Seizure by Cook Robin

Author:Cook, Robin [Cook, Robin]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2002-12-06T23:33:57+00:00

fifteen

9:15 A.M., Friday, March 1, 2002

It had been a long, delightful, and rejuvenating morning. With their circadian cycles awry, compliments of their brief European trip, both Stephanie and Daniel had awakened well before the sun had brightened the eastern horizon. Unable to fall back asleep, they’d gotten up, showered, and taken a protracted stroll around the hotel grounds and along the deserted Cabbage Beach, as a cloudless, tropical dawn broke. Back at the hotel, they’d been the first guests for breakfast and had lingered over their coffee while discussing the schedule for creating Butler’s treatment cells. With only three weeks until his scheduled arrival, they knew they were up against a significant time constraint, and they were eager to get started, although they recognized they could do little until the package arrived from Peter. By eight o’clock, they’d called the Wingate Clinic to tell the receptionist they were in Nassau and would arrive at the clinic at about nine-fifteen. She said she’d let the doctors know.

“This western part of the island looks different than the eastern part,” Daniel observed, as they drove west along Windsor Field Road. “It’s much flatter.”

“It’s also less developed and a lot drier,” Stephanie added. They were passing long, low stretches of semiarid pine forest infiltrated with palmettos. The sky was a deep azure, dotted with a few wispy white clouds.

Daniel had insisted on driving, which Stephanie didn’t mind until he’d suggested she might have more trouble driving on the left than he. Her initial reaction was to challenge what seemed to her an unwarranted, chauvinistic assertion, but then she just let it go. The issue wasn’t worth an argument. Instead, she climbed into the passenger seat and contented herself with getting out the map. As had been the case when they’d fled Italy, she’d be the navigator.

Daniel drove slowly, which was fine with Stephanie, considering the reflex to bear to the right at corners and while circling roundabouts. They’d driven along the northern coast of the island, noting once again the high-rise resorts lined up like soldiers at attention along Cable Beach. After passing a number of limestone caves sculpted by prehistoric seas, they’d turned inland. Bearing right at the next intersection on Windsor Field Road, they’d caught a glimpse of the airport in the distance.

Continuing west, they had no trouble finding the turnoff to the Wingate Clinic. It was on the left side of the road and marked by a huge sign.

Stephanie leaned forward to get a better view out the windshield as they approached. “My word! Do you see the sign?”

“It would be hard to miss. It’s the size of a billboard.”

Daniel made the turn onto the newly paved, tree-lined drive.

“They must have a lot of land,” Stephanie said. She sat back. “I can’t see the building.”

After several turns through a dense copse of evergreens, the serpentine driveway was abruptly blocked by a gate. A formidable chain-link fence topped with razor wire disappeared into the pine forest in both directions. On Stephanie’s side of the car stood a small booth.

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