan, I
like
like him.”

“And you believe him, right, that he didn’t kill that Doctor Kaplan?”

“I believe him. I know he couldn’t do something like that.”

Coogan dropped his gaze. “But he did kill that other guy.”

“But he told us he didn’t mean to. He’s been living with that secret for so many years. I think he was glad to get it out. Whatever happened, it was a long time ago. The man your father is now is the one who matters. He’s the one who raised you and would do anything to keep you safe.”

“He’s a good guy,” he said with that charming Paul Newman smile.

“He
is
. And I have to run. Here’s your milk and a plate for the bread.”

Coogan said thanks as Sheila headed for the shower.

•

Sheila called Tethys security and a guard came to pick her up in one of the medical center’s Land Rovers. As they splashed into the nearly-empty flooded parking lot a flash of lightning startled her. Thunder rumbled in the distance.

Sheila shook her head. Maybe it wasn’t just a lot of rain.

The driver dropped her off in front of the hospital and she spied her car in the distance, parked there since yesterday, water up to the bottom of the door. She stumbled and almost fell as she hurried over the water-loosened cobblestones.

Once inside, her anxiety grew. She wished she could contact Paul. Hearing his voice would be a tonic. Knowing he was all right would set her at ease. But his cell phone was off.

Thankfully no life-or-death situations on the ward right now. All Tethys required of her today was a body and a pulse, which was good because she couldn’t offer much more.

She looked at her watch. Time to call the FDA.

Sheila stepped into the ladies’ room and checked to make sure the stalls were empty, and then used her Blackberry to find the number in Washington. What followed were fifteen minutes of frustration. No one had the authority to launch an investigation based on a “hysterical phone call.” Could she submit something in writing? Which entity was it exactly she was reporting? The hospital, or the manufacturer? The best anyone could do was assign her to a representative, take her number, and have someone call her back later.

She clicked off and resisted the urge to hurl her phone against a wall.

The stone wall of bureaucratic incompetence made her crazy.

She stalked out to the nurses’ station.

“I’m going to my office for a while,” she said to the charge nurse. “I have my beeper and cell phone if you need me.”

She wanted to find the bug in her office.

The tunnels felt damper than usual. The rain had brought more water than the ground above could absorb so the ceilings and walls were dripping. Water seeped from every available crack. And a building this old had a
lot
of cracks.

Drip-drip-drip
she heard along with the
squeak-squeak-squeak
of her wet shoes. Some high-tech hospital.

Water pooled along the edges of the floor. Not a lot, but something maintenance should be alerted to. If the rain didn’t stop they’d have inches in here by tomorrow.

She made it to her office and turned on the light. Though late morning, the day still had a predawn gloom.

Time to look for that bug.

She glanced around. Probably hidden in something that didn’t move. Something bolted in. The heater vent in the ceiling?

She got up and looked. Nope, nothing she could see, even standing on her chair with a penlight.

She stepped down and looked around. She checked along the wall. Pictures, framed diplomas.

She checked the phone. Negative. She looked down at her desk. A lip ran around the edge. She felt along its underside. Nothing. Where could it be?

Her mouth went dry as she looked at her pencil cup. The place she would never look. She peered inside and saw the contact paper had a bulge. She peeled it away and a small circle fell inside to the bottom. A bug.

Mother of God.
Her desk … sex with Paul. Someone
had
recorded the sounds they’d made. She remembered moaning. Bill had heard it all and then looked her in the eye and said nothing.

Feeling queasy, she shut off the light, slipped on her squeaky shoes, and headed for the hall. If they’d planted a bug, they had to have a monitoring station somewhere.

The first place she checked was Bill’s office. With him in Switzerland, this was the perfect time to snoop.

She didn’t expect to find anything. Keeping such equipment in his office where Marge could come across it would be stupid. But she needed to cross his office off her list and wanted to poke around and see if she might come across something about Proteus.

Her footsteps echoed along the empty hallway. She wasn’t alone here, but close to it. The pounding rain had kept all but the hardiest at home. The hospital never slept but in the office today it was mandatory personnel only.

The outer door to Bill’s office was unlocked. People tended to be lax about security. But she had no illusions about his inner sanctum. That would be locked.

And it was.

She went to Marge’s desk and checked the top drawer. There: a solitary key on a ring. She tried it on Bill’s door and was in.

She stepped into the familiar office and stopped. She’d always felt comfortable here. Now it held a different feel. The dark paneling seemed ominous, the awards and testimonial certificates and photos with celebrities mocked her. But she shook it off and got busy.

The storm had blotted out the sun but she didn’t dare turn on the lights for fear of drawing attention.

A quick survey of the cabinets yielded the expected: nothing.

