Tom Hyman (44 page)

“Yes?”

“You promise you won’t be angry?”

Anne narrowed her eyes, mystified. Genny had never made such a request before. “I can’t promise. But I’ll try.”

Genny thought about this for a moment, then nodded. “Okay.

Follow me.” The little girl led her mother to the apartment’s front door.

“It’s about Bomber,” she said, pointing to the door. “He’s out in the hall.”

Bomber was the upstairs neighbor’s pet schnauzer. He was a minor nuisance in the building, frequently running loose in the hallways and barking at all hours. Twice he had chased Moby Cat, and once caught him and roughed him up. Genny disliked the dog intensely.

“Loose again?”

Genny nodded, but she had a peculiar look on her face. “Go see him,”

she said.

Anne opened the door and looked up and down the hall. No sign of the dog.

“He’s downstairs, Mommy.”

Genny followed her mother down the stairs to the small vestibule just inside the brownstone’s outside door. She pointed to the floor. The dog was lying there, on its side, quite still, its eyes shut.

Anne bent down and gently patted the dog’s neck. It was immediately apparent that the animal was dead.

Anne rushed upstairs to inform Bomber’s owner, a middle-aged woman named Mrs. Berkin, whom Anne had met only once. She spent the next forty-five minutes consoling the distraught woman.

Eventually she helped the woman carry the dog upstairs and called a veterinarian for advice on disposing of the animal.

Once back in her own apartment, Anne asked Genny how she knew that something had happened to Bomber.

“He was bad,” Genny said. “He tried to hurt Moby Cat again.

“I know that, darling. But do you know what happened to Bomber? Did you see anyone do anything to the dog? Or feed him anything?”

Genny shook her head. She wore an unmistakable look of guilt.

Anne was perplexed. “You asked me not to be mad at you. Why should I be mad at you?”

“It was me, Mommy.”

“You?”

“Bomber was bad, Mommy. He tried to bite me, too.”

Anne’s puzzlement grew. “What do you mean? What did you do?”

“I just . . . squeezed him.”

“Squeezed him? How?”

Genny put her little hands around her mother’s neck to show her. “I did it real hard. Until he stopped moving. It didn’t take long at all. He was bad, Mommy. You know he was bad. I didn’t want to tell Mrs. Berkin, but he was a very bad dog.”

Anne knelt down and pulled Genny close to her. Tears welled up. Dear God, dear God.

“I’m sorry, Mommy. Don’t cry. Bomber was bad.”

Anne hugged her hard. My precious child, my precious child.

She felt engulfed by fear. Thoughts about all those atavistic genes in Genny’s genome swam through her mind. What was she going to say when people found out that her daughter was an experiment in human genetic engineering?

And what was she going to do if something like this happened again?

That evening Lexy and Anne had dinner at a restaurant off Seventh Avenue. Anne poured out the whole story about Genny and Bomber.

Lexy made light of it. “I don’t believe it for a minute. Genny wouldn’t do anything as monstrous as that. Strangling someone’s pet schnauzer? Come on! The child has an overactive imagination.

I know she didn’t like the animal. She probably saw the dog dead and fantasized that she had killed it. I’ll bet the downstairs neighbor fed the beast a poison hamburger. Things like that happen all the time. And the dog was a miserable little cur, anyway. Forget it.”

“But Genny’s very strong physically. She could have done it.”

“But for godsakes, you’d have heard something, like the dog yowling.”

“Oh, God, Lexy, I want to believe you.”

“Then believe me. And have another glass of wine.”

Lexy was far more interested in the men staked out in the apartment facing Anne’s study. She asked a thousand questions, then rendered her verdict: “I told you. It’s Dalton. He hired them. He’s trying to catch you in flagrante delicto, so he can get a better divorce settlement. And win custody of Genny.”

“I’m not sure he even wants custody.”

“Of course he does. Remember, she’s the only proof that Jupiter works.

Knowing Dalton, he’d probably parade her around Europe with a tin cup.

Anything to make a buck. And speaking of flagrante delicto, how about giving that Dr. What’s-His-Name a call? You desperately need a little romance in your life.”

“I wish you wouldn’t keep bringing him up. I want to for get him.”

“You want to forget you made a fool of yourself, that’s all.”

