AUTHOR'S NOTE:

Here are the concluding paragraphs of Chapter 16, "Festival," from last week's installment of DUBY'S DOCTOR.

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At the wheel of Averell's limousine, Trish glanced in the rearview mirror at Rico, Mitchell, and Carinne – who was dripping rainwater from every hair and pore. Carinne was wild-eyed and trembling. Rico gripped his pistol in one hand and the arm of a groggy Mitchell in the other.

"She don't look so good," Trish said, just before Carinne leaned forward and retched all over Rico and the upholstery.

Rico shoved the girl away from him, snarling and wiping at his soiled clothes. Mitchell fought her way out of a stupor and leaned to try and help Carinne.

Rico glanced out the rear window and shouted, "Step on it! He's coming!"

"Who's coming?" Trish called back.

Mitchell looked behind them. "Johnny! Stop!" she shouted, as if he could hear.

"It's Dubreau!" Carinne sobbed.

"The dead guy?" Trish cried.

Rico roared, "Shut up and drive!"

The main street of Coconut Grove is closed to automobiles during the Arts Festival, and crowds pack the pavement from curb to curb for more than a mile. The limousine was not supposed to be on the street, and its progress was reduced to a crawl by the artists, booths, customers, bicyclists, in-line skaters, skateboarders, and even dogs that thronged the festival grounds.

Jean was gaining on the car. He ran full tilt, pounding the pavement, splashing through rainwater, wiping water from his eyes. He was obsessed with catching that limousine, but Mitchell's knee was not holding up. With every slam of his left foot on the pavement, the pain in his leg jumped three levels in intensity. Blood from his wounded shoulder washed down his shirt and pants.

The limo was nearly within his reach when it cleared the Arts Festival congestion, turned onto an empty street, and sped off through the storm, hopelessly fast.

"Carinne!" he yelled. "Carinne!"

He ran with everything in him, but the knee collapsed,sending him rolling like a runaway barrel through gravel, mud, and puddles. Hestill didn't know that someone more important to him than Carinne was in thedeparting limo. 

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AUTHOR'S NOTE:

Now, enjoy Chapter 17 of DUBY'S DOCTOR.  

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It was nearly half an hour before Jean returned to his booth, bloody and sore, on a friendly bicyclist's handlebars. The rain had stopped. Jean eased himself off the bike.

"Merci, mon ami," he told the cyclist, then he limped toward the booth.

"Any time," was the cyclist's reply. "You sure you're okay?"

Jean waved off the concern, so the cyclist merely shook his head and departed.

When Jean made his way to the front of the crowd surrounding his booth, he was horrified to see it cordoned off with yellow crime-scene tape. The canvas curtains still hid the interior.

"Michel? Michel!" he called, forcing past the yellow tape and uniformed police officers and into his carefully constructed festival booth. The booth seemed smaller with Frank Stone and two burly police officers crowded into it.

Frank Stone turned from examining the rear of the booth. He met Jean in the center of the floor and stopped his forward progress with a hand in the center of Jean's chest.

"I'm sorry," Stone said. "I tried to warn you—"

Jean's look of hatred stopped further explanation and caused Stone to back away a step.

"You!" Jean snapped. "You caused this." He pushed past Stone as if Mitchell must be hiding in the rear of the booth. "Michel!" he called.

He thrust Stone and another police officer aside as he looked under the tables. "Where is she?" he demanded, rounding on Frank Stone.

Stone was bold enough to approach Jean slowly and quietly. He laid a hand gently on Jean's one not-bloodstained shoulder. "Listen, Du—Johnny. The bad news is: Averell has Mitchell. Good news: no blood. Looks like they haven't hurt her." He didn't say, "yet."

Jean fists clenched involuntarily, and a muscle rippled along his jawline. Stone kept a hand in place on Jean's shoulder as if to steady him.

"The other good news is: Averell has made a big mistake this time. This is kidnapping. In front of hundreds of witnesses. Now, I can go after him. This time, nobody's getting him off the hook. Nobody."

