The Select

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The beige brick front of the Science Center loomed over Quinn as she hurried up the slope. The double-wide glass doors slid open at her approach. She hurried through the high-ceilinged, marbled-floored lobby and headed directly for the elevators. Usually her energy was scraping bottom by this time in the afternoon, but today she was up and excited. Today she started her new job.

"Excuse me," said a woman's voice to her right.

Quinn turned and saw a heavy-set black woman looking at her from behind the circular counter of the security desk.

"Me?"

"Can I help you, Miss?"

Quinn stepped closer. The woman's badge read Charlene Turner. She wore a smile but her eyes and manner were all business.

"I'm supposed to meet Dr. Emerson upstairs this afternoon," Quinn told her.

"Fifth floor?" she said, her expression dubious. "He's going to meet you on Fifth? What's your name?"

"Cleary."

The woman tapped something into her keyboard and checked her screen.

"You're not down for an appointment. What time he tell you?"

"No time. He just said to come by after class this afternoon. I'm going to be working for him."

"Ah. Why didn't you say so?" More tapping on her keyboard. "Now I got you. Cleary, Quinn—student assistant to Dr. Emerson."

"Right," Quinn said. "I can go upstairs now?"

"Not so fast. You're not official yet." Charlene Turner flipped through a file drawer and withdrew a manila envelope. From it she produced an ID badge and something that looked like a credit card. She compared the photo on the badge to Quinn.

"Yeah, that's you all right." She handed both across the counter. "The badge goes on your coat or blouse or some other visible place as soon as you enter this building, and it stays there as long as you're in here. The other goes in your wallet. Don't lose it. Big trouble if you do."

The ID badge listed her name and Department of Neuropharmacology assignment next to a photo that looked like a copy of the one she'd submitted with her application. Quinn immediately clipped it to the belt on her slacks. But the card...

"What is this?"

"Your security key," Charlene Turner said. "You can't get to the fifth floor without it."

"Key?"

The card said "Science Center" on the dark blue side, with an arrow pointing away from the "S;" the other side was white with a brown strip running across on the flip side of the arrow.

"Yeah. It's got a magnetic code in that little strip at the end. That's the business end. Just stick it face up into the slot in the elevator and you'll be on your way."

"Okay. Thanks."

They do go a little overboard on their security here, Quinn thought as she headed for the elevators.

One of the pair was standing open when she got there. The car was deep—deep enough for a hospital bed. Inside on the control panel were six buttons for floors 1 through 5 plus the basement. Next to the 5 and the B were pairs of little indicator lights. The red one was glowing next to each. On a hunch, Quinn inserted her card—her key—into the slot above the row of buttons and pressed 5. To the accompaniment of a soft click, the red light next to 5 went off and its companion lit up green. The elevator doors closed and the car started up.

"All right," Quinn said, smiling as she removed the key and slipped it into her pocket. She had a key that let her go where only a select few were allowed. It was exciting. She felt as if she'd arrived, as if she belonged.

Stepping out on the fifth floor, she was lost for a moment. No one was in the hall and she didn't know where to turn. She tried to remember the layout from the tour last Christmas and got the feeling she should head to her right.

And then she saw the glass plate in the wall—the window onto the place called Ward C.

She stopped in the center of the hall. She'd forgotten completely about Ward C. Now it was all back, especially the eyes. She remembered peering through that window and meeting that pair of dull blue eyes staring up at her from within their gauze frame, remembered the questing look in them, remembered the tears as she'd moved away.

How had she forgotten? Why had she forgotten? Too painful a memory? Too disturbing?

As if in the grip of some invisible hand that had reached through the glass from the burn ward and taken hold of her, Quinn gravitated to the window. She couldn't resist. She stopped before it and gazed within.

It was the same...the gauze-swathed bodies on their air mattresses, still, white shapes under their sheets, the IVs, the feeding tubes, the catheters, the blue, green, red, yellow patches on their limbs and trunks, the nurses gliding among them like benevolent phantoms, turning them, examining them, ministering to their unspoken needs. Not a whisper of sound penetrated the glass...like watching a silent movie.

Quinn hesitated, then forced herself to look down at the bed directly before the window, fearing yet yearning for the sight of that same pair of blue eyes, wondering if that person were still here, still in pain, still alive.

The form on the bed by the window was sleeping. Yet even though the eyes were closed, Quinn knew it wasn't the same patient. This one seemed female. Smaller, narrower in the shoulders, a hint of breasts mounded under the gauze—

"Miss Cleary?"

Quinn spun, jolted by the voice. Dr. Emerson was standing behind her.

"I didn't mean to startle you, but they called from downstairs to let me know you were on your way up. When you didn't show..."

"I wasn't sure where to go."

He smiled. "My fault. I should have realized that and had someone watching for you." He glanced at the burn ward window. "This is where we first crossed paths, I believe."

Quinn remembered...the blue-eyed patient, his obvious pain, Dr. Emerson directing the nurse to medicate him.

"Yes. The orientation tour."

"And now you're back in the same spot."

"It's these patients. They're..."

Quinn didn't know how to express her feelings without sounding theatrical, but something about these unknown, faceless, helpless people was drawing her to them. She sensed a need in that ward, and an urge within herself to fulfill it.

"The other patients in the medical center next door come and go," Dr. Emerson said. "But these are our orphans, the homeless, the ones nobody wants. They need more care than a nursing home can provide, yet no hospital can afford to keep them. So they wind up here, at the Science Center, where they allow us to try experimental cures for their damaged skin."

Quinn swallowed. "Experimental?"

He laughed. "You say that as if we're mad scientists, Miss Cleary. All the patients here on Fifth are experimental subjects. They or their families have applied to come here. There's even a waiting list."

"For experimental treatment?"

"Every new drug and every therapeutic advance such as Dr. Alston's semi-synthetic skin grafts goes through exhaustive testing on mice and dogs and monkeys before it's even considered for use in a human being. And once all that testing has been reviewed by the FDA and found suitably safe, then it's tested in human volunteers. Very carefully tested."

Quinn glanced through the window. "But these—"

"Are all volunteers. Or have been given over to our care by their families. You hear about new AIDS drugs being tested. Who do you think they're tested on? AIDS victims. And cholesterol-lowering agents. Who are they tested on? People with high cholesterol. And on whom else can you test new skin grafts but burn victims? Here Dr. Alston and his staff have taken on the toughest burn cases, the ones who've been failed by conventional therapy." He moved up to the window and stared into the ward. His voice softened. "And for the residents of Ward C, The Ingraham is their last, best hope."

"Why the colored patches?" Quinn asked.

"Color coding for different strains of Dr. Alston's grafts. You see, he takes samples of a patient's healthy skin—and on some of these poor devils that's not easy to find—and grows sheets of new cells in cultures. Then he coats the micromesh he's synthesized with the patient's own DNA. The body's immune system does not react against it's own DNA, therefore there's no rejection of the mesh. The skin cells in the mesh begin to multiply, and soon you've got a patch of healthy skin. It's worked wonders in the animal studies. He's maybe two years away from approval by the FDA."

Quinn almost wished she were working for Dr. Alston. Dr. Emerson seemed to be reading her mind.

"I never told you, but your duties in my department will have an impact on the burn patients."

Quinn pointed through the window. "You mean—?"

He gestured down the hall. "Let me show you my lab and things will be clearer."

The prospect of dealing with real live patients pumped up Quinn's already soaring excitement as she accompanied Dr. Emerson down the hall. She followed him past the nurses station and through a narrow doorway.

"Not very glamorous, I'm afraid," he said. "But here's the front section of my little domain."

A small room, its walls lined with desks and computer terminals. A middle-aged woman was hunched over a keyboard, typing madly.

"Alice," Dr. Emerson said, touching her on the shoulder. "This is Quinn Cleary, the student assistant I told you about."

Alice turned and extended her hand to Quinn. She looked about fifty; she wore no make-up, had gray-streaked hair, and unusually dry skin. But her smile was warm and welcoming.

"Am I glad to see you! Are you starting today?"

Quinn glanced at Dr. Emerson. "I'm not sure."

"You're on the payroll as of today," he said, "so you might as well."

"Great!" Alice said. "We're so backed up on data entry, you wouldn't believe! Take a seat and I'll—"

"I think I'll give her the tour first, Alice," Dr. Emerson said with a tolerant smile.

"Oh, right. Sure. Of course. Go ahead. I'll be here when you're through."

Dr. Emerson then led Quinn through a door at the rear of the office. Immediately she noticed a pungent odor. She sniffed.

"Still noticeable?" Dr. Emerson said.

"Something is."

"This used to be the vivarium. Lined with rat cages. But we moved the little fellows back down to the fourth floor. Not many left. We're long since past that stage." He gestured to the work stations where two technicians were measuring minute amounts of amber fluid into pipettes and inserting them into a wide assortment of autoanalytical machines. "This is where we used to sacrifice them. Now we've converted this area to analysis of the sera we draw from the patients."

"The Ward C patients?"

"Yes."

Quinn's face must have reflected her confusion because Dr. Emerson nodded and motioned her back the way they had come.

"Follow me."

They passed Alice again, who turned and looked up at them expectantly.

"Not quite yet, Alice."

Quinn followed him out into the hall to the nurses station.

"Marguerite," he said to the slim, middle-aged, mocha-skinned nurse at the counter. Her black hair was pulled back into a tight bun; her light eye shadow emphasized her dark, penetrating eyes. "One of the 9574 vials, please."

The nurse reached behind her and plucked a two-ounce bottle from a pocket in the top of the medication cart. She handed it to Dr. Emerson, who in turn handed it to Quinn.

"This," he said, "is the reason Dr. Alston and I have our labs on the same floor. It's the new anesthetic I'm developing. We have no name for it yet, so we refer to it by its entry number in the log when we isolated it. This is the nine thousand five hundred and seventy-fourth compound we've registered at The Ingraham."

Quinn stared at the bottle of clear fluid in her hand. It looked like water.

"So many."

"We've sythesized tens of thousands, but we only register the ones we feel have might have human therapeutic potential."

"It's good?"

"Good?" His entire forehead lifted with his eyebrows. "It's wonderful. Works like a charm. And you know the best part?"

Quinn placed the bottle on the counter. "What?"

"It's non-toxic. That's because it's not a foreign chemical compound but a naturally-occurring neuroamine, secreted in minute amounts in the brainstem during REM sleep."

Quinn couldn't help but smile at him. His enthusiasm was catching. He was like a little boy talking about a rocket voyage to Mars. She didn't want to slow him down, so she prodded him on.

"Really?"

"Yes. You're paralyzed during dream sleep, you know. Oh, yes. Almost completely paralyzed. Otherwise you'd be talking, laughing, and generally thrashing all about in your dreams. Yet your eyes move. You've heard of rapid eye movements—REM sleep—of course. And your chest wall moves, allowing your lungs to breath. So what you've got is a selective paralysis, affecting all the skeletal muscles except the eyes, the intercostals, and the diaphragm. And of course, you're unconscious."

"It paralyzes," Quinn said. "I thought you said it was an anesthetic."

"It is. At higher doses it produces total anesthesia. I'm working on the mechanism for that now, but I do know it's active in the higher centers as well as the brainstem." The years seemed to drop away from him as his enthusiasm grew. "But do you understand what we've got here, Miss Cleary? A potent general anesthetic that causes complete paralysis but allows the patient to continue breathing on his own. The anesthesiologist won't have to intubate and ventilate the patient. It can be used in every kind of surgery except chest procedures; there's zero chance of allergic reaction because 9574 is a human neurohormone—everybody's got their own. And perhaps best of all, there's no post-anesthesia side effects. You come to in the recovery room like someone awakening from a nap." He put his hands on his hips and stared at the bottle like a proud parent. "So. Those are the properties of the neurohormone you'll be working with here. What do you think?"

"It sounds almost too good to be true."

"It does, doesn't it." He began gesturing excitedly with his hands. "But that's not the whole of it. It would be almost perfect with just those features, but it's also completely non-toxic. Its LD₅₀—"

"Elldee...?"

"LD₅₀," Dr. Emerson said. "You'll learn all about that as we go. Stands for the lethal dose of a given compound for fifty percent of the experimental animals. Every drug meant for human use must register one. For instance, I take the Kleederman Pharmaceuticals product fenostatin for my cholesterol, a dose of twenty milligrams per day—total. I happen to know that the LD₅₀ of fenostatin is twenty grams per kilogram. In other words, if I gave a hundred lab mice a dose of twenty grams of fenostatin per kilogram of their body weight, fifty of them would die. That's a good LD₅₀. It means that if I became suicidal and stuffed 70,000 twenty-milligram fenostatin tablets down my throat, I'd still have only a fifty percent chance of dying from fenostatin toxicity. Probably rupture my intestines first. But the wonderful thing about 9574 is that it's even less toxic. We haven't found a lethal dose yet."

Triumphant, he threw out his arms and struck the bottle of 9574, sending it skittering toward the end of the counter. Marguerite the nurse leaped out of her seat, knocking it over as she lunged for the bottle. She caught it just as it went off the end and dropped toward the floor. Then she slumped there, shaking her head, panting as if she had run a race.

"Thank God you caught that, Marguerite," Dr. Emerson said. He seemed quite upset.

Marguerite straightened and carefully replaced the vial in its slot on the meds cart.

"Dr. Emerson," she said as she righted her chair. "That was too close."

"Amen," he said, then turned to Quinn. "We have precious little of 9574 available. Synthesizing it in quantities would be a simple matter for a commercial lab, but our tiny operation down on the third floor is taxed to its limits to produce what we need here for research purposes. Consequently, we treat it like gold."

"But who are you using it on?"

"Why, the Ward C patients, of course. It's perfect for them."

Quinn was confused. "But why would you want to paralyze them?"

"It's not so much the paralysis we want for them," he said. "It's the anesthesia. Most of the Ward C patients have horrific scarring, thick wads of stiff tissue that resists movement because it's got minimal elasticity. We use 9574 on them during their physical therapy sessions. It allows the therapists to stretch their limbs and exercise their joints to prevent flexion contractures. If left alone, most of them would end up curled into the fetal position. Without 9574 the pain of physical therapy would be unendurable."

"But didn't you say the lower dose paralyzes, and the higher dose anesthetizes? Wouldn't that mean they're completely paralyzed during therapy?" Quinn was starting to feel uncomfortable.

Dr. Emerson turned and looked at her closely. A wry smile worked across his lips.

"You're a quick study, aren't you."

Quinn was suddenly flustered. Had she angered him?

"Well, I don't know...I just—"

"I like that. I like that a lot. Shows you've been listening. But as it works out, the paralysis with 9574 is a harmless side effect for some of the Ward C patients, and an absolute necessity for others." He gestured down the hall. "Let me show you."

They moved the dozen feet or so to the window and stood looking into Ward C. Quinn counted the gauze-wrapped shapes. Seven. All lying still and silent, looking...

"Are they paralyzed now?"

"No," Dr. Emerson said. "Just resting. They sleep a lot. There's not much else they can do. Their scarring is so extensive that they can't move on their own. But for four of them the therapists need the skeletal muscle paralysis that 9574 offers. Those four are brain damaged from their burns."

Quinn tore her eyes away from the ward and looked at him.

"How...?"

"Anoxia. Either the smoke and heat of the fire itself stole their air, or the shock that goes along with such extensive third-degree burns robbed their brains of sufficient blood flow for too long—either way, lack of oxygen damaged their brains, permanently. All four are disoriented and confused; two are frankly psychotic. The physical therapists would have to fight them all the way without 9574. But with 9574 they can work those limbs and keep the muscles from complete atrophy."

Quinn stared back into the ward and her heart went out to them. "Those poor, poor people." And then a thought struck her. "But even if Dr. Alston's grafts repair their skin, they'll never get any benefit from it."

"True. Their bodies may improve but not their brains. However, their lives will not be wasted. Other burn patients will reap the benefits of what we learn from these poor devils' tragedies." He put a hand gently on her elbow. "But enough philosophizing. It's time to drag you down and introduce you to the more mundane aspects of the daily grind that is medical research. The nitty gritty of gathering raw data, sorting and analyzing it, and organizing it seven hundred different ways in order to satisfy the bureaucrats at the FDA."

*

That's the trouble with Women's Country, Louis Verran thought as he waited outside the dorm and watched the windows of the south wing's second floor. Too much of a class mix.

Women's Country. Sounded so uppity. The kind of name his ex-wife would have been into after her conversion. Elizabeth, the born-again feminist. She took to the women's movement like a convert to a new religion. Took him to the cleaners, then took off. Good riddance.

Woman's Country? Broads' Country was more like it.

It had been Alston's bright idea—not a bad one, really—to room each class as a unit, generally one class per floor per wing, allowing them to work out study groups, make friends, and generally build a sense of camaraderie. The third- and fourth-year students were out more than they were in due to their clinical training schedules at the medical center, but first- and second-year wing floors went to class together, attended labs together, and ate together. One quick look at the class schedule told you when a certain wing would be deserted.

But Women's Country was different. The broads had formed an enclave of first-, second-, third- and fourth-year students there, which made it almost impossible to find a time when everybody was out.

Except dinner time. Hardly anybody on campus missed dinner.

This was Verran's third trip over here today. On both his previous ones he'd found girls wandering about. This time the place would be empty. Had to be. He did not want to come back again.

He had his walkie-talkie on his hip and Kurt watching the elevators over at Science, ready to let him know as soon as the Cleary girl left the building. She'd probably go straight to the caf but Verran was not taking any chances. As soon as he got word that she was leaving Science, he'd be outta here.

Watching the dorm door, he saw a couple more of the broads leave and decided to make his move.

The hallway in Broads' Country looked deserted. He checked the walkie-talkie to make sure it was on. No word from Kurt, so that meant the Cleary girl was still up on Fifth. He checked up and down the hall to make sure no one could see him, then used the master key to let himself into 252.

He was glad he didn't have to turn on the lights. You never knew who might notice. He had his flashlight and the sunset was glowing through the window of the bedroom, where the problem mike was located. Plenty of light.

*

Quinn looked up from the computer screen at her new work station and glanced at the clock. Dinner time already. Time to hang it up.

She rubbed her eyes. Dr. Emerson hadn't exaggerated about how mundane the nitty gritty would be. Alice had set her in front of a computer, shown her how the data-entry end of the program worked, then she'd given her a ream of readings from the analytical lab next door and set her to work.

