Chapter 16

Veni took that as a dismissal, which was so very like her mother. Veni got up and walked out of her mother’s room, even as a nurse came in and checked on her patient.

“Good God,” Veni whispered to Reid, wrapping her arms around her chest. “It’s so hard to believe that she’ll be gone so soon.” She stared up at Reid, bewildered. “There was no warning—or no warning that I allowed myself to see,” she muttered, with a wave of her hand.

“What about your father?” he asked. “Should you let him know?”

She stared up at him in confusion. “I… I don’t really know. I mean, she would’ve called him her one great love, outside of the lab,” she added, with an eye roll. “I think he probably would say the same thing.”

“But he probably doesn’t know that she’s dying, does he?”

“I don’t think so. Mom just now told me that she didn’t tell anyone, including him specifically, but who knows? Funny how my supposed lie-detecting gift doesn’t work with Mom. And I haven’t spoken to Dad in months.”

“But months, not years, right?”

She nodded. “Months, not years,” she confirmed. “We did talk on an irregular basis. But they had a huge fight, and things, well, they were never the same afterward.”

“Do you know what that was about?”

“I’m guessing it had to be about work, that ongoing competition between them, but I don’t know what aspect it was in particular,” she said. “I’m not even sure they would remember.”

“Let’s go get a cup of coffee. The doctor is checking on her now,” he said, with a nod toward the room behind her.

She watched as the doctor checked her mother over. “Sure. I… I kind of need to clear my head.”

“Coffee then. We’ll come right back, and, if she’s awake, we can visit some more.”

“Okay, that sounds good,” she muttered. She looked up at him. “Thanks for sticking around.”

He wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “No thanks needed. If for no other reason, you’re a longtime special friend, and you’re hurting, so the least I can do is be a comfort right now.”

“You’ve done a lot more than that,” she said, “and I know you don’t want me harping on it, but I am grateful. I can’t imagine where I would be right now without all that you’ve done.” With a smile she linked her fingers with his and added, “Come on. I’ll let you buy me a coffee.”

He gave a burst of laughter. “That’s good because I could use some coffee and maybe a bite to eat too, although hospital food?… I’m not so sure about that.” He cringed.

“I understand,” she said, “but maybe a muffin or two.”

At the cafeteria, they quickly picked out a couple muffins and ordered several coffees to go, then slowly wandered back to her mother’s room.

When they got there, Veni paused outside. “I’m probably not allowed to take food in there,” she muttered.

“We can sit here on the bench, if you want.”

She nodded, and they made themselves comfortable for a moment.

The nurse stepped out of the room and smiled at Veni, sharing, “She’s sleeping right now, but, as soon as she’s awake again, you can go in and visit.”

“Thank you,” Veni replied. “I was wondering if I could just sit inside.”

“The doctor’s still with her right now,” she pointed out gently. “When he’s done, you can go on in.” With that, the nurse left.

“I thought she said that my mother was sleeping?” she pondered.

“Or close to sleeping?” Reid suggested.

Veni shrugged. “I guess that’s possible too.” After a few more minutes, their muffins eaten, yet the doctor didn’t come out, she hesitated, then asked him, “Is it just me?”

“No. Why isn’t the doctor out yet?” He stood up and looked through the observation window. “He’s sitting on the bed, talking to her.”

“So, she’s not asleep.”

“No, although she looks very tired, as if she’s just one step away from it.”

“Right.” She stood up and walked beside him to look in the window. Then she gasped. “Oh, my gosh.” She quickly raced to the door. “That’s not a doctor.” She tried to open the door but found it locked. Wide-eyed, she looked at Reid. “That’s my father.”

*

Reid stared atVeni in disbelief, then looked through the window again. “That explains why the door is locked and why they’re talking like old chums. You might also consider that he is her husband, and she’s dying, so maybe give them a moment.”

She frowned and looked back through the window again. “They are holding hands, aren’t they?”

“They are,” he agreed. “So I’m not sure what their relationship really is or whether you want to just barge in there or not, but maybe let them have their moment.”

She swore under her breath. “I don’t know because they are talking, calmly, like two rational people. Honestly, if they’re talking, it’s more than they’ve done in a very long time. I still want to be there.”

“It was that bad?”

“Oh, it was more than bad.”

Just then her father looked toward the door, saw them, and gave her a small smile. Glancing back down at her mother, he stood up.

“Here he comes,” she muttered. “I’m glad we didn’t have to get somebody to bust down the door.”

“Me too. Let’s take this one step at a time.”

