Sins of the Father (16 page)

Peter had no idea how to respond to this sudden terrible confession, so he just kept driving.

“When I came to,” she continued. “I had three broken fingers, and the baby was gone. My shirt was covered in blood, but it wasn’t mine. They said I fell on her. Snapped her neck. I found out later that it took three orderlies to get her little body out of my grip. That’s how my fingers got broken.” She paused, looked away out the window.

“Her name was Jessica. She was only one day old.”

“I’m so sorry,” Peter said softly. “Jesus.”

An uncomfortable silence settled in around them like a bad smell. She broke it first.

“Do you ever fantasize about rewriting history?” she asked. “Like, maybe there could be another world where certain things never happened? Or happened differently?”

Peter glanced up again at the rearview mirror. She was looking right at him now, but her eyes seemed far away. He would never in a million years admit how close to home she’d hit. That he’d had that exact daydream, countless times during his troubled childhood.

Still did, to be honest.

“Sure I have,” Peter said, trying for a light-hearted tone, and almost succeeding. “I can’t tell you the number of times I woke up with a 3 a.m. mistake lying in the bed next to me, and wished she’d never happened.”

“Yeah,” she said, her tone more melancholy than amused. “It’s just like that.” She went quiet again.

“Of course, it’s not possible,” she continued. Her voice cleared, and she spoke with conviction. “But if I can’t change my own past, I’d like to think I can change the future. Can’t you see why this retrovirus is so important to me? If only I could continue with the clinical trials. I
know
I can engineer a more stable strain—one that wouldn’t pose a threat to anyone, epileptic or otherwise.

“I just need a little bit more time.”

Peter didn’t respond. And then it struck him.

In the space of less than an hour, he’d gone from wanting to swindle this woman out of her money, to wanting to save her life—wanting her to destroy the very thing he’d planned to use in the swindle. He didn’t know if there was such a thing as moral whiplash, but if there was, it was hitting him now.

It was his turn to break the silence.

“Well, we can’t just keep driving around,” he said, mostly because he couldn’t think of anything else to say. “We’ve got to find someplace to stop, and decide what our next move will be.”

“You’re right,” she agreed. “But we can’t go back to my place. They probably know where I live.”

“We could try to find another hotel,” Peter suggested.

“Wait,” she said, and her eyes went wide. “I know just the place, and it’s not far from here.” She gave him a series of directions, for the most part avoiding the busier byways. After about ten minutes of weaving through the maze of streets, she said, “This is it—this is the neighborhood. Turn right here, at this light.”

He did as she requested, turning onto a quiet, residential side street.

“Just down this way—there’s someplace they won’t know about.” She pointed at a tidy moss-green house on the left. “Ted Westerson. Best teacher I ever had. One of the best in the entire field of virology. Anyway, he’s in Costa Rica right now, and he gave me his keys so I could water his orchids. No one will think to look for us there. We can get some dry clothes and figure out what to do next.”

Peter continued in the direction she was pointing, heading for the cottage-style house. He was cold and exhausted, and worn down to nothing.

What he
really
wanted to do was kick this woman and her apocalyptic chaos to the curb, and then run for his life. Yet he couldn’t. If he refused to help her, and some crazy bastard got his hands on the vial, there wouldn’t be anywhere left to run.

Besides, she was shivering, and it looked way better on her than it did on him. It wouldn’t hurt to go in and get some dry clothes.

Just for a minute.

Inside, the green house was pin neat and sparsely furnished with older but well-maintained furniture.

On the far side of the long, narrow living room was a large glassed-in porch populated by orchids. Peter went over to examine them, while Doctor Lachaux excused herself to change out of her still-damp clothes, which looked pretty nasty.

“I’ll see if I can find something big enough for you to wear, too,” she said.

Peter frowned as she left the room, wondering just
how
familiar the good doctor was with the house… and its occupant.
Not that it’s any of my business
, he mused. Yet as he stood there in the fading evening light, the feeling of unease wouldn’t let go.

When she came back into the living room she was holding a large towel. She wore a bathrobe that didn’t even come down to her knees, and was much too short in the sleeves. She tossed the towel to Peter.

“I knew Ted was a smaller guy,” she said. “But I had no idea how small until I tried on his clothes.” She smiled and held up her arms, twisting her exposed wrists. The bottom of the robe rose hazardously, as well. “If his stuff is too small for me, there’s no way anything will fit you.”

Peter used the towel to dry his hair.

