Czytaj książkę: «The Forgotten»

Dedicated with sincere appreciation to Dolphin Research Center, Grassy Key, Marathon, Florida, and to all the people who work with love and care to make it such an exceptional facility, especially Rita Irwin, Mandy Rodriguez, Linda Erb,

Emily Guarino and Loriel Keaton.

To Jax, attacked by a shark and alive because of DRC. I don’t pretend to know about all sea mammal centers; I do know that this one is wonderful.

And to my very dear friend Mary Stella, DRC, who introduced me to Jax and Tanner and all!

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Praise

Also by HEATHER GRAHAM

Title Page

Dedication

Prologue

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

Epilogue

Extract from The Hidden by Heather Graham

Copyright

Prologue

“Maria.”

Maria Gomez started at the sound of her name.

She’d thought she was alone.

She had been sitting in the darkness, just staring out at the night, when she’d heard her name spoken. She didn’t even turn at first. She was certain she had imagined it. Her name, spoken so softly, with such affection—by him.

Because all she did was think about Miguel.

She was so numb. She knew that her children worried about her, that her friends and family worried about her, and yet she could do nothing but stare out at the night. Her balcony was beautiful; she looked out over the walled and tree-laden backyard of the beautiful home she and Miguel had built together in Coconut Grove.

In doing so, she looked out over her life. The children had climbed the great banyan tree that grew so close to the house, just beyond the balcony. She and Miguel had hosted pool parties for Little League teams, for the Brownies and Girl Scouts. They’d hosted Michelle’s engagement party and a shower for Magdalena when little Sophia had been due.

But the past was gone. The night was quiet. Only the mental echo of haunted laughter remained of the happiness that had once lived here. She knew that it was time for her to leave, too. Join the children up north, where none of them would be happy—but where they would be safe.

Miguel was gone. He had been the great force in the family. She was empty without him, empty of all the things that made a family strong. She hadn’t even been eighteen when she had married him; they’d had nearly twenty-five years together. She had always trusted him.

He’d always been honest with her.

Some said that he had been a very bad man; Maria knew that wasn’t true. He had gotten swept up into bad things with bad men, but he had never hurt anyone himself; he had simply been born at the wrong place at the wrong time.

It had felt like a knife in her heart when she’d read the reports of his death in the paper; he had died as such a man might, the press—apparently desperate to be as dramatic as possible—had reported. His death had been accompanied—literally—by the same searing flame of violence with which he had lived. Doused with accelerants and burned beyond recognition, burned to cinders. Maria didn’t even know if he’d been killed before the fire—she prayed he had been.

Those reporters! Even they claimed it was a heinous end, despite whatever deeds he had allegedly committed. He’d been involved in the drug trade, and everyone knew the drug trade was filled with cold-blooded killers.

But she knew that Miguel had never done anything but own land.

Most certainly his killers had known that he had gone to the American government.

That was the reason he’d been killed, of course. And the FBI man who had come to the funeral, the one Miguel had gone to, Agent Brett Cody, had been visibly distressed by that knowledge. Agent Cody had been pulled off the case shortly after he and Miguel had spoken, because other agents who specialized in the drug trade had been assigned to work with, to look after, her husband. Maria had told Agent Cody that she did not blame him for Miguel’s death; after all, he hadn’t gone to Miguel—Miguel had gone to him.

Miguel had been foolish; the government hadn’t worked very hard for him. Protection? He hadn’t been protected for a second. The men watching over him hadn’t even found him until the fire had ravaged his body and rendered it unrecognizable.

She didn’t entirely blame the agents, though. Those in the drug trade knew what they were up against if they tried to leave. Those who weren’t in the trade didn’t know that protection might not be possible—even agents who were assigned to the trade didn’t always know that. No one could be watched every minute. And there was still someone out there—watching her.

“Maria.”

She heard her name again. It was Miguel’s voice. She missed him so badly that she could still hear him. It was almost as if she could breathe in his scent.

“Maria.”

His voice seemed to be coming from behind her.

She turned. Her heart slammed to a stop in her chest, and she jumped to her feet, astonished.

There was Miguel. He was standing just inside the double doors that led from the patio back into their bedroom. He looked to be real, flesh and blood. He was there...

Just as quickly as it had ceased to beat, her heart took flight. They’d been wrong. The bone fragments found in the fire had not belonged to Miguel.

