Flashpoint

  “It’s good to see you, Fiske.” It was half a lie. Yes, it was good to see him, but it was terrible to see him like this.

  “Nellie!” He was absurdly happy to welcome her, which showed how lonely and miserable he’d been.

  She hugged him, and couldn’t get over the feeling that she was embracing a burlap sack filled with Lincoln Logs. “I’m sorry no one’s been able to visit. We’ve all been — busy.”

  He gave her a warm smile. “I know what that’s about. Remember, my name is Cahill.” The smile wavered. “And yet, since you last came here, I seem to have become — old.”

  “No way,” she told him firmly.

  “I’m not a child, Nellie. Sooner or later, everybody comes to the end of the road.” His voice cracked a little. “I do confess, however, that my exit seems to have arrived rather — unexpectedly. And now, just when I need him most, my doctor has succumbed to a tragic accident.”

  Nellie leaned closer. “Listen to me, Fiske. You’re not dying.”

  “That’s very kind of you, dear, but —”

  “I’m not being kind,” she insisted, “I’m telling you the truth. There’s nothing wrong with you except that your sweet, sainted doctor was working for Pierce. He’s been experimenting on you with Gideon’s serum.”

  “Interesting,” the old man said, wide-eyed. “Is that why I feel like I can leap tall buildings, when in reality I can barely walk across this room?”

  She nodded. “We all know what that stuff does to people.”

  “Thank you, Nellie, for letting me know exactly what’s been happening to me. It puts my mind at rest, although it can do nothing to change the outcome of all this. For what Gideon created there is no cure. Hard cheese for me, unfortunately.”

  Nellie took a small case from her pocketbook and removed a carefully wrapped syringe. “This is the antidote. It’s untested, but it comes straight from Olivia Cahill’s notebook.”

  Fiske was amazed. “How did you get it?”

  “It was a family affair. Cahills collected the ingredients from all over the world — mostly Amy and Dan. They’re amazing. I’ll give you the whole story later. But right now I have to ask you to be a guinea pig again — for a good cause this time. Can we test the antidote on you?”

  The old man was already rolling up his sleeve. “Even if it’s deadly poison, I’d be no worse off than I already am. Let’s have it!”

  Nellie had to clench her teeth to keep them from chattering as she injected the opaque liquid. One person was already dead as a result of her actions. If it happened to Fiske . . .

  “How do you feel?” she asked anxiously.

  “I feel — I feel —” Suddenly, Fiske twisted in agony, a raspy rattle issuing from his throat. An instant later, his eyes rolled back in his head and he collapsed against his pillows.

  Panicked, Nellie took hold of his shoulders and shook him. “Fiske — wake up! Don’t do this to me!” She reached for the call button to the nursing station, wondering what on earth she could possibly tell them — that he was having an allergic reaction to Anatolian leopard whiskers and the slightly poisonous venom of the Tonle Sap water snake?

  A hand reached up and grabbed her arm — a surprisingly strong hand.

  “No need, my dear. I’m going to be just fine.”

  Chapter 22

  Amy worked the controls with the confidence and ease of a seasoned pilot.

  In the monitoring booth, the supervisor watched her video feed. “No way that girl hasn’t flown before,” he said to Jake, who was fidgeting uncomfortably in the chair beside him. “She’s an ace!”

  The flight simulator was located on the campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the instructor was a former Navy Top Gun. The man never would have bothered with a novice pilot, and a civilian at that. But Admiral McAllister owed Eisenhower Holt — Hamilton’s father — a favor. The Cahills, Jake reflected, seemed to be owed an endless amount of favors all around the world.

  Through the glass, the simulator tilted forward and righted itself as Amy put her “aircraft” into a dive and then leveled off. The Top Gun whistled with admiration. “Outstanding! I know test pilots who couldn’t match your girlfriend’s scores!”

  Jake winced. Every word of praise fell on him like a hammer blow. He’d been hoping that Amy would wash out at this, so she could take the antidote right away and let Nellie do the flying.