“That too.”

Between them they drank a bottle and a half of wine, and by the time Anne got back to her apartment on West Eleventh she felt a little foggy, but much less anxious than earlier in the evening.

Mrs. Callahan came out to greet her.

“Oh, Mrs. Callahan, you didn’t have to stay up.”

“It’s okay, Mrs. Stewart. I took a nap earlier.”

“Did Genny get to bed at a reasonable hour?”

Mrs. Callahan stared at her with a confused expression.

“What’s the matter?” Anne asked.

“Well, Genny’s been gone since seven.”

“Gone? Where’s she gone?”

“Well, Mr. Stewart picked her up.”

“What?”

“He said it was all arranged.”

Anne’s euphoria evaporated. “Where did he take her?”

“Long Island, I suppose.”

“Why didn’t you go with her?”

“He told me that you’d agreed it wasn’t necessary.”

Anne grabbed the phone and dialed the house in Lattingtown.

The phone rang ten times before someone finally picked it up. It was the housekeeper, Mrs. Corley.

“It’s Anne Stewart, Mrs. Corley. Is my husband there?”

“No, he’s not,” she snapped. Since Anne had walked out on Dalton and was no longer the head of the household, Mrs. Corley saw no reason to be civil to her.

“Where is he, do you know?”

“I have no idea.”

“I’m looking for my daughter, Mrs. Corley. Is she there?”

“No.”

“Where is she?”

“I have no idea.”

“This is serious, Mrs. Corley. Dalton’s taken my daughter without my permission. I’m about to call the police and report it.”

“I wouldn’t bother, Mrs. Stewart. They left on a plane for Germany hours ago.”

Anne hung up. “The bastard!”

Mrs. Callahan was standing by the phone, wringing her hands in anguish. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Stewart. I thought it was arranged.

He said it was all arranged. I didn’t—” “It’s not your fault, Mrs.

Callahan. Go on to bed.”

“But I’m very upset….”

“Go on to bed. I’ll talk to Dalton in the morning and we’ll straighten it out.”

Mrs. Callahan went off to her room, sobbing quietly to herself.

Anne sat at the kitchen table, drinking coffee and trying to decide what to do. Dalton had obviously planned this carefully. It would have taken him time to get Genny a passport, for one thing. In the back of her mind, behind the jumble of emotions she was feeling, a stark terror loomed. What if he meant to keep Genny?

How was she going to be able to get her back?

By three A.M. Anne felt exhausted. She went into her bedroom and lay down. After a while she drifted into a troubled sleep.

At six A.M. the phone rang. Anne groped for the receiver.

“I’m in Munich,” Dalton told her. “I have Genny here with me.”

“Why are you doing this?”

“I want you back, too.”

“You have some way of showing it. Why did you take her?”

“You know damn well why.”

“I don’t know damn well why. But I’m coming to get her.”

“Good. Be on the seven P.M. flight from JFK to Munich tonight.

And bring the copy of Jupiter you stole from me with you. And the access code that goes with it. Otherwise you don’t get Genny back.

We’ll meet you at the airport.”

Anne started to reply, but Dalton had already hung up.

Dalton Stewart and his daughter emerged from his Munich apartment early in the morning. While he locked the door, she ran ahead to summon the elevator. When the doors opened, she jumped on ahead of her father.

“Which button, Daddy?”

“K-1.”

Genny scanned the rows of buttons, found the one labeled K-1, and pressed it. “Is that the underground earaee?”

“That’s right.”

“Is Mommy going to stay with us?”

“I don’t think so. You and Mommy will be going back to New York.

Probably tomorrow.”

Genny’s eyes watched the flashing numbers on the panel above the door as they descended the ten floors toward the garage subbasement. “Do you love me as much as Mommy does?”

Stewart felt his throat constrict. “Oh, yes. Even more.”

“Mommy said no one could love me more than she does.”

“Well, I guess we’re tied, then. Because no one could love you more than I do, either.”

“Don’t you miss Mommy?”

“Yes,” he muttered. He did.

“I miss Mommy already,” Genny declared.

“We’ll see her soon.”

Genny looked thoughtful for a moment. “I’m glad both you and Mommy love me, but I wish you still loved each other, too.”

