§ § § -- October 1, 2004
Roarke had her bring the sheriff and deputy back in, then regarded the now-subdued Komainen siblings. "Have you anything you wish to say?" he asked.
Niilo merely glared up at him, but Liisa and Antti were clearly defeated. "We may as well begin from the first day," Antti said. "In the first ten years that passed after Teppo died and Leslie left Finland, we were content to think that she was well gone and out of our lives, and we would never have to deal with her again. Occasionally Niilo would make a case for returning to this island to exhume Teppo's body a second time and take it back for reburial in Finland, but the rest of us preferred to leave things as they lay."
"And then in 2001, the news of Prince Christian's marriage to his third wife got out," Liisa said, her voice shaky and thick with tears. "Imagine how stunned we were to see that his beloved new bride was none other than our brother's widow. We already hated her for causing two deaths in our family—so we believed—and to see her come into such a good fortune was too much for us to bear. From that day we began to plot revenge."
Antti continued, "Five of us saved our money, bided our time, made our plans. We three were in on the scheme, along with our sisters Kerttu and Ilta. Only our sister Mielikki refused to have any part in it. Perhaps Teppo trusted her more than any of the rest of us, for she said he had confided in her and told her exactly what happened with our father. When we told her of our plans, she stated that she would disown us if we carried them out. I expect that if we are extradited to Finland, we can find no help from her."
"We don't need her," Niilo snarled. "I can pick any lock on earth. No prison will ever hold me. You'll see…"
"Shut your mouth," Antti ordered. "Teppo was right…you're as mad as Äiti. You see, Mr. Roarke, madness has appeared in our mother's family for quite a few generations. It's unpredictable as to who will be affected, but with a family as large as ours I'm somewhat surprised that so far only Niilo seems to have inherited it. In any case, it took time to save the money we needed to sustain ourselves and buy the equipment we needed to make our plans reality; and as well, the younger ones couldn't agree on exactly what we should do nor when to do it."
"Then we heard the news about Prince Christian helping to find his country's first royal crown," Liisa added, "and that there would be a ceremony to restore his title to him and to crown Leslie and their babies. We thought there would never be a better time; so we five flew to Lilla Jordsö, rented a horrible, cheap little apartment in a bad part of the capital city, and polished our plot. But we hadn't saved as much money as we had thought. Our mother is still living, irretrievably insane, and the expenses for her care ate at our savings."
"So we ran out of money sooner than we expected to," Antti said. "We had to act quickly before we lost the opportunity. Kerttu was our expert at stealth and sneaking into and out of protected grounds without being noticed, so we sent her to the castle to find a weak spot, some easy way for us to get in and attack Leslie. When she told us that security had all the walls covered and that we would have to get in from the ocean if we wanted to do so undetected, we decided that a straightforward attack was our only choice."
"We took the automatic firearms we had purchased in the capital from a military supply store—Antti is a sergeant in the Finnish army—and as a group, we stormed the castle," Liisa said. "We had scoured the garbage of rich people in the capital and managed to salvage a discarded invitation to the event, and I was chosen to attend, since only one person per invitation was admitted. I was to open the main entrance to let the others in."
"But it backfired on us," Antti went on. "We ran in firing, with Niilo and Kerttu in the lead, Ilta and I behind them. We thought we had prepared ourselves, but there was extra security at the castle entrance, and they returned fire. They outnumbered us, and I am afraid they caught us less prepared than we meant to be. Kerttu and Ilta were hit and both died at the scene. Niilo and Liisa and I could only flee."
"You were the person in white who ran into the south wing of the castle," Leslie said suddenly to Liisa. "You must have escaped through the garages."
"Yes, I did," Liisa said, trying to wipe her wet face. "I joined Antti and Niilo outside the castle grounds, and we retreated into the woods to hide and to regroup. We had done all we knew to do, and yet it had failed. Antti was ready to give up, and I wanted to agree, because we were mourning our sisters. But Niilo told us he had been saving and saving for years—even longer than we knew, ever since Leslie left Finland after Teppo died—and he had all the money we needed. Antti had been the mastermind, you might say, the one who was ultimately in charge, since he was the oldest of us. He agreed to Niilo's plan, but he warned Niilo that if it failed, he would personally end Niilo's life."