  “She’s not my girlfriend,” he mumbled aloud.

  “Yeah, right. I’ve seen the way you two look at each other.” The man spoke into the comm microphone. “Doing fine. Now bank to the left and take it to five thousand feet. Over.”

  “Roger that.” Amy performed the maneuver flawlessly.

  Jake looked on bleakly. She’d never agree to the shot now. The serum was making her too good.

  The instructor regarded him in amazement. “What’s your problem? She’s killing it, and you’ve got a face like your dog just died.”

  “I’ve got to get out of here,” Jake moaned. “Is there someplace I could get a cup of coffee?”

  “Cafeteria’s down the hall to your left. Pick me up an iced tea, will you?”

  Once in the corridor, Jake crumpled against the wall. He used to think that nothing could be worse than witnessing Amy’s deterioration with no antidote in sight.

  Now the antidote was more than in sight — it was in their hands! And still Amy refused it.

  He’d been wrong before. This was worse.

  The supervisor watched Jake out the door, then turned back to his monitor. The girl was so focused and in control that he was barely paying attention now. But what he saw next made him sit bolt upright. Amy’s eyes rolled back in her head. Her body stiffened, her hands still gripping the wheel, her arms shaking.

  The Top Gun was not a doctor and could not have explained what was happening to her. One thing, however, was obvious to him. If she’d been flying a real plane and not a simulator, the result would have been an engine stall, a steep nosedive, a fiery explosion, and a search for the black box flight recorder to figure out what had gone wrong.

  He hit the ABORT button and raced up the ramp to the simulator. The door had opened automatically, providing a view of Amy slumped over the controls. He eased her back in the seat and slapped gently at her pale cheeks.

  “Okay, kid. Come back. You’re all right.”

  Amy’s eyelids fluttered open. “What — ?”

  “You tell me. You passed out and then you crashed.”

  She frowned. “Jake — the guy I came with — did he see?”

  The man shook his head. “He went out for coffee.”

  She set her jaw. “He cannot find out. Not a word, okay?”

  “Not my business,” he agreed. “But you shouldn’t fly, or even take lessons. Not until a doctor clears you first. You can’t take the risk that what happened today will happen when you’re really up there. Understand?”

  She nodded, understanding perfectly. The Top Gun was not a Cahill. Which meant he didn’t even know the meaning of the word risk.

  Dan felt his ears pop as the high-speed elevator bore him up to the thirty-seventh floor, where Aunt Beatrice lived in a luxury penthouse.

  Figures, he thought in disgust. When she was our guardian, she kept us low-rent, dumped off on a series of au pairs. He smiled. He couldn’t regret that part, since it had brought Nellie into their lives.

  The marble décor of the hallway reminded Dan of Rome, only newer, and with fresh flowers everywhere. The Cahills had plenty of money to go around, but Dan found himself resenting that his great-aunt — who did jack squat for the family — was sharing so generously in it.

  Another resident gave him a dirty look as they passed in the corridor, the man’s nose twitching. Probably doesn’t like kids, Dan reflected before remembering that the package he was carrying most lik
ely didn’t smell so great. He was already half sorry he’d come here, and he hadn’t even knocked on the door yet.

  And then there she was, ancient Aunt Beatrice, in her mid-eighties now. She stepped back to allow him to enter, presenting her wrinkled, rouged cheek to be kissed. In some ways, she resembled her younger sister, Dan’s grandmother, Grace, but minus the lively intelligence and good humor. Grace’s eyes had been twin sparklers on the Fourth of July, her smile utterly captivating. Aunt Beatrice’s eyes looked like two stewed prunes, and she never smiled at all.

  “You haven’t grown much,” the old lady observed, as if he had stayed short on purpose.

  “Nice to see you, too,” Dan replied, peering around the palatial apartment in search of the one he had really come to visit.

  At last, he received the greeting he’d been waiting for. A silver Egyptian Mau wandered out of the kitchen, tail in the air. “Mrrrp.”

