by Tom Clancy
He sat in the kitchen nook at the table, looking at Toni as she came back from the fridge with a beer for him.
“Thanks,” he said. “You should have let me get that.”
“I’m in better shape than you, pregnancy notwithstanding.”
He took a sip, put the bottle down on the table.
“So what’s the latest from the office?”
“Well. It turned out that Lee and George were working for the drug company, like we thought. Lee is trying to cut a deal, but I don’t think he has enough leverage.”
“So why’d they kill the chemist?”
“That’s the twist. The pharmaceutical house they were in cahoots with—”
“Did you just say, ‘in cahoots with’?”
“You want me to tell this story or not?” But he grinned.
“Go ahead.”
“It turned out the drug company already had a similar line of research going, upon which they had spent a lot of money, and in which they had a lot of confidence. Not as extensive as Drayne’s, but going in the same general direction. They were far enough along that they had already started some testing protocols, gotten some government approvals, and they didn’t want somebody stealing their thunder.”
“They were trying to suppress Drayne’s stuff?”
“Yeah. George and Lee had been given big blocks of stock to make sure Drayne’s formulas didn’t wind up on anybody else’s table. If their company reached the market first, they’d be millionaires.”
She shook her head. “Huh. Didn’t see that one.”
“Nobody else did, either.”
“What about John Howard?”
Michaels took another sip of his beer. “He says he is gonna retire. Says life is too short, and he wants to be around when his son graduates from school and goes out into the world on his own.”
“I don’t blame him for that.”
“Me neither.”
“Jay Gridley still a Buddhist?”
“Mostly lapsed, if there is such a thing. He can’t sit and contemplate his navel and stay sharp enough to run with the bad boys on-line, he says. He’ll have to work all that out. But he and his girl are going to get married.”
“That’s great.”
“Going to honeymoon in Bali, so he says.”
“And what about us?”
“Us? We’re fine. I guess I won’t be spending much time in the garage until the Chevy gets back from the body shop. Incredible what damage he did.”
“Yes, it was. I can see why so many people wanted to get their hands on this drug. If he had been a jock on the stuff, he could have taken the entire house down to the foundations.”
He nodded. “Tell you what. If I ever complain about things being slow at work again? I want you to slap me upside the head.”
“My pleasure,” she said.
They smiled at each other, and despite his aches and itches, Michaels was very happy to be able to do that.
It sure beat the other options.
