“Where’s it going? The gate’s the other way.”
“I don’t know. I don’t keep track of delivery schedules.”
A bend in the road swallowed the truck. Romy saw no point in standing out here any longer, so she stepped past Portero and slid back into her seat.
“You’re SimGen’s chief of security and you have no idea why an unmarked truck is rolling from the basic research building toward the company’s private airport?”
Portero’s eyes narrowed. “How do you know that’s the road to the airport?”
Romy smiled. “Lucky guess?”
His expression hardened as he slammed her door closed.
“And just when we were starting to really hit it off,” she muttered.
17
WESTCHESTER COUNTY, NY
OCTOBER 6
Patrick Sullivan lay in bed on his right side, face to the wall, Pamela spooned warmly against his back.
Ah, peace.
Judge Boughton’s decision had started to thaw the ice between them. After all, if a federal judge thought the case warranted a hearing, then maybe Patrick hadn’t gone off his head with “this sim thing,” as she liked to call it. A little champagne before dinner and a Graves Bordeaux with perfectly done steaks had finished the melt, leading to a hefty serving of aerobic sex for dessert.
And now for some much-needed sleep. But his slow slide toward dreamland was cut short by the crash of shattering glass. He levered up in the bed. Not again! The sound had come from the living room this time. Anger bloomed with the crash, but thewhoomp! that followed it shot a bolt of terror through his heart, even before he saw the flicker of flames along the hallway.
“Pam!” he shouted, shaking her. “Pam, wake up!”
She was slow coming to. Not used to all that wine. But when she saw the flames and smelled the smoke—
“My God!”
Neither of them was wearing a stitch but they still had a few seconds. Patrick found Pam’s slacks and blouse on the floor and tossed them to her. As she slipped into them—God knew where their underwear might be—he dialed 911. He found his jeans as he was reporting the fire.
Less than a minute later, cold and barefoot, they stood on the curb and watched the flames fan out from the living room. The howling fire trucks arrived shortly and brought the blaze quickly under control, but not before it had gutted Patrick’s house. Somewhere along the way a neighbor had draped a blanket over their shoulders; another had brought them some old sneakers, ill-fitting but a hell of a lot more comfortable than the cold wet asphalt of the street.
When it was over and the firemen were rolling up their hoses, Patrick stood mute, numb with shock, unable to move a muscle as he stared at the smoking ruin of his home. But Pamela began to lose it. She started with a few deep sobs that quickly graduated to wails. Patrick tried to comfort her but she shoved him back.
“Don’t come near me!” she screamed. “This is all your fault! I told you to forget this crazy sim thing but you wouldn’t listen! You had to keep pushing and pushing until you almost got us killed!”
Patrick saw the terror slithering in her eyes. He took a step toward her. “Pam—”
“No!” She held out a hand and backed away. She looked wild with her hair in disarray and her tears reflecting red and blue flashes from the police and fire vehicles. “No, you stay away! I’ve had it! I can’t take this anymore! Everyone I work with thinks you’re either a nut or an opportunist! I’m tired of defending you and I don’t want to be burned alive! We’rethrough , Patrick! I can’t take any more…I just can’t!”
She’s hysterical, he thought. She doesn’t know what she’s saying. “Pam, please…”
“No!” She raised her hand higher and turned away, moving toward her car. Through a sob she said, “I’m going home alone, Patrick. Good-bye.”
She left Patrick standing alone outside the smoking timbers of what had been his home, wondering how a day that had started out so well could go so hideously wrong.
18
SUSSEX COUNTY, NJ
OCTOBER 7
“All I can say,” Mercer Sinclair shouted, “is that there’d better not be any connection to SimGen! If I find out anyone here had anything to do with this, heads will roll, and I don’t care whose body is attached!”
Luca Portero watched Sinclair-1—his pet name for SimGen’s CEO—pace back and forth in his two-toned CEO office before his panoramic CEO window. If this display was being staged to intimidate Luca or the two other men who made up the rest of the CEO’s captive audience, it was failing. Miserably.
Luca glanced around. Abel Voss had his wide butt crammed into an armchair and looked as if he was listening to a weather report, and not a terribly bad one. Sinclair-2, Ellis, the useless Sinclair, was slumped on the sofa and staring out at the clear morning sky. As for Luca himself, he stood. He preferred to stay on his feet during these gatherings.
Sinclair-1 paused, so Luca used the break to offer something useful.
“I spoke to the Westchester County Sheriff this morning. They caught the guys—two of them. Didn’t take much: They were drunk and had wrapped themselves around a utility pole getting away. Had an unused Molotov and a can of gas in their back seat.”
Sinclair-1 pointed at Luca. “Who hired them? You?”
Luca only stared at him.
“I asked you a question,” Sinclair-1 said. “And I’d better like the answer. Because if I don’t…”
He let it hang, but Luca didn’t believe in letting things hang. “You’ll…what?”
Sinclair-1 might be CEO, but Luca wasn’t going to allow anyone he didn’t take orders from to threaten him. And he took orders from no one in this room.
Voss jumped into the tense silence. “I think we can be sure our friend Luca here had nothing to do with any attack on Mr. Sullivan.”
“Can we?” Sinclair-1 said, glaring at Luca. “I’ve witnessed your problem-solving methods in the past, Portero, and this incident, I might say, fits right in with your M.O.”
“We’ve all seen how he solves problems,” Voss said. “And that’s just my point. If we consider one salient fact here, I think we can be certain Mr. Portero did not try to incinerate Mr. Sullivan.”
“And what would that fact be?”
“Mr. Sullivan is still alive.”
Luca fought a smile as Voss winked at him. He disliked the legal profession as a whole and found fat people repulsive, but this lard-bellied shyster was all right.
Sinclair-1 considered Voss’s words, then turned back to Luca and nodded. “I apologize.”
Luca went on as if nothing had happened. “The men were a couple of Teamsters who as much as confessed, making statements to the effect that no way were they calling ‘a bunch of fucking monkeys our union brothers.’ As far as anyone can tell, they were acting on their own.”
“Thank God they failed!” Voss cried.
Sinclair-1 nodded. “Damn right. Bad enough Boughton denies the declaratory judgment. All we need now is some asshole making a martyr out of Patrick Sullivan.” He turned to Voss. “Which brings me to another point: Didn’t you sit in that very same chair and tell me Boughton would be on our side? ‘Our kinda guy,’ was the way you described him. Someone who’d ‘toss this case in two seconds flat.’ Wasn’t that how you put it?”
“I believe I did,” Voss replied, looking uncomfortable. “But you see—”
“What I see is that he did just the opposite. What the hell happened? Did he have some kind of mini-stroke? What is hethinking ?”
“If you ask me, and you just did, I believe that ol boy’s hearin the magic word that rings a bell in every judicial head:precedent .”
Sinclair-1 stopped pacing and did a slow turn toward Voss. “Precedent? You don’t mean—?”
“I do,” Voss said. “Oh yes I surely do. Every judge dreams of having his name attached to a precedent-setting decision. This could be a big one. Might upgrade the legal status of sims to ‘persons.’ To that end any judge might be inclined to allow Mr. Sullivan more latitude than he’d ever normally tolerate.”