Scorpion Scheme Page 10

  "Hold up. You can’t just lock the king in a box and toss him in the closest river."

  "Apparently, you can. King Osiris drowned in that coffin chest."

  "Whoa." Tucker ran a hand through his bangs, which had started to flop despite his usual gel.

  A cheerful woman bicycled past us, pushing what appeared to be a small library attached to the front of her bike.

  Tucker lowered his voice so the cyclist couldn't hear. "People keep talking about Osiris."

  "Yes. Phillip Becker kept bringing him up."

  Tucker bent to whisper in my ear. "And now you're telling me that Osiris was a victim of murder."

  17

  I shivered. Part of it was Tucker's proximity, his breath and his voice in my ear.

  And part of it was his question. Was it possible that Mr. Becker had been deliberately killed, like Osiris?

  IEDs are planted to kill, maim, and incite fear. But what if this had been a targeted attack?

  Three kids in a passing car goggled at us.

  Leave me alone. I cleared my throat and stepped away from Tucker. I'm not comfortable trapped in an urban zoo.

  I flew out of Canada to escape the "detective doctor" label, but in Cairo, a grandpa recognized me from Instagram, and everyone treated us like free TV when we walked down the street.

  I'd ask Kevin to scale back on social media. He thinks we should exploit my fame. They're selling newspapers and toothpaste ads off your story. Why shouldn't you get some?

  I'd agreed, partly because our parents had invested so much in my education that I wanted to pay it back, even through minimal ad revenue. Right now, with student debt threatening to sink my battleship, all I had to offer was "cool story, bro." But infamy made me anxious and irritable, especially so far from home.

  If I didn't sleep soon, I'd explode.

  "You okay, Hope?" Tucker's brow creased.

  I shrugged. You never show weakness in medicine. "Long day. Let's go back to the hotel. We should research Mr. Becker more. Figure out if someone wanted him dead, especially if he had 'treasure.'"

  "Agreed. Let's grab some eats, and you keep telling me the Osiris and Isis story."

  "You think street food is okay?" I raised my eyebrows at the first food "cart," a small wooden table on the sidewalk. The table supported a portable stove where two pots bubbled with unappetizing contents.

  The cart man nodded at me, a short woman beckoned us, and a taller woman pointed to the purple Arabic sign tacked to the side of their silver car.

  "Hello, yes, very safe. Come eat!" called the man.

  I shook my head. Let's go.

  "Cool. What do you have?" said Tucker, ignoring me tugging on his arm.

  "Delicious lentils with tomatoes and toasted bread! We also have belila, Egyptian wheat berries. Or you could try hummus, tea, or qaraa assaly, which is Egyptian pumpkin pie."

  Well. That sounded pretty good, with one exception. "No wheat berries," I muttered. My parents used to force oatmeal and cream of wheat on me, inducing a lifelong horror of gloopy grains.

  "We're very careful about hygiene," said the shorter woman, smiling. "I work in the insurance industry, my husband is an engineer, and our friend works at a bank."

  "And you run a food truck too?" said Tucker.

  "It's necessary to send our children to school," said the bank friend, whose head scarf matched her fancy pink nails.

  I'd hidden my money in the thigh pouch with the ankh, which made it awkward to access cash on the street, but Tucker insisted on buying it all, even the wheat berries.

  "Could you please try them now? If you don't like them, we can adjust the recipe," said the man.

  "If you do like them, we are on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and Snapchat," said the cheery insurance woman. "Could we take a picture of you?"

  I winced and said, "It's been a long day," but Tucker chirped, "Sure!"

  I kept my head down while I sampled everything. Even the wheat berries. Verdict: less horrendous than my parents' oatmeal. Wheat berries literally tasted like wheat, maybe with a hint of pine nuts. I liked the toppings of pomegranate seeds and what turned out to be dried cherries in a coconut-milk sauce.

  "You are students!" said the insurance woman. "You should eat this every day. This is the hot cereal for all Egyptians, as well as our 'sohoor' during Ramadan, eating this before dawn to sustain us throughout our day of fasting."

  Awesome. Maybe it would sustain me back to the hotel.

