She was frightened… but she was also incredibly excited.
“Agent Farris… no, it isn’t ‘Agent,’ is it?”
“Lieutenant.”
“Lieutenant Farris, you’re offering me a job with the Department of Defense, is that correct?”
He looked surprised at her bluntness. “Yes.”
“Because I’m getting a mixed message here. Am I a criminal or a desirable recruit?”
“Desirable recruits are not normally facing charges for manslaughter.”
“Well, you appear to be interested in me regardless. I’d be happy to consider your offer, but I want it in writing. I’d like details: position, title, salary, who I’d report to, how many people I’d have on my team, and what kind of facilities I’d have for my research. I want to know if I’d be able to publish under my own name and what you’d expect to be held back for security purposes. I want everything to be absolutely clear. Of course, I’ll need to interview the people I’d be working with before making any final decisions. Also, I’d like to see something legal outlining the immunity from prosecution that you mentioned. And I—I really do want to know what caused that explosion. If the fire department issues a report, I want to see it.”
Farris studied her, cheeks sucked in. He managed a patronizing smile. “There’s no way we can even begin to discuss such things as salary and facilities until you’ve been a lot more forthcoming. How would we know what we’re paying for?”
Jill folded her arms. “I think you know exactly what you’re paying for. And if I told you what I know, you wouldn’t need me, would you?”
His eyes narrowed. He was not happy. Jill stuck out her chin.
“We’re not in the business of stealing research, Dr. Talcott. But we can’t just—”
“Lieutenant Farris, I’m an associate professor at the University of Washington and a graduate of the University of Tennessee. That doesn’t add up to much. The only thing I have of value is my work. I’m not giving it away without a contract, signed, sealed, and delivered.”
Farris considered her coldly for a long time. He was one tough SOB; Jill could see that. But she refused to be afraid of him. Jill the Chill. Her chin went farther up into the air. She stared him down.
He nodded. “We want you on board, Dr. Talcott. I’ll see what I can do.”
Jill was up out of bed as soon as Farris left. She looked in the closet—no clothes. She looked under her bed—not surprisingly, no clothes. There was nothing in the bathroom except a robe, a thin cotton thing that smelled of bleach. She put it on over her hospital gown and tried to calm down. Where did she think she was going, anyway?
She leaned over the bed, not wanting to lie down again but too weak to stand. She put her head in her arms. Jesus, this was really happening. This was everything she’d always wanted, wasn’t it?
Wasn’t it?
There was a click as the door opened behind her.
“What?” She straightened up in embarrassment. Why couldn’t they leave her alone?
“Dinner, ma’am.” An orderly fussed with something in the doorway, holding the heavy door open with a shoe. Jill went to the window, wishing he’d hurry up and leave. She heard the door shut.
“Here we go.”
The voice was awfully familiar. Jill turned to see a crop of blond-tipped dark hair as the orderly put the tray on the table.
“Nate!”
He held a finger to his lips. Shhh. He came over and hugged her awkwardly, as he’d done at her house. She was nervous when he hugged her, more nervous when he let her go after only a second or two. She worried that he’d felt, well, more of her than he cared to in the thin hospital robe. She wrapped her arms around herself, painfully aware of how skinny she’d become over the past few months.
“Are you all right? God, you were practically dead last night!”
“I’m better. It must have been a twenty-four-hour thing.”
He put a palm on her forehead. His fingers were warm. He removed his hand but didn’t bother to comment on her temperature one way or the other. For a moment, they just stood there, Jill feeling extremely weird. Suddenly she came to her senses.
“What are you doing here?”
His expression became grim. “Jill, that’s the FBI out there. I think they know about our technology.”
Jill suppressed a nervous giggle. “Actually, it’s the Department of Defense. And yes, they know.”
Nate’s olive skin lightened a couple of shades. “DoD! Shit! What did you tell them?”
“Well… not a lot. Not…” She shied away from his eyes. Not yet. “Not much.”
“God! What’re we gonna do? Do they have your equation?”
Jill thought about it, realizing it was very important to know precisely what they had. Because if they did have her equation she didn’t have nearly the bargaining chips she thought she did. “I don’t know. They have some of my early notes and they know about the one-minus-one.” She had a sudden idea. “My briefcase?”
Nate shook his head. “I went to your place. They cleaned it out. Even took the test subjects.”
“Damn!” If they had her briefcase they had the equation. But they still needed her; she was sure of it. Most of her written material was raw data, naked numbers. The important stuff, the meaning behind it all, was in her head—and Nate’s, of course.
Nate misinterpreted her worried look. He squeezed her hand. “I know. We have to do something. We can’t let them get this technology.”
His reaction seemed childish to Jill. She spoke crossly: “Don’t be stupid. In the first place, we don’t have a choice. They already have too much—know too much. In the second place, we have a responsibility. Who’s going to oversee this thing? If it isn’t me—well, I mean and you, too, if you want—but if it isn’t us it’ll be somebody else. Do you really want someone else taking credit for our work?”
Nate looked baffled. “Credit?”
“Nate, this is our chance! Think what we can do with real funding and real facilities.”
“But… what about the results we got in our dinky little lab with our dinky little radio transmitter? Can you imagine if they put the power of HAARP on the negative one pulse? You can’t seriously want that!”
His dark eyes were blazing and… well, it was a daunting thought. How daunting made her realize she was more persuaded by Nate’s theories on the one-minus-one than she cared to admit.
“They wouldn’t do that,” she said, without much conviction. “Not until we know for sure what it does. I won’t let them do it.”
“Yeah, like they’d let you decide.”
“If I’m running the program, yes!”
He gave her a look like she was being incredibly naive.
“What other options do we have?” She realized she was getting loud and lowered her voice. “We can’t keep the one-minus-one secret forever. We always intended to publish, right? Am I right?”
“That was… before we knew what it did,” he said, but he didn’t sound very sure of himself, either.
“Come on! It’s like any other technology—good and bad things might come out of it. It all depends on how you use it.”
But Nate was staring at her, those beautiful dark eyes just too damn big for his own damn good. “Jill, please. I’m not saying this to hurt you, but… twenty-three people died in that accident.”
She clenched her jaw. Unfair.
“Jill?”
“I will not take the blame for that until I know exactly what happened! No one will tell me!”
His face softened. “The Seattle police were on the news a little while ago. Before the FBI sent them packing they’d discovered that the explosion was caused by a furnace. It was right next to our lab.”