“What are you doing?” she begged. She told herself that things would make sense, that someone would tell her what was going on and rid her of the sense of dread that was wracking her bowels.
She tried to ask who that man was and why he looked like Aaron and was he the real Aaron and who are you, but nothing would come. Nothing but fat dumb syllables that didn’t connect.
From someplace she heard the sounds of people. The dinner party guests had arrived, she told herself. Thank God. Maybe someone would explain things, explain why nothing was making any sense.
My head.
Her brain felt like a lightbulb loose in its socket. “What’s going on?” she asked. “Who are you?”
But he didn’t answer her. “Get her ready.”
And from behind her Cho and Pierre entered with two other men in green. They took her arms and pulled her out of the room and into the bright lights of the corridor and into another room across it where they lifted her up and laid her on a bed.
Then they began to remove her clothes.
She was too weak to stop them.
93
The chopper owner was a retired coast guard pilot named Rob Krueger who ran his own flight school out of a small airport in Plymouth. He was a friend of Neil’s, who had gone to the police academy with Krueger’s brother.
To save time, the pilot picked them up at the medevac heliport on Huntington Avenue in Boston and flew a southerly inland course straight toward Buzzards Bay. Homer’s Island lay about ten miles off the Massachusetts shore. The sky was heavily overcast and growing darker by the minute as they approached.
Krueger said he had been over the Elizabeth Islands before and knew the general layout of Homer’s. Using a detailed island map that marked the various estates, he found Vita Nova, the name of the estate that Monks’s receptionist had given. It was located on a rocky ledge that hung over Buck’s Cove.
About fifty minutes from liftoff, they crossed over the southeastern end of the Elizabeth chain and dropped to two hundred feet as they approached Homer’s. A sharp turn and the pilot pointed to Buck’s Cove, which was outlined by the night lights burning on the row of half a dozen estates.
Vita Nova, which sat at the easterly end of the cove, blazed on the darkling heights. And in the cove below, illuminated by lights burning along a long dock stretching into the water, sat a long white power cruiser.
It was the same boat in the photo in Monks’s office. The Fair Lady.
94
Above her head hung blinding lights.
She tried to move her arms, but they would not obey the commands of her brain. The same with her feet. Even her middle felt fixed in place. They had strapped her to the table. Then her vision filled with faces.
“What are you doing?” she gasped.
“A little truth, a little beauty. All you need to know on earth. I’m sure Professor Pendergast would have appreciated that. Pity. The wrong man. That makes two of us.”
She didn’t understand what he was saying and she was too fuzzy by whatever he had given her.
Pendergast. Pendergast.
Her mind rummaged for a connection. She recognized the name. Something to do with Steve. But it was too much work to recall.
Three other faces closed over hers.
“You remember Cho and Pierre. Actually, Drs. Cho Furlon and Pierre Shan. And this is Dr. Max DuPre, your faithful chauffeur.”
Unlike Monks, who was in white, they were in green scrubs. She could vaguely recognize the faces. They smiled at her then pulled up their masks.
Someone put a needle in her arm, and magically an IV bag appeared above her head. She smelled chemical odors.
Please! Her mind screamed. What are you doing? What do you want with me? But the words got stuck in her brain and would not come.
Then her brain quieted.
And the last thing she saw was the light fixtures beginning to spin.
And the last thing she heard was a soothing voice, “Good night, Beauty Girl.”
The last thing she felt was Aaron Monks marking her face with a felt-tip pen.
95
The pilot lowered them to the beach, guided by the dock lights. The boat looked empty, although a night-light burned in the pilot compartment.
Dacey, Neil, and Steve got out with their weapons drawn. While Neil covered them from the beach, Steve and Dacey headed for the boat. Nobody was aboard, but a laptop and navigation charts were laid out on a table beside the steering wheel in the fore cabin. One chart showed the entire eastern seaboard, with details of the inland water ways. Others were of the eastern waters of Florida and the West Indies.
At the end of the dock rose a long set of wooden stairs leading up to Vita Nova, which glowed at the cliff top. There was no movement anywhere, no sounds but the waves and the chittering of cicadas. Overhead brooded a thick ceiling of clouds.
The chopper pilot had cut the engines and waited as the others climbed the stairs to the top of the cliff.
Neil and Dacey each carried a shotgun and a Glock in a shoulder holster, while Steve had his service weapon and a belt of stun grenades.
No one was certain what they would find in the mansion, but every fiber of Steve’s being told him that Dana was here and in trouble.
At the top, they split but kept in whispered contact by their PDAs. They circled the house to determine any activity inside. Exterior lights burned as did two rooms at the rear, including the kitchen. An upstairs room was also lit. But no sounds came from the house. And no cars in the driveway, although there were two golf carts.
Steve and Dacey reconnoitered at the front while Neil covered the kitchen in the rear.
The front door was locked, but Dacey was prepared. From her pack she removed a handgrip plunger that she fastened to the glass panel near the handle and cut an arc with a glass cutter, then snapped it off, incised the sector, put her hand through the hole, and unlocked the door from the inside.
The interior was dead silent. A light burned in rear rooms, and in the parlor on the right. Steve pointed for Neil and Dacey to check the lit bedroom upstairs while he headed for the kitchen, his weapon gripped in both hands.
There was no sign of life in the kitchen, but there was a single champagne glass and an open bottle of Taittinger.
Neil French and Dacey came down shaking their heads. “Two packed travel bags,” Dacey whispered. “Women’s clothes.”
Steve motioned for them to spread throughout the rest of the first floor. As they headed into the other rooms, he stopped in his tracks.
On a stool at a counter in the kitchen he saw Dana’s bright green leather handbag. The one she had bought last summer when they were in New York for a long weekend.
When Neil and Dacey looked back, Steve held up the bag and mouthed: “Dana.”
Steve raised his gun and moved down the hall behind Dacey. She took only a few steps when she stopped and cupped her hand to her ear.
A sound. She turned and pointed to a door in a hall just off the kitchen.
Steve moved to it and nodded. A faint beeping. Neil nodded and they readied their weapons at the door. At a nod from Steve, Dacey pulled open the door.
The beeping was louder and more distinct. Like what you heard in hospitals. Heart monitors. Then from someplace below they heard muffled voices.