  “Saladin!” Dan was overjoyed to see Grace’s cat — technically, Amy and Dan’s cat by inheritance. Saladin trotted over and presented his noble head to be scratched.

  Dan began to unwrap his parcel. “I brought you some fresh snapper. Quincy Market — the good stuff.”

  At the smell of fish, Saladin rubbed up against Dan’s jeans, nudging him in the direction of the kitchen and his food bowl.

  “Your cat has been horrible, by the way,” Aunt Beatrice called from the living room. “His infernal purring keeps me up all night, and don’t get me started on that awful litter box.”

  “Do you change it every week?” Dan asked.

  “Of course not. That’s why I choose not to keep animals in the apartment — so I won’t have to deal with such malodorous things. I simply don’t understand why you and your sister can’t take him!”

  Dan had a vision of poor Saladin scrambling for his life with a Cambodian crocodile in pursuit. “Grace would have wanted it this way.”

  He was laying out the snapper when he heard another voice. This one belonged to the last person he expected to encounter in a Cahill home.

  “The whole trouble with the United Nations is there are too many foreigners!”

  Dan’s head snapped up. “Pierce?” he exclaimed in bewilderment.

  Through the kitchen doorway, he could see the TV tuned to CNN — Pierce, onstage, haranguing a worshipful crowd.

  “It’s his last big speech before the clambake,” Aunt Beatrice enthused. “I swear, if I were a younger woman, I’d go to Pierce Landing to show my support in person.”

  Didn’t it figure? She was a Piercer.

  “Look at dear Debi Ann,” the old lady went on, brimming with admiration. “Always by his side, so loyal. What a perfect first lady she’ll make. She’s a cousin, you know.”

  “I’ve met her kids,” Dan commented. “Human-being-wise, she’s one for two.”

  Aunt Beatrice wasn’t even listening. “They have a perfect marriage. I’m so glad Rutherford found Debi Ann after that silly infatuation with Hope.”

  “Hope?” Dan choked. The mere mention of Mom’s name clutched right at his heart. “You mean Mom? She used to date Pierce?” He shuddered, unwilling to let his vision of Pierce tarnish the tiny shards of memory he carried of his mother.

  “He was in love with her, poor man. But she only had eyes for that awful Arthur Trent.”

  Dan glared at her. “That ‘awful Arthur Trent’ was my father.”

  “Hope was so headstrong — like her mother,” the old lady rambled on. “She was too flighty to appreciate a sterling character like Rutherford.”

  All at once, Dan decided he’d had all he could take of his great-aunt’s company. “I guess I’d better get going. Nice to see you, Aunt Beatrice. Peace out, Saladin.”

  “It was wonderful of you to come,” the old lady replied formally, as if speaking to a stranger. “You’ve always been a good boy deep down. Such a pity that your sister doesn’t share your sense of responsibility.”

  Dan saw red. “Don’t say that!” How dare this woman who had as much warmth and humanity as Saladin’s fresh fish dump all over Amy, who was taking the troubles of the entire world onto her shoulders? “Amy’s got more sense of responsibility than anybody I know! She’s devoted her whole life to this family, the same way Grace always did, maybe even more! She didn’t come with me because she couldn’t! She’s sick —” His voice broke. “Really sick.”

  For the first time, his great-aunt seemed genuinely moved. “What’s wrong with her?”

  Dan was on the verge of tears. He was holding it together dealing with Amy’s situation. But having to talk about it was almost more than he could handle. “It’s — a rare condition —”

  “Bring her to me,” the old woman insisted. “I’ll take her to my personal physician.”

  “I — I gotta go!” He fled, taking the stairs for all thirty-six flights so his elderly aunt couldn’t follow him.

  From the mansion on Pierce Landing, the distant Maine coast was nothing but a thin strip of purple capping the endless Atlantic blue.

  Cara slipped out of her parents’ home and stood on the stone patio watching the glow of the sun just beneath the horizon. A lighthouse winked.

