"That's why I want you to kill them. So I can finally escape from what almost every other person on earth would pay millions of dollars for."
"What happens if you stop taking the treatments?" he asked quietly.
"I don't know," she said. "That's the one thing no one knows. I could go on as I am or…"
"Or what?" Justin said, when she didn't finish her sentence.
"Or my body will stop functioning on its own because it's forgotten how." She cocked her head now, and she looked across the horizon. She crossed back to his side of the road to stand directly in front of him. "Listen," she said. "Do you hear it?"
Justin cocked his head too. Heard a familiar whirring noise off in the distance.
"His helicopter," Aphrodite said. "They're back." She took Justin's hand now. "You should be in the house. It'll be easier if they're inside."
He let her lead him back toward her prison. Her hand felt warm inside his.
"They're going to offer you anything you want," she said. "I know them. And they've got a lot to offer."
"I'm not for sale," Justin said.
"My father has kept the scientists separate. They all know pieces. He thinks that no one has access to the final formula but him. He thinks that no one can really put it all together but him."
"But that's not true?"
"I know everything they've done to me. I've kept track of everything since I was fifteen years old. Every medication, every injection, every pill. I've read and studied the exact same materials and experiments my father's scientists have read and studied. They talk to me-they've explained things to me. I've had nothing to do my entire life but learn what it is I am and why."
Justin saw the helicopter now. It flew into view and headed for the landing strip several hundred yards behind the house.
"I can give you anything and everything that they offer," Aphrodite said. "Anything at all."
"There's only one thing I want," Justin said, and he told her what it was.
They were at the front door now. She told Justin how Kransten and Marshall would enter, where they would go. She told him exactly where to wait for them. Then she asked him to bend down.
When he did, she reached up and put her hands around the back of his neck. She stood on her toes and she kissed him. Her lips grazed his and lingered, pressing against him. Justin didn't move. Stood absolutely still until she released him.
"Thank you," she said. "I've been dreaming about a kiss for almost twenty years."
Justin watched her go into the room to the left of the foyer. She came out a minute later and handed him a floppy disk.
"I have a friend," he told her. "She's in her car, parked, half a mile down the road. Her name's Deena. I'd like you to go to her and wait for me."
"Leave here on my own?" she asked.
"Yes. Can you do that?"
Aphrodite nodded. "I've dreamed about leaving here on my own. I've dreamed about it my whole life."
"Did you dream about what you'd do when you left?"
She smiled a deep, inward smile. "Yes," she said. "I definitely dreamed about that."
"You go wait with Deena. Then we'll help you do whatever you dreamed about. Okay?"
She smiled again, nodded, turned, and walked out the front door and headed back toward the gate. Justin watched as she walked the path that would take Aphrodite outside the walls that had so long imprisoned her.
Aphrodite never looked back. Justin saw her step past the wall. He saw her smile brilliantly right before she turned, heading toward Deena, and then she disappeared from view.
Five minutes later, waiting exactly where Aphrodite had told him to, he came face-to-face with Douglas Kransten and Louise Marshall. Kransten was tall and rigid, with long, wavy silver hair and deep crags in his tanned face. His fingers were long and elegant. Justin was surprised to notice such beautiful hands on an old and despicable man. Louise was younger, but the years didn't really matter because her age no longer was discernible. She had had too many face-lifts. Her skin was unnaturally smooth and wrinkle free. Her breasts were too large and firm under her sweater. Her hair was too dark and her features seemed frozen, cast in something that only resembled human flesh. Neither of them made a sound when they saw him.
Justin didn't say anything either. There was no point. Words meant nothing now. The only thing that had any meaning was that now he could finish what he'd come halfway around the world to do.
Ten minutes later, it was done.
Louise Marshall didn't utter a word before she died. Douglas Kransten said only one thing. He looked straight into Justin's eyes and whispered, "Aphrodite?"
Justin understood the question. The old man was asking if his experiment had survived. Would continue to survive.
Justin let him die without ever finding out the answer. When he reached Deena, she was sitting in the car, parked off the narrow dirt shoulder of the road. She was sitting there alone.
"Is it over?" she asked as he walked over to her side of the car.
"It's over," he said. He peered into the car, checked out the backseat. Then he glanced around at the quiet countryside. "Where's the girl?"
Deena looked at him questioningly. "What girl?"
He didn't know how to tell her, couldn't begin to explain, so he just said, "A little eight-year-old girl. Dark hair. Very pretty. Didn't she come find you?"
Deena shook her head, said, "Who is she?"
Justin shrugged, his eyes focused down the road, half expecting Aphrodite to appear. "The daughter of one of the servants, I guess."
"And she just left on her own? Will she be all right?"
Now Justin nodded. "I think she will. She seemed to have some kind of plan."
"An eight-year-old girl with a plan?" Deena said. "Should we go look for her?"
"No," Justin said. "We should let her be." He smiled, opened the car door, and slid in behind the wheel as Deena moved over to the passenger side. "And we should go home," he said.
36
Kendall came rushing up to Deena and threw her arms around her. Despite all the homemade french fries she'd devoured over the past week, she was definitely glad to see her mother. Deena hugged the girl tightly and planted kisses all over her face until Kendall began to protest and squirm. When she finally escaped her mother's arms, she made her way over to Justin and, with a bit more decorum, kissed him on the cheek. He couldn't help himself-he grabbed her tightly too, and hugged her to him. The girl didn't squirm this time. She seemed instinctively to understand Justin's need to hold her.
"You're lucky," he said to Deena's daughter.
"I am?" she said. "Why? Because I got to stay here and go swimming every day?"
"No. Because you get to grow up and experience all these great things that life has in store for you."
"But there's a lot of bad things, too, Jay. I know there are 'cause I heard you telling my mom. It scared me."
Justin gave her a mock scowl. He chewed on the inside of his lip, wondering when and how kids got to be so smart. "You're right, as usual," he finally agreed. "There are a lot of bad things. But you can't let them scare you."
"But what if they're really scary?"
"Well, for one thing, your mom and I are here. And one of our jobs is to make sure the really scary things don't ever get to you."
"But what if you're not here? What if they do?"
"Then," Justin said, "you just have to realize that all those scary, bad things don't really matter. They're just a part of life. Once you know that, they're not so scary."
"I don't want them to be part of my life."
"I guess nobody does. But you know what? There are so many good things that are also part of life, they make up for all those scary things. They more than make up for them because they're so much more important."