“I’m afraid she is doing quite poorly. It is only a matter of time now.” Valya shrugged. “Still, when I was at the hospital, I was able to get close enough to capture Dr. Cummings’s phone calls and mirror that communication.”
Seichan pictured Lisa Cummings, the director’s wife. At least, Kat wasn’t alone, but what was Valya’s gambit in going to the hospital?
“Why did you need to tap her phone?”
Another shrug. “Someone’s been proving exceptionally stubborn and will need further convincing of our seriousness.”
Seichan struggled to understand, but it was to no avail.
Valya nudged the man next to her and nodded to the girls. “Vzyat’ devushku,” she repeated.
Harriet didn’t need to understand Russian to read the intent and subtext of their conversation. She scooted to the end of her cot, hugging the picture book to her chest.
But the girl needn’t have worried.
The man grabbed Penny instead, tossing her over his shoulder. She struggled and screamed. Her captor ignored her thrashing and hauled her out of the room.
Seichan twisted toward Harriet, but the girl had buried her face in her pillow.
Valya headed out.
Seichan yanked on her restraints, now understanding why they had kept her cuffed to the bed after the procedure. “Let me loose.”
“Soon,” Valya said. “And we’ll bring you a bucket.”
The door clanged shut behind her.
Seichan turned again toward Harriet. “It’s going to be all—”
A loud gunshot made her jump.
Harriet buried her face deeper into her pillow.
Seichan stared at the closed door, knowing she had broken her promise.
I’m sorry, Kat.
6:47 P.M.
Lisa sat bedside, holding the hand of her friend. Alone in the room, she didn’t bother wiping the tears from her eyes. She prayed Kat was at peace now; Lisa knew how much the woman had struggled at the end. She could only imagine the agony of dying without ever knowing the fate of her children.
Guilt knotted inside her.
We should’ve done more.
Still, she could not fault the doctors. Julian and his team had tried everything. They had spent a full twenty minutes performing a final neurological exam: pinching Kat’s limbs and cheeks, testing her pupils with light, running multiple EEG leads. They even took her off the ventilator for a time to see if rising carbon dioxide levels might trigger even a single breath from her.
The conclusion was irrefutable.
Not only had Kat’s higher cerebral functions ceased, but she no longer showed any evidence of brainstem reflexes—those last vestiges of activity before a brain is declared dead.
Kat was truly gone.
Still, Lisa appreciated the warmth of the fingers in her hand, but this effect was artificial. Heated blankets and warmed IV fluids maintained a steady body temperature. Likewise, the ventilator pushed her chest up and down. Hormones had been shot into her, to replace what her brain could no longer trigger: vasopressin to maintain her kidneys, thyroid for body metabolism, others to support her immune system.
The only thing that functioned on its own was Kat’s heart—proving to be as stubborn as the woman. Each remaining beat was powered by her heart’s intrinsic electrical system, a ghostly reminder of what once was. But it was no sign of life; hearts could even beat outside the body for a time. Without ventilation, Kat’s heart would stop within the hour.
Doctors called this life support—but they were wrong. There was no life here to support, no hope for resuscitation. All the machines and ministration were for another purpose. The proper term for Kat’s care was organ support.
Such treatment was sustained to allow additional time for out-of-town relatives to get to the hospital and say good-bye—while there was still even a semblance of life in the body.
Still, this was a cruel ruse, a macabre act of puppetry.
Their loved ones were already gone.
While en route to France, Monk had been informed of Kat’s condition. He had enough medical background not to be fooled, to not hold out false hope. Still, Lisa had offered to keep Kat on the machines until he got back. This living death could be sustained for a week or so.
Monk had refused.
Let her go in peace, he told her. I already kissed her good-bye, knowing it would be my last.
Instead, all of this care was for another reason.
A doctor entered—Lisa couldn’t remember his name—flanked by two nurses and an orderly. “The OR is ready,” he said.
