He shook his head and almost laughed. What a sad excuse to see the beautiful Heather’s skin. He could just imagine what she would say if he told her he wanted to see her chest to find out if the lightning left a tattoo. Especially if he came on all earnest, acting like it was just an interesting scientific fact he wanted to explore.
She’d probably sock him. Hard.
He had to admit he could be ‘aloha nui loa’. Crazy about the girl. She was feisty, cute, and so much fun to be with. In his mind she reminded him of a tiny, beautiful fairy or elf, she was so dainty and elegant. And could she ever swear when she was upset!
When they were surfing and she fell off of her board, she didn’t realize he heard her as she floundered in the ocean, tenaciously getting back on the ‘dam, fucking,’ surfboard. She was muttering, ‘I swear I’ll fucking chop you up into firewood,’ and then let out a really brilliant and astonishingly unusual string of swear words as she stubbornly struggled back on the board to try the waves again.
It cracked him up.
Most people just thought Heather was another pretty model, with not a deep thought in her head, but Mike knew better. Since he had access, like all the news reporters at the TV station to do research, he’d investigated Heather. He’d found she was a minor tycoon. She’d made a substantial fortune as a young model, but instead of socking it away in a bank or 401k, she’d sunk her earnings into fee simple real estate in Hawaii. She owned and managed several apartment builds on the windward side of the island.
The refrigeration door, which was very thick and heavy, finally clicked open. Freezing mist boiled out of the unit. It sure is cold, Mike thought, hoping he could find the eggs fast. If not, they’d find him in the morning; a frozen popsicle collapsed on the floor.
There were many shelves, but luckily each one was labeled. Blood. Embryos. Sperm. Ovum; that was it.
The staff had placed the vials in alphabetical order. Satinov!
He reached in to grab the glass vial, then almost screamed when it burned his hand. “Holy hell,” he murmured. Burned twice in one day. Once by the smoldering heat from the handrail in the stairwell, and now by trying to grab an object way below freezing temperature. He’d been stupid, in too much of a hurry, but lucky as well. That vial could have stuck to his hand and caused a lot of damage.
He saw metal tongs clamped to the side of the freezer unit and picked them up. Then he ran to a paper towel holder on the other side of the room and grabbed a handful. On the way back he saw a cloth towel on one of the desks and took it.
Carefully removing the Satinov, Michelle container with the tongs, he placed it on the paper towels and rolled it up inside. Then he wrapped the whole package in the towel. It was small and he stuffed it in his pocket for safekeeping.
Then Mike had an idea. He took the tongs and pulled out the shelf that said Sperm. He found Satinov, Omar. He pulled out the vial containing Omar’s sperm, holding the object away from his body with distaste. He found a trash can and dropped it inside. Then he stirred the can’s contents with the tongs until the vial was totally hidden. Those little guys would die soon, he thought with some satisfaction.
Just as he was preparing to leave he saw some bright lights moving toward him through a doorway. People were coming!
Feeling panicked, like a guilty thief, he did the only thing he could think of. He ran to the other side of the room and hid under a desk.
Three people entered the room with bright torches, lighting up the room. Even so, Mike believed he was safely hidden in the shadows.
He listened with interest as a woman spoke to her co-workers. “Yeah. It was real funny. Dr. Franz is trapped in the elevator when he realizes the clinic’s live specimens are going to unfreeze and disintegrate in a few hours. He starts shouting so loud that Julie, the receptionist, gets alarmed and shouts back at him. He tells her to run to the main hospital and get help to transfer the frozen live specimens to the main hospital lab.”
Another voice: “The unit’s unlocked!”
Original voice: “Someone’s in trouble. Here, let’s be quick. This stuff is valuable.”
Mike watched them place the containers with their fragile organic specimens into a basket. They were working fast and soon were leaving. He waited until they got out the door and then followed them. They weren’t using the clinic stairwell, so there had to be another way out of the building. He saw the three people go out of another door, and then they were walking over a short bridge that went from the fertility clinic to the main hospital. Since it was dark, he never would have known about this alternate escape route.
The door had a lock, and it was closing automatically as the hospital workers left. He ran and grabbed it just in time. Then he reached blindly in back of him, feeling around on a desk. He found a ruler and secured it between the door and the jam, so the door would would remain unlocked.
Excellent, he thought. There was a way to get Michelle out of here without using the front door to the fertility clinic. Maybe they could avoid Omar altogether.
Mike patted his pocket, making sure the precious package was safe, feeling the cold seep through the paper towels, and his jeans, cooling his skin.
He went to the stairwell and started down, thinking that maybe the hotel they were staying in tonight had a freezer. The other option would be to go directly back to Rod’s company Lear Jet and put
