Thomas Hoover - Syndrome

"She's okay, isn't she?" came a plaintive, slurred mumble. "In her letter it sounded like she’d lost her memory or something. She didn't sound right."

It was a question that cut him to the core.

"Mrs. Starr, I think we should focus on you right now. You've had a traumatic episode and you've injured yourself pretty seriously. You may have to stay here at the institute for a few days so we can take care of you." He took her hand which felt deathly cold. "Tell me, is there anyone we should notify of your whereabouts so they won't be alarmed?"

"There's an address book in my purse." Her eyelids flickered. "Those are all people I'm close to. I just want to sleep. I can't think now."

Good, he thought, the sedative is finally kicking in.

"All right. You need your rest. We'll talk about this later." He turned and picked up the purse at the foot of the bed. But when he searched inside, he didn't see an address book.

Where was it, he wondered.

Alexa Hampton had started reading Kristen's letter, which probably was part of the reason she got uneasy. Did she make off with the address book? But why ?

It didn't matter. She would be back.

If Debra had done what she was supposed to do.

"David have Mrs. Starr taken downstairs. I need to see Deb."

"You've got it."

Van de Vliet went down the hall and then through the heavy steel air lock and into the laboratory.

"Deb, can I have a word with you?" He motioned for her to follow him to the computer cubicle in the back, past the head-high racks of solvent vials and the giant autoclave.

"Is she going to be okay?" Debra asked.

"I think so. It's in her interest that we keep her here and away from a hospital. Gunshot wounds raise a lot of questions. I seriously doubt that that pistol was licensed in her name, given how little she seemed to know about its operation." He settled into a chair and began stroking his brow. "Did you manage to take care of that matter with Alexa Hampton?"

She nodded. "You know, she's not yet entirely with the program."

"Yes, but she will be. Putting her mother in the clinical trials was probably crucial." He grimaced. "God, what a nightmare. A medical experiment that got away from us has turned into guns and virtual kidnapping and God knows what manner of felonies. If this thing gets completely off the track, we could all go to prison. But the real tragedy is that all the successful research we've done here will be buried in infamy."

"It's not going to turn out that way. The results here have been so spectacular." She was gazing at him with eyes that seemed too worshipful. More and more, she made him self-conscious. She needed a father, but he did not need a daughter. He still lived on the memory of Camille.

"This has all got to be resolved soon, Deb. There's a reporter who found out that we had to drop a patient from the program-which would be Kristen-and W.B. thinks he's a little too close for comfort. Now Kristen's mother shows up. It's all starting to unravel."

"Don't worry," she said, getting up. "This Hampton woman is going to be back today. So I've got to get started on her blood."

Wednesday, April 8

2:41p.m.

Ally was very fond of Kristen's West Village neighborhood, since she herself had once had an apartment on West Eleventh Street, just west of Seventh Avenue. The street was tree-lined and many of its nineteenth-century town houses were home to single families, though sometimes the ground floor, with the entry "under the stoop," i.e., beneath the stairs, was rented out to provide a little side income. She had rented one of those "garden apartments"-the upstairs owners were two gay bankers-and had loved it. However, it also was entirely possible that Kristen had the whole town house to herself-that was the kind of thing that a lot of celebrities who lived, or even just spent time, in New York did. There was privacy and there also was the sense of living in an actual house instead of in some cookie-cutter apartment. Then again she could have a downstairs neighbor.

A solitary town house seemed somewhat at odds with the extroverted personality Kristen displayed on TV, but the privacy was probably intended more for her sugar daddy, Winston Bartlett, than for her.

Ally had been pushing the pace ever since she got off the phone with Stone. At Twenty-third Street she had peeled off the West Side Highway and gone over to Seventh Avenue, where she had a straight shot downtown. She passed the old St Vincent's Hospital, and the notorious six-way intersection that caused so many accidents, and hung a right on West Eleventh.

She was approaching the corner at Bleecker Street when a huge black Lincoln Navigator lumbered in front of her, at an angle that cut her off and blocked the street. Then the vehicle abruptly slammed to a halt.

"What-!"

She hit her own brakes and managed to slide to a stop just before she collided with the Lincoln's rear bumper. At first she thought they'd deliberately cut her off, but then she realized the move had nothing to do with her. A man and a woman were piling out. He was muscular and balding, with dark hair and sunglasses, and he was dressed in black. She had red hair streaked with white and was dressed in a nurse's whites. They were in a major hurry.

That was when she recognized the man she'd met at Gramercy Park, the Japanese sidekick Bartlett had called Ken.

Oh shit .

Then she realized that a thirtyish woman was running down West Eleventh Street toward them, carrying a dark green backpack in her left hand. They were gesturing for her to come to them and get into the vehicle, though she didn't appear to see them yet. Halfway down the block behind her, a man in a tan flight jacket was running, calling out.

"Kristen, wait I just want to talk-"

The running woman glanced over her shoulder at him and, at that moment collided with Bartlett's flunky. As she recoiled from the impact the red-haired woman seized her left arm.

"Kirby, come," the woman said. "You're not well. We'll take you back."

"No!" she yelled, and twisted free of the woman's grasp. But now the Japanese guy had grabbed her other arm.

"It's going to be all right," he said as he caught the top of her head and started shoving her through the open door of the Navigator. "You shouldn't go out alone."

At that moment the man in the tan flight jacket reached the scene. It was Stone, but he'd been moments too late.

He stretched his arm into the Lincoln and tried to take the girl's hand. "Kristen, don't go with them. I just need to talk-"

"You don't need to do anything, pal," the man called Ken declared. "Except get out of the way."

He chopped the side of Stone's neck with an open hand, sending him sprawling backwards onto the pavement, flight jacket askew.

Now something odd was going on. Another girl was running down the sidewalk. "Kristy, wait. Don't. ."

But the redheaded woman had already gotten into the back seat of the SUV, beside the girl, and the Japanese man was heading around the front. Three seconds later, he was behind the wheel and peeling out. They were gone.

Ally sat watching, stunned. But now a Chevy sedan was departing a parking space three cars down from where she was and she quickly pulled in.

By then Stone Aimes had picked himself up off the sidewalk and was gazing wistfully in the direction of the vanishing Lincoln. The girl who'd been behind him stopped and was talking to him.

Ally quickly locked the Toyota and went over.

"But why did she run?" Stone Aimes was asking. He was disheveled but then being slugged and knocked to the sidewalk takes a toll on anybody's poise.

"She didn't know who you were," the girl replied She looked like she would have been more at home in the East Village than here: late twenties, tattoo on one bicep, eyebrows pierced blue jeans, hair needing a better day. She had serious acne scars on her cheeks. "I think she thought you were them , whoever they were."