Deadly Design - Emarsan Page 0,108
his pocket because I can’t call them. “Last month, I had your parents followed,” he says. “My guy—I have a guy, a few guys, actually—followed your parents to the cryogenics facility in Nebraska. They were going to visit you. Well, visit the long cylinder they thought your body was being stored in. I knew immediately you weren’t there. There was no way Claudia was going to freeze you. Not with what you have locked inside you. But your poor parents had no clue. That 3 2 0
Copyright © 2015 by Debra Dockter.
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was when I knew they were a dead end to finding you. But I kept trying. I had people watching Dr. Bartholomew’s move-ments, where she traveled, who she talked to. But she was so careful. Then you called me. You found me. ” He puts a hand on my shoulder. “With you on the loose, you know she’s watching them. I guarantee your mom can’t drive to the grocery store without someone following her. And no doubt there are people listening in on every phone call on the chance you’ll try to contact them. Then, of course, there’s the matter of their safety.”
“As long as they think I’m frozen, they’re not a threat to her.” Every time I consider calling Cami or my parents, I think about Virginia. She fled her home because of what she feared Dr. Bartholomew would do to her, either as a way to find me or because she knew too much. If my parents find out the truth about Bartholomew, what’s to keep them from having a car accident because the brakes failed? Or maybe Cami will be walking to her car after the Sak & Save closes and some masked man will . . .
Dr. Rubenstein pulls up a chair for me to sit down in, then rolls another one over for himself.
“Why?” I ask. “I mean, I get that she wants the longevity gene. She wants to know how to make people live longer. She can make billions of dollars if she can sell it to people.” I lift my shirt, looking at the incisions that are starting to morph into scars that will always be with me. “So this was all for money.”
“Money is a pretty powerful motivator. But for her, I think it’s more about redemption.”
3 2 1
Copyright © 2015 by Debra Dockter.
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“Redemption.”
Rubenstein leans forward, his elbows on his knees. He seems calmer than usual. Maybe it’s because it’s late evening and he’s tired. Maybe it’s because being in a lab filled with floating hearts requires calmness. Or maybe he took his ADD meds today.
“I spent a lot of time with Edward Bartholomew before he died. He wanted to get to know me before bequeathing his research to me. So I got to know him pretty well. His father, their father, came over to this country after World War II. I thought it was interesting that your parents knew him as Dr. Mueller, because that was his father’s original name. It was changed when he was brought over to the States as one of the many scientists who were divided up amongst the Allied nations.
People were horrified by the medical experiments conducted in the concentration camps, but there was also this sense of intrigue about what their torturous work might have yielded.
Dr. Mueller was settled in a small town in New Mexico, where the government supplied him with a new set of patients, who were being exposed to radiation. He was young, handsome, intelligent, and after some years in the States, he managed to win the heart of pretty young secretary.
“They married and had two children. Then eight-year-old Eddie got cancer, and his mother started thinking that maybe her parents, who’d been against the marriage, had been right.
She decided that Eddie’s illness was God’s way of punishing her for her disobedience and her husband for his sins. She took the 3 2 2
Copyright © 2015 by Debra Dockter.
FOR REVIEWING PURPOSES ONLY--NOT FOR SALE
kid. Drove him to some shit hotel in Arizona and told him they were going to stay there until he died.”
Eight years old. I don’t want to sympathize with Edward Bartholomew. I won’t sympathize with him, but I can’t help but feel badly for a sick little kid with a crazy mom and an evil father.
“Daddy came to the rescue. He found them. Brought Edward back. As part of Mueller’s working for the United States Government, little Eddie