"I may yet do it," Antti muttered, glaring down at Niilo. "Had it not been for him, we wouldn't be in this predicament." He sighed heavily and looked up. "We flew here to Fantasy Island, bought last-minute charter-plane passes at the gate in the airport in Hawaii, and got onto the island without any trouble. We caught a bus to a fruit farm of some sort and sneaked into a vacant apartment there. Niilo picked the lock so that we could get in and use it as our base. On our second night here, he and Liisa walked to the hospital, broke into a basement window, and stole the hospital's entire supply of morphine and atropine. Niilo picked the lock on the cabinet where the drugs were stored. It took them the rest of the night to walk back to our hiding place."
"We thought to take all of you," Liisa admitted to Leslie. "So we found out where you live and sneaked around the house. Since the windows were all locked from the inside, Niilo couldn't pick those locks, and when he tried the front-door lock, it defied him for some reason. We had to abandon the effort."
Leslie nodded. "I saw your footprints in the flower bed, and there were flattened areas in the grass too. One of you had been messing around in our front yard."
"Niilo again," Liisa said, unaware of the murderous glare Niilo awarded her. "He was always the most determined of us all to exact revenge on you. When it became clear that most of the time none of you were at home, I suggested we change our plans. We decided not to touch you directly. We had often wished you dead, but we also wanted you to suffer, as we suffered from the loss of our father and Teppo. When Niilo and I stole the drugs from the hospital, we passed a doctor's office on our way out, and broke in to see if there were other drugs there that we could use. It was a pediatrician's office and there was nothing practical for our purposes, but I did see that your babies had an appointment in a few days. We decided that was the best time to attack."
"We hid and waited till Prince Christian was about to leave with the triplets, and then hijacked his car," Antti picked up the narrative. "We had him drive most of the way to our hideout, then we blindfolded him and brought him the remaining distance. Once we were inside, Liisa injected him with some of the stolen morphine to keep him subdued. Our ultimate goal was to kill the prince and leave the island with the babies."
"Why?" Leslie demanded.
Liisa said, "We planned to raise them in Finland. We were going to bring them up believing that they were Teppo's children—we felt all along that they should have been—and we were going to poison their minds against you as they grew up. In this way we hoped to make you suffer, through your grief over the prince's death and over the loss of your children. We thought one day to reveal to you what we had done to your triplets, that we had raised them to hate you as we did, and make you suffer all the more."
"You could never have gotten away with that," Roarke said, amazed. "The children are public figures just as much as their parents are, because they are royalty. The fact that they are triplets makes them unusual, thus difficult to conceal."
Antti nodded. "Yes, I think you're right, Mr. Roarke. But we were so determined, so consumed by our blindness and hatred and our mistaken view of Leslie's role in the deaths of Isä—our father—and Teppo, that we discounted that and told ourselves that we would find a way to make it work. We wanted to leave as little trace of our presence as possible in the apartment, so we left our shoes outside the door. It's the practice in the Scandinavian countries to take off one's shoes just inside the front door of one's home so that it's easier to keep floors and carpets clean and in good repair. It was a habit that turned out to be our downfall. The little girl next door took one of Liisa's shoes, and her mother made her bring it back. The mother had a friend who apparently recognized Niilo; he said that he could see the woman knew him somehow."
"My friend Maureen," Leslie said. "She saw the wedding portrait of me and Teppo that had been in storage since I married Christian, and when she saw Niilo she matched his facial features with Teppo's from the picture."
Liisa sighed. "It seems we were doomed to failure from the beginning, but we thought we could still succeed. I shot the full syringe of atropine into Prince Christian, mixed with some morphine as well…I thought that might react in some way with the atropine and raise the chances of his dying. Then we took the babies and tried to get to the charter plane, but it was too late."