  The lentils didn't taste like much, so I mixed in some hummus, which upped the yum factor. Plus, no one ever complains about pumpkin pie. This one was almost like a custard, which was great, except I can't stand raisins.

  "Please leave us good reviews. Our children's future depends on it. We want to buy a proper food cart, and licensing is so expensive!" said the insurance mom.

  When we finally tore ourselves away, their card in hand, loaded down with leftovers, a bearded, bespectacled, twenty-something man at a neighboring bicycle cart food stand called, "Please! I make the best koshary!"

  "World famous homemade burgers! Hot dogs! Hawawshi!"

  "Chinese food! Sweet and sour chicken. Rice. Linguini!"

  "Nutella tangine! Cake pops! Brownies!"

  "I want to go home. We have enough," I said. I love food, but I needed to drink water somewhere cool and quiet.

  "Just a minute." Tucker hailed the koshary guy, who seemed to be named Ali. Ali's koshary looked like more lentils in a tomato sauce, although both Ali and Tucker swore that the fried onions made it special.

  "We'll take it home and eat it for breakfast," said Tucker, raising his voice to tell the other food carts, "Don't worry. We'll be back! We'll be eating every day!"

  If you don't get sick, I thought. No guarantees. My family prides itself on a cast iron stomach. My dad once advised me not to throw away old, stinky noodles, unless they still smelled rotten after I heated them up. It worked for me, but Tucker has a more vulnerable GI tract.

  I zoned out until Tucker said, "Thirty percent unemployment for people our age. Can you imagine, Hope?"

  I shook my head, eyelids drooping. My shoulders ached from my back pack. My arms felt weighed down by the food 'cause I'm a wimp. I unstuck my tongue from the roof of my mouth and swallowed the little saliva I had left.

  Ali glanced at me with sympathetic brown eyes. "Are you okay?"

  Tucker pocketed his change for the koshary. "Wow. I had no idea Nasser made university education so accessible, but then you had no jobs after."

  I fantasized about Ryan Wu, who not only carried my back pack without being asked, but never socialized away my precious hours of free time. We did church stuff for God, not because Ryan loved hanging out over cookies and lemonade.

  I could almost taste the cold bottle of drinkable water I'd left in the hotel fridge.

  I am going to kill you, Tucker.

  Tucker continued, oblivious, "Well, EMR's a growing field, right? We just got electronic records at our hospital in Montreal."

  "SARKET," I snorted to myself. What a gong show. Working with that system on a graveyard shift marked one of the worst nights of my life. And for me, that's saying something.

  Ali brightened. "Yes, SARKET. I worked on it myself as a student, in development, five years ago. Was it not a successful implementation?"

  I gaped at him. Even Tucker shut up.

  Finally, I said to Ali, "You helped develop SARKET, the electronic medical system at St. Joseph's Hospital in Montreal, Canada?"

  Ali blinked. "I believe so. Our company planned an international expansion, including Canada. Was your software made by Sarquet Industries?"

  18

  Sarquet was spying on us.

  I couldn't breathe for a second as every instinct locked up on me.

  Those mofos recorded every word I wrote at St. Joe's, and then they brought me over here.

  No. I forced myself to exhale and switch to logic mode.

  I don't write anything personal on EMR.
It's patient information like 13 y.o. girl with asthma. Chief Complaint: Knee pain. Plus it's all supposed to be encrypted so outsiders, including the software developers, can't access it.

  Still. The fact that they could potentially have read our reports, and factored that into inviting us on a free trip, felt Big Brother to me.

  I'd researched Sarquet Industries before accepting the trip. Or at least I'd checked the Wikipedia stub and media releases, since I couldn't dig up much on a private corporation based in the Middle East and Asia, although they claimed a 2.5 percent share of the worldwide market.

  "Why did they hide their name? Sarquet Industries vs. Selsis and SARKET," I said out loud. Isabelle never volunteered that Sarquet owned the EMR both at St. Joe's and at the Cairo hospital they'd chosen for us. Multiple names and slightly different systems had thrown me off.

  Ali adjusted a stack of plates on his cart, uncomfortable. He had beautiful, slender hands, with a gold ring on his ring finger. "I believe their names were inspired by Serket, the Egyptian goddess. It's spelled Serqet, Selket, Selqet, and Selcis."