Not the least bit exciting, and hardly medical or even scientific. Nothing more than keyboard pounding. She'd been discouraged at first, but Dr. Emerson had forewarned her that this sort of scut work would be part of her duties, and that this was a good way to get herself familiarized with the doings in his little department. Once the data entry was caught up, he would involve her in the analysis of that data and, if all went well, she might even earn herself a credit on one or two of the scientific articles these mountains of numbers were going to generate.

Dr. Emerson had left the department a little while ago and Alice now was on her way out. She showed Quinn how to do a final SAVE on her work and sign off her console. She left while Quinn straightened up her work area. When she had everything looking reasonably neat, she headed for the elevator.

On her way down the hall she noticed that the curtains were drawn across the Ward C window. She was almost glad she didn't have to see those poor souls again.

When she got to the elevators she saw that the floor indicator showed both cars on the lobby level. There was a slot next to the call button. She slipped her card in and pressed the button a couple of times, but neither light moved off its L. She noticed the EXIT sign over the stairway door a short way down the hall.

Why not? She'd spent most of the day sitting in lecture halls, perched over her microscope, or in front of that computer. Her legs could use a good stretch.

At the door she found a little red light and a card slot in the lock assembly. She plugged in the card, the light turned green, and the door opened. She noticed a similar assembly on the other side. Seemed you couldn't get on or off the fifth floor unless you had a card. Seemed a little excessive. God, what if there was a fire?

A few minutes of bounding down the flights and she reached the first floor. The stair door opened into a hall around a corner from the lobby. She started to round that corner when she noticed the red steel door of a side exit. Going out this end, she realized, would save her a lot of steps. But as she approached it she saw the standard warnings:

THIS IS NOT AN EXIT

ALARM WILL SOUND IF OPENED

But she also noticed a familiar slot in the door's lock assembly, identical to the one on the fifth floor door. The little light was red. Quinn wondered...

She stepped up and slipped her security card into the slot. The lock clicked and the light turned green.

She grinned. "Yes!"

She let herself out and saw another slot and indicator lamp on the outside. She could enter here as well as exit. All right. Her little key card was going to come in very handy, especially in bad weather.

She turned and paused for a moment in the mild October air to take in the orange glow of the sunset. Beautiful. She was hungry but she felt grubby. She decided to made a quick trip back to the room to freshen up before dinner.

It would take only a couple of minutes.

*

Verran palmed the defective Electret mike and withdrew its replacement from his coat pocket; he stuck the new one's pin into the same hole in the insulation of the wire just occupied by its predecessor.

"Piece of cake," he said softly.

He was checking the bedroom to make sure it looked untouched when he heard a rustle in the hall on the far side of the door. He froze. Who the hell—?

And then he heard the key slipping into the lock. He dove for the floor on the far side of the bed near the window and lay there, holding his breath, sweating. The door opened and the light came on in the front room. Then the overhead in the bedroom. Its glare hit him like a kick in the head. He winced.

Shit! Why hadn't Kurt called? That son of a bitch! Probably admiring his reflection in the glass door when he should have been watching the elevator. Verran vowed to kick his preening butt when he got back.

But what about now? He was going to get caught for sure. He resigned himself to that. But what the hell was he going to say?

The bed moved as something bounced on it. Not heavy enough for a person. Books? Christ, this was it. He could feel it coming. He was going to look like an ass. He tried thinking of some sort of explanation. He had a flashlight—he could say he was looking for something. But even if he came up with a remotely plausible story, it still would be all over campus before morning: Chief Verran found huddling on the floor of a female student's room. Tightass Alston would have a field day. He'd never live it down.

Fucking Kurt ought to be fired for this. Except he knew too much. Well, he'd see to it that Kurt never screwed up again.

But now...now he clenched his teeth and waited for the scream that would—

A door closed. Water started running in the bathroom.

Hope burst in Verran's chest like a flare.

He risked popping his head up and checking the room. Empty. She was in the john. He didn't hesitate. He jumped up and hurried toward the front room, gliding his feet. He made it to the door, grabbed the handle, gave it a slow, careful twist, then slipped through and into the hall. He closed it very slowly, very carefully behind him, letting the latch catch with a barely audible click.

Panting, sweating, his heart pounding at two hundred miles an hour, Verran checked out the hall. Empty. He hurried toward the exit, his sweaty palms enclosed in fists.

Goddam fucking Kurt.

MONITORING

"She didn't come by me, Lou. I was watching the whole time and I swear she never stepped out of those elevators."

Verran stared at Kurt. They were facing off in the center of the control room. Elliot was at his console, munching a sandwich, trying to make like a chameleon and blend in with the background. Kurt was awful convincing with his hurt eyes and whiny voice. If Verran himself hadn't been in room 252 a few moments ago, he'd be ready to believe him. A first-class performance.

"Then who was it who came into Cleary's room, dropped their books on the bed, and went into the bathroom? Little Red Riding Hood? The Tooth Fairy?"

"Maybe. But it wasn't the Cleary broad, I'll tell you that. I never left the security station for a fucking minute. Not even to take a leak."

"Oh, I believe you were there, all right. But you were too busy admiring yourself in some piece of glass to notice her when she passed by."

"Not fair, Lou."

"Admit it, Kurt. You fucked up. And I'm warning you now, one more screw up and you're out on your ass."

"Bullshit. I'm not taking the rap for something I didn't do. Especially since you never forget, Lou."

That last part was true, at least. He did have a tendency to carry a grudge. And why not? Guy screws up and damn near makes him look like an ass and he should just say, What the hell, shit happens? No way. He wanted to grab a handful of Kurt's perfect blond hair, rip it out, and feed it to him.

"Then how did she get past you, Kurt? Fly out a fifth floor window? Answer me that or—"

"Wait a sec," Kurt said. "I'll prove it to you." He fairly leapt to his console and began typing furiously.

"What now?"

"The locks. We issued her a key, right? Let's see where she used it."

Verran stood over Kurt's shoulder and peered at his screen. The electronic locks in Science weren't just for show. They were linked to this control room, not merely for security, but for monitoring as well. The system kept an ongoing record of each time one of the locks was opened, not only of the time and location, but whose key was used.

He watched as Kurt called up a list of current key holders, highlighted Cleary's number, then plugged it into an activity search with today's date.

The console beeped, and when the results popped up on the screen Kurt slammed his palm on the counter.

"There! What I tell you?" He sprang from his chair and pointed. "What I fucking tell you?"

Verran stared at the screen. It listed three locations where Cleary had used her key today. The first was the fifth floor access slot in the elevator at 3:12 p.m.; the second the fifth floor west stairwell door; the third the fire door on Science's west flank at 5:16.

Shit. It hadn't been Kurt at all. The bitch had gone out the fire door.

So now what? Verran felt like a jerk.

Only one thing to do: Pull a Swann.

Good old Ed Swann had been Verran's direct superior at the Company. Back in the Iran hostage days, he'd chewed Verran up and down for following the wrong Syrian Embassy car around D.C. all day. But when it was discovered that he'd given Verran the wrong license plate number, what did Swann do?

He turned to Verran and offered his hand.

Which is just what Verran did now.

"My apologies, Kurt," he said, keeping any hint of sheepishness from his tone. "She fooled us both. I shouldn't have jumped on you like that. I'm sorry."

Kurt stared at him in shock for a few seconds, then shook his hand.

"Yeah...okay, Lou," he said, completely disarmed. "I guess if places were reversed I probably would have thought you'd screwed up too."

Verran smiled—inwardly as well as outwardly. Kurt had been poised to jump all over him, but Verran had rocked him back on his heels with a matter-of-fact apology. The tactic had worked for Swann, and it still worked like a charm. Kurt had gained the high ground, but the apology made Verran look like the bigger man—and defused a tense situation that might have affected the usually relaxed working atmosphere of the monitoring room.

He didn't want anything to interfere with his operation.

He gestured to the screen. "She's a tricky one. Almost caught me with my hand in the cookie jar. Better not take anything for granted with that one."

Elliot finally must have thought it was safe to open his yap. "You able to get the bug, chief?"

"Of course." He reached into his coat pocket. "It's right..."

The pocket was empty. He tried the other side. Empty too. He patted his pants pockets, pulled them inside out.

"What the hell?"

"What's the matter, Lou?" Kurt said.

"The bad bug. I know I had it."

"You lose it?" Elliot said. "Shit!"

Shit is right, Verran thought as he pawed through his pockets again. He prayed he hadn't lost it; there'd be hell to pay if the wrong person found it.

Kurt rummaged in the cabinet under his console. At first Verran thought he might be looking for the electronic sweeper, which would do no good since electret mikes were non-radiating. Instead he came up with a metal detector. He turned it on, adjusted the controls, and approached Verran.

"Here. Empty your pockets and I'll give you the once-over. If it's on you, we'll find it."

After Verran had dumped all his change on the counter, Kurt began waving the business end of the detector over his clothing. As the wand worked its way around his body, Verran watched the indicator needle in the handle. It would start to move when it crossed something metal. It lay dormant.

"It's not on you, Lou," Kurt said. "You must have dropped it somewhere."

"How could I drop it?" Verran snapped. "I distinctly remember putting it in my pocket."

"Well, it ain't in your pocket now."

Elliot chimed in: "Which means it's gotta be somewhere between here and the room."

"All right, all right." Verran was pissed and there was no one to get pissed at but himself. "Let me think."

Kurt and Elliot stayed mum while Verran retraced all his moves since switching the bugs. He was sure he'd put it in his pocket, just before he'd put the chair back...which was just before he'd heard the key slipping into the door lock...

Acid surged around Verran's ulcer.

"Christ," he said. "It must have come out of my pocket when I hit the floor."

Kurt held up the metal detector. "Want me to go back to the room and see if I can find it?"

"No," Verran said, glancing at the clock. "They'll all be wandering back from dinner now. No way you can get in and out without being seen."

"You can't just leave it there."

No, they couldn't just leave it there. The discovery of an electret mike in a dorm room might tip the first domino. The whole scenario played out in his head: Questions asked, jokes made, talk about the place being bugged, people starting to search their rooms...

That one little mike could bring down the whole operation.

"It's small. If it's in the room it's on the far side of the bed by the window. Nobody's going to see it there. We're okay. We'll pick it up tomorrow. No sweat."

No sweat? he thought. Then why am I shaking like a little old lady inside?

TWELVE

Quinn pinned her ID badge onto her new lab coat—her white lab coat—and turned to Tim.

"How do I look?"

Tim glanced up from the spare bed in her room where he was stretched out on the spread reading this morning's Baltimore Sun. He had his shoes off and looked perfectly at home.

"Very scientificky. But I still say you'd score more points in your running shorts."

"Fine," she said quickly. She didn't want him starting in on her legs again. "Be like that. While I'm out toiling to push back the frontiers of medical science, what'll you be doing?"

"Reading the funnies."

"You going to stay here?"

"Yeah, just for a little while, if you don't mind. Kevin's sacked out—he was up late studying last night—and I figured I'd let him sleep."

Quinn shook her head. She didn't mind at all. In fact she wished he'd stay until she got back. Not just because she liked having him around; it had been kind of creepy coming back to the room during the dinner hour yesterday. The floor had been deserted yet she'd had the weirdest feeling that someone was lurking about.

"Stay as long as you want. Why not hang out till I get back and I'll buy you dinner."

"Deal," Tim said and stuck his head back into the newspaper.

*

Matt Crawford let himself into his New Haven condo and tossed his notebooks onto the couch. He dropped into the recliner, turned on the TV with the remote, flipped through the thirty-four channels in as many seconds, then turned it off. He sat there and stared at the blank screen.

He was feeling low and not sure why. A brand new high-rise apartment with a panoramic view of the harbor and the Sound beyond, luxury furnishings selected and arranged by the decorator his mother had hired, a fully-stocked fridge, all to himself.

Maybe that was the problem. Too much to himself these days. Never anyone around—at least not anyone he had anything in common with. Unlike The Ingraham, Yale and most other medical schools had no dorm. Students lived wherever they could find a place they could afford. Matt's dad had jumped on this condo not only as a great place for Matt to live, but as a great investment as well.

He was half right.

At times like this, Matt almost wished he were at The Ingraham. But then if he were, Quinn would be somewhere else, sweating her tuition payments as well as sweating her courses.

He felt his mouth twist into a crooked smile. "'Tis a far, far better thing I do than I have ever done."

Quinn's strawberry-blond head with its wide blue eyes and red cheeks appeared in his mind and suddenly he had to talk to her. He pulled out his address book and punched in her number.

A groggy male voice answered on the third ring.

"'Lo?"

Matt wasn't sure what to say. "Is, uh, Quinn there?"

"Matt?"

Now he recognized the voice. "Tim? What are you doing there?"

"Didn't Quinn tell you? We moved in together. In fact, she's right beside me here in bed."

Matt was struck dumb.

Quinn and Tim...was it possible? He'd seen them both back in August before they'd left. Tim was being Tim and Quinn seemed to be barely tolerating him. Ms. No-nonsense and the goofmeister. A lot could happen in a couple of months, but this was too much. Definitely too much.

"Not."

Tim's laugh rattled over the line. "Had you going there for a second, didn't I."

"Not for a nanosecond."

Matt was surprised at his sudden surge of relief and asked himself, How come?

Tim went on, telling him that Quinn had just left, so they talked—compared courses, teachers, test difficulty, reminisced about the Good Old Days at Dartmouth—and as they spoke, an aching void expanded slowly in Matt's chest.

When he finally hung up, after asking that Quinn give him a call when she had a moment, Matt felt more alone than ever.

He felt as if he were being left out of something. Something good.

*

Quinn hurried over to Science. She was tempted to use the side door but decided to save that for when she was running late.

Charlene was at the security desk again. Quinn flashed her badge as she approached and Charlene waved her by.

Up on fifth, Quinn tried not to look into Ward C as she passed the window but couldn't resist a glance.

The curtain was drawn shut.

Quinn intended to keep moving, but the sight of that blank beige surface brought her to an abrupt halt before the glass. She stepped closer and tried to peek around the curtain's edges but found no openings.

Frustrated, she proceeded around the corner to the nurses station. Maybe Marguerite would be there. All Quinn wanted was for someone to tell her everything was all right in Ward C. Not that she could do anything if it wasn't, but she felt linked to those seven helpless patients, in some odd way partially responsible for them.

The nurses station was deserted. Where was everybody? Wasn't anyone watching Ward C?

Behind the counter and to the left Quinn spotted a glass-windowed door. It had to open into Ward C. Why else the red and white warning sign under the glass?

AUTHORIZED STAFF ONLY

She glanced up and down the hall. Still no one in sight to ask. Shrugging, she stepped behind the nurses station to take a peek through the glass.

What could it hurt?

Yes, it was Ward C, but it looked different this time. Brighter. Instead of back-lit by daylight from the windows, the room was bathed in the fluorescent glow of the ceiling lights. Everything seemed to have a sharper edge. Otherwise, nothing had changed. The patients still numbered seven—at least no one had died—they still lay on their beds, immobile mounds of white with—

No. Not all were immobile. One patient lying on his side on a bed in the central area was moving slightly, twisting, shifting his weight, sliding his red-bandaged leg toward the edge of the bed. The red bandage on the thigh gripped Quinn's attention. Something about the way it glistened...

She gasped and pressed her face hard against the glass. That wasn't a bandage. That was blood. A patch of raw flesh, oozing red.

And then Quinn noticed that the safety rail was down on the side where the leg was moving toward the edge. The patient was trying to get out of bed. If nobody stopped him, he was going to land in a heap on the floor.

Quinn stepped back for another look up and down the hall. Still empty. She called Marguerite's name twice but no one answered. She thought of running down the hall for Dr. Emerson but that would take too long. And what could he do then that she couldn't do now?

She returned to the door. The patient's bloody leg had moved farther along—the knee was jutting over the edge of the mattress. Another thirty seconds and he'd start sliding toward the floor.

Quinn realized she couldn't wait. Setting her jaw, she pushed through the door and hurried to the bed. She caught the lower leg by the calf just as the foot fell off the edge.

"Whoops!" she said softly, smiling and putting all the reassurance she had into her expression. "You're going to fall if you're not careful."

Gently she guided the leg back onto the mattress. She averted her eyes from the bloody patch of flesh and looked into the eyes. They were blue, yes, the same eyes she had seen here over Christmas.

Quinn jumped as a loud, angry voice rang out behind her.

"What the hell do you think you're DOING?"

She whirled and found Marguerite standing not two feet away, her dark eyes wide and angry above her surgical mask.

"He—he was falling," Quinn said.

"You're not allowed in here!" the nurse cried, her shout muffled by the mask. "Can't you read?"

"Just get her out of here, Marguerite," said a sharp voice from the far side of the room behind Marguerite. "Before she does any more damage."

Quinn knew that voice: Dr. Alston's. She looked past Marguerite's shoulder and saw him standing—masked, capped, gowned, gloved—in an alcove to the left of the door Quinn had entered. He was holding something over a tray, something that looked like a pink, wet paper towel.

Quinn felt as if she'd been slapped in the face. "But I—"

"Get her out!" Dr. Alston shouted. "We'll deal with her later!"

"You heard him," Marguerite said. "Out."

Unable to speak, her cheeks afire, Quinn brushed past her and hurried for the door. What did she do that was so terrible? She'd only been trying to help.

*

Arthur Alston's face was livid as he pointed a shaking finger at Quinn Cleary.

"It will be days before we know the fall-out from your irresponsible misadventure, young lady."

Walter Emerson watched Quinn closely, curious as to how she was going to respond. She had come to him with her story nearly an hour ago, visibly upset. He had listened, calmed her down, but had given no opinion, saying only that he would be with her when she faced Arthur.

That time came soon enough. Arthur stormed into Walter's lab with that insufferable attitude of his, demanding that "the ignoramus who invaded Ward C" be brought before him. Walter had sent Alice on an early coffee break and summoned Quinn. Now he was settled back in his chair, waiting to see how she handled herself. If she had half the gumption he thought she had, she'd stand her ground.

"I'm sorry, Dr. Alston," she said. "I know I entered a restricted area, but I saw no other choice at the time."

"The sign says 'Authorized Staff Only'," Arthur said. "Can it be stated any more clearly than that?"

"No, but—"

"There are no 'buts' here, Miss Cleary. If you are to remain a lab assistant here—in fact, if you are to remain a student at this institution—you will follow the rules, or you will be out of here faster than you can blink your baby blue eyes."

Walter watched Quinn's cheeks redden. He was tempted to step in here before Arthur got out of hand, but no. He wanted to hear Quinn's response.

