Page 35 of Slow Burn

She might have lied about the bugs, just to throw him off. He glanced around the room. Six bugs? Where would they have hidden them? Behind the corkboard? Under the desk?

“Minute traces. Not enough to prove anything—but it does raise suspicions. It’s possible the stuff could be ingested, or absorbed through the skin.”

“And once in the body …”

“Once in the body, it causes a violent chemical reaction that starts a self-fueling fire,” he continued. Was it under the desk? He had to resist the urge to lean over and look, couldn’t resist running his fingers under the drawer in front of him. Something bumpy there. It felt like an ancient wad of chewing gum. “Spontaneous combustion.”

She waved away a white veil of smoke. Her smile looked predatory.

“Fantasy,” she said. “Nicely done, though. I like the charts, very colorful. I’ll bet you even have overheads, don’t you? Maybe, if you’re really ingenious, you’ll have a multimedia presentation. They’ll love that.”

She stubbed out her cigarette on the corner of his desk, leaving a bubble in the abused walnut varnish, and dropped the butt in his battered trash can.

“Crap,” she finished quietly. “It’s scientific crap. Listen, Marty, you’re right, but you’re wrong. Right about the method, wrong about the delivery system.”

“Are we back to your terrorists again?” He chuckled, stopped when he saw the quiet frightening look on her face. “Oh, Jesus, you’ve got to be kidding me.”

“You’re wrong about the delivery system. It’s not in the water, and they’re going to buy your theory because it’s something environmental, something they can appoint a blue ribbon panel and study. They’ll waste years, Marty. They’ll waste lives.” She cocked her head to one side, studying him like a bug on a pin. “I can’t let that happen. I can’t let you go in there and give them an easy out. It’s nothing personal, I want you to understand that. I like you.”

“Gee, that makes everything swell.” His sarcasm was feeble, but it was all he had. She’d left him with nothing else.

She leaned across the desk, put her face very close to his. He smelled a rich perfume, whispery-sweet. Her eyes were dark teal green, almost blue, as reflective as mirrors.

“This time tomorrow, you’re going to want to use my head for a football,” she said. “I thought I ought to give you an even shot. That’s all.”

She straightened and walked to the door. He stood up, not quite sure whether or not to follow her, and watched her close the door. She took her guest chair and jammed it up under the handle with a squeal of wood on concrete.

His heart squeezed into a hard knot. So easy to make him disappear. One more missing crewmember on theTitanic.

She reached under her coat. He watched the gun come out in little freeze frames of alarm, cold matte metal, long lethal barrel.

Somebody might hear him if he screamed.

“I told you, I’m sorry,” she said, and walked toward him. She raised the gun and put it down on one corner of his desk. When her hand left it, he continued to stare at it, as stunned as if she’d dropped a body part.

She took her coat off and draped it over his chair. He didn’t move as her hands pushed his own coat off his shoulders. “Tomorrow you’ll hate me, Marty. So there’s only tonight. No more time.”

Her lips were cherry-sweet, warm, soft. The feel of her hair on his fingers was like cold silk. His erection caught him by surprise because it was instant, as if it had been lurking for the opportunity, and he couldn’t remember needing anybody so badly, not his wife, not the occasional date, not anybody. He pressed her against the desk and fumbled at her suit buttons, got her coat off, her blouse. Her skirt slid down and tangled with his pants on the floor.

She had a condom ready, and she was expert with it, rolling it on with quick sensual strokes of her fingers. He had just enough time to think dazedly,I don’t know anything about her, and then it was too late, he knew everything, everything.

He wondered, too late, if her bug was recording it.

Chapter Fourteen

Velvet

Robby had a paranoid’s weight of locks. Velvet watched her open the second deadbolt—bottom of the door—and fumble for the key to the knob. When the door opened on darkness, something gave a sharp beep. Robby stepped around the corner and, in the dark, punched in a code.

“Make yourself at home,” Robby said, and flicked on an overhead light. Velvet hobbled a couple of steps inside and hardly noticed Robby pressing past to shut the door and reset all her locks; she was busy absorbing details.

Hardwood floors—well, it was a downtown loft, so she’d expected that. High industrial ceilings, girders painted garish red and blue. Windows, lots of them, wrapping all the way around the big room; the vertical blinds were open, letting in the neon glow of downtown.

No plastic carpet runners. What carpet there was wouldn’t have been caught dead in Mom’s house-wild carpet, black with sharp slashes of blue and yellow and purple. The couch was black, the chairs mint green and an unbelievable magenta. The TV, compared to Jim’s big-screen altar to the networks, was puny, the stereo correspondingly huge. The CD tower rack next to it was so full it leaned like the Tower of Pisa.

There was only one thing on the one un-windowed wall. Velvet couldn’t imagine how Robby had gotten a billboard up here, but there it was, stretching from floor to ceiling, corner to corner. It was a bright yellow ad for Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey, with a big red SOLD OUT sign taped over the date.

“Jesus,” Velvet said blankly. Robby had finished with the locks and gone off somewhere around the corner—God, there wasmore.She wasn’t sure her eyes could take the strain. “Jesus Christ, Robby—”

---