"Take your hand off me," Jean said far too softly.

Stone, who was not a complete fool, dropped his hand to his side and backed away. "There's a team of paramedics outside, Johnny. I think you better go with 'em. Gotta take care of Mitchell's knee, right? She'd want that."

Jean wiped his face with trembling hands and brushed rain-saturated hair from his eyes. He straightened his shoulders and began to limp out of the tent.

"Johnny—" Stone began.

Jean silenced him with a look and limped across the booth and out onto the sidewalk.

Frank Stone entered the hospital emergency room a while later, in his rumpled raincoat, looking like a low-rent, high-calorie Peter Falk, and wove a path through rushing interns, nurses, orderlies, and aides, past a waiting room filled with patients and their families.

At the admitting desk, a nurse pointed Stone toward treatment rooms at the rear, where curtains were drawn around a cubicle. When a young resident physician emerged between the curtains, Stone nabbed him. It was almost a replay of the day Yves Dubreau had been pronounced dead, and Jean Deaux had been "born." Except, this time the physician was not Mitchell Oberon, but a young man Stone had never met.

"Is he talking?" Stone asked the physician.

"Not to you!" Jean shouted from behind the curtain.

The physician started to direct Stone back toward the waiting room, but at the flash of a badge, a flint-hard look, and an imperative gesture from Stone, the young resident relented and moved away.

Stone pushed between the curtains and into the cubicle.

Jean was sitting on the treatment table, shoulder bandaged, with his knee packed in a beehive of ice and ace bandages. His ruined clothes were a wet, shredded, bloody heap on the floor. He wore only his briefs and a drafty hospital gown three sizes too small, though it was probably the largest size they had.

"Whattaya mean 'not to me'?" Stone said. "Mister, I'm the only guy on this planet that you do want to talk to right now."

"You are wrong."

"Yeah? Name one person you need more than me right this minute."

"Michel Oberon. Now, go away."

Stone only stepped closer. He stepped very, very close. "You don't mean that."

Jean backhanded Frank Stone with all the strength remaining in his good arm. Stone nearly went down, but he caught the sturdy metal drapery frame and, after a stunned second, hauled himself upright. Then he smiled. Jean's mind may not remember everything it learned as a special agent, but Jean's body seemed to have retained enough muscle memory to be dangerous even when he had been physically wounded and emotionally traumatized.

"Averell," Stone said. "You remember that name? You remember how I told you he keeps getting arrested, but he never goes to trial, he never goes to jail? Remember?"

"I don't care."

"Averell," Stone said, "has taken Doctor Oberon. And he's gone too far this time, with way too many witnesses. I can get a warrant, and I can get the support I need from my department, now. But, if we want to get into Averell's compound without shots being fired and hostages getting killed, I'm gonna need your help."

Jean did not respond.

"They killed Yves Dubreau, Johnny. And he wasn't the first, or the last. They won't hesitate to do the same to Mitchell Oberon. Or worse."

Jean flinched, and Stone knew he had found the chink in Jean's armor.

"Why did they take her?" Jean asked. "She never did anything to them. What do they want?"

"You. They want you."

"Then, they will have me. I will go to them."

"Exactly!" Stone said with a grin. "And once you're inside, we can spring our trap."

"You said you sent them an invitation. You knew they would come, because they wanted me. I was the bait for your trap, but your trap did not work, Frank Stone. They did not take me, the bait. They took Michel. And now, Michel is the bait." Jean's lip curled in disgust. "Michel was wrong; even if you are a sort of policeman, you are not a good man. You are no better than this man, Averell. You will use Michel, you will use me, you will use the daughter of Averell, you will use anyone to get what you want."

"Fine. Then, when you've finished with Averell, you can come after me."

"Merci. I will. I promise you."

"We'll get started soon as you're back on your feet again," Stone said, then he went in search of the doctors.