"I saw one of your patients in danger, Dr. Alston," she said through tight lips. "I saw his bed's safety rail down and saw him slipping over the edge of the mattress. What was I supposed to do?"

"You shouldn't have been at the door in the first place!"

"What was I supposed to do, sir?"

Very good, Walter thought. Stay polite, respectful, but keep the ball in his court.

"You should have called for a nurse," Arthur said.

"I did, sir. More than once. No one answered. What was I to do then, sir? Stand there and watch your patient hit the floor?"

"You should not have ignored the sign on the door, Miss Cleary. The health of those patients is extremely fragile. Their graft sites are highly prone to infection. We allow no one to enter Ward C unless they are wearing a surgical cap, a surgical mask, and sterile gloves. You were wearing none of those. God knows what you brought with you into that room."

"Correct me if I'm wrong, sir, but wouldn't he be worse off contamination-wise if he'd fallen on the floor?"

"That would not have happened, Miss Cleary. Marguerite was keeping an eye on him all the time."

"If you say so, sir. But I could not know that at the time. I acted as I thought best. I'm sorry it upset you or risked any harm to your patient. But may I ask you, sir: If I'd stood there and watched your patient bounce off the floor, would you now be here congratulating me for not acting?"

Arthur opened his mouth, then closed it, then opened it again.

"Do not enter Ward C again, Miss Cleary. Under any circumstances. Is that clear?"

"Very clear, sir." She turned to Walter. "I'm going to call it a day, if that's all right with you, Dr. Emerson."

Walter could see she was fighting back tears. He wanted to shake her hand and congratulate her on the way she'd handled herself, but he couldn't do that in front of Arthur.

"Fine, Quinn," he said. "Get some dinner and relax. It's Friday night. Have some fun somewhere."

She gave him a forced smile that said she was not in a fun mood, then she started for the door.

"Good night, Dr. Alston," she said as she passed him.

Arthur said nothing. When she was gone, he turned to Walter, but Walter spoke first.

"A little hard on her, weren't you, Arthur?" he said.

"Not hard enough, I fear," Arthur replied. "That girl is trouble, Walter, sticking her nose where it does not belong."

"She saw someone in trouble, she rushed in to help. A humanitarian gesture. Why do you berate a future doctor for a humanitarian gesture?"

"She could have contaminated the graft. She shouldn't have been in there, pure and simple."

Walter fixed Arthur with a stare. "And the safety rail shouldn't have been left down," he said pointedly. "Pure and simple."

Arthur returned the stare for a few heartbeats, then turned away.

"This is getting nowhere. But it does point up one problem: 9574 needs a longer half-life. The subjects seem to be developing a tolerance to it. The longer they're on it, the less efficacious it appears to be."

"I'm working on it," Walter said. "And with Miss Cleary as an assistant, I may be able to solve that problem for you."

Arthur looked at him and shook his head. "You do love to rub salt in a wound, don't you."

"Only your wounds, Arthur. Only yours."

They shared a laugh.

*

Tim had been dozing on Quinn's extra bed. The sound of the key in the lock roused him. He leapt up and tiptoed quickly to the door where he flattened himself against the wall next to the hinges and waited. As the door began to swing inward, he grabbed the knob and yanked it the rest of the way.

"Booga-booga!"

Only it wasn't Quinn staring at him with an open-mouthed, shocked expression. It was some fat, fiftyish guy instead. Tim yelped in surprise and took a step back.

"Who the hell are you?" Tim said.

"That's my question, buddy," the guy said in whiny voice. "Who the hell are you, and what the hell are you doing in one of the female rooms?"

He looked rattled. He had a hang-dog face and a bulging neck. He carried a flashlight in one hand and some sort of electronic baton in the other. Tim gave him a closer look and recognized him.

"You're Mr. Verran, the security guy."

"Chief of Security. And you still haven't answered the questions."

"Oh. Yeah. I'm Tim Brown. First-year student here. I'm waiting for Quinn Cleary—this is her room—"

"I know that. Let's see some ID."

Tim fished his photo ID card out of his wallet and handed it to Verran. He noticed a tremor in the older man's hand as he examined it.

"Tell me something, Mr. Verran. What's the idea of sneaking in here?"

"I'm not sneaking in anywhere," he said sharply. He seemed to have regained his composure as he handed back Tim's card. "There's...there was a report of some guy hiding out in one of the girls' rooms. I came by to check up on it. Where's the assigned occupant?"

"She's over in Science, working for Dr. Emerson."

"She know you're here?"

"Of course. We're going to dinner together when she gets back. But tell me something: Who reported—?"

"A concerned fellow student. But how do I know the assigned occupant knows you're here?"

"You don't. But we can wait for Miss Assigned Occupant and she can tell you herself."

"Maybe I—" The walkie talkie on Verran's hip squawked. He unclipped it from his belt and turned his back to Tim. "Yeah?"

"She's on her way, Lou," said a tinny voice.

"Right." Verran turned back to Tim. "I've got to go. But I'll check up on you, buddy. If your story checks out, okay. If not, you're in big trouble."

Tim watched him hurry down the hall, then looked around. Women's Country was empty. Who would have called security about a guy in Quinn's room? And how could anyone possibly have known he was here?

Tim closed the door and wandered back toward the spare bed.

Come to think of it, this Verran guy had looked pretty damn surprised, as shocked to see Tim as Tim had been to see him. Maybe more so. And why a flashlight and that other weird-looking gadget? Not exactly equipment for confronting a prowler.

What was he going to do with a flashlight in Quinn's room?

Tim stepped over to the window.

Something strange there. Some—

"Damn!"

Sudden pain in the sole of his right foot. Something had jabbed into it. Something sharp.

He dropped back onto the bed and pulled his foot up where he could see it. Some sort of pin had pierced his sock and was stuck in his sole. He pulled it out and held it up to the light.

A little black thing, a flat, circular hockey-puck-like nob, maybe a quarter inch across, stuck on a straight pin. What was it? A tie tack? One of those old-fashioned stick pins? He wondered if it was Quinn's. He doubted it. She wore about as much jewelry as she did make up. And this thing didn't look very feminine anyway.

Then he heard the key in the door again. He hoped this time it was Quinn, not just because he didn't want to deal with Louis Verran's homely puss again, not just because his stomach was rumbling, but because he was hungry for the sight of her. Images of her face—talking, eating, bending over her books, concentrating as she wielded her scalpel—had been popping into his head at all hours.

As she stepped into the room, the sight of her sent a smile to his face and a wave of warmth through him.

What have you done to me, Quinn Cleary? he thought.

He said, "How were things at the office today, dear?"

She smiled, but it was a half-hearted smile, as if it were an effort. That wasn't like her.

"Something wrong?"

"Oh, nothing really," she said as she slipped out of her lab coat. "I just had a bad run-in with Alston over at Science a little while ago."

She told him about Ward C and the patient almost slipping off the bed, and about the dressing down she'd received.

"The ungrateful bastard," Tim said when she'd finished. "That wasn't a fair or even a sane reaction."

"Tell me about it. But you know, I got the strangest feeling that he was almost as afraid as he was angry."

Tim was angry too. And the heat of his anger surprised him. He had an urge to find Alston and grab him by his dinky string tie and teach him a thing or two about the proper response to a young woman who tries to help a patient in trouble.

Was he so angry because that young woman was Quinn?

More evidence of how far she'd gotten under his skin.

But he bottled the anger. Confronting Alston was little more than an idle fantasy anyway.

"Forget about the creep," he told her. "Let's go eat."

"I've lost my appetite," she said, "but I'll keep you company."

Tim remembered the weird black stick pin he'd found and held it out to her.

"By the way, is this yours?"

She gave it barely a glance. "Nope. Never seen it before. What is it?"

"Beats me. I found it on your floor, over there by the window. Stuck me in the foot."

She looked at it again, more closely this time, but no sign of recognition lit in her eyes. She shrugged.

"Maybe one of the maids dropped it."

Tim shrugged into his sport coat and stuck the pin into the lapel, then he struck a pose.

"May I present the very latest in men's accessories. Think it'll catch on?"

Quinn squinted at his lapel. "I can hardly see it."

Tim glanced down. The tiny black hockey puck was almost lost in the herringbone pattern.

"Oh, well. Another of my fashion milestones down the drain."

Tim followed her out the door.

*

About time, Verran thought as he watched Brown and Cleary leave and head for the caf. I was beginning to think they'd never leave.

He waited in the bushes until they disappeared into the caf, then he slipped into the dorm and hurried up to Broads' Country.

No one about. Quickly he unlocked 252 and closed the door behind him. He turned on the metal detector and went immediately to the space between the window and the second bed, where he'd hit the floor when Cleary had surprised him last night. Slowly, carefully, he waved the business end of the detector over the thick carpet, keeping a close eye on the needle in the illuminated gauge in the handle.

It didn't budge.

He ran his fingers through the deep pile. This was the most obvious area. It had to be here.

When his fingers found nothing, he turned and crept across the room, carefully sweeping the detector over the carpet all the way to the door.

The only flickers from the needle turned out to be a penny and a dime.

Great. Just great. The detector was working fine, but no bug.

Where the hell was it, then?

NOVEMBER

Claropril (ACE-I) the new ultra-potent ACE-inhibitor from Kleederman Pharmaceuticals, has captured a 20-percent share of the anti-hypertensive market a mere six months after approval.

Modern Medicine

THE WORLD'S LONGEST CONTINUOUS

FLOATING MEDICAL BULL SESSION

(II)

Tonight the session had wound up in, of all places, Harrison's room.

"He's not as bad as we all thought," Tim said as he led Quinn down the hall of the north wing's first floor. His sharp blue eyes were bright. He wasn't wearing his dark glasses as much as he used to. She preferred him this way. "Of course, he's hardly Mr. Warmth, either. Far from it, in fact. But at least he's articulate."

Quinn glanced at her watch. She was behind on her histology notes and had been in the middle of bringing them up to date when Tim had popped in and dragged her away to the bull session.

"Come on, Quinn," he'd said. "You need a break. Take five and add your two cents to the session. It could use some new blood."

"But my notes—"

"You want to crack like that guy Prosser who disappeared without a trace a couple of years ago? There's more to medicine than histology, you know."

"But if I don't pass the rest won't matter."

"You'll pass."

She'd come along because she realized Tim was right. She would pass. Just passing had never been good enough for her and still wasn't, but she did need a break. Between classes, labs, studying, and working with Dr. Emerson, she was beginning to feel a bit frazzled. She'd thought about quitting the lab job, but the work was getting more interesting now and she found the extra money came in handy for the sundries The Ingraham didn't provide.

Eight people were in Harrison's room. Quinn and Tim made it ten. They greeted Quinn with hellos but they had a cheer for Tim when he came through the door. He clearly had become a mainstay of these sessions. She marveled at his ability to make friends with almost anybody. And envied it.

"Tim, you're just in time." It was Judy Trachtenberg. Didn't she ever study? "Harrison here is going radical on us. He thinks chiropractors ought to be included in the tiering of care."

"Tiering?" Quinn said.

They quieted and looked at her.

"Tiers of eligibility," Tim told her. "You know. Alston mentions it every so often."

"Oh, right," Quinn said. Somewhere along the line Dr. Alston had turned tier into a verb: to tier. Last week he'd asked the class to assume a limited amount of medical resources, then directed them to create two sets of tiers: the first set listing levels of care in descending order of sophistication, the second set dividing the population into groups in descending order of their value to society. Quinn had found it a chilling exercise, but she'd considered it no more than that: an exercise in ethics. The bull session semed to be taking it seriously.

"What do you think?" Harrison said. Quinn wondered if anybody knew his first name. "Yes or no on the back crackers?"

"Definitely yes," Tim said. "Acupuncturists too. We've got to find a tier for every therapy if this is going to work."

Quinn waited for the zinger, the gag line that would turn around what he'd just said. But it never came.

"All right," Judy said. "Where to we lump them?"

"With the physical therapists," Tim said. "Take away all their mumbo-jumbo and look at what they do: physical therapy."

Quinn watched and listened in shock. "I thought you were against any kind of rationing," she said.

"I was," Tim said.

"Well, what happened?" Quinn realized that although she and Tim did a lot of talking, the future structure of healthcare delivery was not a topic of conversation. She had no idea he'd come around 180 degrees.

"That was before I realized the full scope of the problem. The day is coming when there won't be enough care to go around. And that means some people are going to have to make do with lower levels of care. Tiering is the only way to decide who gets what, Quinn. The only way."

She heard murmurs of agreement and saw heads nodding in agreement all around the room.

"What are you saying? Someone gets past a certain age and we throw them to the wolves?"

"Nothing so blunt as that," Harrison said. "Age should not be the sole criterion. Overall value to society should be considered. Of course, the older you are, the fewer years you have left—ipso facto, your chances of contributing much are reduced. Plenty of people of all ages contribute nothing. The homeless, the drunks, the addicts are the most obvious, but there are others, less obvious. People we never see, shut-ins who sit at home and do nothing. Should some couch potato on welfare get a coronary bypass while a hard-working mechanic who's the father of three has to go on working with chest pain? I don't think so."

"I don't think so either. But who's going to decide who gets stuck in which tier? Who's going to arbitrate human value?"

"You can bet we'll have something to say in it," Tim said. "Especially those of us who go into primary care. We'll be deciding who gets referred and who doesn't."

"But this tiering idea, this dividing people up and stacking them in order of how useful they are is so...cold." She turned to Tim. "What about compassion? Remember how we talked about finding a CPT code number for compassion?"

"Yeah," Tim said softly, his eyes suddenly distraught. "I remember. Trouble is, I don't know how I forgot."

Quinn didn't know what it was, but something in Tim's eyes unsettled her.

THIRTEEN

Quinn had a few moments so she wandered across the lab to where Dr. Emerson was reading a journal article. He looked up at her approach and smiled.

"Taking a break?" he said.

Quinn nodded. "My computer's tied up with some number crunching on that reuptake program. It'll be another ten minutes or so till it's done."

"Very good." He nodded and returned to his article.

"Uh, Dr. Emerson," Quinn said, not sure of how to broach this. She'd rehearsed her opening all last night and most of today, but still she felt awkward. "Can I ask you a strange question?"

"Sure," he said, still reading. "Go ahead. I've always liked strange questions."

"What's going on here?"

He looked up at her over the tops of his reading glasses.

"I'd think you'd know the answer to that by now. We're putting 9574 through—"

"No. Not here in your lab. I mean in the school. In The Ingraham. What's going on here?"

Dr. Emerson put the journal down and removed his reading glasses. He stared at her.

"I'm not quite sure I'm following you, Quinn."

She dropped into the seat opposite him. "I'm not sure I'm following me either. It's all so vague." She groped for the right words, the appropriate analogy, but came up empty. "It's just that everybody here at The Ingraham seems to think alike, seems to have the same point of view."

"That's not so unusual, really," Dr. Emerson said. "It happens at many academic institutions. Certain points of view gain favor with an influential segment of a department, take root, bloom, and draw other like-minded individuals. As this group gains influence and tenure, those who strongly disagree with its positions tend to drift away, while those who agree or are indifferent stay on. Look how the deconstructionists came to rule the English department at Yale. Or—"

"But I'm not talking about a department. I'm talking about a whole institution—students and faculty alike."

"The Ingraham? Maybe you'd better explain."

Quinn took a deep breath. How was she going to explain this in a sane and coherent manner when it all sounded pretty crazy to her?

"Everyone's starting to sound like Dr. Alston."

Dr. Emerson burst out laughing. "Oh, I hope not! I truly hope not!"

"It's true. They're all starting to sound like his lectures. Why just last night—"

Dr. Emerson put one hand and her arm and raised the other to wave someone in from the hall.

"Arthur! Come in, Arthur. I want you to hear this."

Quinn turned and started at the sight of Dr. Alston strolling through the door and approaching them. What was Dr. Emerson doing? Was he trying to get her in more trouble with Dr. Alston?

"You remember Miss Cleary, don't you?"

"Ah, yes," Dr. Alston said, nodding to her. "The object of my wrath a few weeks ago. I do believe I overreacted. My apologies, Miss Cleary."

"I'm glad you apologized, Arthur," Dr. Emerson said. "Because Quinn here just paid you a compliment."

Dr. Alston smiled thinly as he looked down at her. "Did she now? And what did she say?"

Quinn fought the urge to tell him not to refer to her in the third person. She was here in the same room and quite able to answer for herself.

"She thinks you're a very persuasive lecturer."

The thin smile broadened. "Is that so?"

"Yes. She says the whole student body is beginning to sound like you."

Dr. Alston's gaze became penetrating. "May I infer from your perspective that you have somehow managed to remain immune to the sway of my rhetoric?"

Quinn swallowed. This wasn't going well at all.

"I think you argue your points very well, but I find it difficult to accept the concept of rationing medical care on the basis of social and economic worth."

"Given the inevitability of such rationing," he said, his manner cooling quickly, "what criteria do you propose?"

"I don't think I'm qualified to make decisions of that magnitude," Quinn said. "I don't know if anybody is. But I've read where it used to be widely held that global communism was inevitable, how it was only a matter of time before Marxism took over the world. And now the USSR is gone. I'm sure there are plenty of other 'inevitabilities' that have never become reality."

"I'm sure there are too, Miss Quinn," Dr. Alston said, nodding slowly as he stared at her. His gaze made her uncomfortable. "I'm glad we had this little talk. You've given me something to ponder."

He nodded goodbye to her and Dr. Emerson, then left.

Quinn shook off a chill and turned back to Dr. Emerson.

"Am I such a Pollyanna?" she said. "I mean, why do I seem to be the only one in The Ingraham who isn't falling into line behind Dr. Alston's bleak outlook?"

"Knowing Arthur," Dr. Emerson said, "I'm sure he's wondering the very same thing."

*

As Louis Verran approached Alston's office in the faculty building, he wondered what Dr. Tightass wanted. Whatever it was, he knew it couldn't be good. Not from the tone of voice he'd heard on the phone a few minutes ago.

Please come to my office immediately, Louis. I have made a fascinating discovery that I wish to share with you.

Right. Verran had little doubt that the fascinating discovery meant Alston had tripped over a glitch in security and was going to rub his nose in it. He just hoped he hadn't somehow heard about the lost bug.

Damn it! Where the hell was it? They'd swept the halls on both levels of the dorm but still hadn't found it.

Verran knew he wouldn't have a decent night's sleep until he'd found the damn thing.

He knocked on Alston's door.

"Come," came the reply from the other side.

Come? Gimme a fuckin' break!

