Robin Cook - Abduction

“Let go!” Mura yelled, her voice rising through her sobs. She got one arm free.

“Shut up!” Michael shouted back. He slapped her across the face with an open palm, hoping to snap her out of her hysteria. Instead, she opened her mouth and let loose an earsplitting scream. Fearful of the consequences, Michael clapped a hand over her mouth. But it was not enough. Mura was a tall, strong woman, and she twisted from his grasp, letting out another cry.

With some difficulty Michael got his hand over her mouth again, but no matter what he tried, he could not keep her quiet. Impulsively he dragged her over to the deep end of the pool and launched them both into the water. But even the sudden dunking did not contain her screams until he forced her head beneath the water’s surface.

Still she struggled, and when he brought her up for a breath, she let out a cry as loud as any previous. Again Michael pushed her under the water, and this time he held her until her violent flailing slowed, then ceased.

Slowly he eased up on the grip he had around her head, afraid she’d suddenly rear up and yell once more. Instead her limp body slowly bobbed to the surface, her face submerged.

He pulled her body to the edge and lifted her onto the pool’s marble lip. A foamy mixture of mucus and saliva issued from her nose and slack mouth. As he looked at her and realized she was dead, a shudder passed down his spine. His teeth began to chatter uncontrollably. He had killed someone-someone he cared for.

For a moment he stood perfectly still. He wondered if anyone could have heard Mura’s screeches. Thankfully, the night was still. In a panic, he dragged her over to the bed, laid her alongside, and pulled the coverlet over her. Then he ran past the pool and out into the night.

Richard’s cottage was no more than fifty yards away, and Michael covered the distance in seconds. He pounded on the door.

“Whoever it is, go away!” Richard’s voice commanded from within.

“Richard, it’s me!” Michael shouted.

“I don’t care who it is!” Richard yelled back. “We’re busy in here.”

“It can’t wait, Richie,” Michael insisted. “I got to see you.”

A string of expletives preceded a short silence. Finally the door was pulled open. “This better be good,” Richard growled. He was buck naked.

“We got a problem,” Michael announced.

“You’re about to have another one,” Richard warned. Then he noticed that Michael was sopping wet. “Why’d you go swimming with your clothes on?” he asked.

“You gotta come with me back to my cottage,” Michael stammered.

Richard noted the degree of his friend’s anxiety. Richard glanced over his shoulder to make sure none of the women were close enough to hear. “Does this have something to do with Sart’s body?” he asked in a whisper.

“Yeah, unfortunately,” Michael said.

“Where’s Mura?”

“She’s the problem,” Michael said. “She saw the body.”

“Oh, Christ!” Richard moaned. “Is she upset?”

“She went ballistic on me,” Michael said. “You gotta come!”

“All right! Calm down. So she really got psycho?”

“I’m telling you, she went completely crazy. You gotta get your ass over there.”

“Okay already,” Richard soothed. “Don’t shout! I’ll be over in a few minutes. I’ll have to get rid of my friends.”

Michael nodded as Richard closed the door in his face. Turning around, he sprinted back to his quarters. After checking to make sure Mura’s body was where he’d left it, he changed into a dry set of clothes. Then he paced up and down the room, waiting for Richard.

True to his word, Richard arrived in less than five minutes. He scanned the room the moment he stepped over the threshold. Everything looked peaceful enough. He half expected to see Mura sobbing uncontrollably on the bed, but she was nowhere to be seen. “Well, where is she?” he demanded. “In the bathroom?”

Michael didn’t answer. He motioned for Richard to follow him and walked around the end of the bed. Reaching down with a shaky hand, he grasped the corner of the coverlet and whipped it aside to expose the corpse. Mura’s previously translucent alabaster skin had become a mottled blue and the foam oozing from her mouth and nose was tinged with red.

“What the hell?” Richard gasped. He knelt down and felt for a carotid pulse. He stood back up. His face was slack with shock. “She’s dead!”

“She opened the refrigerator,” Michael explained. “She saw Sart’s body.”

“All right, I understood that,” Richard said. He stared at his friend. “But why did you kill her?”

“I told you, she went crazy,” Michael said. “She was screaming bloody murder. I was afraid she was going to wake up the entire goddamn city.”

“Why the hell did you let her open the refrigerator?” Richard demanded angrily.

“I wasn’t watching for two seconds,” Michael said.

“Yeah, well, you should have been more careful,” Richard complained.

“That’s easy for you to say,” Michael snapped. “I told you I didn’t want the body over here. He should have been in your refrigerator, not mine.”

“Okay, calm down,” Richard said. “We got to think what to do.”

“There’s no more room in my refrigerator,” Michael said. “She’s got to go in yours.”

Richard wasn’t wild about dragging the body over to his place, but he couldn’t come up with an alternate idea, and he knew they had to do something quickly. If Mura was found, then Sart would be, too. One way or the other he’d be involved.

“All right,” Richard said reluctantly. “Let’s get it over with.”

With dispatch they rolled Mura up inside the coverlet. Then with Richard at the head and Michael at the foot, they carried her across the lawn to Richard’s cottage. They had a little trouble navigating her in through the door since it was relatively narrow.

“Jeez,” Michael complained. “Carrying a body is a little like carrying a mattress. It’s harder than you’d think.”

“That’s because it’s so much dead weight,” Richard said, smirking at the double meaning.

They dumped the body in the middle of the floor. While Michael unraveled the blanket, Richard went to the refrigerator and emptied it. Since this was his second time through the body-in-the-refrigerator routine, he knew exactly what to do, meaning to get Mura inside required a complete rearrangement of the contents.

“All right,” Richard said. “Give me a hand.”

Together they got Mura wedged into place. She was taller and heavier than Sart, so she was a tighter fit. In the end, they had to leave a few containers out.

Richard straightened up after finally managing to get the door to shut. “This has got to stop,” he said.

“What?” Michael asked.

“Knocking off these Interterrans,” Richard said. “We’re out of refrigerators.”

“Very funny,” Michael said. “How come I’m not laughing?”

“Don’t make me answer that, birdbrain,” Richard said.

“I’ll tell you what it really means,” Michael said. “We gotta get our asses out of Interterra! With two bodies, the chances of someone stumbling across one has just doubled.”

“You should have thought of that before you knocked her off,” Richard said.

“I’m telling you, I didn’t have any choice!” Michael yelled. “I didn’t want to ice her, but she wouldn’t shut up.”

“Don’t shout!” Richard said. “You’re right. We got to get the hell out of here. The only good news is that it seems the straightlaced admiral is thinking the same way we are.”

Suzanne couldn’t remember the last time she’d swum in the nude, and she was pleasantly shocked by the sensation as she struck out across the pool. And although she was mildly self-conscious about being naked, especially given Garona’s perfect form, she wasn’t as uptight as she had imagined she’d be. It was probably because Garona made her feel so accepted the way she was despite her physical imperfections.