The door opened, and she immediately stepped in, not giving her father a chance to stop her or to make Veni leave. And, with that, Reid stayed right on her heels. He wasn’t sure what was going on, but it was apparent that Veni didn’t either.

“Dad?” she asked, with a questioning expression.

He nodded. “I came to say goodbye.”

She stared at him, wordless for a moment. “You knew?”

“Of course,” he replied, then frowned at her. “You didn’t?”

She shook her head. “No, I didn’t know. Not until the doctors told us today.”

“I’m sorry about that. I knew months ago. Years ago, maybe. Her remission was never really a true remission, and she always kept trying new drugs, trying to buy more time. Her cancer never truly went away,” he stated, “and I knew that it kept getting worse. I tried to get her to go for more treatment, but she wouldn’t.”

“Is that why you fought?” she asked hesitantly.

He gave a bark of laughter. “We fought for a lot of reasons. That was one of them, yes. The other was her stealing my work.”

There was no objection from her mother. Veni looked past him to where her mother stared at her. Veni asked in shock, “Mom?”

“Yes?”

“You told me that Dad didn’t know about the cancer. Plus you told me that Dad wasn’t anywhere close in his research.”

“He isn’t now because, when I took his work from him,… I took it to a whole new dimension. And that’s why he’s really here—to say goodbye, of course, but also to see where the work is, where my lab reports are, so he can continue it himself.”

Veni blinked. “But you told me to ensure nobody ever got it. And you told me that Dad stole your work, not the other way around.”

“It wasn’t hers in the first place,” her father declared, his tone grim. “An awful lot of people back home expect me to return with it.”

Veni winced. “Is that fair?”

“Is what fair?” he asked in amazement. “That was my life’s work.”

“It was also hers,” she added gently, “and look where it got her.”

He hesitated, frowning at her.

“This research destroyed your marriage, Dad. And it killed her. The cancer was something she could never really accept because it meant downtime from her work.”

“I know that.” He looked back at his wife, frowning. “She’s the one who turned this into a nightmare,” he declared bitterly. “As much as I loved her, I didn’t love her once I was thrown in jail because my work wasn’t as good as hers.”

Veni winced at that. “Seriously, that’s not what happened, is it?”

“Of course it is,” he stated, astonished. “Natalia also knew that jail would quite possibly be the outcome.”

“No, I didn’t know that,” Natalia argued, gasping in pain from the bed. “You had the connections. I didn’t. I knew that, if I could do what I needed to do, I could prove to the world that what we were doing worked,” she explained, “but it was so slow, and I needed Veni.”

At that, she stiffened and glared at her mother. “No, you didn’t need me. You wanted me to help, and you wanted me to do whatever it was you wanted to do, but you didn’t need me.”

“I did,” Natalia argued. “You made the work go so much easier, so much faster. The results were amazing.”

Her father turned to stare at Veni, questions all over his face.

Veni watched as a new potential danger arose. This was where she started to lose her train of thought. “I’m not a scientist in any way, Dad. I’ve never had anything to do scientifically with any of her work.”

He nodded, a look of relief on his face. “That’s why I was so confused when they told me that you were here too. I understand why Natalia ran, although not so much once I realized how sick she was, except that she’s turned her back on her country again,” he snapped, glaring at Natalia. “That is something I find hard to understand as well.”

Reid didn’t get the undertones here at all. “Why are you here now, sir?” he asked calmly.

At that, the older man turned and glared at him. “Who are you to ask me that question?” he snapped.

“He’s a longtime friend of mine, Dad. He’s special to me.”

Reid put a hand on her shoulder. “It’s all right, honey. I don’t need defending.”

Her father looked from her to him and back again. “He’s yours?”

“Yes,” she stated immediately. “Whether you like it or not.”

He shrugged. “It’s important for you to have protection, so that’s good, but you’re still coming back with me.”

“Why is that?” she asked curiously.

Reid was surprised at her response because he expected her to flat-out say no. Obviously she was still after information, and that he could not understand.

“Because it’s important. Your mother has the work, and I need it. So whatever she’s done with it, you need to give it to me.”

“And if I don’t?” she asked bluntly.

He turned to face her. “You are very much like your mother,” he declared, with a level of bitterness that seemed to surprise her.

“So that’s a bad thing? Is that what you’re saying?”

“It’s wrong when you go against your father. You know that I’ll be dead if I don’t come home with that material.”

“Will you?” she asked. “I’ve certainly been at the butt end of what the Kremlin wants,” she pointed out, “and I have no intention of going back to subject myself to that type of abuse.”

