The waist-high, high-volume paper shredder lurked against the back wall. Flemming returned to it, and the stack of paper on the table next to it.
"Is everything okay, Doctor?"
"I'm just cleaning up."
"In case you have to move out, is that what you're thinking?"
"Maybe."
"So, no tours of the lab today?" He'd started shredding again, and I had to speak louder to be heard over the noise.
"Ms. Norville, this isn't a good time."
"Can I come back tomorrow?"
"No."
"You don't have any hapless interns who could show me around?"
"No. There's only me."
The scene made me think Flemming wasn't just afraid of losing his funding; he was already at the end of it.
The computers were on, but the screen savers were running. I wondered if I could casually bump the desk, and get an image to flash on-screen, maybe a word-processing file with a title across the top saying, "Here's What's Really Going on in Flemming's Lab."
I took slow steps, craning my neck to read the papers on the tops of various stacks. There were graphs, charts, statistics, and articles with titles containing long, Latinate words. Without sitting down and plowing through the documents, I wasn't going to get anything out of the mess.
I really wanted to take a look at what he was shredding.
He was keeping an eye on me, watching me over his shoulder while continuing to feed pages into the shredder.
"So, um, do you think the committee would want to take a look at what you're destroying there?"
"I don't think that's any of your concern."
"Then I guess if I asked you straight up what the real purpose of your research is, you wouldn't be inclined to tell me?"
"Do you treat everyone like they're on your show?"
I hadn't really thought of it like that, but he had a point. I shrugged noncommittally.
"I've told you a dozen times, and I've told the committee: I'm doing pure science here, information-gathering research, nothing more."
"Then what was all that you told the committee about finding the secret of vampire immortality?"
He'd run out of pages to feed into the machine. The room became still, a contrast to the grinding noise of the shredder. After a pause he said, "Potential medical application. That's all. Government-funded programs like research that leads to practical applications. That's what the committee wants to hear. I had to tell them something."
"Have you done it? Found the secret of vampire immortality?"
He shook his head, and for a moment the constantly watchful tension in his face slipped. The scientist, inquisitive and talkative, overcame the paranoid government researcher. "It doesn't seem to be physiological. It's almost as if their bodies are held in stasis at a cellular level. Cellular decay simply stops. Like it's an atomic, a quantum effect, not a biological one. It seems to be outside my immediate expertise." He gave a wry smile.
"Like magic," I said.
"What?"
"Quantum physics has always seemed like magic to me. That's all."
"Ms. Norville, I'm really quite busy, and as pleasant as your company is, I don't have time to talk with you right now."
"Then when?"
He stared. "I don't know."
"Which means never."
He nodded slightly.
I stalked out of there. The door closed behind me, and I heard the sliding of a lock.
Chapter 6
The committee staffers finally put me on the docket for that afternoon. I was beginning to suffer anticipation-induced, nail-biting anxiety. I just wanted to get it over with.
Ben and I walked down the hallway to the hearing room. Fifty feet or so away, I put my hand on his arm and stopped him.
I recognized the silhouette of the man leaning against the wall outside the door. I would have noticed him in any case. He was out of place here, wearing laid-back, Midwest casual—a black T-shirt, faded jeans, biker boots—at odds with the East Coast business fashions that predominated the capital. His leather jacket hung from one hand. The building security guards let him keep his belt holster—still holding his revolver.
I knew exactly what I'd see when the man turned to face us. He was in his early thirties, with brown hair, a trimmed mustache, and a lazy frown. When he was amused, the frown turned into a smirk, which it did now. Cormac.
Somebody let Cormac in here with a gun. What happened to security? How had he snuck by them? A moment of blind panic struck. I glanced around for the nearest exit, which was behind me—I could run there in no time.
A split second of reflection reminded me that the last time I saw Cormac, I'd almost invited him into my apartment for the night. Maybe the panic wasn't entirely fear-driven. I didn't want the confusion of having Cormac around.
"What the hell?" Ben murmured, catching sight of who I stared at.
Cormac shrugged himself away from the wall, crossed his arms, and blocked the hallway in front of us. Ben matched his pose, arms crossed and face a wry mask. Ben was a couple inches shorter and a bit slimmer than the hit man, but he matched him attitude for attitude, smirk for smirk.
"What the hell are you doing here?" Cormac said to him.
With a nonchalant shrug, Ben said, "Representing my client."
The weird part of it was, Cormac was the one who referred Ben to me. By all accounts, Ben was the reason Cormac wasn't in jail. Neither of them would tell me if Cormac ought to be in jail.
I butted in. "What are you doing here?"
His eyes lit up, like this genuinely amused him. "The committee wanted someone with experience to be on hand in case things get out of control. Duke called me, hired me on as extra security. Great, isn't it?"
Security had been around the entire week. Knowing Duke and his paranoia, I had assumed they were all armed with silver bullets. That was the thing about all the "special" methods used to kill supernatural beings: a stake through the heart or a silver bullet will kill anyone.