“I wish we did, too, honey.”

“Do you think you will again sometime?”

“Maybe. I hope so.”

The fact that he was using his daughter as a pawn in a power struggle with Anne and the baroness did not make him feel good about himself.

He knew it would probably end forever any chance of reconciling with Anne, but he was backed into a corner. This was his only way out. If it worked, everything would become possible again. And he’d prove to his daughter just how much he really did love her. There would be no end of what he would do for her. He’d fulfill her grandest dreams, her most extravagant ambitions.

The elevator stopped and the doors rattled open.

Genny slipped her hand inside her father’s and skipped along beside him toward his car, a gray BMW parked near the back.

“Do you love someone else now, instead of Mommy?”

Her father laughed. Genny had peppered him with hundreds of questions ever since he had picked her up in New York. She would ask three or four or a dozen completely trivial questions and then suddenly spring a zinger on him when he least expected it. “No,” he said in a stern voice, hoping to scare off any further inquiry along this line.

Genny was not deterred. “Mommy told me you loved the baroness.”

He started to say that she was just a business associate, but under the circumstances it sounded ridiculous. “No. I don’t love the baroness at all.”

Genny craned her head up to look directly into her father’s face.

“Well, I don’t even like her at all,” she declared in an emphatic tone.

“No? Why not?”

“She’s bad, that’s why.”

They arrived at the car. Stewart unlocked the door on the driver’s side. Genny was right. His relationship with the woman was a simple case of mutual exploitation. He had lusted after the woman sexually, but what he had really wanted was her money and her connections. The baroness in turn had wanted his empire, Stewart Biotech, to give her a foothold in the United States market.

And of course both of them had wanted Jupiter. A couple of predatory animals, that’s what they were, each circling the other and snarling over who was going to get the spoils of the hunt.

“Mommy has a friend, too. And I like him a lot.”

“Who’s that?”

“Dr. Elder.”

“Oh.” Stewart had never heard of him.

“She doesn’t see him anymore,” Genny said. “I wish she would, though.

He taught me lots of neat doctor things. He showed me how to use a stethoscope.”

Stewart wasn’t listening. He was thinking how Anne still held the key to everything. Literally. God, he hoped she did. The nightmare possibility that he was risking so much on the assumption that Anne knew for certain what she was talking about frightened him. But if she did—if the access code really worked—then that was all that he needed.

And Anne would have to cooperate if she wanted Genny back.

But he hoped, he prayed, he could persuade her to give him Jupiter and the code willingly.

Genny squeezed past him and crawled across the driver’s seat to the passenger side. Stewart heard someone calling. He looked around.

About six cars away, a tall, thin man with a black mustache was motioning at him and shouting “Bitte!” in a loud voice.

Stewart hesitated. The man’s attitude annoyed him. Only in Germany would somebody shout at you to demand your help. “I don’t speak German,” Stewart shouted back.

“You English?” the man asked.

“American.”

“Good. You can help me. I dropped my key. I can’t bend over to pick it up. My back is very injured, ja?”

Stewart cursed under his breath. He ducked down to look at Genny, squirming around playfully on the leather seat to warm it up.

He felt like a heel not offering to help the man, but there was something suspicious about him. He was too young to have a bad back—and too young to be driving a new, top-of-the-line Mercedes. The hell with him.

He started to get into the car. No sooner had he lifted his foot than he felt a powerful blow land against the back of his skull.

It hit with such force that he toppled forward and smashed his head against the car’s roof. Another blow landed behind his ear.

He sagged backwards, unconscious.

A man caught him under the arms, dragged him away from the car, and dropped him on the garage’s concrete floor. He fished in Stewart’s jacket pocket for a wallet, found one, and opened it.

He grabbed the handful of bills inside and then threw the wallet onto the floor.

Two other men—the thin one who had called out to Stewart, and a short, thickset man who had been crouched down out of sight—came running over from the Mercedes and closed in quickly on the front doors of the BMW.

Genny reacted instantly. She fell across the driver’s seat, pulled the door shut, and reached for the button that would lock all four doors automatically. The thin one, approaching the driver’s side, saw what she was trying to do and managed to get the door open a split second before Genny could hit the lever. He yanked the door wide and grabbed her arm.