“It wouldn’t be abuse. It never would have been that way if your mother had just followed instructions, but she wouldn’t. She refused to cooperate with them, and now I’m here, expected to get that research from her.”

“Again, what if you don’t?”

He shrugged. “That’s a whole different story.”

“Yet you’re here, which means you don’t have to go back,” she stated. “You could ask for asylum.”

“Like you? No. I work for my country. I’m not going against it.” When she frowned at that, he added, “I’m not a traitor. That is not who I am. They have been good to me,” he said. “They’ve given me labs. They’ve given me everything I’ve needed to do the work I have spent my life on—a life’s work that she stole from me,” he snapped, turning to glare at his wife.

“Yet you came here to see her,” Reid interjected again.

He stiffened at that and then nodded. “She is still my wife,” he noted heavily. “And it’s important I find out where her material is.”

“What happens then?” Veni asked her father. “Even if you have her material, what makes you think you’ll duplicate the results?”

“If I have the material, I can at least work on duplicating it,” he replied. “They will give me that much of a chance at least.”

“That’s a pretty slim chance. Do you really want to work with a government that’s only willing to give you that much of a chance?” she asked.

He turned stiffly. “You do not understand loyalty. We made a commitment, and that’s important to me. She broke that commitment, both in our marriage and to our government,” he shared. “That is not something I can live with.”

“We couldn’t live with their regulations, restrictions, abuse, which is why we’re here in England, but you’re not. Although technically I guess you are,” she said, with a headshake. “Although, how you managed to get here so easily, I don’t know.”

“I managed because I came with the government’s help. I’m allowed to be here, and I’m under diplomatic immunity,” he explained. “However, that help will be rescinded if I do not return.”

“If you don’t return with her work, you mean. Isn’t that what you’re saying?”

“Exactly. So I need that work.” He turned and looked at his wife. “But, even now, she won’t tell me where it is.”

“That’s because she wants the work for the wider world,” Veni stated. “Not just for the Kremlin.”

“I can’t help her with that. We signed a contract and took a position of responsibility, of trust, and she broke that contract time and time again. Honestly, if she wasn’t already so ill, I don’t know what would become of her,” he admitted, his tone shaky for the first time. “But, because she is so ill, she gets to walk away once again, free and clear.”

His tone alternated between being hurt and being angry, but then that was probably normal, based on what Reid had heard about their marriage.

“And if she does give it to you, then what?” Veni asked her dad.

“Then I can go home, and I can work in my lab again. So, if you have any idea how to get that material, so I can continue her work, then that’s only fair. Especially since it was my work to begin with.”

Veni looked over at her mother, but she had fallen asleep again. “Yet right now she’s asleep, and I don’t know if she’ll even wake up again,… and that is something I’ll have to deal with. We were kidnapped and treated terribly. Hauled from one end of the world to the other, held prisoner, and constantly drugged with God-only-knows what. Then you just get to walk in here, free and clear. I don’t even know how to feel about that.”

“It has to do with loyalty,” he repeated, staring at her. “Something you never seemed to understand. You always hated me, and yet I’m not the bad guy.”

“I never hated you. Honestly that was never part of my world. I loved you. I just wished we could have had a relationship without everybody fighting all the time. But no matter how much I want that, even now, it will still not happen.”

“It can happen,” her dad stated. “Come home. That’s all that’s needed. You can come home, come work with me,” he murmured. “You know that’s what the Kremlin wants.”

“Why would I do that? You do realize that Mom started to go off her rocker at the end.”

He stopped and eyed her hesitantly. “I did wonder. She passed on all kinds of weird mumblings at one point that made several of us stop and look sideways at each other, trying to figure out what she was saying.”

“Exactly. And, because of that, whatever you’ve been told, you can’t trust it. I’ve heard her. She just rambles on and on.”

He sat down heavily beside his wife and stared. “I was really hoping that her mental faculties were much stronger, but the cancer appears to have ravaged all of her soul.”

“And more,” she added. “There is no peace after this.”

He looked up at her. “Will you stay here?”

She nodded. “I will.”

“Even without your mother?”

“Even without my mother. I’ve thought of it many times over the years. This is where I went to school. It’s where I was the happiest.” Her father’s gaze went directly to Reid, and she nodded. “Yes, he is part of my past and my future, whether you like it or not.”

He shrugged. “It’s not as if anybody gets an opinion on the matter, and you were always so independent. Scattered, wary, but always independent. We could never figure out what to do with you. Honestly we should never have been parents. We never saw it at the time, but we just don’t have that temperament.”