He stepped into the office—dark, oak paneled, the largest in the building, befitting Alston's status as DME—and saw him behind his desk, leaning back in his chair, his fingers steepled before his mouth, looking like the proverbial cat with a bad case of canary breath.

Verran took one of the chairs without asking. He noted with satisfaction how Alston stiffened when he put his feet up on the desk.

"What's up, Doc?"

"One of the dorm SLI units is malfunctioning—and please take your shoes off my desk."

Verran dropped his feet to the floor to cover his relief. Alston hadn't heard about or found the bug.

"Yeah? Which room?"

"I don't know the number, but I know the student's name. You're capable of following up from there. But I didn't call you here merely for informational purposes. A simple phone call would have sufficed for that. The truth is, I'm more than a little disturbed by the fact that if I hadn't learned of this by sheer happenstance, she might have gone all semester without hearing the night music."

Verran had to admit this was no petty matter. A malfunctioning SLI undercut The Ingraham's very purpose. But Alston's notion didn't necessarily equate with an established fact.

"What makes you think it's not working? I doubt the student came up and told you."

Alston smiled. "In a way, she did. She told me she saw all her fellow students swinging their points of view toward mine on certain matters, and she couldn't understand why." He leaned forward. "Obviously her viewpoints are not changing. Ergo, she's not hearing the music. Conclusion: her SLI is malfunctioning. Can you dispute that?"

Vaguely uncomfortable now, Verran scratched his jaw. "No. It's logical."

"My question, Louis," Alston continued, "is why didn't you know about the malfunctioning unit?"

Verran shrugged. "All our SLI indicators are green. No signs of trouble anywhere. Every unit got its usual overhaul this summer. Everything checks out fine every night."

Alston furrowed his brow. "But something is obviously awry. I want you to check into it immediately."

Verran gritted his teeth. He didn't need Dr. Tightass to tell him that.

"Right. Who's the kid?"

"First year. You're supposed to be watching her closely already. Quinn Cleary."

"Oh, shit!" Verran said. "Not 252 again."

Alston straightened. "Again? You've had trouble with Cleary before?"

Verran had to be careful here. He couldn't slip up and spill about almost getting caught—or about the missing bug.

"No, no. Not with her personally. Just her room. Her audio pick-up went on the fritz last month and I had to replace it."

"Did you now?" He paused and leaned back. "Strange, isn't it?"

"What?"

"That two electronic devices should malfunction in the same room within a matter of weeks—in a room with only a single occupant." His tones became pensive, almost distant. "And that occupant...a young woman that I was against admitting in the first place. Very strange. I wonder...is something going on here?"

"She doesn't have any jamming equipment, if that's what you're thinking." He grinned at Alston. "You're not going paranoid on me, are you, Doc?"

"Not at all, Louis. I realize that coincidences occur, but I'm always suspicious when they do. It's the scientist in me, I suppose."

"Well, the first thing we should do, Dr. Scientist," Verran said, rising, "is make sure you've got your facts straight. So far as I know, room 252's SLI is working perfectly."

"It had better not be, Louis," Alston said. "Or otherwise we've got ourselves a big problem. I do not want another problem, Louis. I had enough problems two years ago to last me a lifetime."

Verran nodded. This was one point on which he and Dr. Tightass were in complete agreement. That had been a nightmare.

"Amen, Doc." He turned toward the door. "I'll let you know as soon as I check it out."

"How are you going to work this?"

"I'll use the old exterminator ploy."

Alston nodded absently. "Odd, but lately it seems that every time there's trouble, this Cleary girl is involved. Why is that?"

"Beats me," Verran said as he stepped out into the hall.

"Am I going to regret letting her in?"

Verran closed the door and hoped Alston wouldn't regret it. Because if Alston regretted letting Cleary in, then inevitably Verran would come to regret it.

Of course, the one who'd wind up regretting it most would be the Cleary girl.

FOURTEEN

"Don't lock your door, Quinn," Tim said as he heard the clink of her key chain.

"Why not?"

"They're spraying today."

"Oh, that's right."

Tim watched her tuck the keys back in her pocket. She looked great in her slacks and sweater, except that the sweater was too long—it covered too much of her. He sighed as he watched her. Today was going to be an especially long day, for tonight was the night they were taking off for AC. A lot of quality time with Quinn—overnight time with her in his free room. He'd been indulging himself these past few weeks in some wild sexual fantasies—visions of those long, slim, dynamite legs wrapped tight around him—none of which, he knew, had the slightest chance of becoming reality, but still they managed to fuel his anticipation. He'd even picked up a pack of condoms, which he supposed was like buying a Pick-6 Lotto ticket—the chances of winning were six million to one, but that didn't stop you from thinking about what it would be like to be a multimillionaire.

He smiled. And as the lotto folks liked to say: You can't win it unless you're in it.

He stepped across the hall and took another look at the sign pinned to the bulletin board.

NOTICE

The exterminators will be performing their periodic

spraying of the dorm. The second floor is scheduled

first on Friday morning, November 18. All rooms must

be vacated between 8 a.m. and noon. Please leave

your room unlocked and remove all articles from your

floors before leaving for morning classes that day.

Louis Verran

Chief of Campus Security

Something about the notice bothered Tim but for the life of him he couldn't nail down just what it was.

"Seen any bugs around your room, Quinn?" he said.

"Not a one," she said as she left her door and came over to him. "And I don't want to."

"How about the other girls? Any of them mention being bothered by bugs?"

"Not that I recall. Why?"

"I don't know. Seems strange to start spraying on the second floor. I'd think if there was going to be an insect problem in the dorm it would start at ground level and work its way up."

"You're an expert on bugs now?"

"No. But if nobody's seen any—"

"Sounds like preventive medicine to me," Quinn said. "If you spray on a regular basis, you won't develop a problem. Not a bad idea, really. Besides, the stuff they're using is supposed to be colorless and odorless and non-toxic to humans once it dries." She tugged on his sleeve. "Come on. We'll be late for Path."

Tim took one last look at the notice. Maybe it was Louis Verran's name on the bottom that bothered him. He hadn't told Quinn about his little run-in with Verran in her room that night. She'd already been upset about her confrontation with Alston and he hadn't seen any purpose in bringing it up.

But something about Verran's demeanor that night had lingered with him like a bad aftertaste. Tim had had a vague impression then that the man was hiding something. He'd looked guilty. Over the following weeks Tim had written it off as a misread, but then this notice: the second floor was going to be empty, all the doors unlocked, with Louis Verran in charge.

Was something going on?

Nah.

He followed Quinn toward the stairs.

*

Louis Verran stood at the door to room 252 and glanced at his watch. 9:16. Plenty of time left. He stepped back into the suite and watched Elliot checking the SLI units in the headboards. All the works were exposed and he was running his check, his long fingers pulling, poking, and probing the tangled wires and circuit boards.

"How's it look?" Verran said.

"Perfect so far, chief. I'm about halfway through and haven't found a thing. I got a feeling I'm not going to."

"Never mind your feelings," Verran said. "Just don't miss anything."

There had to be something wrong with the unit, something mechanical, something electronic, something that could be fixed. But if the problem wasn't with the unit; if the SLI wasn't on the fritz, then it had to be Cleary. A malfunctioning unit was one thing, but a malfunctioning student...?

They'd had one of those two years ago. Please, God, never again.

He looked at his watch again.

"Don't rush, Elliot. Just do it right. Still plenty of time."

*

Tim sensed rather than saw Quinn lean over his shoulder.

"I've got to get back to the dorm," she whispered.

"Now?"

The clock on the auditorium wall said 9:30. Still ten minutes to go in Dr. Hager's pathology lecture on inflammation.

"I forgot my histo notes. I want to have them for the review."

Staying low, she edged out of the row of seats and started up the steps to the exit. Tim hesitated a moment, then got up and trailed after her.

"Wait up," he said in the hallway.

She turned, surprise in her eyes. "Tim? Where are you going?"

"With you."

"You forget something too?"

"No. I just..." How did he say this? He didn't want to tell her of his misgivings about Louis Verran. He was sure they'd sound pretty lame if he said them out loud. But he did not like the idea of her entering the empty dorm alone, even if it was a bright fall morning. "I don't think you should go alone."

She stopped and stared at him. "What? You've got to be kidding."

"No, I'm not kidding. They've got a bunch of outsiders wandering the halls."

"Campus security is there."

Tim was tempted to say that might be the problem, but resisted.

"Yeah, but even The Ingraham's crack SWAT team can't be everywhere. One of the bug men could be a nut case. All the rooms are unlocked. He could catch you when you step into yours and...well, who knows."

"My hero," she said. Then she touched his arm. "Thanks for the thought, but I—"

"No arguments," he said. "I'm going with you and we haven't got much time. Besides, I'm not letting some creep who's been sniffing too much bug spray ruin my weekend in AC."

"Some hero!" she said and laughed.

Tim loved the sound.

It took them less than five minutes to make it back to Women's Country. As Quinn pushed through the stairwell door ahead of him, she stopped and pointed down the hall.

"See? Nothing to worry about. You could have saved yourself the trip. There's the Chief of Security himself standing in my doorway."

I knew it!

Tim squeezed past her into the hall. He saw Verran, but the security man was no longer in the doorway to Quinn's room. He had just pulled it closed and was bustling toward them, his jowls jiggling, an anxious look straining his features.

"What are you two doing here?" he said. "You're supposed to be in class now."

"We're going right back," Quinn said.

"Didn't you read the notice? Rooms are to be vacated between eight and twelve."

"I'll only be a second," Quinn said, starting toward her room. "I just have to pick up some—"

Verran stepped in front of her, blocking her way.

"You can't go in there right now. He's right in the middle of spraying."

"Bullshit," Tim said.

He stepped around Verran and headed for Quinn's door. He'd had enough. Too many screwy coincidences here: Fifty-two rooms on the floor and they just happen to be spraying 252 when he and Quinn arrive unannounced, Verran obviously upset at their surprise return, and the unsettling fact that Verran didn't have to ask Quinn who she was and which room was hers.

Something was going on.

"Hey! Come back here!"

Tim heard Verran hurrying after him but didn't slow. He had a good lead. He'd be in Quinn's room well ahead of him. But as he was reaching for the knob, the door opened.

A tall, dark-haired man in his early thirties stood there. He wore gray coveralls with an oval patch on the left breast that said A-Jacks Exterminating. He carried a toolbox in one hand and a two-gallon spray canister in the other.

He smiled easily at Tim. "Hey. How's it going?" then looked past him. "All set in here, Mr. Verran. Where to next?"

Verran hauled up next to Tim, puffing. "What? Oh, yeah. Good. We'll go to 251 next." He glared at Tim. "What's the idea of taking off like that? You got a problem or something?"

Tim saw Quinn come up behind Verran. She was giving him a funny look. What could he say? Something wasn't right but he hadn't the vaguest idea what.

He turned back to the exterminator and saw that he, too, was staring at him. Not at him, exactly—at his lapel.

"That's a neat-looking pin you got there," the bug man said. "Where'd you get it?"

"Found it," Tim said.

Tim wasn't in the mood for small talk, but the bug man seemed completely taken by the pin.

"Take a look at this, Mr. Verran," he said, pointing to Tim's lapel. "You ever seen anything like that?"

Verran came around and looked. Tim thought he saw him stiffen, but couldn't be sure. What was so fascinating about a little black hockey puck?

"No," Verran said slowly. "Never." His voice sounded strained. "You want to sell that?"

"No."

Tim was irritated with the attention. He didn't want to buy or sell anything. He just wanted Quinn to get her notes and get out of here.

"You sure?" Verran said.

"Very sure. Is it okay if she gets her notes now?"

The bug man seemed surprised by the question. "Hmmm? Oh, uh, yeah. Sure."

Tim waved Quinn into the room, followed her in, then closed the door behind them.

"How's the room look?" he said.

Quinn glanced around. "Fine."

"Just as you left it?"

"I think so. The bedspread looks a little wrinkled, but otherwise—"

"Nothing missing?

"Not that I can see." She looked at him closely. "Tim, are you all right?"

"I'm fine. Why?"

"Because you're acting—"

"Weird? Yeah, I know." He searched for a plausible explanation. "Maybe I've been cooped up on this campus too long. Maybe I'm getting Ingraham fever. I need a break, need to get away for awhile."

"Well, you're getting away tonight, aren't you? We both are."

"Right. To AC. And not a moment too soon."

"Okay. So hang on."

He gave her a smile. "I will." Then he sniffed the air. "You smell anything?"

"No. Should I?"

"They just sprayed in here, didn't they? Shouldn't we be smelling something?"

"The stuff they're using is supposed to be colorless and odorless."

So's water, Tim thought.

"Can I use your phone a sec?"

"Sure."

As Quinn dug her notes out of a drawer, Tim dialed 411. He turned his back to her and he asked in a low voice for the number of A-Jacks Exterminating. He didn't know whether to be relieved or disappointed when the operator came up with a number. When he hung up, Quinn was ready to go.

"All set?" she said.

"Yeah. Let's get out of here."

Before he closed the door behind them he took one last look. Something had been done to this room, something more than bug spraying. But damned if he could figure what.

MONITORING

Kurt was laughing.

"What's so goddamn funny?" Verran said.

"This whole thing! Here we spend weeks combing the whole fucking campus for this bug you lost and all the time this jerk's been wearing it like a stick pin on his coat!"

"At least it explains why we could never track it down," Verran said.

"Oh, God, I wish I'd a-been there...just to see the look on your face when you saw..." Kurt dissolved into helpless laughter again.

Even Elliot was grinning like an idiot.

Verran ground his teeth. Nothing funny about this, dammit. That Brown kid had been wearing the bug around campus for all to see. What if somebody had recognized it for what it was? Christ, what if Alston had spotted it?

Verran didn't want to think about it.

"Better get a grip on yourself," he told Kurt, "because it's going to be your job to get it back."

Kurt stopped laughing. "Why me? I didn't—"

"Tonight."

"Brown's taking off for Atlantic City tonight, chief," Elliot said.

"How do you know that?"

"Heard him talking with the Cleary girl about it. They're going together."

"Awright!" Kurt said. "Boffing the blonde! Wouldn't mind a piece of that action myself."

Verran motioned him to shut up. "Maybe our luck is starting to change. We can grab the bug back while he's out of town."

"What if he's got it with him when he leaves?" Elliot said.

Kurt snorted. "The way our luck's been running, that's the way it'll go down."

Verran couldn't argue with that. But maybe that could be worked to their advantage. What was the old saying? When somebody hands you a lemon...

"Here's what we'll do," he said. "We'll watch him leave. If he's wearing the same jacket he had on this morning, we'll assume he's got the bug on him. You two will tail him to Atlantic City—"

"And whack him!"

Verran glared at Kurt for the interruption and started when he saw the .38 in his hand.

"Put that away!"

Kurt grinned. "Just kidding, Lou."

He watched Kurt replace the pistol in the bottom drawer of the center console, then continued. "As I was saying, tail him to A.C. and look for a chance to rough him up a little. Make it look like a mugging."

Elliot frowned "What if we see a chance to get it without any rough stuff?"

"Do it anyway."

Kurt ground a fist into his palm. "Awright!"

"I don't know about this, Chief," Elliot said. "We could get pinched."

"Not if we do it right," Kurt said.

"I don't know," Elliot muttered. "I don't know."

Verran knew how twitchy Elliot got at the thought of winding up in a jail cell again.

"It'll be all right, Elliot," Verran said, clapping him on the shoulder. "I promise you."

Kurt grinned. "Don't worry, little buddy. I'll take care of you."

Verran swung on Kurt. This was almost like being a goddam football coach—push one, restrain the other. "No permanent damage, Kurt. Just enough to get the cops involved. And make sure they get involved—even if you have to call them yourselves."

Elliot's expression was baffled. "How come?"

"I've got my reasons."

FIFTEEN

"I hope I'm not making a mistake," Quinn said as she dropped her overnight bag into Griffin's trunk.

She watched as Tim settled her bag next to his own, then slammed the trunk top.

"What do you mean?" he said.

"I mean that we're traveling as friends and there isn't going to be any hanky panky."

He laughed. "'Hanky panky'?"

She felt her cheeks reddening. "One of my mother's expressions. But you know what I mean. I just don't want any... misunderstandings. Understand?"

He hung his head. "You mean we're not going to have the night of wild, Dionysian sexual abandon that will finally give meaning to my miserable life?" He sniffed.

"Open the trunk," she said. "I'm out of here."

He grinned. "Only kidding!"

"You'd better be, otherwise you're going to be one very disappointed medical student."

"Let's go."

As Quinn moved toward the passenger door, she heard a car behind her. A black Celica GT-S pulled into the neighboring spot on her side. With all the empty slots around, she wondered idly why it had to park so close to them. A big blond fellow got out and gave them a friendly nod. He looked vaguely familiar, then Quinn recognized him as someone she'd seen around the security desk in the Science Center. Why was he parking in the student lot? She noticed him looking past her, directly at Tim, almost staring. Then he slammed his door and strode up the incline toward the Administration building.

I wonder if he knows we're going away overnight? she thought. Probably. Everyone else seemed to. You couldn't keep too many secrets at a place as small as The Ingraham.

And everybody seemed to think they were indeed going to AC for the wild night Tim had kidded about before. Judy Trachtenberg had caught her in the hall just a few moments ago, winking and nudging, speaking in a very bad Cockney accent: "Gettin' away for a bit o' the ol' in an' out, are we?"

Quinn supposed it was a natural assumption. She and Tim were seen together a lot, and now here they were going off with overnight bags.

She settled into the front seat, belted herself in, and looked at Tim as he started the engine. She liked Tim, liked him a lot. She had a sense that his occasional sexist remarks and bluff attitude were a male thing, a front to hide the sensitivity perking below the surface. She was sure it was there; he'd let the facade slip a couple of times and she'd caught glimpses of it. Why did he feel he had to hide it?

Romance with Tim, a little sexual cuddling, or even sex...would that be so bad? There was an empty spot in her life, a void that she'd never managed to fill, a subtle, aching loneliness that she kept submerged in the torrent of activity that consumed her daily life. But in quiet moments, sometimes in those early morning hours when she'd awaken before her alarm clock, she'd feel the pang of that hollow spot.

She wasn't a virgin. That had ended in high school with Bobby Roca. She'd been sure he was the love of her life. They'd made lifelong promises to each other, and had wound up in his bedroom one Saturday night when his parents were away for the weekend. Her next period had been late and she'd been scared to death. She'd seen her whole future in medicine swirling down into a black hole and she was desperate for some support, some comfort, someone to lean on, just a little. Bobby had offered all the warmth and comfort of a snake. Worse, he actually blamed her. When her period finally arrived, a week late, she'd told Bobby to take a hike.