  “America,” came a voice behind her. “Starting tomorrow, it’s going to be ours.”

  Her father came out to join her, placing an arm around her shoulders.

  She laughed. “You’re not invading it; you’re running for president.”

  “Same difference,” he told her. “Everything you do in this life, every undertaking, every goal you set yourself is a kind of battle. And you can win or lose. Never forget that, Cara. No matter how great your position, losing is always a possibility.”

  “You never lose.”

  “Once,” he admitted, his eyes clouding at the memory of Hope Cahill. “But that was a long time ago. And I want you to know that the presidency is just the beginning. One day, we Pierces will take our place at the head of a family of nations never before seen on this planet. I’ve made it our destiny.”

  “One thing at a time. Right, Dad?”

  He beamed at her. “Forever practical. I need someone like you — someone who understands that every grand design must be implemented one step at a time. I’ve been watching you these past weeks.”

  She tensed for a moment. Watching her? What had he seen? What did he know?

  “It’s always been understood that your brother would succeed me, but lately I’ve been wondering if he has the stuff. There’s a lot of Mom in him. We don’t need more teddy bears; we need moxie! The way he gummed things up in Cambodia —”

  “Those Cahills are not to be underestimated,” she offered in defense of Galt. Cara knew her brother couldn’t stand her, and the feeling was pretty much mutual. But it was hard to grow up in the shadow of a bombastic dynamo — and harder still for Galt, who had once been Dad’s fair-haired boy, and now seemed to have lost that most-favored status.

  “I know,” Pierce sighed. “I remember their mother. But you — you’re a true Pierce. Don’t go waltzing off with some handsome young man, because I’ve got a big future in mind for you.” The sun slipped behind the strip of mainland, leaving them in dusk. “It may look peaceful now, but just wait till tomorrow. Boats, helicopters — the joint’s going to be jumping. Everybody who’s anybody will be coming right here. This little island will be the center of the universe.”

  She experienced a flicker of regret. He was still her father. And in his own way, he loved her. “You really think you can win? The presidency, I mean?”

  He flashed her an enigmatic grin. “Big things come in small packages.”

  Something about the way he said it worried her. It was mischievous, but also ominous — the tone of a prankster whose prank is something truly terrible.

  She tried to conceal her misgivings in order to draw him out. “Our next president talks in riddle
s, Dad?” she chided.

  “Big things come in small packages,” he repeated. “And I’ve got six, hidden all around the globe. Don’t worry, you’ll know soon enough. The whole world will know soon enough.”

  Her father would not reveal his twisted plan, whatever it was.

  Cara set her jaw. He was right about one thing, though. She was a true Pierce. And Pierces didn’t hesitate to do what needed to be done.

  Chapter 23

  The Zodiac inflatable raft cut through the choppy waves at high speed, shaking the four occupants like rag dolls and drenching them with cold water.

  “I’m going to puke,” Dan threatened in the darkness.

  “Such a lovely word,” Ian commented miserably. “Have you considered something more civilized, like ‘throw up’ or perhaps ‘give back’?”

  “In my hood, they call it ‘tossing a sidewalk pizza,’” Jonah managed.

  “Your ‘hood’?” Hamilton echoed from his place at the wheel. “You live in a row of twenty-million-dollar palaces. Do you even have sidewalks?”

  They had left the coast of Maine just after midnight, navigating via GPS in near-total blackness. A wind had come up early on, and the ocean was rough and inhospitable.

  “You think we missed it, yo?” Jonah worried. “It’s mad small, right?”

  “According to the GPS, it’s dead ahead,” Hamilton insisted.

  Ian took out his phone, cupping his hands around it to protect it from the spray. “Cara, are you there? We can’t find the island.”

  “It’s right here where it always is,” her voice crackled in reply. “Oh, look, the swelling has gone down on your nose. You’re almost cute again.”

  “Cut it out,” Dan snapped. “This isn’t a pleasure cruise. We’re tossing pizzas here. Can’t you turn on a light or something?”