"What will happen to us now?" Antti asked.
Roarke looked at Leslie, and she closed her eyes and shook her head. "It's too much for me right now," she said softly. "Christian's alive, Liisa, but his life is still in danger, and until I know whether he's going to make it, I can't process this." She looked at Liisa with pity. "I can't believe you're actually a nurse—a profession whose members are sworn to help people. You must be a really bad one, if you don't know how morphine and atropine would act together. You probably didn't even make note of how much you gave him."
Liisa only stared at her, and Antti said quietly, "Whatever you decide, Leslie, we will accept without protest. Teppo was correct: we deserve what we have coming."
"We'll confer with Mr. Roarke and Miss Leslie on that later on," the sheriff told them, "once we have final word on Prince Christian's condition. Is there anything else you need, sir, Miss Leslie?"
They both shook their heads. "I believe you have a full confession," Roarke said, "so we will leave you with the paperwork until late today or tomorrow. What happens to Christian will determine what happens to the Komainens."
‡ ‡ ‡
Late in the afternoon Leslie returned to the hospital, having fed the triplets and put them down for a nap in her old room. She had spent part of the morning calling her friends and updating them on the whole situation, along with Christian's condition; then she'd tried and mostly failed to eat lunch. Roarke had finally sent her on an errand, telling her that once she'd completed it she could go on to the hospital.
"He's not conscious right now, Miss Leslie, but if you want to sit with him, you can," a nurse offered kindly when she came in and asked about Christian. "He's still holding steady, and he's close to the crucial twenty-four-hour mark."
Leslie managed a hopeful smile at that and let the nurse lead her back to Christian's still-darkened room. He was still under an oxygen mask and hooked up to an IV, and Leslie could see another tube running out from under the covers. Frowning in perplexity at it, she skirted the bed and settled in the big white wicker chair nearby, reaching for his hand and wincing again at the amount of heat it was giving off. She traced experimental fingertips across his forehead, which was very dry and even hotter than his hand.
The nurse had been watching, and now Leslie turned to ask, "What's in the IV?"
"A hydration solution. At regular intervals we give him an injection of physostigmine," the nurse told her. "It helps to counteract the hallucinations. He's not convulsing anymore, but most of the symptoms will take at least another day to wear off, possibly longer for those affecting his brain."
"I see," Leslie murmured, peering at the bag of clear liquid that hung from the IV pole. It was about half full. "Well, thank you." The nurse nodded, smiled and left.
She focused on Christian, who seemed unnaturally still. She thought his breathing had eased somewhat, but it was hard to tell. The triplets, she knew from experience, would be asleep for a good two hours or more, so she was prepared to sit here for some time. She closed her eyes and let her mind drift, letting random recollections float through. They all seemed to be memories of moments in her marriage to Christian, and she wondered if there were something significant in that.
Leslie lost track of time and drifted along with her recollections; so when a finger twitched in her hand, she started hard, then sat up straight in the chair, eyes wide with hope. For a few seconds there was nothing; then Christian frowned slightly and his eyelids fluttered before slowly opening. His frown deepened; then he seemed to notice her and smiled under the oxygen mask. He murmured something, but it was muffled, and she leaned forward. "What was that, my love?"
This time she realized he was speaking jordiska, and she smiled ruefully. "Christian, could you speak English, please?" she asked.
He only responded in his own language again, and she gave up. "It's okay, my love, never mind," she said softly. "The important thing is that you get better. You've got to survive this. The triplets are fine. We got them back safe and they're at Father's house now, sleeping…" Leslie let her voice trail off when Christian lost focus and blinked, then made a weak comment in his own tongue. Her heart sank: apparently he was hallucinating again. She tried not to react, but she couldn't seem to stop the tears flooding her eyes. She closed them and hung her head, clutching his hand.
But he shifted in the bed and his hand tightened around hers, making her look up again. This time he was peering directly at her, squinting. "Leslie, is it you, my darling?" he croaked, muffled but distinct under the oxygen mask.