There'd been nobody since...nobody important, anyway. Not that there hadn't been opportunities, but she'd never let a relationship get off the ground. She wasn't sure why. Why did she take sex so seriously? So many of the girls at U. Conn had been so casual about it. They went out once or twice and sex just became part of the relationship. Male and female—what could be more natural? She knew it wasn't always so great for them, but neither was it the hardest thing in the world. Why wasn't it easy for her? Why did she attach so much importance to it?

Hadn't most of them been raised the way she'd been—the right man, the right time and place and circumstances?

Tim might be the right man, but this wasn't the right time in her life, and a freebie hotel room in Atlantic City after a night of watching Tim gamble would not be the right place and circumstances.

And overriding all of it was the weight of her concern for her career. She couldn't afford any sort of distraction now. This was not the right time in her life for a serious relationship—the only kind of relationship she knew how to have. Later. There would be plenty of time later. For now she had to remember to keep pulling back from Tim and keeping her eyes—and the rest of her—focused on the future.

No foreign entanglements.

But snuggling close to him tonight, his arms around her...a nice thought, a warm thought. But it would remain just that: a thought.

*

"You're sure you saw it?" Verran said.

He was standing with Elliot and Kurt on the rise overlooking the student parking lot.

Kurt nodded. "It was there, right where Elliot said it was—same coat, same place. I could've reached out and grabbed it."

"That you'll do later on. In AC. Follow them there. Watch them. Stay out of sight. Be patient. Wait for your chance and make it a good one. You got what you need?"

Kurt nodded. "Reversible jackets, gloves, ski masks, the works."

"Isn't there another way we can do this?" Elliot said.

He'd been quiet and edgy all day. Verran knew Elliot was picturing himself in a jail cell, but he didn't want to pussy out so he was hanging in there with Kurt.

"This is no big deal, Elliot. And it's perfect if it happens up in Jersey. That way The Ingraham isn't involved in any way. And should there be any question, you were both here with me all night. Now get going. You don't want to lose them."

Verran watched them get into their separate cars and roar off. By tomorrow morning he'd have the missing bug back and he could rest easy again.

*

"Mmmmmm," Tim said as they came off the Delaware Memorial Bridge and turned onto New Jersey Route 40. "The road to Atlantic City. I can smell the money already."

Quinn looked around at the surrounding darkness as the four-lane blacktop quickly narrowed to two.

"Pretty desolate."

"This is mostly farmland. If you think it's dark here, my dear, wait till we get into the Jersey Pine Barrens. A million acres of nothing. Then you'll see dark. AC is still almost sixty miles off, so now's as good a time as any to plan our strategy."

"Strategy?"

"Sure. We're both going to play."

"Oh, no. I don't know the first thing about gambling. And I can't afford—"

"You'll be playing with my money. Here's how it works. In the casinos, blackjack is dealt—"

"Blackjack? I've never played blackjack."

"Sure you have. It's twenty-one. The guy who gets closest to a twenty-one value in the cards he's dealt, without going over, wins. Number cards are face value, picture cards are worth ten, and the ace can be worth one or eleven—your choice. You get dealt an ace and a picture card—say a queen—that's twenty-one. That's blackjack, and you win automatically."

"Win what?"

"Money. If you just plain beat the dealer, you double your money. So if you bet ten bucks, you get your ten back, plus another ten. A blackjack pays even more."

"Who pays you?"

"The house."

"Whose house?"

"The casino! Quinn, where've you been for the past 22 years?"

"I've been lots of places." Why was Tim getting so worked up? "I just haven't been in casinos."

"That's obvious. And that's probably a good thing. But..." He wrinkled his nose as a pungent odor seeped into the car. "Whew! What's that?"

Quinn recognized it immediately. "Cows," she said. "Somebody's got a herd along here. You don't grow up on a farm without knowing that smell."

"Yeah? Well, they do call this the Garden State. But let me lay the situation out for you. We're going to be customers of the casino, and since the casino's business is gambling, we're going to be called gamblers."

"I'd rather be a customer."

"Bear with me, Quinn. We're going to go into the casino and sit at the table with other gamblers. But we're not going to play each other. We're going to play the casino—the house. The house will be represented by the dealer. The dealer is nothing more than a guy—or lots of times a woman—who is paid to be a machine."

"I don't get it."

"Dealers have no decision-making powers. If the cards they've dealt themselves total sixteen or less, they deal themselves another card. When the cards total more than sixteen, they take no more. The casinos have calculated that this strategy gives them the best odds of staying ahead of their customers. And they're right."

The whole concept baffled Quinn. "Well, if you know the casino—excuse me, the house—is going to win, why bother gambling at all?"

"An excellent question, Quinn. A question many gamblers have asked themselves countless times."

"It sounds to me like you should simply walk into the casino, hand your money to the dealer, and walk out again. You'd save yourself all the sweat and apprehension and maybe you could do something useful with the extra time you had."

Tim stared at her, awe in his voice and a look of utter amazement on his face.

"You're not kidding, are you? You're really for real, aren't you?"

"The road, Tim," Quinn said, pointing through the windshield. "Please watch the road."

He faced front again. "How about excitement, Quinn?"

"What's exciting about losing money?"

"But that's just it. You don't always lose. Sometimes you win. And it's not so much the winning or losing but the process itself that matters. It's a chance to beat the system—or at least a system. And everybody likes to beat the system. Especially me."

"I think we've had this conversation before."

"Right. While we were waiting to hear if The Ingraham was going to accept you. That was when I told you that I can beat the casinos' system."

"Isn't it an old joke that if someone comes up with what he knows is a sure-fire, fool-proof, can't-lose gambling system, the casinos will have a car waiting for him at the airport to take him directly to their tables?"

"Right. Because the casinos have got their own system: the structure of the pay outs, the ceilings on the bets, the simple mathematics of the law of averages—everything is geared toward guaranteeing them the lion's share of the action that crosses their tables. But no casino's system is set up to handle a wild card like me."

Dustin Hoffman's face suddenly flashed before Quinn's eyes and she laughed. "You think you're Rain Man, don't you."

"I beg your pardon, Miss Cleary. I may be an idiot, but I am not an idiot savant. Rain Man and I work differently. His brain was number oriented, mine is picture oriented. But the end result is the same: after a few decks have been played, we both have a pretty good idea what's left in the shoe."

"Now I'm completely lost."

Tim sighed patiently. "Okay. Casinos don't deal Blackjack from a single deck anymore since a bunch of people worked out a counting system that gave them a decent edge over the house."

"But—?"

He held up a hand. "Let me finish. So the casinos started shuffling up to eight decks at a time and loading them all into this hopper called a shoe and dealing from that. Most folks can learn to keep track of a fifty- or hundred-card deck, but not four hundred cards. But I can."

"Your photographic memory," Quinn said.

"Yep. I remember every card that's been played."

"But what good is that?"

"Not much until you get down to the end of the shoe. But when we do get down to the last hundred cards or so, I usually know exactly what's left in the shoe."

"But if you don't know the order they're in, what good is it?"

"I don't need to know the order. All I need to know is if there's a predominance of high cards or low cards. If those last hundred or so cards are tilted heavily in either direction, that's when I make my move. That's when I make my killing and beat their system. And you're going to help."

"What do you mean?"

"Know what this is?" He held up his right hand; his thumb and forefinger were extended, the three middle fingers folded down. He wiggled it back and forth. "It's the Hawaiian hang-loose sign." He wiggled his hand again. "In hoc signo vinces."

She knew the translation, but..."I still don't get it."

Tim reached over and patted her knee. "You will, Quinn. By the time we get to AC, all will be clear. And then we'll both beat the system."

*

Atlantic City wasn't at all as Quinn had pictured it. The postcards and photos she'd seen over the years had shown sunny beaches, tall, new, clean buildings, and a wide boardwalk filled with smiling, happy people. The city she saw as they came in from the marshy salt flats was old, worn, battered, and beaten, with vacant store fronts, peeling paint, rotting shingles, and broken windows. Equally dilapidated people—most of them black—shuffled or slunk along the narrow, crumbling, littered sidewalks in the halogen glow of the streetlights.

"This looks like Beirut," Quinn said.

"Yeah, but it's a Beirut laid out by the Parker Brothers."

Despite the desolation, Quinn had to smile as they passed the avenues: Atlantic, Illinois, New York, Pennsylvania...

"Right. Monopoly. I've bought these streets plenty of times. But I'd be taking a lot better care of them if they were still mine."

"Consider this your reality check before stepping into the land of make believe."

They turned onto Virginia, and moments later they were entering an Arabian Nights Neverland. Smooth, well-lit pavement lined with stone elephants led down a long, walled entry to a maharajah's palace—or rather a Hollywoodized vision of a maharajah's palace, with candy-colored cupolas and faux-Arabic script spelling out "Donald J. Trump presents the TAJ MAHAL." Tim pulled to a stop under the canopy where turbanned attendants unloaded their baggage and whisked the car away to the hotel garage.

"Sort of like stepping out of Kansas into Oz, isn't it," Tim said as they followed their bags toward the registration desk.

Quinn thought of the desolation outside and the costumed attendants swirling around her now in the opulent lobby.

"More like entering the Masque of the Red Death."

Tim gave her a sidelong glance. "Nothing like an upbeat literary analogy to set the tone for the evening."

As the porter led them to the registration area, Quinn noted that the faux-Arabic script was everywhere—over the restrooms and over the VIP check-in desk where they stopped.

"Can we have two beds?" Quinn said to the woman as Tim handed his comp invitation across the counter.

"I'll see what I can do, ma'm." She checked her computer screen. "Yes. That will be no problem."

"No problem for you, maybe," Tim muttered.

Quinn laughed.

*

As soon as the bellman was gone, Quinn tossed her bag onto the king-size bed near the window.

"I've got this one!"

Tim dropped his on the other. "Then I guess this one is mine."

Compared to the rest of the hotel, Quinn thought the room was rather ordinary. Almost a relief not to see minarets on the bedposts.

"We can unpack later," she said. "Let's go downstairs. I'm not underdressed, am I?"

He laughed. "No way. There's not much in the way of a dress code on the gaming floor."

"Good. Are we ready, then?"

She was getting into the mood, giving in to a growing excitement. She couldn't help it. She wanted to see the casino and try out Tim's plan.

"Fine with me," Tim said. "But how about a quickie before we hit the tables?"

She could tell he was kidding—well, half kidding. And she was almost tempted...

...No foreign entanglements...

She played indignant and pointed to the door. "Out."

"For good luck?"

"You told me you didn't believe in luck."

He hesitated. "I did, didn't I. Why do I say things like that?" Then he brightened. "But I'd sure as hell consider myself lucky if—"

She pointed to the door again. "Out!"

*

Quinn was taken aback by the casino's gaming floor. She'd expected the flashing lights and the noise, the bells, the clatter of the slots, the chatter of the voices, but she wasn't prepared for the crowd, for the ceaseless swirl of people, and the layer of smoke that undulated over the tables like a muslin canopy.

She paused at the top of the two steps that led down to the gaming floor, hesitant about mingling with the flowing crowd. Everyone down there seemed to know what they were doing, where they were going. Suddenly she felt a little lost. She grabbed Tim's arm.

"Don't lose me."

He patted her hand where it gripped his bicep. "Not a chance."

He led her gently into the maelstrom.

"First we'll take a walk, get you oriented, then we'll find us a table and relieve Mr. Trump of some of his money."

Quinn couldn't say exactly what she had expected to see in a casino, but this was not it. Not by a long shot.

But it was absolutely fascinating.

She had always been a people watcher, and this was a people-watcher's paradise.

First they had to wade through the phalanxes of slot machines with their dead-eyed players, most of whom seemed old, and not too well dressed. Each stood—except for the ones in wheelchairs—with a cup of coins in the left hand, and a cigarette dangling from the lips as they plunked in coins and pulled the lever with their right hand. The machines dutifully spun their dials, and then the procedure was repeated. Endlessly. Robots playing robots. Even when the machines clanked coins into the trays, the players showed no emotion.

Quinn had a sense of deja vu, and then she remembered an old silent film, Fritz Lang's Metropolis, in which laborers in the city of the future were shown working the machines of the future, pulling levers with soulless ennui.

But this was no dank subterranean factory. Dozens of huge, magnificent chandeliers were suspended in recesses in the mirrored ceiling. Lights flashed everywhere.

She heard excited shouting from a group of men crowded around a table.

"What's that?"

"Craps. I've tried to learn that game for years but I still don't understand it."

"They sound like they're having fun."

"That's because they're winning. But you can lose your shirt before you know it in that game."

She followed him to the blackjack section, aisles of curved tables, some full, some empty.

"Can we get a non-smoking table?"

"That's not one of my criteria," Tim said, "but I'll try."

"There's nobody at that one," she said, pointing to a table where a female dealer stood with her hands behind her back, staring blindly ahead over an empty expanse of green the color of sunlit Astroturf. She wore a purple vest festooned with gold brocade over a white shirt fastened at the throat with a gold broach. All the dealers, male and female, were dressed identically. "We could have it all to ourselves."

"We don't want it all to ourselves," he said. "It'd take forever to work through the shoe."

"But she looks lonely."

"Quinn..."

"Sorry."

They wandered up and down the blackjack aisles. Quinn watched Tim's eyes flickering from table to table, searching.

"What are we waiting for?"

"I'm looking for the right table," Tim said. "It's got to be nearly full and the dealer is just starting a new shoe." He stopped, staring. "And I think I just found it."

He led her to the right.

"But it's only got one seat."

"That's for you."

"What are you going to do?"

"I'll be standing right behind you, teaching you the game, waiting for another seat to open up."

Quinn saw cigarettes in the hands of two of the four players already at the table.

"About that non-smoking table?"

"Quinn..."

"Sorry."

*

As Tim pulled out the end seat on the dealer's right and held it for Quinn, he scanned the cards on the table. This was the first hand. He'd seen one of the players placing the yellow cut card and had moved quickly, despite the table limits: minimum $10 / Maximum $500. He would have preferred something higher. Once the cards already played were photographed and filed in his memory, he squared Quinn at the table and dropped twenty one-hundred-dollar bills on the table.

"Hundreds," he said, and waited for Quinn's reaction.

As the dealer called out, "Two thousand in hundreds," she didn't disappoint him: She nearly gave herself a whiplash as she snapped her head around to look at him. Tim winked, pushed the black-and-green chips in front of her, then moved behind her where he had a good view of the table.

The other players were three deadpan middle-aged men with drinks in front of them—scotch or vodka on the rocks, Tim guessed—and an elderly, chain-smoking woman with orange hair.

"What do I do now?" she said.

"Bet a hundred. Put out one chip."

"That's a hundred dollars!"

"Please do it, Quinn." He winked at the dealer, a pretty blonde wearing a ton of eye shadow. "She's a beginner." The dealer favored him with a tolerant smile.

Quinn slid the chip forward and was dealt an eight and a ten. The dealer had a king showing.

"What do I do now?"

"Stick."

The dealer turned over a nine and raked in Quinn's chip.

"What happened?"

"We lost."

"We lost a hundred dollars? Just like that?"

Down the table, one of the other players groaned softly.

"Put out another chip."

"How about half a one?"

"Quinn..."

"Sorry."

She placed the chip and got a four and a five in return. The dealer had a seven showing.

"What do I do now?"

"Take a look: The very best she can do is eighteen. Since that's over sixteen, she has to stick. You're a sure loser with what you've got, so take another card when she comes around to you."

The dealer looked at Quinn, her eyebrows raised questioningly.

"I'll take another card, please."

Tim said, "Real gamblers say, 'Hit me,' or just tap their cards."

Quinn tapped her cards. "Hit me. Please."

Tim scanned the cards showing and noticed an indulgent smile on two of the other players.

A ten of clubs landed in front of Quinn. The dealer turned over a queen. She placed another green-and-black chip next to Quinn's.

"I won?" she said.

"You won."

"That means we're even. Maybe we should quit now."

"Quinn..."

"Sorry." She reached for one of the two chips in front of her.

"Let them ride," Tim said.

"Two hundred dollars all at once? I hope you know what you're doing."

The pit boss, dressed in a gray suit, stepped up to Tim's side and spoke in a low voice. "Is there anything the casino can do for you, sir?"

Tim had been expecting him. Two thousand tossed on the table tended to attract the right kind of attention. That was why he'd bought all his chips at once.

Tim shrugged. "Our room's already comped."

The pit boss nodded sagely. "In that case, may we offer you dinner, perhaps? And the show? Julio Iglesias is here tonight."

"Dinner will be fine," Tim said.

The pit boss bowed and walked off.

Meanwhile, Quinn had been dealt a jack of clubs. Then came an ace of diamonds.

"Blackjack!" Tim said and Quinn screeched excitedly as the dealer pushed three more chips in front of her.

"I like this game!" she said.

The others were smiling openly now, nudging each other. They loved her.

Of course they did. Tim put his hands on her shoulders and gently kneaded the tight muscles under the fabric of her blouse. How could they help but love her?

*

Quinn was feeling a little more comfortable with the game now. She'd caught the rhythm of the table, of the play, but she was behind in the winning category. Her pile of hundred-dollar chips had shrunken.

She didn't like this gambling thing. She didn't like any of it—the casino with its noise and congestion, the city around it, the people within it with their dead eyes and their cigarettes, their endless, air-fouling, breath-clogging, eye-stinging cigarettes.

And she would have been completely loaded by now if she'd taken advantage of the complimentary cocktails. Every few minutes a long-legged waitress in a short skirt and a feathered fez—it had taken awhile for Quinn to get used to that fez—would be at her side, asking her if she wanted a drink. Quinn ordered her usual Diet Pepsi.

She had a moment of uncertainty when the orange-haired lady quit her seat and Tim strutted to the far end of the table to claim it, taking half of her remaining chips with him.

"I guess it's time for me to show Mr. Trump how to play this game for keeps," he said in exaggerated basso voice, a perfect parody of macho overconfidence.

He gave her a reassuring wave from the other end and she realized why he hadn't hesitated to move: the curve of the table gave her a clear view of him to her right. She missed the reassuring pressure of his hands resting on her shoulders but realized it was probably better if there was a little distance between them. It would make it easier to see the series of hand signals Tim had set up between them.

