Transhuman Page 3

Minteer froze, although Luke could see a flood of emotions in her deeply green eyes. Do it, he urged silently. Do it.

  She pushed the phone back toward him. Before Luke could say anything, she pulled her own smartphone from the pocket of her white coat.

  He held his breath as she thumbed the phone’s keyboard. She could be calling security, he realized.

  “Dr. O’Shaughnessy? This is Tamara Minteer.” Her eyes met Luke’s, then flicked away. “Look … I’ve, uh, I’ve got a personal emergency and I’ll have to leave town for a few weeks.” Luke heard a voice gabbling from the phone’s speaker. “Yes,” Minteer said. “Two or three weeks. It just came up all of a sudden. I hate to take off on such short notice … No, it can’t be helped. It’s … personal. Very urgent. Life or death, literally.”

  From the tone of the voice squeaking from the smartphone, Luke could tell that Dr. O’Shaughnessy was very upset. But at last Minteer gave a tentative smile and said, “Oh, thank you for understanding, Bridget. Yes, I’ll stay in touch with you. Of course. Thanks again.”

  She snapped the phone shut and glared at Luke. “I hope you realize that I’ve just put my career in the toilet.”

  “No you haven’t,” Luke said. “When Angela’s cured, you’ll be on top of the world.”

  Minteer shook her head. “The child isn’t a lab mouse, Professor.”

  “But it’s the same genes!” Luke insisted. “Don’t you see? Our genes for controlling telomerase production are the same as the mouse’s. We share those particular genes in common.”

  “But that doesn’t mean…” She left the thought unfinished and said instead, “You’re right. You’re the only hope that Angela has.”

  He reached across the table and took both her hands in his own. “Thank you, Tammy. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.”

  “Tamara,” she said. “My name is Tamara. Not Doc and not Tammy. Don’t ever call me Tammy.”

  He nodded, grinning. “Okay, Tamara. I’m Luke.”

  * * *

  EVEN WITH ALL the paperwork filled out it wasn’t easy to get Angela out of the hospital. The child was deeply asleep when Luke and Tamara got to her room. An IV was in one frail arm.

  “We’ll need a gurney,” Tamara said.

  “And an orderly to manhandle it,” said Luke, knowing he was not physically up to the task.

  “I just hope O’Shaughnessy doesn’t pop in on us,” she muttered as she went to the door and headed out into the corridor.

  Luke looked down at his granddaughter.

  I’m going to save you, Angie. I’m going to save you. Or die trying.

  Two orderlies pushed a gurney into the room and, under Dr. Minteer’s direction, transferred Angela’s sleeping body to the wheeled bed. She tucked a pair of blankets around the child as one of the orderlies pushed the gurney and the other guided the IV stand alongside. Angela stirred and mumbled but didn’t wake up.

  Luke raced ahead and went to the parking lot for the Ford Expedition, his heart thundering. It was bitingly cold out there; his lungs began to rasp painfully. For an agonizing few moments he couldn’t find the SUV, couldn’t remember where he’d parked it. Then he fished in his trouser pocket and pushed the remote key. Halfway up the line a red van blinked and beeped.

  Angie, Tamara, and the two orderlies were waiting just inside the hospital’s entrance when he tooled the van up the driveway. It was a lot bigger than the sedan he’d left at his apartment building, but it steered easily enough.

  They bundled Angie into the makeshift cot Luke had built into the back of the van. Then Minteer climbed into the right-hand seat, and Luke slid in behind the wheel.

  She gave him an odd look. “I feel like Bonnie and Clyde,” she said.

  “Yeah. Me, too.” He gunned the engine to life and put the van in gear.

  “We’d better stop at my apartment and let me throw some clothes into a suitcase.”

  “Right.”

  And they drove away from the hospital with Angela sleeping peacefully and Luke feeling, not like Bonnie and Clyde, but like the guy who had kidnapped the Lindbergh baby.

  Chelsea

  FOLLOWING TAMARA’S DIRECTIONS, Luke drove across the Tobin Bridge over the Mystic River toward the town of Chelsea.