I might have been mistaken. Normal security might not have changed their routine at all. Rather than arming the regular guards with silver bullets, in case the werewolf called to testify went berserk, why not call in the expert? Cormac was a professional, as he was pleased to call himself. He was a bounty hunter/hit man who specialized in lycanthropes, and brought in a few vampires on the side for fun. We'd had some run-ins. We'd even helped each other out a couple of times, once I talked him out of trying to kill me. The man scared the daylights out of me. And now he was standing here with a gun, looking at me like hunting season had just been declared open.
It seemed that Duke's paranoia knew no bounds.
"You wouldn't really shoot me, would you?" I felt my eyes go large and liquid, puppy-dog eyes. After all we'd been through, I'd like to think he wouldn't be so happy about traveling across the country for a chance to kill me.
He rolled his eyes. "Norville, if I really thought you were going to get out of control, I wouldn't have taken the job. I've seen you in action, you're okay."
I looked at Ben for a cue. His wry expression hadn't changed.
"No, I'm not going to shoot you," Cormac said with a huff. "Unless you get out of control."
"If you shoot my client, I'll sue you," Ben said, but he was smiling, like it was a joke.
"Yeah? Really?" Cormac sounded only mildly offended.
Could Ben simultaneously sue Cormac for killing me while defending Cormac against criminal charges for killing me?
I was so screwed.
Also on the docket for the day were some folklorists from Princeton who gave prepared statements about how phenomena attributed to the supernatural by primitive societies had their roots in easily explained natural occurrences. When the floor opened to questions, I was almost relieved that Duke harried them as hard as he'd harried Flemming. The senator was after everyone, it seemed. He'd cornered Flemming on vampires. He cornered the folklorists on the Bible.
"Professor, are
you telling me that the Holy Scripture that tens of millions of good people in this country swear by is nothing more than a collection of folklore and old wives' tales? Is that what you're telling me? Because my constituency would respectfully disagree with you on that score."
The academics just couldn't counter that kind of argument.
Duke called one of the committee staffers over and spoke for a few moments. Then he left. The remaining senators conferred, while the audience started grumbling.
Then Senator Henderson recessed the hearing for the day. I didn't testify after all.
Anticipation produced the worst kind of anxiety. It didn't matter how nervous about a show I was beforehand, how worried I was that a guest wouldn't show, or that I'd get a call I couldn't handle, or that I was presenting a topic that would get out of control, once the show started that all went away. I was only nervous when I sat there, doing nothing, inventing terrible stories of everything that could go wrong.
The longer I sat at the hearing without doing anything, the more nervous I got. I'd be shaking by the time I finally got up there to testify.
Cormac stayed in the back, leaning by the door, where he could keep an eye on the whole room. When the committee members left out the back and the audience was breaking up to leave, he came to our row and sat beside Ben.
"Has it been going like this the whole time?"
Ben crossed his arms and leaned back. "No. They've been totally businesslike until now. I wonder if they've lost interest."
I pouted. "That doesn't matter, they still have to let me talk. I drove all the way out here, I've been sitting here for three days—could they really not let me talk?"
"Theoretically, they can do anything they want," Ben said.
Case in point: one of Senator Duke's aides, a young man looking stiff and uncomfortable in his suit, came down the aisle toward us. I guessed he was Duke's aide—the senator had returned to the room and watched us closely from the side of the benches. The aide only glanced at Ben and me, then leaned in to whisper to Cormac.
"The senator would like a word with you, if you don't mind." He waited, then, like he expected to escort the bounty hunter that very moment.
Cormac deliberately picked himself up out of the chair, taking his time, then followed the aide to see Duke. The reason for the summons became clear at once. Duke didn't even need a microphone to be heard.
"You didn't tell me you were friendly with her!"
If Cormac answered, he kept his voice subdued, and I didn't hear him.
Duke replied, "Does conflict of interest mean anything to you?"
He apparently didn't know Cormac very well. Even I knew the answer to that one.
"You're fired! You're off security! I want you out of this building!"
With as little concern as he'd shown strolling up there, Cormac walked back, wearing a wry smile.
"So sue a guy for trying to make an easy buck," he said.
Ben asked, "Could we? Sue, I mean. Is there a breach of contract?"
"No," Cormac said, shaking his head. "I took a kill fee."
Ben hesitated, then said, "Kill fee. That's funny."
"No, it's not," I said, interrupting. "That's not funny at all."
Too bad they were both grinning. I gave a long-suffering sigh.
"Come on," Ben said. "We'd better get you out of here."
Flemming left just ahead of us. He'd tucked his briefcase under his arm, ducked his head, and strode out of the room like he was late for something. His gaze flickered over us as he passed; we were all staring at him.
"Who's that guy?" Cormac nodded after him.
"Dr. Paul Flemming," I said. "He heads the Center for the Study of Paranatural Biology. The committee spent the first two days grilling him."
"He a straight shooter?"