As she approached his desk she jumped when a bolt of lightning lit the sky and the office; the immediate blast of thunder rattled her along with the leaded glass windows.

Too close.

The desk proved as unrewarding as the rest of the office. Except for pens, paper clips, sticky notes, some keys on a changing-the-world-one-person-at-a-time key chain, and other miscellaneous desk stuff, the drawers were virtually empty. One held a large near empty bottle of Jack Daniels. That explained the whiskey breath. The only surprise was a small metal lockbox in the bottom drawer. She lifted it. Heavy. Something metal rattled within. None of the keys on the chain fit the lock and if she tried to pry it open then Bill would know he’d been searched.

She returned the box to its place and sighed. Marge managed the paperwork. Most of the data that concerned Bill would be stored on his computer.

Sheila’s gaze snapped to the blank monitor. Bill’s all-access computer—why hadn’t she thought of that in the first place?

She seated herself in the big leather chair, booted it up. She tried every password she could think of—his wife’s name, his childrens’, Proteus, Tethys—but couldn’t get past the login screen. She wanted to slam her fists against the keyboard. The answers she needed could be just a few keystrokes away. So damn frustrating. In the movies somebody always sussed out the password. But this was no movie.

She turned off the computer, locked the door behind her, and returned Marge’s key. She peeked before stepping back into the empty hallway.

Now where? The search seemed hopeless. That bug’s receiver could be anywhere—even in some locked room in Bill’s basement at home. But she couldn’t see Bill spending hours running through the recordings. He didn’t have enough time as it—

She heard one of the entry doors close down the hall. Instinctively she stepped back into the shallow well of Bill’s doorway. Stupid! If whoever it was walked by and saw her standing here …

She heard squeaking footsteps but they were headed away from her. She risked a glance and saw that it was Shen Li. No surprise there. The chief of security seemed devoted to his job and to …

… Bill.

Mother of God.
Had Shen been a part of this the whole time?

A prickle of fear shot up her spine. He’d been so close-by for the break in. And his height … Shen. Reliable Shen. “If someone wanted you dead, you’d be dead,” he had said. Or something like that. He knew. She was alive because, for now at least, Bill didn’t want her dead. Hadn’t ordered Shen to kill her.

Sheila watched Shen head for the elevators, but he opened the door to the tunnels instead.

Who more likely to be doing the monitoring and dirty work than Bill’s trusted chief of security?

The question was, where was he monitoring from?

Sheila was on the move as soon as Shen stepped out of sight. She hurried to the door, reaching it just before it swung shut. She hurried down the two flights and emerged into the tunnel. The
empty
tunnel.

After a mental coin flip she chose a direction and began to search. No need for subterfuge. She had perfectly good reasons for being here, like going to or returning from one of the wards. No one in their right mind would brave the weather raging above.

She walked softly, cursing her squeaking soles, stopping at each of the half dozen doors she found. She couldn’t knock or yank on their knobs, so she pressed her ear against them and listened. No sound from the first three, but the fourth … the fourth had a peephole—the only door with one. She pressed her ear against the wood.

A faint voice—a woman’s, barely audible. Couldn’t tell who she was or what she was saying, but this had to be the place. The elation of a successful hunt mixed with vague nausea at knowing that Shen Li was probably spying on someone else at that very moment. She wanted to bang on the damn door and make him stop.

But she hurried away. Needed to get in there. Maybe it held other secrets—something on Proteus, perhaps? But now she’d have to wait for Shen Li to leave, and then find a way to get past the lock. She’d need a key—

Keys! In Bill’s desk.

She ran back upstairs.

Abra beamed at the regal, white-haired woman on her computer screen.

“Why didn’t we think of this before, Mama?”

“To tell you the truth,” Mama said in her thick German accent, “I had no idea it was so easy.”

Mama knew all about genetics but not about Skype? Well, perhaps that wasn’t such a surprise. She tended to have tunnel vision.

They’d had a lovely, meandering conversation over a wide range of topics.

“And how is
Die Perfekte
?” Mama said, sipping her tea in her office in Geneva.

Abra smiled. “So, Bill told you about that?”

“Of course. He is quite proud of it. And you should be too.”

“It’s an interesting experiment with no real practical use.”

It had been Bill’s idea, really: create a stem cell line with a genome as close as possible to flawless. They’d dubbed it
Die Perfekte
in honor of Mama. Of course, no genome could be perfect, but
Die Perfekte
was pretty close. They’d scrutinized its genetic structure for years, scrubbing it of any defects.

Mama laughed. “One could always add it to the water supply.”

“That wouldn’t work. Chlorination and purification processes would kill the cells before—” She stopped when she saw Mama’s expression. “You’re having me on, aren’t you.”

She shrugged. “Perhaps. Would it be so terrible?”