  Sure, spellings vary in translation from different scripts or characters. But companies usually stick to one brand name.

  What was Sarquet Industries playing at?

  Why did they want us here?

  "And why Serket," I muttered under my breath. They referenced Egyptian mythology right after Tucker asked me about Osiris’s murder. Coincidence? My head spun, and not only because I needed aqua.

  As if reading my mind, Ali handed me a bottle of water.

  "No, thanks." We'd already spent enough. Water would be cheaper at a corner store.

  "It's a gift."

  I set my bags of food on the ground and took the bottle, my fingertips erasing the condensation on the sides. I popped open the lid and felt better with one sip.

  "Egypt is a desert. Please make sure you drink enough throughout the day. Now tell me, why did Sarquet Industries invite you here?"

  I felt embarrassed explaining our free trip when they wouldn't give him a job, but the man had handed me water. I told him the truth.

  "Strange," Ali said, without rancor.

  "You're not angry?"

  He raised his eyebrows. "Of course. But that serves no purpose. I would be more likely to land a job if I made friends with you and made a connection to Isabelle Antoun or Youssef through you, you see?"

  That made me feel better. I downed half the bottle and felt my eyes clear and my shoulders relax.

  Tucker kissed my temple and took my bags of food. "Sorry, babe. I should keep a better eye on you."

  "I can keep an eye on myself." Although I'd nearly failed on that score. I turned to Ali. "We don't know why they invited us. That's the truth. I've asked them a zillion times. No straight answers. A lot of inviting us out on tours." My cheeks reddened. What they'd already spent on us could feed Ali's family for a month. "I'm sorry. I can ask them if they have any openings."

  Tucker held up his phone. "I connected with him on LinkedIn, Hope, and I'll bring up his c.v. with Isabelle and Youssef."

  I still felt beholden for the water. "Let me see what I can do for you too."

  "We're on your team," said Tucker.

  "And I'm on yours." Ali fist bumped him, slightly awkward with plastic bags of food looped over Tucker's wrists. Ali said, "Now take your woman home. She works hard and needs a rest."

  I smiled at Ali. "I'm okay, but thank you."

  We walked toward the bus stop while Tucker waved and called out to more food cart owners.

  At the bus stop, we claimed a wet but empty green plastic bench. I felt more relaxed despite the omnipresent honks and the soot no doubt clogging my nose.

  I offered Tucker a sip of water and checked my phone. "He's right."

  Tucker glugged the rest of the water down and crumpled the bottle before kissing my cheek. "Thanks. I'm always right."

  Shoot. I was still thirsty, not to mention annoyed at his attitude. I am magnificent! I'm always right! "No, I mean Ali. Selsis and SARKET are both made by Sarquet Industries. You think it's a coincidence that shortly after St. Joe's installed SARKET, our hospital can barely function, leaving Sarquet free to fly us out to Egypt?"

  Tucker frowned. "Hang on. You can't blame your graveyard shift on Sarquet Industries. That was a completely different disaster."

  "Yeah, but everyone hates SARKET. I mean, Tori never complains about anything, and she wrote a full page of problems that need fixing."

  "True." He moved the bags to the right so he could squeeze closer to me. "I'm not hyping SARKET. It's going better, though. And I love St. Joe's, but they never implement anything right."

  I nodded. The entire Quebec health system broils in incompetence. Canada divides health care up by province, and it never ceases to amaze me, the difference between my home province, Ontario, vs. its neighbor, Quebec. Although health care is precarious everywhere now, from what my friends tell me.

  I breathed in the smog and longed for more water, but we should bus back to the hotel soon. "Still. It seems wrong that Isabelle never told us they'd installed our EMR when they invited us here. Why would you hide that?"

  "Agreed."

  "It feels like they're watching us." I shifted on the bench, which had already soaked my scrubs. I should've sat on one of the plastic bags, or my back pack.

  "We can call them right now if you want," said Tucker.

  My head began pounding at both temples. "Nah. I've got a headache."

  "Okay. First thing tomorrow morning. Before our shift."

