When Lexi Stoltz came home from her final day at the clinic, her genius father was in their driveway, wearing a trench coat and loading suitcases into a U-Haul van with one hand, while holding an umbrella over his head with the other.
The sun was shining and the sky was blue. It was pushing eighty degrees.
She pulled into the driveway, sighing. It was heart breaking to watch his decline. He and his team had created a vaccine against a deadly strain of Malaria. He’d won the Nobel Prize for Medicine. And she was proud of him, but it was unrequited pride. The dementia had come on suddenly. She’d decided to quit her job at the inner city free clinic to stay home and take care of him. They wouldn’t hold her position for her, but she was a doctor, and she figured she could find another one without too much effort when the time came.
Her father had failed to come home from his University lab for three days in a row two weeks ago. She’d gone to get him, of course, pounded on the door, begged him to just talk to her, but he’d called her an idiot and sent her packing.
That pretty much summed up their relationship. She was an unworthy admirer and he was a medical god.
Everything in her hoped this setback was something simple. She’d had elderly patients who developed symptoms this bad due to a simple UTI, but so far he was adamantly refusing any doctor’s appointments or medical care. So she’d brought home two weeks’ worth of broad spectrum antibiotics and a urinalysis kit. She was going to get to the bottom of this, and she would care of him herself, whether he liked it or not, the stubborn old bastard.
She drove past him, into the open garage, then got out of the car, reaching back in for her purse and medical bag. But her father beat her to it, yanked her passenger door open, grabbed both bags, and hustled out to his rented van, moving as fast as a twenty-something, even if he did wobble side to side like a penguin when he rushed. “Dad, what—”
He slung the bags into the back of the van, followed by his umbrella, then turned to glare at her from behind thick lenses rimmed in gold. His wild hair fit the mad-genius cliché a little too well, but she couldn’t get him to sit still long enough to let her cut it.
“Get in, Lexia,” he told her. “Hurry, get in. We have to go.” He slammed the van doors closed and thumbed a button to close the garage door. Then he headed to the driver’s side.
She hurried to keep pace. “Where are we going?” she asked.
He opened the door, but Lexi moved in front of him and blocked him from getting in. “Dad, slow down. Just tell me what’s going on.”
He stood still, looked into her eyes, and his were filled with impatience, anger, and no small amount of dislike. These were not new. He’d always looked at her pretty much that way. And despite the apparent confusion suggested by his actions, he was clear eyed.
“I’m leaving,” he said. “I have everything set up, and I’m leaving. Your time off begins today. You told me so, didn’t you?”
“Yes, I did.” She’d told him she’d resigned to care for him. She’d told him several times, and as recently as this morning. His dementia was worsening at an alarming rate. She was determined he not go into a facility. She’d keep it quiet, though. He was a hero. He was adored and respected the world over by anyone who knew anything about infectious disease. His reputation was responsible for most of his team’s research funding. They were making strides against Zika, against Triple E and Malaria and even HIV.
She and her dad had plenty of money, and her career could wait. It was more important that she take care of him. To preserve his legacy.
“Then you’re free to come with me if you want. God knows I’m going to need help, as much as it galls me to admit it. Bad enough I had to move in with you.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I wanted you here.”
“You can stay behind if that’s what you want. I’ll hire a nurse when I get there. If that’s your choice, fine, but you should know that you will never see me again.”
She frowned hard, a trill of alarm skittering up her spine. “Dad, what the hell is going on? What do you mean, I’ll never see you again?”
He looked past her, up and down the street. “I can’t tell you that. They could be listening.”
God, this was far worse than she’d thought. He was completely delusional. Okay, okay, she needed to just keep him calm.
“Everything’s taken care off,” he said again. “The heat’s turned down, and a discreet friend will check on the place once a week. I’ve set up timers for the lights so it’ll look like we’re still here. Our mail will be forwarded to a service that will forward it to a lawyer who’ll keep it for us to pick up. I paid top dollar. We won’t be traced.”
“Why would anyone want to trace us?”
“We have to go now. We have—we have to go—we have to—” He started gasping in between his words, and then he pressed one hand to his chest.
Lexi swore. “Where’s your nitro, Dad?”
He reached for his pocket and missed. “Not gonna help. Have to go. House is all locked up. Everything’s… taken care of.”
She dug the pill bottle from his pocket, shook out a tablet and pushed it between his lips. “I’ll drive, okay? You just calm down. Don’t kill yourself over this. All right?”
Panting, he nodded and speed-wobbled around the van to the passenger side. She opened the door and helped him get in. He seemed calmer, but not enough.
She watched him do up his seatbelt, then glanced back at the house. “Where’s Jax?”
“In the back with the other boxes.”
“Ah, hell, Dad.” Lexi closed his door, ran around to the driver’s side and got in. There was an open path to the back where it looked like everything they owned had been tossed, some boxed, some bagged, some just loose. Shoes were scattered everywhere. A mountain, apparently made out of every outfit she owned, blocked the rear windows, and their toaster lay across the top of it.
“Jax? Kitty? Where are you, boy?”
A plaintive and far too muffled “meow” guided her to a box that was taped shut and jiggling fiercely.
Right. He threw her clothes in loose, but boxed up her cat. Rolling her eyes, Lexi peeled off the tape and her oversized goofball of a yellow cat shot out like one of those snakes out of a fake peanut can.
“Will you hurry it up, girl? I am not playing games here. We have to go, now.”
She wasn’t going to calm Jax at this point, so she let him be, and got herself into the seat behind the wheel again. “Okay, we’re going.” She started the van, and turned to her father. “Which way?”
“North.”
She almost smiled when he said that. The only place she could think of in that direction was her mother’s cabin. Well, hers now, she supposed. It was still in her mother’s name, though she’d been dead for twenty-four years. She’d willed it to her daughter when she’d received her terminal diagnosis. She’d passed before Lexi had started kindergarten. Lexi and her father hadn’t been back there since.
She had no idea what kind of condition the log home was in. But it was the place that held her fondest memories of her mother for her.
She backed out of the driveway and headed down the street. “How long are we staying?”
“Not very long,” he told her. “Just ’til I’m dead. Now step on it, will you?”
Sighing, Lexi stepped on it.