In Carinne's suite of rooms at the Averell mansion, Mitchell rifled purses, closets, dresser drawers, even trash cans, but couldn't find what she needed. She moved into the dressing room and searched every drawer in the vanity table.

Carinne entered behind her, dressed in a bathrobe. Still Mitchell continued searching, rummaging through every nook or cranny.

"You won't find anything useful," said Carinne. "My mother taught him to be very careful."

Mitchell stood erect and looked at Carinne, then turned and went into the bathroom, where she rattled through the contents of the medicine cabinet.

"No pills, no razor blades, no belts, no pantyhose, no nothing," said Carinne from the other room. "Even the hot water has a regulator on it, in case you should try to scald yourself to death in the shower."

Mitchell burst out of the bathroom, enraged. "I have no intention of taking my own life," she snapped. "I just want to get out of here. What am I doing here? I'm nothing to them. Why are they keeping me?"

"Duby," Carinne said. "They thought he was dead. We all thought he was dead. And, trust me, he will be, when he comes to get you."

"That makes no sense whatsoever," Mitchell said. "I was kidnapped in broad daylight! Half the world saw it happen! Shots were fired, for Pete's sake! So, where are the police? We should be hearing sirens by now. Surely, they've identified the owner of that car. With all the computers they have?"

Carinne nodded. "Oh, trust me, they definitely know it was my father's car. That's why I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for the police to break down the door."

"No police?" Mitchell said in a very small voice.

"No police. But, Duby is another story. Rico wouldn't have grabbed you if he didn't think you were important to Duby. He'll come for you."

Mitchell slowly lowered herself into a sitting position on the huge canopied bed. She nodded to herself. "You're mistaken. But, you don't know, do you; you haven't seen the pictures."

"What pictures?"

"Jea– Duby's pictures. Dozens of them. Your face is in every one. He forgot everything else he ever knew; he even forgot how to talk, but he didn't forget you."

As a medical professional, Dr. Mitchell Oberon could keep her emotions in a lead-lined container in a far corner of her mind. In that way, she was able to calmly discuss tragic, horrible situations with patients, their families and loved ones. It was a valuable, essential skill, and one of many that she, an experienced surgeon, had honed.

She used that skill now. She locked away every hope, dream, fantasy or memory about Jean, so that she could say without emotion: "No, he won't be coming after me. But, he will definitely come after you. Either way, he'll be walking into a kill zone, and we can't just stand by and let that happen."

The room was silent for a minute before Carinne stepped forward and joined Mitchell, sitting on the bed. "We won't," she said, and there was steel in her voice.

"You have a plan?" asked Mitchell. A tiny hope raised its head off the floor of her soul.

"I do," said Carinne. "But you've got to do exactly what I tell you, even if it sounds weird. And, don't make trouble. Otherwise, Daddy will call Doctor Heinzman to give you a shot, and you'll be in La La Land for a week."

"Heinzman! That quack?" Mitchell said. "What does he have to do with all this?"

"He used to 'take care' of my mother whenever she was, let's say, 'uncooperative' with Daddy. She's dead now. She, ah, 'took her own life' – according to Doctor Heinzman. Daddy pays Doctor Heinzman very well."

Mitchell scooted closer to Carinne and reached out to place a comforting hand over Carinne's hand where it rested on the bedspread.

Carinne clasped Mitchell's hand tightly.

Together they sat, grim faced and determined.

Carinne broke thesilence with, "We only have a few days before the wedding. You just concentrateon being a model prisoner, and leave everything else to me."  

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AUTHOR'S NOTE:

Is Carinne ready to fight back against her powerful father at last?  Will Duby indeed attack the mansion to rescue Mitchell?  Will Stone be a help or a curse? Will Carinne be strong enough to stand against her father?

Watch for next Monday's update of DUBY'S DOCTOR:  Chapter 18, "Rescue." 

Thanks for your votes and comments.  If you're enjoying the story, tell a friend; help them discover it, too.

Until next time,

Iris