  "Awesome." I don't sleep well before confrontation, but maybe jet lag would make up for it. I yawned.

  "Plus Ali's going to help us out. He thinks he can help ID the guy with the cobra bag, too."

  I straightened up, my knee knocking into Tucker's. "He recognized him?"

  "Said he looked familiar. And I'm getting some nibbles on Twitter. I'm telling you, Hope, you can go to sleep. I've got this. Tuck-ah's in the houuuuuuse."

  That snapped me awake. You've got this? What am I, steamed lentils? I reached for my phone.

  "What are you doing?" said Tucker.

  "I'm texting Muhamed."

  "You got a lead, huh?" He nudged my elbow and grinned. "That's so cute."

  "Cute?" I wanted to bash him with my phone. Only that would hurt my phone.

  "What? It's a compliment. I love the way you're like a dog with a bone." He nuzzled my cheek.

  I shoved his shoulder. "You've got this, you're in the houuuuuuuse, you drink all my water, and I'm the cute, little dog?"

  "Huh?"

  I enunciated every word to make this clear. "You're the magnificent Sherlock Holmes, and I'm your elementary doggy Watson who should go to sleep?"

  He held up his hands. "Hey. Don't worry, Hope. We all know you're the 'detective doctor.'" He actually held up his fingers to do air quotes. "I know you're thirsty and tired and pissed off that you didn't get to meet the chief of ER. But I'm doing my best to feed you and get you home."

  I inhaled. I love this guy.

  Exhaled. But I can't stand him right now.

  I looked him straight in the eye. "Don't pretend you're the hero."

  "What?"

  I pointed at the crunched water bottle in his lap. "I told you I wanted to go home. Multiple times. But you kept talking and talking."

  "What? Really? I didn't hear you."

  "Because you're too busy making friends with everyone. It's pathological. You're the one always wagging your tail. I speak Arabic! I'm the best! Love me, love me, love me! You take ten years to do anything because you've got to shake hands with all creatures great and small."

  Tucker opened his mouth and then closed it. He knew I was right.

  My voice cracked. "You're so into them, you don't care if I've been sprayed with toilet water, or jet lagged, or stressed out from the IED and an ER shift."

  Tucker's eyes widened. "Oh. Right. I didn't think."

  "You finished my water without aski
ng me. The water Ali gave to me while you were talking and talking."

  "Shit. Hope—"

  "And then you condescend to me about being the 'detective doctor' and tell me to go to sleep?" I added the air quotes myself.

  "I'm just—" He paused, and even in the rapidly-encroaching darkness, his cheeks flushed. "Well, of course I want to figure out what's going on. And I have to drink water."

  "You can drink water, but every time we get a case, you try to run with it and leave me in the dust."

  Tucker drew back, shaking his head. "Maybe that time with Elvis—"

  "Every. Time."

  He paused to think about it before he gave a slight nod. "Well, I can see how you might look at it that way."

  "Every. Time. And you need to be loved by everyone. It never stops. Tonight the street vendor could tell I was thirsty and tired, but you kept going on and fucking on. Even after Ali pointed it out to you. Even after I told you I have a headache. So no, I don't think it's cute that you want to be the 'detective doctor.' Who the fuck are you, anyway?"

  Tucker opened his mouth and shut it a few times. By the time the bus came, blinding us with its lights, he still hadn't said a word.

  19

  A silent Tucker was a strange beast.

  In a way, it was refreshing. I still throbbed with the mean pleasure of telling him off as I slid in the window seat and turned toward the glass.

  I felt the weight of him settling on the aisle seat beside me, but didn't turn to acknowledge him until I detected a different cologne, and my seat mate called, "Konnichi wa!"

  I whipped my head around and spotted Tucker still standing in the aisle with the food bags wrapped around both wrists, eyes wide, before I rotated to stare at the man directly beside me.

  He was young. Young enough not to have much of a mustache. But he seemed plenty confident and maybe drunk as he singsonged to me in pseudo Japanese and placed a hand on my left knee.

  In that moment, it hit me that a) I'd taken a seat on the right side of the bus, the same side where Mr. Becker had been killed, and b) I was trapped by some douche.