“That’s okay,” he said, plucking at the damp shirt. It was stained with grit and other souvenirs of their activities. “I’ll dry out eventually.”

“Come on,” she said, shooting him a look. “Don’t just sit there all damp and miserable. Wrap that towel around yourself and give me your clothes. I’ll put them in the drier with mine.” She turned away from him. “I won’t look.”

He just stood there for a moment, watching her not watching him and feeling weirdly self-conscious. Finally, he gave in, and started unbuttoning his shirt.

“I suppose it would be ironic to catch cold, what with the deadly mutagenic retrovirus and all,” he said, pulling the vibrator out of his waistband and setting it on a small Asian end table before unbuckling his belt. “There’s got to be some kind of quota. You know, one disease per customer?”

“You aren’t any more likely to contract acute viral nasopharyngitis if you’re cold and wet than you would be if you were warm and dry,” she replied. “Either a viable, contagious strain of rhinovirus is already present in the environment, or it isn’t.”

“You’re killing my ‘A’ material, you know,” he said, toeing off his soggy shoes. “You know that, right?” As he peeled off his socks, he was pretty sure they were beginning to grow mold.

She let out a little, stifled half laugh and shook her head.

“Sorry,” she said. “But if you’re going to crack virology jokes in this crowd, your science has to be solid. We’re a discriminating audience.”

He laughed too, and stripped the clinging pants and damp shorts off his sticky legs and kicked them away, wrapping the towel around his waist. Even shirtless, it was amazing how good it felt finally to be rid of the clothes and relatively dry. As opposed to being wet and dead. Which, up until about twenty minutes ago, had seemed a great deal more likely.

“You can turn around now if you want,” he said, gathering his things into a bundle. “Where’s that dryer?”

She turned to face him, gaze involuntarily dropping to take in his towel-clad body. She blushed and looked away again.

“Right,” she said. “Um… this way.”

He followed her down the hallway to a narrow laundry room off the kitchen. It was barely big enough for the two of them, standing side by side. There were a small utility sink, a washer, and a dryer—which was already running.

“Give me your clothes,” she said, holding out her hand.

He handed over the wet bundle and she pulled open the dryer door, interrupting the cycle. She popped his clothes in with her own, closing the door and hitting the button to restart.

“Thanks,” he said, feeling awkward again, and unsure of what to do next. He was intensely aware of her closeness in the tight space as she turned toward him, looking up, then twisting shyly away. He could smell her, her damp red hair and warm body. No flowery perfume, just a subtle hint of something like tart, green apples and warm grass and her own clean-skin scent.

He really wished he were wearing something more substantial than a towel.

“Thank you,” she said, not meeting his gaze. “For saving me, I mean. You didn’t have to.”

“Yeah,” he said. “I did, actually.”

She looked up at him again, and there was something in her eyes, a kind of guileless vulnerability.

This is probably a really bad idea…

* * *

Julia extracted herself from the tangled bedclothes and Peter’s lazy, satisfied embrace. He made a little non-verbal sound of protest, reaching out to caress her naked back. She smiled and tipped her chin toward the bathroom.

“I’ll be right back,” she said.

He nodded and returned her smile, eyes at half-mast.

Inside the bathroom, she closed and locked the door, then turned on the shower. While the water ran, she opened the cabinet beneath the sink and pulled out a forensic rape kit.

Ignoring the comb used to extract hair and fibers, and the nail pick for matter that was embedded beneath the fingernails, she used the sterile swabs to meticulously collect Peter’s DNA. Once all the swab-tips were broken off and safely sealed inside sterile containers, she went ahead and got into the shower.

Moments later, scrubbed clean and feeling buoyant with success, she gathered her sterile containers, slipped them into a zippered pocket in her purse, and made her way back to the bed where she stood silently looking down at the now sleeping Peter. It was amazing to her that he had no idea who he was, or what had been done to him.

Or how long she’d been waiting for a chance to see him again.

She grabbed the purple vibrator off the table where he had carelessly left it before being so easily distracted. She paused in the kitchen to open the battery compartment and remove the cylinder. Turning it over in her hand for a moment, she smiled to herself, then cracked it open and poured the colored liquid down the garbage disposal.

It would have been far too dangerous to allow Peter to handle live virus, she mused, especially since they couldn’t be certain that he would do exactly what she wanted. Fortunately for her, he couldn’t have behaved more predictably if he’d been following a script.

She pulled her phone from her purse and sent a text.

Everything is according to plan.

Then she put the phone away and headed down into the basement lab, where she had prepared everything in advance.