He'd said they'd be a very unpopular couple if the casino tumbled to what they were up to. That was probably the reason she had this prickling at the back of her neck, this feeling she was being watched. She'd glanced around a few times when the feeling had been exceptionally strong but had found no one staring at her.

Probably just a minor case of Timothy Brown-induced paranoia.

Quinn held her own through the next few hands without his direct guidance, then she glanced his way and noticed his left hand was splayed in the Hawaiian hang-loose configuration he'd shown her.

That was the signal to push her bets to the limit. A pulse of adrenalin shot through her. That meant the shoe was running out and Tim had calculated the remaining cards were heavily weighted one way or the other, predominantly high or predominantly low. She wondered which. Not that it mattered.

Whichever way it was, Tim had decided the time was right to make their move.

She watched him carefully now, her eyes darting repeatedly to his left hand, allowing him to direct her play.

She glanced at the plastic sign before her on the table.

MINIMUM BET: $10

TABLE LIMIT: $500

With an extreme effort she ignored the sick feeling that roiled through her stomach at the very thought of risking so much money on the turn of a card and pushed five one-hundred-dollar chips into the play area.

A queen and a two landed in front of her. What did Tim want her to do with that? Especially since the dealer had a five showing.

She glanced right and repressed a gasp as she saw that Tim had bet five hundred dollars too. Then she saw his left hand balled into a fist. She looked again to make sure, then took a deep breath. She hoped he knew what he was doing.

Her palms were slick with perspiration by the time the dealer came back to her. Quinn waved her off.

"I'll stick," she said, and her voice sounded hoarse. She knew it wasn't just from the smoke.

Right. First I'll stick, then I'll get sick.

The dealer flipped her down card—a jack. That gave her fifteen. She had to draw. Like a robot, Tim had said. Quinn held her breath...and watched her pull a king.

Busted!

The dealer placed a stack of five one-hundred-dollar chips next to Tim's bet, and another next to Quinn's.

Quinn felt too weak to cheer. She looked down at her watch. How long had that taken? Thirty seconds? She'd just made five hundred dollars in thirty seconds. How many summer weeks had she waitressed back-breaking double shifts and not made that much?

But then, as a waitress she'd never run the risk of losing money.

"You're beyond the table limit, Miss."

Quinn looked up, startled. "What?"

"Five-hundred-dollar limit," the dealer said.

"Oh, sure. Sorry." Quinn picked up the winnings and left the original stack out in the bet area.

Then she stopped and turned around. That feeling of being watched was stronger than ever. But once again, no one but the dealer seemed to be paying any overt attention to her.

She shrugged off the feeling and braced herself for another nerve-wracking hand.

*

They won three of the next four hands, then a yellow card popped out of the shoe and the play paused. Tim stood up and stretched.

"Maybe we should have had dinner, hon," he said. "I'm starved. Want to get something to eat?"

Hon? Quinn couldn't figure out what he was up to, then she glanced at the dealer and saw her shuffling a stack of cards.

"Uh, sure, hon. I know I could sure go for a big fat juicy steak right now myself, hon."

Tim laughed out loud and began gathering up his chips. Quinn began stacking hers. She thought the pit boss was watching them a little too closely. Did he suspect?

"For a beginner, you're one lucky little lady," said the old fellow next to her.

Quinn nodded toward Tim. "I have a great teacher."

Her pile was about the same size as when she'd sat down, but Tim had accumulated a pile of his own. Her hands shook as she stuffed them into her pockets.

She saw Tim take a chip and give it to the dealer. Quinn wondered why. The dealer hadn't been particularly friendly or helpful. She shrugged. Probably a custom. Like tipping a waitress.

She pushed one of her own chips across the table.

*

Tim pocketed his chips and guided Quinn away from the table. He wanted to throw his arms around her and kiss her, but he settled for putting his arm across her shoulders. He felt a fine tremor running through her. He squeezed her upper arm.

"Quinn," he whispered, "you were great."

"I think I need a shower," she said.

"Not bad for less than an hour's work," he said.

"How much did we make?"

"I figure we're almost two thousand ahead. And that's just the start."

Quinn sagged against him. "I don't know how much of this I can take."

"Hang in there, kid. That's about what I do alone. For the two of us it's just a start."

"You mean to tell me you clear two thousand every time you come here?"

"Not every time, but most times. Sometimes it takes longer than others. Sometimes you'll nurse a shoe all the way along and it stays even straight through, never swinging too far high or low. That's wasted time."

"But..." Quinn seemed to be having some trouble grasping the numbers. "If you take home two thousand dollars every time, and if you came here just once a week, you could..."

"Pull down six figures a year?" He shrugged. "Maybe. Don't think it hasn't occurred to me. Work one day, have the other six to spend the hundred thou you're taking home. Sounds great, doesn't it."

They wandered from the casino to the hotel section and strolled past the windows of the shops.

"I don't know," she said. "Does it?"

He noticed her watching him closely. He got the feeling the answer was important to her. But he didn't have to ponder a reply. Over the past few years he'd given the matter a lot of thought.

Still, he hesitated. He wasn't used to talking about himself—his real self. He'd spent his teen years cultivating an exterior that hid the sap inside. But this was Quinn and those big blue eyes were so close. Maybe he could risk it. Just a little.

"On the surface, yeah. It sounds ideal. But what have you got by the time you're old enough for Medicare?"

"I don't know," she said. "A pile of money?"

"Yeah. If that. Certainly not much else. There's got to be more to life than that, don't you think? Just making money isn't...doing anything. You haven't enriched anything but your bank account with your work. Like being a currency trader or a gossip columnist, or something equally empty."

"So you chose medicine—so you could do something with your life?"

This was getting a bit too sticky and Tim felt himself instinctively pulling back.

"Well, I figure medicine's a good thing to have to fall back on. And at least I'll have something noble-sounding to tell the kids—our kids—"

"Bite your tongue!"

"—when they ask me what I've been doing with my life."

"Can't you be serious for two consecutive minutes?"

"It's not entirely beyond the realm of possibility, Miss Cleary, but let's not fit me for a halo yet. As I've told you, mostly I'm at The Ingraham because it's free and it's a way to stave off adulthood a little longer."

"Uh-huh." He sensed that she didn't buy that, especially since she was nodding slowly and smiling at him. A very big, very warm smile.

"Let's go outside," Quinn said. "I could use some fresh air."

Tim sighed. He'd been hoping she'd want to go up to the room.

"Sure. This way."

*

"Aaaahhh!"

Quinn breathed deeply as she ran up to the railing on the leading edge of the boardwalk and threw her arms wide to catch the cool onshore breeze from the Atlantic. She reveled in the clean briny smell.

"Why can't they pump some of this into the casino?" she said.

Tim leaned on the rail beside her. "Because half the folks in there would probably keel over from an overdose of oxygen. Some of them haven't had a whiff of fresh air in twenty years."

She turned and looked at all the blinking lights, all the garish metallic colors on the cupolas of the Taj Mahal.

"Sort of adds new dimensions to the concept of gaudy, doesn't it," she said.

Tim laughed. "It could give garish a bad name."

They leaned and listened to the ocean rumbling beyond the darkened beach, watched the light from the gibbous moon fleck the water and glitter off the foamy waves. Quinn felt the tension of the blackjack table vent out through her pores. She noticed a stairway to their left.

"Let's go down on the beach, just for a minute." She kicked off her shoes. "I want to get some sand between my toes."

Tim followed her, grumbling. "I hate getting sand in my shoes."

At the bottom of the steps Quinn worked her feet into the cold, dry granules, and again felt that prickle at the back of her neck, that feeling of being watched. She turned and saw two dark figures moving along the boardwalk above them, hugging the rail, watching them. Something furtive about them...

She tapped Tim on the shoulder. "Maybe we should go back up."

"We just got here."

As Tim bent to empty the sand from his shoes, Quinn glanced up again. The two figures were at the top of the steps now, staring down at them, both definitely male, wearing knit watch caps. The lights were behind them so their faces were shadowed. They could have been sailors, but as she watched they pulled their caps down over their heads—ski masks!—and began sprinting down the steps.

"Tim!" she cried.

She saw him turn at the sound of their pounding feet but he had no time to react before they were upon him. They knocked him onto his back in the sand, punched his face, then began tearing at his coat pockets, ripping them open. For a few heartbeats Quinn stood paralyzed with shock and terror—she'd never witnessed anything like this, had always thought it happened to other people—before she began screaming for help and beating on the backs of the assailants. One of them turned and shoved her back. The blow was almost casual, but it over-balanced her and her feet slipped in the sand and she went down. In the cold moonlight she saw chips falling and scattering on the sand next to Tim as she continued to cry for help. The smaller of the attackers began to scoop up the chips while the bigger one kept battering Tim and tearing at his coat. Finally, after rocking Tim's head with a particularly vicious blow, the bigger one got to his feet at about the same time Quinn regained hers. He lunged toward her but she leaped for the stairs, shouting non stop for help, praying someone would hear, or maybe see her. She was half way up when he caught her, grabbing the waistband of her slacks and trying to pull them off her. With his other hand he began pawing between her legs. She jabbed back at him with her elbow but it glanced off his shoulder. She was losing her balance.

Suddenly Tim loomed up beside them, bloody nose, bloody mouth, and he was yanking the big one around and slamming his fist into the bump of the nose behind the mask. Quinn heard a crunch, heard a cry of pain, and then the smaller one was there, pulling his partner away, pointing toward the underside of the boardwalk.

Quinn kept up her shouting. She craned her neck above the level of the boards and saw security guards rushing toward them from the casino entrance. When she turned back the two muggers were already disappearing into the darkness under the boardwalk. Then she saw Tim slump against the hand rail, gasping, retching. Quinn darted to his side and hung there, not knowing what to do, where to touch him, where not to touch him, but knowing too well that her control was tearing loose and that all she wanted to do was throw her arms around him and cry.

So that was what she did.

MONITORING

Louis Verran snatched up the phone on the first ring.

"Yeah?"

"Chief—it's Elliot."

Tell me something good, Elliot!

"We got it."

Verran let out a long, slow sigh. At last. All this grief over a lousy bug.

"Where are you now? You made it out of town okay?"

"No problem." He sounded pumped, half delirious with relief that he'd come through without getting pinched. "We're at a rest stop on the Delaware pike. We took him outside on the beach. It was too perfect to pass up. He put up a fight but we nailed him good. Then we ducked under the boardwalk, ditched the ski masks, and reversed the jackets. Kurt ran north to his car and I went south to mine, just like we planned. Nobody gave us a bit of trouble. Very smooth, Chief. Very smooth."

Of course it was smooth, Verran thought. You plan out all your moves ahead of time, it always goes smooth. Even if the AC cops could have got out an APB in time, they'd have been looking for two guys of unknown race wearing black or dark blue windbreakers. A lone white male driving out of town in a red jacket wouldn't get a second look.

"And the cops? You give them a call?"

"Didn't have to. The hotel fuzz was coming to the rescue just as we were leaving."

Perfect.

"Where's Kurt now?"

"He's in his car not ten feet from me, waiting to get home."

"Good. Both of you come straight here. I'm proud of you guys."

And besides, Verran wanted to see and feel that rotten lousy defective bug in his very own hand. Tonight.

SIXTEEN

"At least I didn't lose any teeth."

Tim sat on the bed with an ice pack against his right cheek. Quinn knelt beside him, her hands clasped between her thighs, still shaking inside. The room was warm but her hands felt cold; she felt cold all over.

"You could have lost your life."

They'd been to the hotel infirmary once, in and out of the hotel security office twice—she had to say the Taj Mahal had been genuinely solicitous, even though the mugging had occurred off their premises—and to the Atlantic City Police department and back. They had filled out forms, given descriptions, and recounted the events leading up to and during the attack until they were both sick of talking about it.

The consensus was that it had been a random mugging, but Quinn remembered that feeling of being watched. She hadn't said anything to the police about it, though. But she suspected the two attackers had watched them win heavily, seen them go outside to the deserted boardwalk, and made their move.

Tim fingered the tears in his sport coat with his free hand.

"Look at this. Torn to shreds." He looked at her, reached out and rubbed her arm. His warm touch felt good. "You okay?"

She nodded. "I only got shoved around a little. But I feel completely worn out." She felt as if she'd been inflated to twice her size, and then had her plug pulled. A dull, throbbing headache topped it off.

"I know what you mean. But you got more than just shoved around. That goddamn creep!"

She didn't want to talk about it, even think about it. She put her hand over his. "You were very brave."

He snorted. "Brave? They had me down on my back and were punching my lights out."

"No. I mean after, when the big guy was attacking me. I know they hurt you, but still you got up and...came to help."

"I couldn't very well lie there and let him maul you, could I?"

"But you were hurt."

"Yeah, but I've seen all those John Wayne and Clint Eastwood movies. They sort of make you feel there are things you should do even though you know you're going to get hurt."

Quinn slid closer and leaned against him, resting her head on his shoulder.

"Does this hurt?"

"I'd say that's just what the doctor ordered."

Quinn felt oddly warm, with rushes of heat coursing through her. Short of breath too. All the good feelings she had for Tim crowded close around her, pressing her to him, and all the doubts and reservations she'd had, all the irritations he caused were gone, blown away. They didn't matter any longer. Tonight they'd walked together through a fire. She felt joined to this man.

She lifted her head and kissed him on the lips, gently.

"Sorry," she said. "I don't know why I did that." And that was true. She hadn't planned it, or even thought about it. She'd just...done it.

"Do it again," he said softly. "But easy on the lower lip. It's killing me."

And what followed came very naturally, very slowly, with their clothes being shed bit by bit, like old skin, and the heat building incrementally but irresistibly till it pulsed and throbbed with an incendiary life of it own as they joined like longtime lovers who'd known each other forever.

*

Quinn lay face down on the sheets and shivered in the dark as Tim's fingers traveled lightly up and down her spine. On one trip they continued further down and he ran his hands gently over her rear.

"I always knew you had a—"

"Don't say it."

"—nice butt."

"You said it."

"It's true."

"I have a caboose butt on an Olive Oyl body."

"No, you've got a Bluto brain. You need therapy for your distorted body image."

She lay quiet, her thoughts in turmoil, as he continued his feather-light caresses.

"What have we done, Tim?" she said finally.

"What comes naturally."

"I'm serious."

"You mean, have we ruined a beautiful friendship?"

"Exactly."

He moved closer, sliding against her right side, crossing his knee over the backs of her thighs. His lips brushed her ear.

"I hope not. I desperately hope not. But we can't pretend this didn't happen."

"I know."

"Do you want to stop and never do this again?"

"No. God, no. But every time you stop by the room, are you going to want to be like this? Am I? I didn't want to be involved, Tim. I really didn't."

"Are you involved?"

Quinn turned toward him and felt his chest hair brush her nipples as their legs entwined. She couldn't remember feeling this way about anyone else. Ever. This had to be love.

"Yes. Yes, yes, yes. Are you?"

"Have been since I first saw you at orientation last December. From that moment I knew it was going to be you and me. I didn't know how long it would take or how many different roads we would travel, but some part of me seemed to sense that we'd wind up together. You must have sensed something like that too."

Quinn laughed and hugged him closer—but gently. "No way! I thought you were an obnoxious brat, one of the last people on earth I wanted to have anything to do with. Just slightly ahead of Saddam Hussein."

"Thanks a lot." He nuzzled her throat. "But I have an idea. A compromise. We'll make it a rule between us that we don't make love on campus. When we can we'll sneak away to the No-Tell Motel or something and go nuts, but at The Ingraham we stay strictly platonic."

Quinn tried to see his face in the dark. Was this one of his put-ons? She wished she knew because it sounded perfect to her.

"Where'd you come up with that?"

"Oh, I don't know. I just put myself inside a very practical, borderline-nerdy mind and tried to imagine what that mind could come up with."

She punched him lightly on the shoulder and he winced.

"Ouch!"

"Sorry. But is that what you think of me?"

"Isn't that what you'd have come up with?"

Reluctantly, she had to agree.

He said, "But there's got to be an angle we can work with this. Maybe we can apply to Dr. Alston for extra credit when we make our little off-campus trips."

"Extra credit?"

"Sure. Extracurricular studies in anatomy. Or how about human sexuality lab? Gotta be worth something. In fact I think I'm ready to earn a few extra credits right now."

Quinn slid her hand down his abdomen. "Yes, you are. Yes, you are indeed."

MONITORING

"What the hell happened to you?"

Verran was staring at Kurt's swollen, purpling nose as he and Elliot arrived in the control room.

"The kid got in a lucky one when I wasn't looking." He sounded like he had a bad cold.

"Great. Just great. That means you're going to have to stay out of sight until that thing heals."

"What the hell for?"

"Because Brown saw you in the student lot before he left and your nose was fine then. If he knows he clocked one of the guys who attacked him on the nose and then he sees you with a freshly busted beak—"

"Aw, he'd never put the two together."

"Maybe not. But these kids ain't here because they're dummies. Just to be sure, I'm keeping you on the graveyard shift till that heals up."

"Aw, Lou."

Verran held out his hand. "Where's the bug?"

Elliot leaned forward and dropped it into Verran's palm.

"Safe and sound, Chief."

Verran stared at it. Such a tiny thing to cause so goddamn much trouble.

"Want me to see if I can fix it?" Elliot said.

"Are you kidding?"

Verran bent and placed the errant bug on the concrete floor, straightened, then ground it flat under his heel.

"That's the last time that little sonovabitch will give us any grief."

Elliot grinned and headed for his console while Kurt went to find some ice for his nose. Verran surveyed the varicolored meters, terminals, and LEDs of his little domain with quiet satisfaction. Only one problem remained to mar his serenity: the Cleary broad.

Elliot had run an exhaustive, comprehensive check on her SLI unit yesterday and had found everything in perfect working order, but tightass Alston was still insisting that there had to be something wrong with it. Verran knew there wasn't. As far as he was concerned, the problem wasn't with the unit, it was with the girl.

And since it was Alston's responsibility to screen the students, that put the ball in his court.

Which was a big relief to Verran. He'd solved his own missing bug problem; let Dr. Tightass figure out the Cleary problem.

As far as Louis Verran was concerned, it was back to business as usual in the control room.

DECEMBER

THE WORLD'S LONGEST CONTINUOUS

FLOATING MEDICAL BULL SESSION

(III)

Tim had dragged Quinn to another session tonight in Harrison's room. He told her the usual: She was working too hard lately and needed a break. But that wasn't the main reason. He simply needed to be with her a little more.