"Christian!" she breathed, lighting up, yet trying to suppress her wild surge of hope. "It's me, yes…how do you feel?"
"Did we go to hell?" he asked in all evident seriousness. "I'm baking."
Leslie giggled, feeling slightly hysterical. "It's the drug, my love," she said. "It gave you a fever, and all sorts of crazy symptoms."
"Ach…herregud," he muttered. "Get a doctor, my Rose, please. I have so many questions, I'm afraid I'll forget them all before I can ask them."
Laughing softly, Leslie squeezed his hand, got up and hurried to the door, sticking her head out and flagging down the first nurse she saw approaching. "Christian's awake," she said excitedly, "and he has questions."
The nurse grinned. "That's great news! Let's see what he wants to know."
Christian squinted again when Leslie and the nurse returned, and while Leslie took his hand again he asked, "What did my kidnappers inject me with? I can't see, the lights are painful, I'm hotter than the center of the earth, and my head has been full of some of the oddest dreams I've ever had in my life."
Leslie and the nurse grinned at each other, and the nurse explained, "You were given an overdose of a drug called atropine. It has certain medicinal purposes, including as an ingredient in eye drops that are used to dilate the pupils for optical exams, and also to relax the muscles of surgery patients just before they receive anesthesia."
"Ah," Christian murmured. "So what has it done to me, then?"
"A whole raft of things, I'm sorry to say, Your Highness," the nurse said apologetically to him. She proceeded to tick off on her fingers: "Dehydration, characterized by the thirst you feel, along with lack of perspiration; pupil dilation, causing your sensitivity to light; blurred vision; fever; difficulty or inability in speech and swallowing; muscle stiffness; rapid pulse; labored respiration; and in more severe cases, such as yours, convulsions and coma. About half of overdose patients hallucinate, and evidently you fall into that category, judging from your mention of strange dreams and from what Mr. Roarke told the doctor when you had just arrived here." She grinned widely at Christian's dazed look. "Some of the symptoms seem to have worn off already. You're able to speak and swallow, and it looks as if you don't have any trouble with stiff muscles. Most of the rest of it should be gone by tomorrow, but you may experience unsteady gait, lingering hallucinations and possibly disorientation a day or two beyond that. So we'll keep you in here at least through tomorrow night, and if things look good, Miss Leslie can come and pick you up on Sunday."
"Ödet ta mej," Christian mumbled, barely audible under the mask. Leslie snickered, for she had picked up the phrase from Christian's constant repetition of it; it meant "fate take me." "Of all those symptoms, only three have left me??"
"Those are just the obvious ones," the nurse said, pulling a stethoscope out of her pocket and peeling back the bedcovers enough to expose Christian's chest. He and Leslie both watched her listen to his pulse; he didn't wince when she applied the instrument, which told Leslie that he was probably grateful for any sensation of cold. "Your pulse rate sounds much more normal. Let me get Dr. Pierce in here and he'll check you out a little more thoroughly." She smiled. "Welcome back, Your Highness." With that, she left, and Christian and Leslie looked at each other, he still squinting, she with tears of relief in her eyes.
"They told me that if you survived the first twenty-four hours after injection, your chances of full recovery were very good," Leslie said, clutching his hand, "and it's been just a little more than that since I brought you in here."
"You, by yourself?" Christian asked, raising an eyebrow.
"Well…mostly. It's a long story, but I did drive you over here, and you'd probably have given me hell for my excessive speeding, but I was afraid of losing you." She pressed his hand to her forehead and closed her eyes, dislodging the tears. "Christian, my love, will we always have to live this way?"
"What way?" he asked, but before she could explain, Dr. Pierce came in with the nurse behind him. Pierce paused by Christian's bedside and regarded the prince.
"It seems you beat someone's attempt to do you in, Your Highness," he observed. "Let me tell you, we're all very glad of that. For a while we were wondering, since last night you suffered convulsions on a couple of occasions, and your fever spiked at 107. We had the air conditioning going full blast in here, and there was a nurse watching you closely for several hours—wearing a sweater." They all laughed quietly. "You've been in and out of consciousness for the last twenty-five hours or so, and part of that is due to the physostigmine we've been administering to help with the hallucinations and give you a chance to rest."