Because Miguel was standing right in front of her.

She raced to him, throwing her arms around him. He barely moved in response. She drew back, staring at him. It was Miguel. But...

Something was wrong with him. Something was really wrong.

“Miguel, what—what have they done to you?” she asked.

His eyes were blank as he stared back at her. Then, to her astonishment, he picked her up.

And he walked back out to the balcony without saying a word.

He spoke like Miguel, he smelled like Miguel, he looked like Miguel, but...

She was confused, but her confusion cleared in a split second when she realized his intent, and started to scream.

1

A bottlenose dolphin leaped majestically out of the water, crystal droplets raining down around it in the morning sun. It splashed as it landed, then appeared almost to fly as it raced around the lagoon, thrusting itself out of the water with the power of its fins and flukes, all the while staring straight at Lara Mayhew. The dolphin emitted a chattering sound, something delightfully akin to laughter.

Lara smiled at the sight and sound of the dolphin, a beautiful female estimated to be about ten years old and named Cocoa. Rick Laramie, the head dolphin trainer, had told Lara on an earlier visit that Cocoa was performing for her and “speaking” to her simply because she had chosen to, that she’d decided she liked Lara. That was fine with Lara. She liked Cocoa, too, and was fascinated by her. Cocoa was one of the facility’s rescue dolphins. She’d been attacked by a shark and been near death when she was brought to Sea Life. Now it seemed she knew she owed her life to the facility. She was as friendly as a family pet. Today Rick was taking her for her first dolphin swim and training experience, and she was glad it was going to be with Cocoa.

Rick hadn’t shown up yet, but Lara knew she was early. She was delighted just to be there, enjoying the sunlight beneath a beautiful blue summer sky, feeling the warmth of the day heat her skin. No one at the facility was up yet, in fact. It was just after six thirty. In another half hour the cooks and cashiers who ran the small café would arrive, and a few minutes after that the rest of the staff would come wandering in. The facility opened to the public for seven hours each day, but the crux of the work here was research and education, not entertainment. They didn’t study dolphin disease and physiology, or perform necropsies or anything like that; they focused on training, learning more about dolphin habits and intelligence with each passing season.

Which, of course, was expensive. And why Grady Miller, one of the three founders of the Sea Life Center, had decided that, like other sea mammal research facilities, they would educate the public on dolphins, arranging for playtimes, dolphin swims and other trainer-conducted interactions. While Rick was the head trainer here, Grady was managing director. The facility had been a nonprofit research institute for years, and Grady was loved and respected by the dolphins as well as all of his coworkers. She’d seen him in the water with the dolphins; they had all rushed to him like giant wet puppies, eager to greet him, eager to have him stroke them along their backs and fins, eager for his kind words. He’d purchased the property and the docks from the previous owners—filmmakers who’d trained dolphins to perform for the camera—and continued working with the dolphins they’d left behind, simply loving and being fascinated by the creatures. That had been almost thirty years ago. He’d started with two partners. Willem Rodriguez had provided financing, and Peg Walton worked with him day-to-day. Peg had passed away a few years ago, and now Grady essentially ran it on his own. The facility was now far larger than when it had been founded, and it was thriving, with its research featured in the most influential scientific publications.

They were supported by people from around the world, rich and poor alike. Their contributors included people who “adopted” a dolphin for a small donation and “sustainers” who, in return for their substantial support, were allowed to see some of the research as it was being conducted and were invited to attend a picnic-style fete each year, as well as being welcomed to various small meetings where the center’s newest findings were presented. There was, in fact, a dinner planned for that evening. It would be Lara’s first chance to attend such a special occasion, because there weren’t many of them, and as a new employee she was lucky to find one happening so soon after she was hired. At Sea Life, every contributor was appreciated, and with nonprofit enterprises continually reliant on the philanthropy of others, it was important to always let all their contributors know how much they were valued. And tonight a few of their major supporters would be on hand. Lara didn’t know much about Grant Blackwood of Eden Industries or Ely Taggerly of Taggerly Pharmaceuticals. She did know that Mason Martinez, CEO of Good Health Miami, had a nationwide reputation for his healthful lifestyle clinics and the preventive medicine practiced there. She was also familiar with Sonia Larson of Sonia Fashions.

