Total pages in book: 109
Estimated words: 103719 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 519(@200wpm)___ 415(@250wpm)___ 346(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 103719 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 519(@200wpm)___ 415(@250wpm)___ 346(@300wpm)
There was a long pause. “Will your former boss be shocked at your disloyalty, I wonder.”
“I’m not being disloyal. I don’t work for people who threaten my woman’s life.”
“Fair enough.” C.P. inclined her head. “But I’m not sure I require anything. I am curious why this is all coming up now.”
“Apart from the dead guard, you mean?” As C.P. tightened her lips, like she was going well-duh in her head, he continued, “I want Lydia to be able to pick when she leaves this house. If you feel like you owe me something, that gives her some time. Even if I’m dead.”
“You don’t have to worry about her. She’s welcome here for however long she wishes to stay. I am… aware of her differences.” C.P. cleared her throat. “Security cameras have shown me… incredible things. She is a miracle.”
“I couldn’t agree with you more.”
And he respected that C.P. hadn’t tried to exploit any of that—or brought it up with Lydia as far as he knew. Stress was stress, after all, and he wasn’t sure how much of that dual nature she wanted out in conversation.
“You know what,” C.P. said, “I think I will take you up on your offer.”
“Good.” He laughed a little. “I figured I’d have to argue with you—or wait until a couple of others died on your property before you came to your senses.”
“I’m far more logical than you give me credit for. And at any rate, you are an unusual situation.”
He waited for the expound on her reasons for taking someone she hadn’t hired, and perhaps shouldn’t trust, into her confidence. But when she didn’t go any further, he approved of her closed-lip routine. He would have been the same in her situation: She had a big operation to protect and the resources to do just that—but an unknown threat was on her horizon. If she could somehow extract intel from him? She bettered her position without a lot of exposure, given he had already been on the inside of her lab and had done nothing to violate her privacy.
“What do you need from me?” she asked.
“A computer with internet access. That’s it.” He held up a forefinger. “And I don’t want to stress Lydia out about this. I worry her too much already—and besides, it’s not like I’m going to go out into the field or anything.”
At least… he didn’t think he was headed in that direction.
Nah, he thought as he got to his feet. That wasn’t what was going to happen.
After C.P. told him she’d deliver a laptop to his room, he turned and started crossing the distance to the door. Halfway there, he paused and looked down at himself.
Well. What do you know.
He’d forgotten his cane, and didn’t even miss it.
TWENTY-FIVE
DOWN AT THE lab, Gus was pacing around his office, dribbling his basketball. In the entire facility, his work crib was one of the few that had four walls and a door; everything else was those open-air workstations. Of course, in typical C.P. Phalen style, he was monitored like everything else on the premises, but he certainly had more privacy than most.
And good goddamn thing, too.
He was supposed to be getting things ready for the first transfusion at midnight. Instead, he was fucking around, playing ghost jump shot with the door, working offense against absolutely nothing coming at him: He’d lied to good ol’ Cathy. There were no more tests to run. The shit that had been done at MD Anderson recently had been more than sufficient for relevant baselines and an assessment of her general health, and he’d done his own snapshot last night.
No, he was giving her a chance to back out.
He disagreed with the Houston people. She could get more chemo if she wanted; they could push it a little farther with the conventional drugs. Sure, sooner or later her body was going to fail by inches and then feet with as much chemo exposure as she’d had—but when you were staring down the barrel of a funeral anyway, what did you care?
And maybe he was getting cold feet.
Glancing at his watch, he noted the time. Maybe she was getting cold feet.
With a grim curse, he thought about the guard who had been killed. How was she feeling about the fact that her lover had lost his life in the line of duty on her front lawn—
As his phone rang, he took it out of his lab coat and answered like he was back in residency—no checking the screen, no preamble.
“St. Claire.”
There was a pause, and then a clicking sound. “Hello?” he demanded.
Just as he took the thing away from his ear to hang up, a tinny voice emanated from the unit. “Augustus Reginald St. Claire Jr., resident of Plattsburgh, New York. Aged thirty-two years, nine months, five days, four hours, and—”