Chapter 44 - Blood and Saline
Desmond closed the distance between them in two long strides. He did not pull away. Instead, he wrapped his arms around her, burying his face in her dark hair, holding her so tightly she could feel the thunderous, unbroken rhythm of his heart.
"Stop," Desmond commanded softly against her ear. "Don't you ever dare apologize to me for existing."
"She made me a weapon against you," Sadi sobbed, her fingers clutching his tactical vest. "Every massage, every needle, every hour I spent waking your dead nerves... she planned it. She used my hands."
"Your hands saved me," Desmond said, pulling back to hold her face between his palms. His icy blue eyes were clear, fierce, and entirely devoid of doubt. "She might have paid your tuition, Sadi. She might have guided your resume to my gate. But she didn't give you your soul. She didn't stay up for seventy-two hours straight holding my head while I convulsed from withdrawal. She didn't bleed for me. You did."
He kissed her hard on the mouth, a fierce declaration in the midst of falling plaster and distant gunfire.
"Now," Desmond said, turning back to the master console, "we look closer."
"What are you doing?" Sadi asked, wiping her eyes, the steel returning to her posture.
"Arthur Gallagher did not build an international empire by being a passive victim," Desmond muttered, his fingers flying across the auxiliary terminal. He pulled up the cached video feed Vivienne had just transmitted, isolating the twenty-second segment showing Arthur’s hand on the hospital bed.
"Look at the telemetry monitor in the background," Sadi said, her medical training immediately taking over. She pointed at the green line displaying the heart rate. "That’s not a resting sinus rhythm for an octogenarian on mechanical ventilation. It's erratic."
"Not erratic," Desmond corrected, his eyes narrowing as he zoomed in on the flashing LED beneath the pulse oximeter on Arthur’s index finger. "It’s patterned. Long, short, short, long."
Sadi’s breath hitched. "Morse code."
"My father taught me Morse before I learned long division," Desmond whispered. He grabbed a pen from the desk, transcribing the rhythmic blinks of the amber diode:
*— . . . / . / . — . / — . — — / — — — / . . — / — . — . / .... / — — — / — — . . / . — . . /*
Desmond stared at the letters he had scribbled: *BERY-OUCH-OZL*.
"It doesn't make sense," Sadi murmured. "It’s gibberish."
"No," Desmond said, a dark, terrible smile touching the corners of his lips. "It’s an anagram. Arthur used French nautical ciphers when communicating with the Genoa syndicate."
He rapidly rearranged the letters on the paper:
*CHATEAU DE CHILLON — BASEMENT NINE.*
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"He isn't in Valparaíso or the Jura," Desmond said, slamming his hand onto the desk. "He’s being kept beneath Lake Geneva. In the old waterworks bunker below the castle."
***