Veni couldn’t argue with that because her life had been many, many things, but easy hadn’t been one of them.

Reid watched the exchange, amazed that Veni had managed as well as she had, after growing up with these two as parents. Yet she was holding her own right now in a pretty impressive way.

She looked around the hospital room. “She clearly doesn’t have much longer to live. I’m not even sure that she’ll wake up again.”

“She needs to,” her dad stated abruptly. “I can’t go home empty-handed. That… That will not work out well for me.”

“No, it may not,” she agreed. “However, you must understand that Mom may not tell you anything anyway, not with her declining mental abilities. Surely you have your own notes from back then.”

“Yes, but she apparently did something to move it all forward at an incredible speed,” he shared, “and that is what they want from me.”

“What if she lied?”

Reid looked over at her, barely keeping his facial expression calm. What was Veni up to? She didn’t look at him, staring only at her father.

“What do you mean, lied?” her father asked, his tone turning harsh. “The Kremlin spent a lot of money getting things to this point. If she lied, that would not be good.”

“And yet isn’t that exactly what she would do? She wanted out, not for herself but for me. She didn’t want me to spend my life the way she had. She wanted me to be free, to have a better life. Instead of what she had, forced to work crazy hours in the lab, pressured to produce, competitive to the point of insanity. She didn’t want that life for me. She wanted to come here in order to get a different life for me,… a better life, and she knew it wouldn’t happen without some pull, and that pull was her work. So she sacrificed everything she held dear, including her work, to bring me here.”

He stared at her in shock. “Oh, good Lord.” He turned his gaze to the sleeping woman. “That is something she would do. She never knew what to do with you. You were this anomaly that she couldn’t correlate with her science experiments,” he explained. “She was constantly uncertain about what to say, what to do, and often ended up saying the worst things to you, just because she didn’t know how to react or how to respond. I often found her in tears because she’d said the wrong thing and had set you off, but then you were so emotional.”

He made it sound as if Veni’s emotions were the worst thing in the world. Reid could only imagine what her life was like growing up in such a family, where everybody was so analytical, where there was absolutely no room for emotions. Yet she’d been created, conceived at some point in time, so there must have been some drive to perform at that level at times.

Her father continued to speak. “Both of us were completely unprepared to be parents. We should have just aborted the fetus,” he declared dispassionately, as if completely forgetting that Veni was right here.

She stared at him and shook her head. “Yeah, maybe you should have,” she conceded in a dry tone, “because somehow you guys just didn’t quite figure out what made me tick.”

He looked at her and shrugged. “We tried, though.”

Astonished, she stared back at him. “Did you? Did you really? Did you ever get out of the lab long enough to try?”

He waved his hand. “And there, right there, that’s you, with that same old argument again. You need to come up with new arguments, if you want to keep going back to the same old topics,” he stated. “We’ve already disputed the logic on the ones you’ve come up with so far.”

Reid’s eyebrows shot up at that. He couldn’t imagine what it must have been like for her, but it helped to explain the woman who had wanted no commitment, who had wanted to enjoy life for a little bit, without the intensity and drive that her parents had. It didn’t make this time any easier for her, and Reid could see that she was still struggling with her father’s words, his completely dispassionate tone.

Was it only because his wife was dying, or was it also about convincing his daughter to go back with him? Was it all about securing the documentation of Natalia’s work? Reid felt Veni slip her hand into his and squeeze tightly, as if looking for some stability in a world gone awry. He smiled at her gently. “It’s okay. This too shall pass.”

At that, she gave a gurgle of laughter. “God, I needed to hear that. It does give you some idea of what my life was like though.”

“Indeed,” he murmured. “But your future is not limited to that which has gone before. Remember that. You have the ability to make better choices now.”

“I made those choices when I came here,” she declared. “I’m still standing here, staring at my father’s presence, in total shock that he gets to walk around free, yet Mom and I were carted all over as prisoners.” That comment got her father’s attention once again.

“Yet you’re the one who tried to escape. If you hadn’t, you would have been treated completely differently. You would’ve been given compassionate leave to come and say goodbye to your mother, wherever she had ended up.”

She didn’t respond to that at all but added, “All I can tell you right now is that, in the last few months, she got very strange, very uncertain, and almost fanatical. Yet she always was fanatical to a certain extent.”

“She was,” her father agreed. “Her work was everything to her. I really admired that.”

She swallowed hard, then nodded. “Of course you did. What I can tell you is that her recent work is not stable. It’s not anything you can count on. I can give you a copy of a lot of it, up to a few months ago. That’s when she started getting even worse. Most of it was just gibberish and went in the garbage,” she stated. “Yet I can give you what I have up to that point in time, which was about, I don’t know, six months ago.”