In fact, she owned a number of Sonia’s pieces, trendy business fashions that didn’t cost an arm and a leg. She was anxious to meet the woman, along with all the others, of course.

Lara’s job tonight was to seat everyone and see that they were happy with the food and everyone had a good time while the trainers and scientists talked about their research and results. It hardly seemed like work.

And then there was the day-to-day here at Sea Life. Always time to walk around the lagoons and talk to the dolphins.

Lara felt she’d truly found a haven. She loved all the dolphins—but especially Cocoa.

Cocoa was in the front left lagoon that day, her usual location, though occasionally she was shifted to a different lagoon for training purposes. There were six underwater enclosures for the dolphins at the facility, front, right and left, and then two more behind each of those, with a sandbar-like island at the rear that more or less created a back street to approach the lagoons. The last two were the largest, where the adolescent males were kept. They could be rough when they played, just like teenage boys, and since two of the females had calves that were just a few months old, they were happiest away from the antics of the “boys.” The lagoons were all connected via underwater gates so the dolphins could be moved around for training and medical purposes.

Each lagoon had a floating dock for trainers, medical personal and the visitors who were part of a swim program, as well as a floating platform farther out in the water.

Lara sat down on the dock. “Good morning, Cocoa!” she called.

The dolphin made that clicking sound again, disappeared for a minute, then came up near Lara in a magnificent leap and welcomed her with a showering spray of seawater.

Lara laughed. “Yes, yes, you’re lovely and talented, and that actually felt very good. Love the sun, but it is warm. That water felt great. This is such a beautiful day,” she said.

And it really was. Stunningly beautiful. The sun was shining, making the water sparkle. A breeze was drifting in off the bay, rustling the palms and sea grape trees that grew along the stone paths and by the docks. By afternoon it would be hot, and they might be caught by one or more of the torrential storms that could hit the area in the summer and into the fall. But right now, it was simply beautiful. The sky was a true bright blue; the water was like a sea of diamonds.

The move to Miami had been a good idea.

She was actually living in Coconut Grove, an area of the city that was historically artsy, with a “downtown” that was hopping until what seemed like all hours of the morning. It was a ten-minute hop over to the research facility, which was situated on a small private road off one of the bridges that connected the city with Miami Beach, which meant it was near other attractions, such as downtown Miami, the Art and Design District, South Beach, the Port of Miami, Jungle Island and the Children’s Museum. While the area surrounding Sea Life was busy and modern, the facility itself had an old-time charm. The foliage was a little wild and ragged, iguanas roamed freely, and birds were everywhere. The best of both worlds.

And I so desperately needed the change, she thought.

Yes—a complete change. She had even started going by her mother’s maiden name, Ainsworth. The trauma she had fled had been one thing; she was strong. The constant publicity had been another. Ironic, since media was what she had done as a congressional assistant—and was mainly what she was still doing now. Of course, her boss, Grady Miller, knew who she was and what she had fled from. He was supportive and wonderful, and she trusted him completely.

And why wouldn’t she? Grady was friends with Adam Harrison, executive director of the Krewe of Hunters, her best friend’s unit at the FBI. Without Meg Murray and her unit, Lara wouldn’t have survived.

“Hey!” Rick called to her, heading from the service building with a cooler filled with fish. “You’re here bright and early.”

“I understand that this is very special. That even employees don’t get free swims all that often,” Lara told him, grinning.

She liked Rick; he was probably about fifty, weathered from years in the sun, slim and fit. He was married to Adrianna, another of the trainers. She had actually met Adrianna first, right here, just two years ago when she had been at her previous job, doing media for then-congressman Ian Walker. Due to a series of murders in Washington, DC, with which Walker had been involved—indirectly, or so he alleged—he was no longer a congressman.

Murders—and Lara’s own kidnapping and imprisonment, naked and starving, in the dank underground of an abandoned gristmill in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

But she had survived, and now she was here, building a new life. Rick knew all about her past; he also knew that she’d survived mainly because of the ingenuity of a friend who worked for the FBI, and that she’d received extensive therapy since. To be honest, she hadn’t felt that she’d needed all the therapy; she’d come out of the experience grateful for her life, and furious with anyone who would commit atrocities and murder for personal gain. The henchman who had actually carried out the vile acts was, she was convinced, truly certifiably crazy, but that didn’t mean she was unhappy about the fact that he was going to rot in jail for the rest of his life, or that the woman whose manipulative will had set him on his murderous course would rot along with him.