  “Where’s Old Ironsides?” he asked as he steered past a big semi rig belching black diesel fumes.

  Tamara waved vaguely. “She’s docked at a pier over in Charlestown someplace.”

  “I’ve never seen the ship.”

  “Me neither.”

  She guided him through a maze of streets and up a hill that was crowned by what looked to Luke like a small, rather shabby hospital.

  “Soldiers and sailors retirement home,” Tamara explained. Pointing halfway down the street to a modern-looking four-story redbrick apartment building, she said, “That’s my place. You can park in the back.”

  Once Luke slid the van into a parking slot and turned off its engine, she ducked out and hurried toward the building’s rear entrance. “Give me ten minutes,” she called to him over her shoulder as she unlocked the door and stepped through.

  Luke got out, too, his legs already aching from a twenty-minute drive. I’m too old for this, he told himself. How the hell am I going to drive all the way across the country?

  Shaking his head, he walked to the rear of the van and pulled its back hatch open. Angela was sleeping peacefully, on her back, breathing regularly, the IV still in her arm. He tucked the blankets around her more snugly.

  This is crazy, Luke told himself. I ought to have my head examined.

  For December, it was a beautiful day. Cold, of course, but the sky was bright blue, and the wind coming off the harbor wasn’t too bad. Luke pulled his woolen watch cap from the pocket of his windbreaker and pulled it over his nearly bald head.

  Squinting up at the apartment windows, he realized that Minteer could be calling the police instead of packing a bag. He considered taking off without her. No sense letting her turn me in, he thought. Even if they can’t arrest me for kidnapping they’ll take Angie back to the hospital, and that’ll be the end of her.

  Gently, he closed the rear hatch, then went back to the front of the van and climbed in. He started up the engine, to get the heater running again. Then he pulled off his cap and stuffed it back in his pocket. He glanced up at the apartment windows onced more. I can’t get through this without her, he realized. I’m an old man who’s trying to make believe he’s some kind of superhero. Who am I trying to kid? And he knew the answer. He was kidding himself.

  But Angie’s life depends on me. I’ve got to do this, got to get through it somehow.

  The back door to the building opened and Tamara came out, wearing a long, warm-looking dark blue coat and pulling a roll-along bag with one gloved hand.

  Luke popped out of the van again and helped her wrestle the bag onto the backseat beside his own well-worn suitcase.

  “What’ve you got in there, concrete?”

  She glared at him. “A woman has to pack a lot more than an extra pair of socks, Professor.”

  They both climbed into the van, and he revved the engine. “I thought Chelsea was nothing but a bunch of junkyards,” he said as he steered up the driveway and back onto the street.

  “It used to be,” Tamara said, “but this section of the town is really rather pretty. You can get a wonderful view of the whole city of Boston from the park in front of the veterans home.”

  Nodding, he asked, “How do I get to I-95?”

  “North or south?”

  “South.”

  “You’ll have to go back into the city, then down to Quincy. Follow I-93.”

  “Okay.”

  As he threaded through the streets, heading for the interstate, Tamara asked, “Where do you intend to go, Professor?”

  “Luke. Call me Luke.”

  She nodded. “Okay. As long as you don’t call me Tammy. My name is Tamara.”

  “You made that clear back in the hospital,” he sai
d.

  “So where do you intend to go?”

  “Philadelphia.”

  “Philadelphia?” she echoed, surprised. “I would think you’d head for Canada, get over the border.”

  Luke shook his head. “I’ve got friends at the University of Pennsylvania. Former students of mine. They’ll take us in and help us get the meds and other chemicals we need for Angie.”

  “Oh. I see.”

  “Besides, you have to go through a customs station to enter Canada. I don’t want to be stopped by some guy in a uniform with a missing-person alert in his hand.”

  Tamara nodded. “That’s right,” she said, her voice going hollow. “We’re fugitives, aren’t we?”

  “Not yet, maybe. But as soon as my daughter finds out I’ve taken Angie, we will be.”

  University Hospital

  “BUT SHE CAN’T be gone!” Lenore insisted.