With that, Reid understood what she was doing. He almost smiled in appreciation of her brilliant move, but it was obvious that she would still have to work the angles for a little bit.

Her father stared at her. “If you would do that,” he began hesitantly, “I might be able to call them off.”

“That would be very good, if you could,” she stated. “I don’t want to spend my lifetime looking over my shoulder.”

He nodded absentmindedly. “But I need the evidence first,” he claimed, looking at her sideways.

“Of course you would,” she said in a dry tone. “I don’t have a laptop or any way to log into the material at this point,” she revealed, “so it’ll take a little bit.”

“Until it happens, I can’t do anything for you.”

“What email do you want it sent to?”

Eagerly, he gave her his email address. “Seriously you’ll help?”

“Seriously I’ll help, but only on the condition that I get to walk free. This is not my fight,” she stated, “and honestly, as you can see from Mom’s state of mind and her present health situation, she’s well-past fighting, and the experimental drugs messed her up these last few months. I wasn’t even sure who to talk to about it, but it’s obvious that something needed to happen. But how do you make something like that happen when you don’t even know who to call on.”

“No, of course not,” he muttered, turning to look at his wife. “If she would wake up one more time, I could ask her.”

“You could, but you also know how secretive she is and how absolutely fanatical she is about her work. She’ll tell you anything and everything she wants you to hear but not necessarily the truth.”

He stared at Natalia for a long moment. “As much as I hate to admit it, you are correct. She was always a little bit like that.”

“A little bit?” Veni repeated, with a headshake. “You’ve both been like that all my life. There’s no little bit about it.” She looked over at Reid, squeezed his hand again, and asked, “Can you get me a secure laptop?”

“I can,” he replied, pulling out his phone. He contacted Anders and explained what he needed.

“Is everything okay in there?” Anders asked. “You’ve got quite a collection of people watching outside.”

“Yeah, so far, and, if you can get me that laptop, we might bring this to an easier conclusion.”

“I hope so. I’ll be there in five.”

Reid didn’t dare look out the window, but obviously Anders had seen people standing around outside the hospital, probably not sure whether it was safe to come in or not. When a gentle knock came on the door to Natalia’s hospital room, Reid opened it and accepted the laptop from Anders.

Anders looked at the tableau in front of him. “Peaceful?” he whispered in a low tone.

“So far.”

“Resolving?”

He nodded. “Yes, but with some interesting twists.”

“Got it. I’m right outside in the hallway, if you need me.”

“Okay, stay alert.”

At that, Anders gave him a sharp look.

“He didn’t come alone.”

“Of course,” he muttered. And, with that, he stepped out of the room. Reid turned and handed the laptop to Veni. “As you requested.”

She nodded and sat down beside her mom, then logged in and quickly checked her emails. It was a hunch, but it had paid off, and she had it all. With that confirmation, she looked at her father and said, “Tell me your email address again.”

He gave her the address and stood there, not able to see what she was doing, but close enough to ensure that she was doing something productive.

As soon as she sent it, she noted, “Check your phone.”

“Where’s your phone?” he asked.

“The kidnappers stole it,” she stated coolly.

He didn’t say anything but pulled out his phone and nodded. “It just came in. Is this the only backup you have?”

“It is, and it’s from six months ago, likely the last time Mom was technically in any headspace for this.”

The relief on his face was monumental. He hesitated and then said, “Thank you.”

She nodded. “I probably won’t see you again after this.”

“So, you won’t be coming back to Russia?” he asked.

“No, I won’t. I would rather take a bullet than get put in that position again.” He stared at her in surprise, and she nodded vehemently. “Yes, it was that bad, and I have no intention of going through that ever again.”

“If you hadn’t argued with them and given them such a hard time…”

“I didn’t do anything,” she snapped. “So don’t go blaming this on me.”

He fell silent and then nodded. “I know you probably don’t believe me, but we both really, really love you.”

“I hope so,” she muttered. “It’ll be a lonely future for you, unless you do this all over again with some other woman.”

“No,” he stated immediately. “I certainly won’t be reproducing again. It’s… It’s amazing that we produced you,” he added, as he tapped his phone. “Obviously you’ve turned out pretty well.” He walked to his wife, leaned over, and kissed her very gently on the cheek, then whispered something that nobody could quite hear. Then he turned to Reid. “Look after my daughter.” With that said, he stepped out of the room and disappeared down the hall.