“Well, Lara, you should definitely be in the water with these babies,” Rick said. “There’s nothing in the world like getting to know Cocoa and her buds. We bring in wounded soldiers, autistic kids—you name it. This interaction is good for whatever ails you.”

“Rick,” she told him firmly, “I’m absolutely fine, and I don’t want people tiptoeing around me. I’m here to do a bang-up job with Sea Life’s PR. Not that I’m not beyond excited to get to know Cocoa better.”

“Okay, we’ll start our training session on the platform,” he told her. “And then we’ll get in the water. No bull, though. I’ll kick you out in two seconds if I don’t think you’re going to be a good fit with the dolphins, okay?”

“Okay.”

From the platform, Rick began to teach her the hand signals that Cocoa knew. Lara dutifully imitated every sign Rick made, and Cocoa responded like a champ. She learned from Rick about the vitamins they gave to their dolphins to compensate because they didn’t hunt their fish from the wild, and how they were given freshwater, too, something they usually got from their fish—and still did—but this ensured that their intake was sufficient, and they loved it. The biggest issue was trust, Rick told her. No dolphin was forced to perform or work—ever, under any circumstances.

“How on earth do they learn what a hand signal means to begin with?” Lara asked. “I mean, it’s not like you can explain, ‘Hey, when I raise my hand like this, I want you to make that chattering noise while you back up on your flukes.’”

Rick grinned. “We use targets, and it’s a long process—except for sometimes when we work with the calves and they just follow their moms. Dolphins are social creatures, and they’re curious about us, too. They like interaction, and they love learning. When the trainer blows a whistle after a task, it’s to tell the dolphin that he, or she, did it properly. It’s called positive reinforcement, and I don’t know of any facility that uses anything else. When the dolphin hears the whistle, he knows to come to the trainer for a reward. It may be fish, like we’ve been using today. Sometimes it’s a toy and sometimes it’s a lot of stroking. Dolphins are mammals. They’re affectionate. Oddly enough, a lot like aquatic dogs, but even smarter. Smart as all get-out. I love working with them. I’d honestly rather be doing what I’m doing than be a millionaire working on Wall Street. I wake up happy every day, and I get to work in paradise, with my friends and these amazing creatures. You’re truly going to love it here.”

“I already love it,” she assured him. “I knew I would.”

She did love what she was doing. The first week she’d started, half of her media work had been planning out her own press spin, getting the media to get past her move to Miami and the Sea Life Center and concentrate on the dolphins and the work being done here. She thought she’d handled it very well. The “news” was always fickle; a high-profile celebrity had been involved in a sex scandal, a policeman in Oregon had been accused of taking bribes from prostitutes and the world had quickly begun to forget her. In the past three weeks she had been able to work with a society that arranged dolphin interactions for autistic children, adults and children with Down syndrome and an organization involved with veterans’ affairs and helping wounded servicemen and women. Writing press releases that dealt with the good things going on in the world wasn’t like working at all.

It was a bit more of a challenge to politely fend off reality-show producers or convince the rich and famous that they had to go by the same rules here as everyone else. No one was allowed to just hop in and play with the dolphins; trainers always called the shots. And, of course, no one bossed a dolphin around; if a dolphin didn’t want to play, it didn’t have to play. Each animal could escape human interaction if and when it chose to do so. There was no drama. No one interviewed anyone without the express permission of Willem Rodriguez, who had provided Grady with the financing to buy the place a quarter of a century ago. Willem had used his business savvy in the years since then to make Sea Life what it was now: an excellently run nonprofit with a top staff of trainers and veterinarians. It was one of the most important aquatic mammal centers in the States, possibly the world.

“Ready to get in the water?” Rick asked her.

“You bet!”

Lara slid in; Rick stayed on the dock.

“You’re not coming in?” she asked him.

“No, I’ve had all kinds of dorsal tows in my day. I’m going to teach you how to get one when you need one, though, whether you’re in the water or you’re on the platform, okay?”

“Okay. Thank you.”

“Swim out into the center of the lagoon,” he told her. “You’ve seen this done, so you know the hand signal. Give that signal and Cocoa will come get you. Just grasp onto her dorsal fin and go for a ride!”

Lara swam out. The day was heating up; the water was still deliciously cool. This was so entirely different from what she had left behind.