Christian took this in for a moment, then made a noise of comprehension. "All right. My next question is, why am I sore in a particularly sensitive region of my anatomy?"
"We had to apply a urinary catheter," Dr. Pierce said. "Normal elimination is one way the body rids itself of atropine, but sometimes it needs help because of the muscle problems the stuff causes. If your muscles have recovered, as Nurse Penny here suggests they may have, we can remove that for you. Let's see what's happening here."
About ten minutes later Christian was freed of the oxygen mask and the catheter, and Dr. Pierce and the nurse departed to give him and Leslie a chance to be alone. Sitting up in bed and sipping from a paper cup of cold water, Christian swallowed slowly, clearly savoring not just the feel of the liquid in his throat, but the ability to get it down. After he'd downed about half the contents, he turned to Leslie. "I'm beginning to see you a little better now," he remarked. "All right then, so tell me what I missed."
"For one thing, the triplets are all safe and sound," Leslie said. "The police stopped the Komainens before they could take the babies off the island, and once you were here and under medical care, Father took me over to the police station to pick them up. They were a lot happier once I gave them baths and changed them and they had a chance to eat."
"I'm sure of that," chuckled Christian, "and it's very relieving to know that they're all unharmed. What was the Komainens' motive, anyway?"
"Revenge on me," said Leslie. "What it boiled down to was that they wanted me to suffer from loss, as they suffered after Teppo and their father died. Their plan was to poison you, then take the triplets back to Finland and raise them to believe that Teppo was their father, as well as teach them to hate me."
Christian looked incredulous. "Something's wrong with their reasoning. How could Teppo possibly have fathered the babies when he's been dead fourteen years?"
Leslie giggled and said, "Well, they're being held in the town jail, so maybe when we spring you from this place, you can go over there and ask them. Father and I went over this morning and got the whole story from them, and wait till you hear it." Christian sat and sipped the rest of his water while she told him all they had learned; when she got to the part in which Roarke had summoned the ghosts, he turned sharply to her and squinted at her in disbelief. Leslie, feeling it was better that he knew everything, told him about Teppo's little talk with her as well; when his expression changed, she paused, watching him anxiously.
Finally he said, "Perhaps it's as well I wasn't there. Ghost or not, I'm afraid I'd have found it very difficult to see him there with you."
"It doesn't matter, my love," Leslie said softly. "I just told him that I love you more than I had believed I was even capable of loving. I could tell he knew that included him, and he even admitted that I was better off with you."
That eyebrow went up again. "Ah," Christian mused. "In that case, I won't ask Mr. Roarke about exorcism after all." He smirked when Leslie dissolved into reluctant laughter, and reached over to squeeze her arm. "So, then, go on." She continued the narrative, and when she finished he gave a great sigh and shook his head. "Amazing."
"Terrifying was my word for it," Leslie muttered. "Antti and Liisa seemed repentant after they heard the truth from their father and Teppo, but Niilo was still hostile. Something tells me he's inherited his mother's mental illness, but that's his siblings' problem now."
"That it is," Christian said firmly. "And you, my Rose, are to worry only about Tobias, Karina and Susanna…and me."
"You think I didn't worry about you? I could barely sleep last night for being scared stupid that you wouldn't make it through the night!" Leslie informed him indignantly. "If they'd let me, I never would have left your bedside! I'd have brought the triplets in here and recruited that nurse to help me feed them and…"
"Stop, stop!" Christian protested, raising his hands and laughing. "I get the picture, Leslie!" He reached out for her face, squinting, and she caught his hand and pressed his palm against her cheek while his laughter melted into a soft smile. "I truly believe you would have done exactly that. Ah, my Rose, I do love you…and I'm incredibly grateful that I'm still here to be able to say that to you."
"So am I," Leslie murmured thickly, and she half arose and leaned to him. He pulled her head gently forward and kissed her deeply.