Lisa nodded, unable to speak as she struggled to hold back a sob. She stood, gave Kat’s hand a final squeeze, and stepped away from the bed. The medical staff swooped in to take her place, unhooking and readying the patient for transportation to the operating room.
Kat had signed an organ-donation order.
It was no surprise—and fitting.
Even in death, Kat would still be saving lives.
Lisa stayed in the room until her body was rolled outside. Afterward, Lisa sank back into her chair. She knew Kat had left long before her body was taken away. Still, the space felt far more hollow, emptier than before, as if the loss of all that verve and energy had left a vacuum in its wake.
Too broken-hearted to move, she sat in silent vigil.
Then a commotion drew her gaze back to the door.
Julian entered swiftly, accompanied by a stranger, a woman. The neurologist’s gaze swept the room. “Where’s Kathryn?”
Lisa stood, her heart pounding harder, reading the anxiety on the doctor’s face. “They moved her to the OR, to harvest her org—”
Julian swung away. “We have to stop them.”
21
December 26, 1:08 A.M. CET
Paris, France
Gray ducked under a broken archway.
They had been traversing the catacombs for fifteen minutes, and he was already lost. Simon led the way through a warren of tunnels and graffiti-scarred chambers, descending section by section through crumbling vents—wormholes their guide called chatières, or cat flaps. Simon even had to backtrack once, mumbling something about a cave-in.
Thankfully, their guide was generous enough to chalk a few Xs and arrows along their path, markers to help lead them back to the exit. Until then, Gray stuck close to the man.
Gray held the group’s lone ultraviolet torch, a penlight mounted on the rail under the barrel of his SIG Sauer. Invisible to the naked eye, the beam bounced off their surroundings, where the light was picked up by sensitive detectors in their night-vision goggles. It allowed the group to see, but Gray still used it sparingly, setting the torch to its weakest setting, fearing the beam might ignite anything fluorescent and give away their approach.
Like now.
As Gray straightened into the next chamber, the far wall exploded in his goggles, revealing a huge mural painted across the expanse of limestone. They had passed similar glimpses of such subterranean artistry, but nothing like this masterpiece hidden in the dark. It glowed and shimmered under the UV bombardment.
The mural depicted a ghostly mummy riding a boat, transporting its own coffin. The vessel and its silent passenger crossed a dark lake toward a towering island, dotted with cypresses and sculpted with tomblike porticos.
“That can’t be a good omen,” Kowalski grumbled.
“It’s the work of a cataphile artist named Lone,” Simon whispered. “Took him a full year to paint. His rendering of Arnold B?cklin’s Die Toteninsel. The Isle of the Dead.”
Gray read a sign posted at the mural’s bottom.
Designed by the author
It contained a palindrome, the letters of the sentence running the same forward and backward. Its message was eerily prophetic. Even the star between the lines sent a chill through him. The pentagram was identical to the symbol for Bruxas International. It was even angled identically, as if the symbol were marking their passage forward.
Gray again had a weird sense of fate swirling around him.
Noting his attention, Simon translated the palindrome aloud: “Around and around we spin in the night as we are consumed by fire.”
Gray stared up, picturing the conflagration far above. Here, down in the catacombs, the air was cool and dank, the limestone damp and cold. The only evidence of the fires was the occasional wisp of smoke, found hanging in the stillness. As Gray had passed through them, he caught a whiff of ash, a touch of heat, as if the ghosts of the dead had retreated here, seeking refuge in the cold tombs.
“Let’s keep going,” Monk urged.
Gray waved Simon onward.
They continued even deeper, proceeding single file.
After another few minutes, a vague glow appeared ahead. Fearing they were nearing the enemy, Gray clicked off his UV torch. But it proved to be a false alarm. A three-foot-wide shaft in the roof drilled straight up. Fifty yards or more above his head, tiny orange supernovas flared, the light amplified by his night-vision gear. He shuttered the lenses on his goggles, telescoping the view to reveal the underside of a manhole cover. Holes in the steel carried the glow of the fires beyond.