No guarantee, of course, but eight chances out of ten he would croak weren’t bad odds. And if he made it, he’d be a long time recovering, on immunosuppressive drugs if they could find him a new liver, and unable to screw with his body chemistry if he wanted to stay alive. And if he made it that far? Well, they could always pay him another visit.
If he died, it would be due to mushroom poisoning, a terrible tragedy, a freak accident. Bad for the restaurant’s reputation and insurance carrier, but, hey, that was how life went sometimes. You want an omelette, you gotta break a few eggs.
The flight attendant approached. “Care for champagne, sir?”
“That would be nice. Look, I don’t want you to think I’m hitting on you, but I’m a movie producer. Have you ever considered acting?”
He held up his producer business card and smiled.
She took the card, looked at it, and smiled back. “I’ve thought about it. I was the lead in my high school play.”
Life was very good.
Life is crappy, Toni thought. Nobody had told her what might happen when she got pregnant, nobody had said she’d be reduced to the mobility and muscularity of a slug. She hated this.
Alex had hung around to take care of her, but she had made him leave. He was sweet, but she wasn’t going to be pleasant company, and she didn’t want him thinking of her as a constant bitch. Better he should see her smiling and at least offering some pretense of being happy once in a while.
“You sure?” he’d asked, after three exchanges on the subject.
“I’m positive. Go.”
And he had, and that pissed her off, too. Yes, she had said for him to, she had insisted that he do so, but she hadn’t really wanted him to leave. Why didn’t he know that? How could he just… take her at her word that way? Why were men so stupid?
Yes, yes, all right, she knew it was illogical, but that was how she felt.
Now that Alex was gone, she was at a loss for what to do with herself. The doctor had made it crystal clear she was on light duty from now on, and since a big part of her had always been physical, this was proving to be intolerable. She couldn’t move, she might as well put down roots and turn into a fucking houseplant. She really hated this.
She didn’t feel like sitting at the scrimshaw project. She didn’t feel like watching television or listening to music or reading. What she felt like doing was going for a five-mile run to clear her mind. Or a half hour of stretching and then silat practice. Or anything requiring sweat and sore muscles.
No point in even bothering to think about such things. It would only make her feel worse, if that was possible.
Other women must have gone through this. She could do it if anybody else could, she kept telling herself. But that didn’t help.
The house was clean. She had spent way too much time doing that lately, wiping counters, sweeping floors, rearranging shelves. You could eat off the floor — if you were allowed to bend over and take the risk.
She wandered into the bedroom. The bed was made. The bathroom was clean. Nothing.
The floor in Alex’s closet by his shoe rack had some clothes piled up to be dry-cleaned. Well, she could do that. Surprise Alex, given as how she didn’t usually fool with his chores.
She picked up a suit, a sports jacket, a couple of good silk shirts, a few ties. The laundry-to-go basket was in the garage, where Alex would usually notice it when it got full, toss the dirty clothes into his car, and drop it off at the Martinizing place run by a family of Koreans on the way to work.
As she started dropping the clothes into the hamper, she automatically went through the pockets. Being raised in a family full of brothers had taught her that when doing the wash. Boys left all kinds of crap in their pockets, and a handful of coins clattering in the washer or dryer would drive you nuts, not to mention chipping the inside of the machines. Ink pens could ruin a load of whites, and it was no fun picking lint from a washed, shredded, and dried paper napkin from a load of dark shirts, either.
In the suit trousers, Toni found a paper clip box, and inside that, the capsule.
She knew what it was from Alex’s description, it being big and purple and all, and it puzzled her as to why it was in his pocket. But maybe it was important. She seemed to recall the stuff had some kind of timing chemical in it, and it would be inert after a day or so. Alex hadn’t worn this suit yesterday, had he?
She reached for the phone on the workbench, looking at the capsule. She put it down next to the scrimshaw piece she’d been working on as Alex’s com bleeped.
“Hey, babe, what’s up? You okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. I was taking your dry cleaning out to the hamper—”
“You were what?”
“Don’t sound so amazed.”
“Sorry. Go on.”
“Anyway, I found this purple capsule in your pocket.”
“Ah, damn. I keep forgetting about that. I was going to take it by the FBI lab and have somebody look at it. That’s the one John got on the raid I told you about.”
“I can do that for you, run it by the lab.”
“No, you can’t. You aren’t supposed to be driving, remember? Hang on to it for me, I’ll do it tomorrow.”
“Fine.”
“Uh, thanks for calling me about it.”
“You at work yet?”
“Almost there.”
“I’ll see you later,” she said.
After she broke the connection, Toni stared into space. She sure hoped this baby was worth all this crap. He’d better be.
She wandered back into the house. All of a sudden, she was tired. Maybe she would lie down and take a short nap. Might as well. She couldn’t do anything else.
Jay shook his head, feeling stupid. It had been right there in front of him all along, and he had just skipped over it. He had narrowed his focus too much and missed the connection.
Maybe all this navel-gazing was good in the long run, learning how to clear your thoughts, to relax your mind, but the old Jay Gridley wouldn’t have let this slide past unseen.
Maybe it wasn’t a good idea to be too relaxed mentally in his business.
He ran it down. The most important piece took a while, but finally, he got it. Wasn’t proof of anything, of course, but certainly it was a circumstantial lump that would choke an elephant.
Jesus.
He needed to fly it past the boss, to get his hit on it, but he was pretty sure it meant something important. He reached for the com to call, then decided maybe it would be better to avoid using the phone or net. Net Force’s corns, especially the virgils, were scrambled, the signals turned into complex binary ciphers that were supposedly unbreakable by ordinary mortals. That little episode in the U.K. with the quantum computer had cured Jay of his faith in unbreakable binary codes, however. And given the people with whom they were dealing, maybe face-to-face was better.
“I have to go into HQ,” Jay said to Saji on his way to the door.
“This late?” She opened her eyes and stared at him, still seated in her meditation pose.
“It’s important. I love you. See you later.”
“Drive safe,” she said.
He thought about his discovery all the way to Net Force HQ. Boy, wasn’t the boss going to be surprised at this twist!
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