"Not in the least. I went to his office this morning and found him shredding a stack of documents. Just try to get a clear answer from him."
"Used to working under the radar. Going crazy now with the spotlight on him. He looks the type." Ben nodded in agreement.
I said, "What I want to know is: what's he hiding?"
Cormac pursed his lips thoughtfully. "You really want to know? We could find out."
"How? I've tried talking to him, I even had him on the show."
Ben said, "I've pulled everything on him I could—military record, academic record. He's got this scientific veneer over everything he does. Talks a lot, uses big words, doesn't say anything."
"We could break into his office."
I hushed Cormac. "Are you out of your mind?" He was talking like this in a government building. I looked around, but no one seemed to have heard.
"You know I can do it," he said. "Especially since it looks like I'm not busy for the next couple days after all."
He could do it. I didn't know where he learned how to do things like breaking into radio stations and government buildings, but he could do it.
Cormac could probably learn more in a couple of hours of breaking-and-entering than I had in months of wheedling. He grinned, because my hesitation was all the confirmation he needed to go ahead with the plan.
"Officially, I'm not hearing any of this," Ben said. "Unofficially, be sure to wear gloves."
Cormac huffed. "I think I've just been insulted."
"I'm only saying." Ben squeezed past us to the door. "You kids have fun."
Cormac turned to me. "Where's this guy's office?"
"Bethesda. At the Magnuson Clinical Center, in the basement."
"Show up there at about four. Go inside the building, I'll be watching for you."
"Four—in the morning?" I said.
"Four this afternoon," Cormac said.
"You want to do this in broad daylight?"
"Do you trust me or not?"
If he really wanted to shoot me, he'd had half a dozen chances. And I still couldn't answer that question. I swallowed a lump in my throat. "Do I really have to be there?"
"You're the one who knows what you want to find."
Ben said to me once that Cormac wasn't a crusader. He wasn't a werewolf hunter because he hated werewolves, or had a religious beef against them like Duke. Rather, he liked to see how close he could walk to the edge without falling off. He didn't have any loyalty to the government, the people who hired him, or anyone else.
Cormac was only planning this to see if he could. For him, it was a challenge.
"All right. Four o'clock this afternoon." I sighed, hoping to still my pounding heart.
"Bring gloves," he said, then stood and walked away.
This was a bad, bad idea. I knew it in my gut. You didn't just go breaking into government buildings in the best of times, and this wasn't the best of times. But if I didn't show, Cormac might break into Flemming's office without me. If he learned anything juicy, he'd keep the information from me out of spite.
I had to go.
I drove my car from the alley around the corner and found Luis waiting outside Alette's town house. He casually leaned on the wrought-iron fence that divided the property from the sidewalk. By all appearances he looked like he was out enjoying the unseasonable sunshine, pausing during a stroll. I pulled up to the curb in front of him, parked, and got out.
He beamed at me. He had a generous smile and sparkling eyes. My stomach fluttered.
"You're a hard person to track down," he said brightly. "I hoped to find you outside the Senate building, but you were already gone."
I winced in apology. I hated the idea of him running all over town after me—then again, it was awfully flattering. "I gave you my cell number, right? You should have called."
He shrugged. "Chasing you is more fun."
Spoken like a true predator. He stepped toward me, looking like he was getting ready to pin me against the car. Part of me wanted to dodge, to keep the chase going for a little longer. But I let him put his hands on my hips and lean forward for a kiss. I held his arms and pulled him close.
I glance
d over his shoulder at the windows of Alette's townhome, hoping no one was watching.
Coming up for air, I said, "You shouldn't be here."
He followed my gaze back to the building. "I'm not afraid of them. Is it too early for me to take you to dinner?"
"I'd love that. But—" I wanted to pull my hair out. I couldn't believe I was going to turn down Luis to go play Mission: Impossible with Cormac. "But I can't. I set up a meeting and I can't miss it."
"Something for your show?"
"Yeah, something like that." It wasn't an outright lie. Most everything ended up on the show eventually. But Luis looked at me sidelong, like he knew I wasn't being entirely truthful. He could probably smell it on me, or sense the twitchy nervousness through my body.
He said, "The full moon is coming soon, in just a few days. Do you know where you'll be?"
I knew the full moon was coming soon. I couldn't forget. "No. I usually scout out a place to run, but I haven't had time."
"Come with me. There's a park about an hour outside town, a few of us drive there. It's safe."
Full moon night with friends. It had been a long time since I had anyone watching my back.
"I'd really like that. Thanks."
He brought my hand to his lips and kissed it. "Then it's a date."
When one lycanthrope said to another, "run with me," it was usually a euphemism. I certainly hoped so.
"I should let you get to your meeting."
"Yes."
"Then until I catch you again." He touched my cheek, kissed me on the corner of my mouth, lingering for just a moment as if he'd draw the breath from me, then pulled back. He stepped away, grinning, and it was all I could do to keep from following him, step by hypnotized step.
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