During the weeks since Atlantic City, despite the awful time he'd had keeping his hands off her, Tim had stayed true to his word and abided by their agreement, hands-off on campus. And when he'd suggested some HSR lab—HSR being their code for human sexual response—Quinn had never turned him down. She'd even suggested it a couple of times herself. After Thanksgiving break she'd told him she'd started on the pill, but still she insisted he wear a condom. One very careful lady.

They didn't get to the Quality Inn that often, but when they did she left Tim wrecked for days.

Those nights were like his wildest dreams come true. For all the no-nonsense prudishness Quinn projected when she was fully dressed, between the sheets she was a different species. Her inhibitions seemed to slough off with her clothes. She approached sex like she approached everything else—seriously, practically, with boundless enthusiasm. She attacked it, she studied it—that was hardly a surprise—and wanted to try everything. Very little was taboo. She even rented triple-X videos for instruction and she and Tim had spent exhausting nights mimicking the couples on the screen.

But for Tim the sex was the icing on the cake. It cemented the substance of their relationship, which for him was simply being with her, sharing her presence. He never seemed to get enough of her. Between the hours they were required to spend in class and in the various labs, plus Quinn's job as Dr. Emerson's research assistant, and the wasted hours grudgingly surrendered to sleep, there wasn't any time for them simply to be together. Sometimes they'd study together, holding hands when they weren't scribbling notes or turning pages, but her presence was too distracting for Tim to get much done.

He hungered for her presence. And that baffled him. He'd always been so self-sufficient. Now, when Quinn wasn't around, he felt incomplete. Tim wasn't sure he liked that.

But looking at her face now, at the disturbed and troubled expressions playing across it, he wondered if he'd been wise to include her in the bull session tonight. Her expression drifted toward horrified as Harrison elaborated on his ideas on the formation of a central government authority to oversee the equitable redistribution of medical resources. Tim couldn't understand her reaction. Harrison's plan made perfect sense to him.

"I don't believe you people," Quinn said when Harrison took a breath. "You're all talking about 'redistributing' medical care like you're discussing natural resources."

"A country's medical care is a natural resource," Judy Trachtenberg said. "Once of its most valuable resources."

"But it's not a natural resource," Quinn said. "It wasn't sitting underground waiting to be dug up. It's human made. You're not talking about moving lumps of coal or steel around, you're talking about people—doctors, nurses, technicians. I don't know about you folks, but I don't become a national resource just because I've earned a medical degree. I'm not something to be shipped around at the whim of some appointee in Washington. I don't remember signing off my human rights when I became a student at The Ingraham."

The room was silent. The eight other occupants sipped Pepsi or munched pretzels as they stared at her.

"Easy Quinn," Tim said.

"No. I won't take it easy." She was getting hot now. He could see the color rising in her cheeks.

She said, "Since when are all of you in favor of bureaucrats making medical decisions? What are we going to medical school for? To become glorified technicians? To spend our professional lives taking orders from a bunch of political appointees? 'Here, Brown. Fix this one here but forget that one over there.' They'll shunt you here and shift you there and call you a 'provider' and a 'resource,' but what about the patients?"

The room was utterly silent. Tim saw eight uncomprehending faces staring at Quinn as if she were speaking a foreign language.

"Well," Harrison said slowly, "it's because of the patients—for the patients—that tiering is necessary. They can't all receive top-level care, so some will have to be satisfied with second-level care, and some with third-level care. And someone has to decide who deserves what level of care. No one's happy with that, but it's a reality that has to be faced. Hiding your head in the sand won't make it go away."

The crack annoyed Tim but Quinn simply laughed it off.

"Who's got his head in the sand? You're talking about social engineering. What next? Eugenics? Or maybe a new Master Race?"

Judy groaned. "We're not Nazis."

"You know, I wish you'd all wake up and smell the coffee. I mean, don't you think there'll be a temptation for some of us to 'tier' patients according to political, religious, and racial prejudices?"

Harrison cleared his throat. "I can't see that being a problem for an ethical physican."

"I aggree," Quinn said. "But we're not all ethical—we're human. And we should be treating illness wherever we find it, not just in a select population. That's a God game I don't want to play."

"But it's going to be the only game in town," Harrison said. "That's why it's so important that graduates of The Ingraham go into primary care. That's where the front lines are. That's where we'll be exposed to both the useful and the useless members of society. That's where we can make a real difference. And maybe we can work it so that some of those useless folks can contribute something to society." He turned to Tim. "You've been unusually quiet tonight, Brown. Any comments?"

Tim shook his head. "No, uh...just listening."

Tim avoided Quinn's eyes but knew she was giving him a strange look.

He deserved it. He felt strange. He'd had the oddest feeling while sitting here listening to the conversation. Schizoid. Dissociated. A deep part of him completely agreeing with Quinn and yet another part tugging him the other way. The only times he noticed this dichotomy in his attitudes was on those rare occasions when he discussed medical politics with Quinn, or when she stopped by the bull session. He'd attributed his attitude shift to the fact that he was now more conversant with the issues associated with the coming healthcare crisis than he had been in September. None of the bull session regulars seemed to differ much on the issue of tiering health care delivery, simply on the mechanics of how to implement it. Quinn was becoming the gadfly, the Devil's Advocate they maybe needed to goad them into examining their premises.

Except no one was examining premises. Tim seemed to be the only one of the group even remotely receptive to Quinn.

But what had rocked Tim back on his heels was Harrison's last statement.

That's why it's important that graduates of The Ingraham go into primary care. That's where the front lines are. That's where we'll be exposed to both the useful and the useless members of society. That's where we can make a real difference. And maybe we can work it so that some of those useless folks can contribute something to society

It had been a typical Harrison statement. That wasn't the problem. The problem was in Tim's head: The same statement -not the same sentiment, the same statement, word-for-word—had gone through Tim's mind in response to Quinn's question.

Almost as if he'd been coached.

Suddenly he wanted out of the session.

Not to walk out. To run.

MONITORING

"Guess who's on his way down," Elliot said.

Louis Verran looked up from the daily status printout and groaned. "Don't tell me..."

"Yep."

"Shit," Verran said. He wasn't in the mood for Alston tonight. But then, when was he ever in the mood for Doc Tightass? "All right, pull that last bull session tape. Maybe it'll get him off our backs."

Alston had developed this thing for the Cleary girl. He'd been on her case and had been dropping by the control room regularly since Thanksgiving, looking for anything and everything Verran could get on her.

"Good evening, gentlemen," he said, breezing through the door like he owned the place. "Any new elucidating snippets of tape for me, Louis?"

"As a matter of fact, yes," Verran said. "We found some good stuff for you this time." He turned to Elliot. "Got that tape cued up there? Let her roll."

Alston took a seat and cocked his ear toward the speaker, listening intently. Verran listened, too, not so much to the words—he'd already heard them—as to the quality of the recording. Not bad. Pretty damn good, in fact. The kids must have been circled around the mike. Let Alston try griping this time about not being able to understand what they were saying.

Verran didn't record everything. Couldn't, and wouldn't want to if he could. Most of what went on in the dorm was studying and sleeping, the sound of pages turning followed by deep, rhythmic breathing. And when the kids were talking, it was usually about the most trivial, boring junk imaginable. So he sampled here and there. He'd rotate from pick-up to pick-up, eavesdropping from within the rooms or along the telephone lines, listening for anyone who might be talking about The Ingraham, or about any particular staff or faculty member. Happy talk was bypassed for the most part, but gripe sessions were always recorded. And any talk of a potentially compromising nature—sexual encounters, schemes to cheat on tests—was recorded and cataloged and filed away in Louis Verran's personal J. Edgar Hoover file...just in case.

The roving bull session tended to be as boring as all the other talk, except when a couple of them disagreed and got real pissed, but that only happened between newcomers early in their first year. After they'd all been here awhile, not only did the disagreements rarely get vehement, they rarely happened.

But when Verran had picked up the Cleary girl's voice in last night's bull session, he'd stopped his wandering ways and settled down to record the whole thing. Alston had said he was looking for any tidbits that would give him another look into Cleary's views on the future of medicine. Verran had recognized one of her rare participations in the bull session as a golden opportunity. Originally he had planned to tease Alston along with it, dangle the recording before him like a carrot before a mule. But when he'd heard Cleary sounding off like she did, he knew he couldn't wait. He had to dump the whole thing on Alston in one shot...and watch him squirm.

Verran watched the growing concern on Alston's face as he listened. He barely moved. He was still sitting there listening even after Cleary had quit the session. He knew exactly what Dr. Tightass was thinking: Who can I blame this on?

But Louis was ready for him when Alston finally swiveled in his chair and faced him.

"What do I have to do, Louis, to induce you to repair that young woman's defective SLI unit?"

"There's nothing to repair."

"It's quite obvious to me, and I am sure it will be equally obvious to our overseers from the Foundation, that you are not getting the job done."

Verran had suddenly had enough. He wanted to grab this twit and shake him until his brain rattled inside his skull. Instead he squeezed the arm rests of his chair.

"I'm not in the mood for games, Doc, so here's the story: Her unit checks out. Elliot and I went back to her room again last weekend while Cleary and her boyfriend were off campus boffing each other. It checks out. You hear that, Doc: Her SLI is in A-1 shape. Perfectamento. So stop blowing smoke and tell me what you're going to do about it?"

Alston was silent for a moment. His voice sounded tired when he finally spoke.

"What else can I do? She'll have to flunk out."

SEVENTEEN

Tim was feeling restless, edgy. He couldn't handle studying tonight. He wanted to be with Quinn but she was booking it for the anatomy practical tomorrow. So he wandered.

He wound up in the north wing's first-floor lounge—soft, shapeless leather couches, a dropped ceiling for acoustical effect, snack and soft drink machines lined up against the rear wall. Joe Nappo was stretched out in front of the big rear-projection screen watching some cop movie. Tim dropped into one of the rear seats. He didn't recognize the movie but he did recognize Peter Weller's face from the Robocop flicks. On the screen, Weller was tearing his apartment apart, looking for something. Tim didn't know what the film was about and didn't care. He stared at the screen without really following the action. He had other things on his mind.

Like his own mind, for instance.

His last bull session—the one Quinn had sat in on—still bothered him. It baffled him how he could believe one way and think another. The shrinks had a term for it: cognitive dissociation. Two conflicting points of view existing within the same person.

...on the screen Peter Weller pulled his telephones apart, then began unscrewing the plates over the electrical outlets in his walls...

Tim realized he had two intellectual positions, one very much like Quinn's, the other identical to Harrison's, warring within him. The first seemed to spring from his gut, seemed to belong to him, but it had been battered into the mud by the second position. He might have forgotten it had ever existed had not Quinn's arguments caused it to stir. And that stirring had pointed up the vague strangeness of Harrison's position. What was it doing in his head? It sounded like an echo of everybody else who spoke up at the bull sessions.

Everybody else.

Tim had always prided himself on not thinking like everybody else. Yet he could sense himself becoming an intellectual clone of Dr. Alston. The guy was a charming and disarming lecturer, true, but he wasn't that good.

...on the screen Peter Weller was holding up something he had found. A small dark object. He was examining it, turning it between his fingers. The camera moved in for a close-up...

Tim bolted upright in his chair.

"What the hell?"

The object in Peter Weller's hand looked startlingly familiar, like a tiny hockey puck on a pin.

"Hey, Joe," he said. "What is this?"

Nappo spoke without turning around. "Called Rainbow Drive or something like that."

"What's going on?"

"His partner got killed in the opening scenes and—"

"No. I mean now. What's he up to?"

"He just found out his apartment's bugged."

Tim stared at the screen in cold shock, then got up and hurried for the door. His thoughts swirled in a chaotic jumble as he trotted down the hall and burst into the chill December night outside. The sky was a clear bubble and the stars seemed to spin as he walked aimlessly along the paths between the buildings that made up The Ingraham. He jammed his hands into his pockets against the late fall chill.

A bug. His mind shied away from accepting the fact that his little stick pin had been an electronic pick-up. He'd heard of them, but he'd never expected to see one in real life. Not at The Ingraham. Certainly not in Quinn's room. The possibility had never even occurred to him.

Was The Ingraham bugged? Or more specifically, was the dorm bugged? The very idea seemed ludicrous. A paranoid delusion of the first order. Because why in the name of sanity would anyone want to monitor the blatherings of a bunch of medical students? The idea zoomed past the ludicrous to the laughable.

And yet...How come I'm not laughing?

Because in some way he couldn't fathom, it seemed to dovetail with whatever it was that was making him so edgy lately.

Okay, he told himself. Let's run this through and follow the likely scenarios to wherever they lead. Let's assume the dorm is bugged. Or more specifically, since I found the bug in Quinn's room, that Quinn's room is bugged.

Why?

Who knows? We'll leave why for later. For now, let's just get logical.

Premise: Room 252 is under electronic surveillance.

If we accept that premise, who would be in charge of that surveillance?

Obviously, campus security.

Who's in charge of campus security?

Mr. Louis Verran.

Who has been caught twice in Quinn's room when she was scheduled to be out?

Mr. Louis Verran.

Tim shook his head as the pace of his walking slowed of its own accord. This was getting scary. Syllogistic logic had its flaws, but this little syllogism hit a too close to recent events: If room 252 is bugged, and if campus security is in charge of the bugging, and if Louis Verran is in charge of campus security, then one would expect Louis Verran to display an inordinate level of interest in room 252. Which he had.

Tim stopped short and watched his breath fume in the cold air as his thoughts raced through his mental pantries, grabbing incidents and observations from the shelves and tossing them helter-skelter into the stew. He didn't like the aroma that was beginning to rise from the pot.

Fact: Louis Verran saw the bug in my lapel last month— that so-called exterminator with him had pointed it out. And twelve hours later I get rolled in A.C., supposedly for my winnings. But maybe those guys were after a different sort of chip. They put a lot of effort into ripping up my coat, and afterwards, my little stick pin just happens to be missing along with my chips.

He swung around and headed back toward the dorm. Normally the glow of the lights in the rooms would have seemed warm beacons beckoning him in from the cold. Tonight they looked like a multifaceted cluster of eyes, watching him.

Because if one room was bugged, why not more? Why not all the rooms?

He pushed through the entrance to the south wing and turned toward the stairs to the second floor, heading for Women's Country. He had to tell Quinn. She had to know.

Then he stopped, unsure. Was that fair? Between classes, labs, and tests, plus her research job, she had enough on her mind. This would make her as crazy as it was making him. And maybe all for nothing. He could be wrong. Why dump any of this on her until he was sure?

But how could he be sure, unless...?

If Quinn's room was bugged, there was a good chance his was too. Tim could think of only one way to find out: tear it apart.

He headed for his room.

*

"I really appreciate this, Kevin."

It had taken a fair bit of doing, but Tim had convinced his roommate to bunk in with Scotty Moore for the night. Moore's roomie, Bill Black, had gone home for a long weekend due to a death in the family. Kevin, a good guy but a congenital straight-shooter, wasn't crazy about the idea. He was afraid it was against the rules, but he hadn't been able to find a rule against it. So he'd agreed, reluctantly.

"Yeah, well, it's okay this time, but don't make a habit of it."

"This is the only time I'll ask this of you, Kev," Tim said. "I swear."

He'd told Kevin that he and Quinn needed "some time alone together" and that the inhabitants of Women's Country were too damn nosy to allow them any "real privacy." Pretty thin, but it was the best Tim could come up with on short notice. He didn't feel he could wait until Kevin went home for a weekend; he wanted to search the room now. It worked, mainly because everyone knew that Quinn and Tim had a thing going on. Kevin read between the lines what Tim had written there for him, and finally agreed.

"And you'll stick to your bed, right?" Kevin said.

"Stick? What on earth—"

Kevin's dark features darkened further. "I mean, you'll just use your own bed, right? You won't...do anything in mine?"

Tim held up three fingers. "Scout's honor."

"All right. But I've got to get back in here first thing in the morning."

"Have no fear, buddy. Everything will be exactly as you left it."

As soon as Kevin was gone, Tim ducked out and ran down to the parking lot. He took the tool kit from his car trunk and lugged it up to the dorm. Back in the room, he locked the door and stood there, looking around.

Where to begin?

He decided to try the bedroom first. After all, wasn't it in Quinn's bedroom that he'd stepped on the bug he mistook for a stick pin?

He started with the furniture. Flashlight in hand, Tim crawled around the room, peering into every nook, cranny, corner, and crevice. He crawled under his bed and Kevin's, and when he found nothing on the underside of the frame, he pulled off the mattress and box spring and inspected the frame from above. He couldn't move the bed around because it was bolted to the headboard unit which was fixed to the wall, so he unbolted the bed frame from the headboard and gave it a thorough going over. He emptied the closets, pulled out the nightstand drawers, cleaned out the bookshelves built into the headboard unit, took down the curtains and dismantled the curtain rods.

Nothing.

Then he remembered what he'd seen in the movie. He attacked the telephone, dismantling both the base and the handset. Then he removed the wall plates from all the electrical sockets and light switches. He dissected the desk lamp and the gooseneck tensor lamp atop the headboard unit.

Nothing.

Hours after starting, Tim stopped and surveyed the carnage around him. It looked like Nirvana had shot a video here. He'd torn the place apart. All for what? He was tired—probably the one of the last people awake in the dorm—and he was angry. There was something here. There had to be. Too many coincidences lately to be ignored. And he wasn't crazy.

He flopped back onto the mattress and box spring where they lay on the floor. He put his hands behind the back of his head and lay there staring at the ceiling, thinking: Where is the best spot to place a microphone if you want to pick up every sound in the room? Someplace centrally located with no possibility of being covered and muffled...

Tim's gaze drifted past the light fixture in the ceiling, then darted back to it.

Of course!

He jumped to his feet and stood on his mattress, but it was too much of a stretch to reach the fixture. He pulled a desk chair over, and he was there. As he loosened the central screw on the frosted glass diffuser he wondered if it was just coincidence that the glass on these fixtures hung an inch below the ceiling. A sensitive bug positioned up here would pick up every word said in the room.

When the glass came free, Tim set it on the bed, then squinted at the two sixty-watt standard bulbs. He couldn't see much in the glare, plus they'd been on for hours and were hot. He craned his neck, this way and that, trying to check it from all sides, but saw nothing.

Damn, he thought. Not only was it the perfect place, but it was the last place. He gave up and was fitting the diffuser back on its spindle when he spotted something in the tangle of wires behind the bulbs. A tiny thing—black like the one he'd found in Quinn's room, only this one's face was more beveled—with its pin inserted into the insulated coat of a wire above the bulb sockets. Completely unnoticeable, even to someone changing a bulb.

