“Should I call a vet?” Marnie asked.
“He’s fine. No thanks to the reporters.”
“I canceled our clients,” she said. “Patients with anxiety issues shouldn’t run that gauntlet before their screenings.”
“Thank you.” Efficient as always was Marnie. “Let the reporters stew.”
“Don’t forget you have that gala tonight,” she said. “The press will probably eat you alive if you don’t give them something.”
Joe groaned. She was right. “I’ll be out in a minute to draft something.”
He walked past the giant glass brain in the lobby. It was laced with fiber optic cables that lit up to correspond with the EEG results of past patients, including Joe. Ironically, a lot of activity pulsed through the amygdala — the center of the brain that processed anger — which suited his mood.
He closed his office door. This call was going to be tough enough to make without an audience. Edison curled up on the dog bed next to the desk, his scuffle with the cameraman apparently already forgotten. He hoped the reporters wouldn’t hassle the dog when he went out with his dog walker later. With any luck, they’d leave Edison in peace.
But right now, he had to call Vivian and warn her about the reporters, their questions, and the headlines she might have to deal with. As mad as she was at him already, this wasn’t going to make it better. And that mattered, because he sure as hell wasn’t going to let this go, and he needed her help.
Vivian didn’t answer.
Chapter 12
Avi put on his white dress gloves and picked up two cardboard boxes. One box contained a drone, the other a camera, batteries, and a tiny tripod. Perfectly normal devices for a photographer to possess. And that’s what he was posing as — a photographer. Not just any photographer either, but one who had been hired to use a drone to film tonight’s gala at the Natural History Museum hosted by Blue Dreams.
To get the job, he’d had to locate the original photographer hired by Blue Dreams and kill him. Now he would take the man’s place. Simple.
Avi had trained in up close and personal combat, but had lost his taste for it. Now, he preferred to work remotely, to avoid the touch and the smells and the cleanup. He’d made an exception for the photographer, because Avi had no time to set the job up properly. It must be done quickly.
The contract had come via standard online channels. He’d not been surprised by the job. He’d been expecting someone to be contacted from the moment he’d heard of the attempt on the prince’s life. Perhaps Tesla had been trying to kill the prince and had accidentally killed his bodyguard, and this contract was in revenge for that act. Perhaps someone had been trying to kill Tesla and had failed. Either way, Avi would complete his task.
Still holding on to the boxes, he rotated his left shoulder. A bullet had damaged his rotator cuff. Surgery and physical therapy had never put it right. He’d spent the previous day in Calvert Vaux Park hunched over a remote control, becoming familiar with this type of drone and its limitations, then thrown that drone into a dumpster so it couldn’t be traced to him. He would use the original photographer’s drone — covered with the man’s fingerprints and DNA.
His shoulder ached from the unaccustomed position and tension. Weight training kept his wounded shoulder strong, but nothing stopped the pain. Painkillers would have helped, but he’d forbidden himself from ever taking them. Drugs were a weakness, and he abhorred weakness in himself, even as he expected it in others.
He stepped out of his room at the Grand Central Hyatt and let the door fall closed behind him. This room was close to his quarry, expensive enough it would seem an unlikely place for a man like him to stay and not so expensive he needed a complicated cover identity. His driver’s license had an address in Lincoln, Nebraska, and his credit card bills went there, too. No one ever asked him about Nebraska. In fact, most people’s eyes glazed over when he mentioned it, making Lincoln the perfect cover city.
He wore a nondescript gray trench coat over a black suit. His shiny shoes were forgettable, as was his face. He’d made himself even more nonthreatening with a blond wig, a straw fedora, and round hipster glasses. People looked right through him, and they always had. As a young man, he’d hated it, but now it was his greatest gift.
Footfalls silent against the thick carpet, he walked to the elevator. With one white-gloved fingertip, he pressed the down button. A woman in a red cocktail dress breathed out alcohol fumes next to him, and he held his breath as he waited for the car. She looked like she wanted to talk, then took in his glasses and his bland expression and changed her mind. That boded well for his disguise.
A few minutes later, he was walking briskly uptown toward the Natural History Museum. A yellow cab honked, and car exhaust fouled the air. Other pedestrians jostled by with their own odors. He walked past Grand Central Terminal without sparing it a glance, his straw fedora tilted down to shadow his face from its surveillance cameras.
Based on the instructions emailed to the photographer he’d murdered, he needed to be at the event a half hour early to set up his camera and drone. He had plenty of extra batteries and an external charger, plus a special item he’d secreted in a flat gray box next to the emergency exit the day before, when he’d mapped his methods of egress from the building.
He tripped up the stairs where, with a smile, he presented the dead man’s credentials, submitted to wanding with a metal detector, and allowed his boxes to be opened and searched. He was just a simple geek come to film the event, and he had nothing to hide. The bored security guard bought into that theory, too, and barely looked at him.
No one even looked at him twice as he walked up to the second floor, behind the tail of the giant blue whale. He was here to film the event, to watch Tesla, and to search for his moment. No one needed to worry about him.
Until he wanted them to.
Chapter 13
Joe knew he should be getting dressed for tonight’s party, but instead, he sat in his parlor and tried to catch up on his email. He’d taken a day off after the sub accident, and things were still piled up. Pleasant down here, with the electric fire lit in the hearth, Edison curled at his feet, and a warm cup of Earl Grey steaming on the antique side table.
He loved the room — thick Persian carpet, floor-to-ceiling bookcases filled with leather-bound books, carved mantel over the electric fire, oil painting of the builder’s daughter in a yellow dress, and original Victorian furniture. This room had survived nearly unchanged for a century, a time capsule from the days of Jules Verne, HG Wells, and Nikola Tesla himself. The only thing from the modern era was Joe’s laptop.
But he still felt out of sorts. He’d heard nothing about a further investigation of the crash and was starting to worry they were either treating it as an accident, or they weren’t even trying to find another suspect beyond him. He’d tried to hire another submarine to go out and look at the crash site, but even Marnie hadn’t been able to find one. He could rent a dive boat, but he’d have to go outside to board it. He needed a submarine, something small enough to make it up the pipes to his dock, something he could get in and out of without going outside. He’d already ordered another one, but the company was backed up and it would take months to be delivered to New York. So, he was stuck.
A ping told him he had another email.
“Last one,” he told Edison.
The dog didn’t even twitch an ear. He was used to false promises.