“I told you. I like to know as much as I can about my clients. Turns out, I learned a lot.”
“You have no business investigating me,” Holly snaps. “You took my money and you’re supposed to be doing what I say, and that’s helping me find my daughter. What about looking for Peter? That’s what you said you were going to do.” She can hear the hysteria in her voice. She fights to control it, to stay calm and discover what he knows. She was stupid not to have expected this.
“Peter wasn’t panning out, if you’ll excuse the pun,” Christopher says, and Holly feels that familiar urge to throttle him. “I don’t have enough to go on. So I decided to pull on the other end—to see why, rather than how, your daughter might leave. And that took me to Cornwall. Now I know what you were doing. But what I don’t understand is why.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she stalls.
He sighs. “We can play that game if you want. But it won’t work. Before my accident, people used to say I was typical Irish, a mix of charm and temper both. Well, these days I’m down an arm and short on charm. But I’ve picked up plenty of rage, especially when it comes to the safety of children. I need to know what you were doing with that kid. And trust me, you won’t like what happens if you stonewall.”
“If you must know, I was trying to cure my daughter.” It’s the truth. Part of it, at least.
“It might have been useful to mention she’d been in a coma for years,” he says. “Somehow you happened to omit that tiny detail in our conversations. It certainly explains why you have no photos of her with her eyes open.”
Holly struggles to think, decides that the best way to get information is to give some. “Fine. As I mentioned when we met, Eden has a rare genetic disease—it causes her to grow too fast. When she was young, she had an accident. She fell and hit her head. The doctors think her body couldn’t heal and sustain that rate of growth, so she essentially went into a type of hibernation. Over the years I’ve tried everything to wake her up.”
“That’s why all the medical equipment? The IVs and everything else?”
“Yes.” She swallows hard. “I have a PhD in immunology and microbial pathogenesis, and my postdoctoral training is in stem cell biology. I’ve been studying Eden’s blood, hoping to find the answers to curing her.”
Now it’s his turn to pause. “It’s a good story,” he says at last. But his next words are a blow. “But I’m not convinced it’s true. Or at least not all of the truth.”
“Excuse me?” Holly’s gotten her voice under control. She’s cool and crisp, the way she would talk to an assistant, especially one she’s about to fire. There’s absolutely no reason at all for him to doubt her.
“Do you know what they call your daughter? Those women who cared for her?” he asks. He doesn’t wait for a reply. “They call her anghel ng mga himala—the angel of miracles.”
“What?”
“The angel of miracles,” he repeats. “They think her blood will heal them—heal almost anyone—no matter what’s wrong with them.”
Holly’s gripping the phone so tightly her fingers are numb. “That’s ridiculous,” she scoffs, putting as much scorn into her voice as she can without letting it shake. “You must have misunderstood. English isn’t their first language. I’ll talk to them myself and clear this up.”
“Funny, they thought you’d say that. So they decided to head home, back to the Philippines. All of them,” he says. “They made me promise not to talk to you until they’d already left. Now why would they worry about a thing like that?”
She pictures it. A drop of blood falling onto a nurse with a cut or a scar. She’d insisted they wear gloves, be fully gowned, every time they came in contact with Eden, but someone must have been sloppy. She can see the blood, ruby red, a single drop suspended when they cleaned around the port or gathered up the vials.
One drop would be all it took.
Her stomach churns. If they’d discovered Eden’s secret, would they have taken her? And the missing bags of blood . . . Perhaps Peter was never involved. But no. Maria’s grief and concern had been real. That feather Holly had found the day she went to Grace House had been real too. It was Peter. It had to be.
Christopher has said something, but she’s missed it.
“What?”
“I said, they even suggested I try it, when we find her. On my stump.” He sounds amused. “They actually thought it might work.”
He doesn’t believe them. Of course he doesn’t believe them. It’s too crazy-sounding to be true.
“Holly? You still there?”
She pulls herself together. “This isn’t funny,” she snaps. “My daughter is out there somewhere and you—”
“I never said it was.”
“You let them leave.”
“They were terrified after talking to me. Apparently you had some hell of a nondisclosure agreement in place. But I’ll tell you this: they broke it because they truly want to help. They’re worried because more people—like the police—aren’t looking for her. And they don’t have your daughter.”
“How can you be so sure?” she cries, as much to herself as to him. She can’t tell him about the missing blood, not now.
“I just am. I have a knack for these things,” he says, and his voice has lost that amused tone. Instead she hears something else. Compassion. It tugs her back from the brink like a lifeline. “They love your kid, especially Maria. They’re genuinely worried about her.” He pauses. “Also, I had them followed. Your kid isn’t with them.”
More proof he’s not as easily put off as she once thought. “I assume I’m paying for that, even though I didn’t authorize it?”
“You are,” he says cheerfully. “It will be in my next bill.”
“Well, what’s your next step?”
“Figuring out what else you’re lying about,” he says without hesitation. “I’ll be in touch.”
He hangs up.
Holly stares at the phone. She should have listened to Barry—she never should have hired Christopher Cooke. He’s too independent, too hard to control. The best she can hope for now is that he doesn’t find anything else he can use against her. She thanks god that there are no old pictures of Jack immediately after the crash, that she’d managed to keep the paparazzi away from the hospital and his rehab. If Christopher saw those and started putting two and two together . . .
No chance, she assures herself. He’s already decided it’s too implausible to be believed.
But a little voice inside Holly’s head whispers that Christopher Cooke seems like the type who’s more than willing to believe the impossible once he’s found the proof.
Chapter Twenty-Five
At least the package from Elliot arrives in one piece. Holly’s working in the office a few days later when it comes, so Nan signs for it. When Holly walks into the kitchen, the housekeeper is holding the cooler box and looking curiously at the bright biohazard warnings taped across it.
“Thank you, Nan, I’ll take that,” Holly says. She expects the housekeeper to get the hint, but she doesn’t.
“Is this something from the States?” Nan asks.
“Yes,” Holly says, trying to keep the impatience from her voice. Nan has been a huge help with Jack this week, keeping Ed’s schedule busy enough so that including Jack in practice has been a nonstarter. Holly can tell Jack’s frustrated, but he’s not blaming her, which is a refreshing change.
“Is it safe to have in the kitchen? Around the food, I mean?” Nan asks dubiously. “It has all those warnings on it.”
Holly had been planning on injecting Jack in two days. Superstitiously, she’s wants to wait a full month from his last injection in the hopes she’ll catch a break before then and Eden will be found. But it’s clear Nan won’t be comfortable storing the blood in the refrigerator next to the Brussels sprouts for tonight’s dinner. And really, Jack’s been so up and down lately she can’t afford to wait until his next crash. Holly sighs.