  The head of the hospital’s administrative staff sat stiffly behind her desk, Angela’s discharge papers spread before her. She was a large, gray-haired, motherly figure, inured to the emotional eruptions of patients’ relatives.

  “She was discharged this morning in her grandfather’s care,” she said softly, placatingly. “All the forms are correctly filled out.”

  “But we weren’t told!”

  Shaking her head, the chief administrator pawed through the papers and pulled out the consent form that Lenore and Del had signed.

  “You gave the power of discharge to your father, Mrs. Villanueva, when we admitted Angela.”

  “But he didn’t tell me he was taking her out of the hospital!” Lenore screeched. “Where’s he gone? Where’s he taken my baby?”

  The door to the administrator’s office burst open and Del strode in, his face a thundercloud.

  “I got here as soon as I could, Norrie,” he said, rushing to her and kneeling beside her chair.

  “Dad took Angie out of the hospital,” she bleated.

  Getting to his feet, looming over the administrator’s desk, Del demanded, “How could this happen? We’re the child’s parents, for Christ’s sake. You can’t just let her be taken away without notifying us.”

  The administrator could see that nothing she might say would placate these two. The hospital’s in the clear, she thought. All the forms are correctly filled out. If the grandfather took the child without telling her parents, there’s nothing we could do about it. It’s not our problem.

  But Del Villanueva was standing in front of her desk, furious, radiating dangerous rage.

  Looking up at him, the administrator reached for her phone. “Let me call the hospital’s chief executive; he’s the man in charge.”

  * * *

  ODOM WEXLER’S MAIN job, as chief executive officer of University Hospital, was to talk well-heeled donors out of their money. Hardly a week went by when he wasn’t leading a small parade of potential benefactors through the hospital’s wards and labs and gleaming, efficient treatment centers, all smiles and pleasantries as he pried open their wallets.

  But this morning he felt genuine pity for the couple who sat before his handsome desk, a mother in tears and a father who looked as if he wanted to wreck the building.

  “This is terrible,” he said, focusing on Lenore. “We’ll do whatever it takes to get your daughter back here, Mrs. Villanueva.”

  His chief administrator raised a cautioning finger. “Technically, sir,” she said, “Angela Villanueva is no longer a patient here.”

  Wexler absently stroked his beard, then shook his head. “This is no time for technicalities. A child is missing. She’s been abducted.”

  Del nodded vigorously. “Call the police. We’ve got to find Angie before it’s too late.”

  “I’ll do better than that,” said Wexler. Punching the intercom button on his desktop phone console, he called, “Amanda, put me through to the FBI’s Boston office.”

  * * *

  IT TOOK MORE than two hours for the FBI to send an agent to the hospital. Del had tried phoning his father-in-law’s cell phone, then his university office, finally his home. No answer, only canned messages.

  “Where is he?” Lenore cried. “Where’s he taken Angie?”

  Wexler kept the Villanuevas in his office, ordered lunch for them, tried to get them to relax a little.

  “He can’t have gotten far with her,” he soothed, as they sat at the round conference table in the corner of his office, over lunch trays. Lenore hardly touched the sandwich in front of her. Del tore at his like a tiger dismembering its prey.

  “Mrs. Villanueva, please try to eat something,” Wexler coaxed. “You must keep up your strength.”

  Lenore reached for the plastic bowl of salad on her tray. “We’re taking up so much of your time…”

  “Don’t worry about that. Finding Angela is more important than my morning’s regular agenda.” He knew it was true, although he also fretted that he’d had to cancel the meeting with a committee of bankers that had taken him several months to arrange.

  The intercom buzzed. Wexler excused himself and hurried to his desk.

  “Mr. Hightower is here,” his secretary’s voice announced. “From the FBI.”

  “Show him right in!”

  Jerry Hightower filled the doorway as he stepped into Wexler’s office. He was big, in every dimension, like a professional football lineman. Yet he seemed light on his feet as Wexler led him to the table where the Villanuevas were sitting.