Life was good.

* * *

There was something strangely but beautifully surreal about the sight of Maria Gianni Gomez in the banyan tree.

It was almost as if she’d been posed.

Her arms were spread out almost gently, forming a casual arc over her head. Her face was turned slightly to the right.

Her eyes were open.

She was dressed in a flowing white robe. A small branch lay over her lower body, as if set there by a modest and benign hand that might have reached down with ethereal care. The great banyan with its reaching, twisting roots had grown in such a way that the center, where Maria lay, might have been scooped out to create a bed for her.

If it weren’t that death was so visible in her open eyes, she could have been a model posing for any one of the sometimes very strange commercial shoots that took place in the notoriously and historically bohemian section of Miami.

Brett Cody was standing next to his partner, Diego McCullough, and looking up at the tree, studying the body where it lay.

“Ladder?” he asked Diego.

“One of the Miami-Dade cops went to get one. He’ll be right here, along with the medical examiner,” Diego said. “You got here fast,” he noted.

“We’re not all that far from Virginia Street,” he reminded Diego. He lived right down from the mall that was more or less central to the area, almost walking distance to this North Grove area of nicer homes. “You got here pretty quick yourself.”

Diego nodded. “I was at the coffee shop,” he said glumly. “This is just...so wrong.”

“She should have been protected,” Brett said, a feeling of deep anger sweeping over him. But someone out there had killed Miguel—who, after all, had made his living in the drug trade, where violence was common—and now had come after his widow, it appeared.

But how?

“She had a state-of-the-art alarm system and steel bolts on the doors, and there’s no sign of forced entry,” Diego said.

“We need to talk to the fed who was duty in front of the house when it happened,” Brett said. “We knew Miguel’s killers might think she knew too much, so we were keeping a watch on her.”

“He thought she jumped,” Diego told him. “She was deeply depressed, devastated, after Miguel’s murder. You don’t think that’s possible?”

“No,” Brett said quickly. Too harshly. He understood how the officer might have gotten that impression; the tree was fairly close to the master bedroom balcony, which overlooked the pool and the patio area.

But, Brett was certain, no matter what kind of an athlete she might have been when she was young, there was no way she could have jumped from the balcony and wound up where she was.

It would have been possible, however, for someone to throw her over and cause her to land exactly where she had.

“Hey, I know how you feel about this one, how much you wish you could have seen it through,” Diego said quietly. “But if you want to keep the peace, don’t tear into the officer on duty.”

“Sorry,” Brett said quickly. “I didn’t mean to bark like that. And I don’t blame the agent. He didn’t see anyone go by, and should someone have gotten past him, the house has alarms and a top-of-the-line security system. No one broke into that house. How the hell she was killed, I can’t begin to imagine. Unless Miguel has a clone running around somewhere—a clone with his fingerprints and his memories.”

They were both quiet for a minute, looking at one another.

“He was burned beyond forensic recognition,” Diego reminded Brett. “No DNA left, even in the teeth or the bones.”

“Identified by the melted remains of his jewelry, and the fact that we saw him get out of his car and go inside, the only person in there,” Brett said thoughtfully.

“Maybe Miguel wasn’t killed in that oil-dump conflagration,” Diego suggested.

Brett shook his head thoughtfully. “Those were definitely Miguel’s things forensics took from the fire. And Miguel truly loved Maria. There’s no way on God’s earth that he would have killed his wife. Even if he didn’t die in the fire,” he added.

They both turned at the sound of footsteps. A uniformed police officer was hurrying over with a ladder. Dr. Phil Kinny, medical examiner, was just behind, followed by two forensic teams, one from the local Miami office of the FBI and one from the Miami-Dade homicide division.

“Let me get a quick look up the ladder first, okay?” Brett called to Phil.

“As you wish,” Phil told him. “I’m here, ready whenever. I can only tell you how she died. You’re the one who’s going to have to figure out how she got in that tree.”

“Thanks,” Brett said.

The ladder was set carefully next to the tree; Brett nodded his appreciation to the young officer ready to steady it. Brett could have climbed the tree without it, but he was trying to maintain a level of professionalism. Once he had studied Maria Gomez in situ, photographers would chronicle everything before Phil started his exam and told them the preliminary time of death and whatever he could about the injuries that had presumably killed her.