  The FBI agent’s face was almost a coppery color; clearly he was a Native American. Unsmiling, black ponytail hanging down his back, eyes like onyx.

  He sat heavily between Lenore and her husband as the two of them poured out their fears to him. He listened patiently, letting them talk themselves out.

  Then he looked across the table to Wexler. “How was he able to take the kid out of the hospital?”

  Wexler gestured helplessly, both palms up. “It was a strictly correct procedure. He filled out all the proper forms.”

  Hightower made a sound that might have been a grunt. “All the proper forms. But he’s taken the child away from her parents.”

  “That’s kidnapping!” Del snapped.

  “Maybe,” said Hightower.

  “What are you going to do?” Lenore asked.

  Hightower looked into her red-rimmed eyes and said simply, “Find them.”

  New Jersey Turnpike

  “PULL OVER AT the next gas station,” Luke said.

  He had let Tamara take over the driving once they crossed the Tappan Zee Bridge and entered New Jersey. Now, nearly half an hour later, soft wet flakes of snow were sifting out of the gray sky.

  “I’m okay,” Tamara said. “I don’t mind driving.”

  “I’ve got to make a phone call,” Luke explained.

  “Use your cell.”

  He shook his head. “Pay phone is better. They can’t trace it.”

  “Are you sure?” Tamara asked.

  “Pretty sure,” Luke said. “Anyway, I’ll make it real quick, so they won’t have time to trace it.”

  She glanced at him uncertainly, then turned back to watch the road. The turnpike traffic was light, mainly because trucks had their own lanes, separate from automobiles.

  Luke turned on the van’s radio and fished through blaring rock music and twangy country tunes until he found a weather report.

  “… snow accumulation expected to be six to eight inches through tonight,” an announcer was saying cheerfully. “Tomorrow will be fair and cold. Temperatures at sunrise will be in the twenties for most of the region.”

  Luke clicked the radio off.

  “We’d better find a motel for tonight,” he said.

  “Why?” Tamara asked. “Philly’s only an hour or so away.”

  “I don’t want to take any chances driving in the snow. By tomorrow morning they’ll have cleared off the roads.”

  She nodded glumly, then pointed to a sign announcing a service area five miles ahead.

  When they
reached it, Tamara pulled up to a gas pump. “You make your call, I’ll fill the tank and check on Angela.”

  Luke nodded tightly, ducked out of the van, and sprinted through the falling snow to the service center’s restaurant. A trio of pay phones hung on the wall just inside the entrance. He suddenly realized that he didn’t have much change in his pockets and went to the restaurant’s cashier to ask for a couple of dollars’ worth of quarters.

  Once he fed money into the phone, it took a few moments for the connection to go through. Luke peered through the building’s glass doors to watch Tamara leaning into the van’s rear deck.

  Is Angie all right? he wondered.

  Then a voice in the phone’s handset said, “Hello?”

  “Van?” he replied. “It’s Luke Abramson.”

  “Prof? Good to hear from you. How are you?”

  Van McAllister had been one of Luke’s graduate students six years ago. Now he was an assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s department of cellular biology.

  “I’m okay, Van. But I need your help.”

  “Sure, Prof, what can I do for you?”

  Three minutes later, McAllister’s voice was distinctly less eager. “Gee, I don’t know if I can get all that together for you on such short notice.”

  “It’s important, Van,” Luke urged. “Vital. My granddaughter’s life depends on it.”

  “The kid is with you?”

  “I’ll explain it all to you tomorrow.”

  “Well … okay. I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Fine. I’ll see you tomorrow, in your lab.”

  “What time?”

  “The sooner the better.”

  “Let me check my calendar…”

  Luke pictured McAllister poking at his computer keyboard.

  “Could you make it at seven thirty? Before my students start coming in.”

  “Seven thirty. Fine. In your lab.”

  “In my lab. Room four-oh-eight in the biology building.”

  “Four-oh-eight at seven thirty. Got it.”

  “Uh … Prof … is your granddaughter with you?”

  “Yes. With her attending physician.”

  “Oh. Okay. Yeah. See you tomorrow, then.”