"Jesus."

Tim could barely hear his own voice.

An uneasy chill rippled through his gut as he stared at the bug. He realized then that deep within he hadn't expected to find anything. He'd been suspicious, there were unanswered questions, but this whole exercise had been something of a game. His hunt was not supposed to yield a real bug. Nestled in the unspoken rules had been the assumption that he would do a thorough search and find nothing, and then the game would end, leaving him frustrated at having no hard evidence to back up his suspicions.

But the game was no longer a game. Hard evidence was half a dozen inches from his nose. He stared at it a moment longer, then stepped down to the floor and sat on the corner of the bed.

Now what?

Report it? To whom? Certainly not Louis Verran. And what did one bug prove? No, the best way was to spread the word, have everybody check out their ceiling fixtures, and then present all the bugs en masse to the administration, even though they were probably involved as well. But even if they weren't, what could they do? What could they say? He could imagine what they'd say:

Yes, you have indeed found electronic eavesdropping devices in the rooms, but that doesn't prove anyone is actually listening. It's got to be some sort of elaborate practical joke. Because in the final analysis, why on earth would anyone want to listen to the incidental conversations of a group of medical students? We certainly don't. We can't imagine anything more boring.

Neither could Tim.

But that opened the door to another question: If the administration had nothing to do with the bugging and didn't care what was being said in the dorms, why did they insist that all Ingraham students live here for their entire four years as medical students?

It didn't make sense.

Unless there was something else going on.

He'd been puzzled by the seemingly alien thoughts taking hold in his mind. What if they'd been planted there?

Tim shook his head. This was getting wilder and wilder. The bug was one thing, but...

...but what if the people behind the bugging were interested in hearing what was coming out of the students as a way of monitoring what they were putting in?

Nah. The whole idea was too far-fetched. Besides, how could they possibly put ideas into your head? Where could they hide the equipment?

His gaze drifted to the only piece of furniture in the room he hadn't disassembled.

The headboard unit.

Before attacking that, he replaced the glass diffuser on the ceiling fixture without touching the bug—better not to tip off the listeners that they'd been found out. Then, screwdriver in hand, he approached the headboard.

Monitoring

"Yo, Chief."

Louis Verran looked up from his copy of Shotgun News and saw Elliot motioning him to his console. He rose, dropped the magazine on his seat, and waddled over.

It had been a very routine night so far. Less than a routine night. Nothing much of interest going on in the dorm, what with all the first- and second-year kids studying for their first-semester finals. Even the bull session was in a lull.

Dull. Just the way Verran liked it.

"What's up?" he said, leaning over Elliot's chair and scanning his read-outs.

"Something's going on in room one-two-five."

"Yeah? Let's listen."

"No. No chatter, Chief. But I've been picking up strange noises all night long."

"Yeah? Like what?"

"Like all sorts of scrapes, squeaks, scratches, and sounds like furniture being moved."

"Somebody's redecorating?"

"I don't think so. Especially since I'm almost sure he was fooling with the ceiling fixture."

Great, Verran thought. Just what we need.

"The pick-up still working?"

"Yeah. Perfectly."

"All right." Verran let out a deep breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. "So even if he was fooling around with the light fixture for whatever reason, he didn't find nothing."

"I can't say that for sure," Elliot said. "All I can say is he didn't touch the pick-up. But I wish I could say the same for his SLI."

Verran felt a sheen of cold sweat break out between his shoulder blades and spread across his back.

"Stop beating around the fucking bush, Elliot. What's wrong?"

"It went dead about five minutes ago. I'm not getting any feedback from it at all."

"You run the trouble-shooting program?"

"Sure. First thing. But you can't do a software troubleshoot on a dead unit."

"Shit!" Verran said. Was this how the year was going to go? First Alston bitches about Cleary's unit when nothing was wrong, and now they had a unit that was genuinely on the fritz. "What do you think's wrong with it?"

Elliot gave him a sidelong glance. "You really want to know?"

"Of course I want to know!"

"I think it's being tampered with."

Verran reached for a chair and gently lowered himself into it. He hadn't wanted to know that.

"You mean he's into the headboard?"

Elliot nodded. "Not only into it, I think he unplugged the unit."

"Who?" Verran said. "Who the fuck is it?"

"Brown."

Brown. Verran rubbed a trembling hand over his eyes. It was happening again. Just like two years ago.

"I should've known. Where's Kurt?"

Elliot glanced at his watch. "Not due in for another hour yet."

"Call him. Get him down here right away. Tell him we need him pronto."

"Take it easy, Chief. This could all be a false alarm."

"False alarm, my ass! That Brown kid has been trouble since the day he stepped onto this campus. We've got to do something about him."

Brown has a roommate, he thought. Is he in on this too? Christ, two of them at once. What was he going to do?

As Elliot made the call, Verran pressed a hand against the right side of his abdomen, trying to ease the growing pain there. His ulcer was kicking up again. It had started two years ago, now it was back full force, mostly because of the Brown kid and his girlfriend Cleary.

Trouble. Nothing but trouble.

And if Elliot was right about Brown opening up the back of his headboard, the shit was really going to hit the fan.

EIGHTEEN

All right, Tim thought as he stared at the maze of wires running throughout the rear section of his headboard, I've found it. But what have I found?

It hadn't been easy getting into the base of the headboard. Steel bolts with recesses in their heads had been used instead of conventional slotted or Phillips-head wood screws; they'd been wound tightly into steel bushings. Apparently these headboards had been custom made to take a lot of punishment. But Tim had found an Allen wrench in his tool box that did the trick—not with ease, but after an hour of cursing and earning a few fresh blisters, he'd managed to loosen the panel and expose the innards.

He knew something about electronics—he'd poked through his share of PCs, stereos, and VCRs—but he'd never seen anything like what lay behind the panel. Wires and circuit boards, okay, but what was that big, black, shiny disk facing the bed? It reminded him of a giant sub-woofer.

Whatever it was, he knew he was out of his depth. Something big was going down here. He was too beat to open up Kevin's headboard, and besides, he was sure he'd find the same thing. The same damn science-fiction rig was probably inside every damn headboard in the whole damn dorm.

Something clinked against the window then and Tim jumped. He stared at the drawn curtains. Was someone on the other side? His was a first-floor room. The window sill was chin level to a man of average height. If someone wanted to check out what he was up to in here, the first thing to do would be to try to look in the window.

Steeling himself, Tim stepped to the curtain and pulled it aside. Cold air trapped between the glass and the curtain swirled around him, raising gooseflesh on his arms, but thankfully there were no faces peering through the panes. Nothing but darkness out there.

I'm getting jumpy.

He closed the drapes and turned back to the exposed workings within the headboard. Maybe he had good reason to be jumpy. What if there was a trip switch of some sort within that mess of wire in there that set off an alarm somewhere when the headboard was tampered with?

Maybe he should get out of here.

Tim was scared now. He felt himself shivering and his hands shook as he pulled on a sweater. He wished he'd never begun this search, wished he'd left well enough alone.

But dammit, things hadn't been well at all. Somebody had been tampering with his mind, skewing his values. How could he have let that go on?

But now he had to tell Quinn. She had to know what was going on, what they were doing to people's heads here.

Funny thing about that, though...Quinn seemed unaffected. She'd stayed the course...

...which might explain why Verran kept returning to her room. Maybe the thing in her headboard wasn't working.

He had to tell her. He glanced at his watch. Late, but this couldn't wait. He snatched Quinn's room key off his dresser and shoved it into his pocket. They'd traded keys awhile back—he'd given her a set to his car and she'd given him one to her room so he could use it anytime he wanted to be alone when she was out.

But he couldn't talk to her there, or anywhere else in the dorm. Where? He grabbed a scratch pad and a pen as he left. He hoped he could figure out a safe place to talk by the time he reached the second floor.

*

"Wha—?"

Abruptly, Quinn was awake and she didn't know why. She lifted her head and looked around the darkened room, listening. She felt extremely vulnerable in the dark, especially since she was wearing only an oversized T-shirt and a pair of panties. But nothing was moving, nothing—

She head the hall door click closed.

Someone's here!

She reached for the phone beside her.

"Who's there? Tim, is that you?"

The light went on in the front room and Tim's voice drifted through the open door.

"Just me, Quinn." His voice sounded strange...strained.

She glanced at the radio alarm. The red LED display read 2:34.

"Do you know what time it is?"

He stepped through the door and flicked on the light.

"I'm sorry it's so late, but I couldn't sleep."

Quinn squinted in the sudden glare. "Must you?"

"Yeah. I want to look at you."

When her eyes adjusted, she stared at him and gasped. He looked ghastly—pale, haggard, and...frightened.

"Tim, what's wrong?"

"Nothing. I just had to see you."

As he finished speaking he held his index finger to his lips and thrust a note pad toward her.

"What—?"

He tapped the finger against his lips insistently and pointed to the pad. Quinn stared at the block printing.

THE ROOM

IS BUGGED!!!!

"What? You've got to be—"

He was frantically jamming his finger against his lips now. She looked at him and shrugged, completely bewildered. Was this one of his gags or had he gone off the deep end completely?

He took the pad and scribbled lengthwise on the next sheet.

MAKE SMALL TALK!

Quinn gaped at him. He appeared to be in genuine distress. She fumbled for something to say.

"Uh...you ready for the anatomy practical?"

He gave her the O-K sign and began writing on a third sheet as he spoke.

"Sure. You know me. I'm a quick study. Nothing to those practicals."

He held up the new note.

MEET ME IN THE

ANATOMY LAB

MY CAR AND I'LL

EXPLAIN EVERYTHING

"Yeah. I wish I had a memory like yours," Quinn said as she grabbed the pen and pad from him and jotted her own note.

ARE YOU FOR

REAL???

His slow, grim nod gave her a chill.

He yawned loudly as he retrieved the pad, scribbling as he spoke.

"Well, I've bothered you long enough. I'll leave you alone and see if I can get some sleep."

He handed the pad back to her.

I'LL WARM

UP THE CAR

She nodded. "Good idea. See you soon."

Tim flashed her another O-K sign, waved, and left her there in her bed, wondering what on earth had come over him. She sat for a moment or two, staring at the pad he'd left with her, flipping through the bizarre series of notes. She decided the only way to find out what was going on was to meet him in his car.

She jumped out of bed and began to get dressed.

*

"Can you hear me, Chief?"

It was Elliot's voice, transmitting via the pick-up in room 125.

Louis Verran stood in the control room with his face all but pressed against the fabric of the speaker.

"You know damn well I'm listening," he said irritably, though he knew just as damn well that Elliot couldn't hear the reply.

"Listen, we're in the bedroom of one-two-five. We couldn't see anything through the window—he almost caught us doing the Peeping Tom thing—so we came inside when he left. I was right, Chief. He's got the whole place torn apart, including the headboard."

"Shit!" Verran said. "Shit, shit, SHIT!"

"We don't know where he is now, but we can guess. We're going to go looking for him. Out."

"Yeah," Verran muttered. "Out."

This was bad. Very bad. Kurt and Elliot would have to find Brown and bring him in before he talked to anyone.

And Louis Verran would have to pick up the phone and call Dr. Arthur Tightass Alston and tell him that the nightmare scenario from two years ago was starting a rerun.

His intestines coiled into a Gordian knot as he reached for the receiver.

*

Tim checked his pockets as he galloped down the stairs, and realized he didn't have his car keys. He'd have to stop off at his room.

When he opened his door, the room was dark. Had he turned the lights out? He didn't remember. As he reached for the switch someone grabbed his arm and yanked him inside. The shock and sudden terror of it stole his voice. He heard the door slam behind him and now he was in complete darkness. He started to yell but someone rammed a fist into one of his kidneys and all that escaped him was an agonized groan. As the pain drove him to his knees, gasping, retching, his arms were pinned behind his back.

Here it comes, he thought. A bullet through the brain.

But then something—a rag of some sort—was forced into his mouth. He heard the scritch of tape being pulled from a roll and then a piece was pressed over his mouth. He had to breath through his nose. Air whistled in and out of his nostrils. He fought panic as he listened to another piece of tape being torn from the roll. If they covered his nose he'd suffocate. But this piece went across his eyes. And then he felt metal bands tighten around his wrists.

Handcuffs. His panic ebbed toward mere terror. They weren't going to kill him.

At least not yet.

*

Quinn knew something was wrong before she reached the parking lot. As she hurried down the slope she spotted Tim's car in its usual spot, but the motor wasn't running. She approached Griffin cautiously and peered within.

Empty.

She touched the hood and found it cold.

What's going on, Tim? What are you up to?

She shivered in the chill breeze. She'd thrown on a sweatsuit and a jacket but still she was cold. She'd just got out of a warm bed from a dead sleep and her body wasn't ready to handle this drop in temperature.

She heard a creak as one of the dorm's outer doors opened and closed.

Finally!

She looked toward the darkened dorm, expecting Tim to appear on the slope, heading her way. She heard the squeak of wheels, like someone rolling a wagon along the walk up there, thought she saw a shadow or two move across the space between the dorm and the caf, but they were gone before she could focus. She waited, but still no Tim.

Who else would be wandering around the campus at this hour?

Meet me in the car. That was what the note had said. Tim had said he was going to warm it up.

That gave Quinn an idea. She pulled out her key ring and picked out Tim's car keys. She opened the door and got inside. The cold of the vinyl raced through the fabric of her sweats, chilling her rear and the backs of her thighs. She started the car and pushed the thermostat up to the maximum.

If Tim wasn't going to heat up the car for her, she'd heat it up for him. But she wished he'd hurry. It was creepy out here.

She pushed down the door lock and rubbed her hands together, waiting for the heat.

Come on, Tim. Come out, come out, wherever you are.

*

Tim tried to keep the encroaching panic at bay by cataloging what he knew.

First off, he was still alive. That was a good start.

Second, he was unharmed—relatively. His left flank still ached and throbbed from that one, nasty kidney punch—which he now assumed had been dealt to shut him up—but after that he'd been handled roughly but without any evidence of malice. His abductors didn't seem to have anything personal against him. It was all pretty businesslike. Tim wasn't sure whether or not he should take heart from that.

Third, he was still on campus—where, he wasn't sure. After binding and gagging him, they'd dumped him into one of the laundry hampers the maids used for dirty linen and wheeled him out of the dorm—just the way convicts used to break out of prison in the old B movies. He'd bumped and rattled along a series of fairly level concrete walks, so he'd assumed he was traveling among the buildings of the campus. Then he'd been pushed uphill a short distance, into a building, into an elevator for a short trip down, along a hallway and into this room where he'd been strapped into a padded armchair that creaked like wood when he shifted his weight.

His best guess: He was in the basement of the Science Center.

Suddenly the tape was ripped away from his mouth. Tim spit out the gag and gulped air. He waited for the blindfold tape to be removed but it remained untouched.

"Who are you?" he heard someone ask him.

The tantalizingly familiar voice startled him with its matter-of-fact tone.

"What?" Tim's tongue was dry from the cloth gag and he sounded like a frog who'd been singing all night. He worked up some saliva to moisten it.

The question came again. "Who are you?"

Now he pegged the voice: Louis Verran's. He found a certain grim satisfaction—if no comfort—in realizing that his suspicions were now proved correct.

"You know damn well who I am—" He almost added Verran's name but caught himself. Maybe the blindfold had been left on for a reason. Maybe he'd be endangering himself by revealing that he recognized his interrogator.

"I want you to say it. Say your name."

Okay. He'd cooperate. No harm in that.

"Timothy Brown."

"From what college did you graduate, Mr. Brown?"

"Dartmouth."

"And which is your room here on campus?"

"Room one-twenty-five."

"All right," Verran's voice said, moving closer. "He's all yours."

Tim grimaced with pain as the tape was ripped from across his eyes, taking some of his eyebrows with it. He squinted in the unaccustomed glare, but gradually the light and shadows began to take form.

"Mr. Brown, Mr. Brown, Mr. Brown," said a tired voice he recognized instantly. "Whatever are we going to do with you, Mr. Brown?"

Tim blinked to bring the figure standing before him into focus.

"Dr. Alston!"

"Yes, Mr. Brown."

"You're in on this?"

Dr. Alston pulled up a chair and seated himself facing Tim. He looked utterly relaxed, completely in control.

"In on what, Mr. Brown? Just what is it you think is going on here?"

Tim glanced around. He could have been in an electronics hobbyist's heaven—or hell. Monitors, speakers, computers, equalizers, oscilloscopes, white, red, and green blinking lights, wires, cables, and an array of other equipment he couldn't identify. Louis Verran was off to the right, watching a monitor. Tim tried to pull his arms free but they were securely bound—wrists, forearms, and biceps—to the armchair. He noticed wires connected by clamps to his fingertips. Were they going to shock him? He wiggled his fingers, trying to shake off the clamps, but they held firm.

He looked at Alston who smiled.

"No, Mr. Brown. We have no intention of torturing you. But we do want to make sure you stay put until we are through with you."

No question about staying put. He was trapped. Caged like a lab animal. The realization was a sick, sinking sensation in his chest. But at least Dr. Alston was a safe, sane, respected physician, researcher, and academician.

Wasn't he?

Alston said, "Again: What do you think is going on?"

"I don't know," Tim said. "But I do know you've got The Ingraham bugged six ways from Sunday."

Dr. Alston smiled that thin, cold smile of his as he lounged in his chair. "'Six ways from Sunday.' How quaint. I assure you we do not have The Ingraham bugged."

"The dorm, then."

"The dorm, yes. And you've discovered that, haven't you? What else have you discovered, Mr. Brown?"

Tim saw no use in lying about dismantling the headboard. The two goons who'd mugged him must have seen it.

"Something in the headboard."

"What in the headboard?"

"I don't know."

"You're the brainy medical student, Mr. Brown. What do you think?"

Might as well let it all hang out, Tim thought.

"I think you're brainwashing us."

Tim saw Dr. Alston stiffen and straighten in his chair. He was no longer lounging.

Bingo.

"What on earth could lead you to such a farfetched conclusion?"

"You really want to know or are we just killing time?"

"I quite sincerely want to know, Mr. Brown. It's important to me."

Tim believed him. Briefly he ran down the suspicions he'd developed about the stick pin/bug, the change he'd perceived in his own attitudes, his search of his room, and what he'd discovered.

Dr. Alston listened with visibly growing agitation, glancing frequently at Verran who was partially insulated in the earphones of his headset and seemed absorbed in his read-outs.

"So am I to understand it that if you hadn't stepped on that misplaced bug you would still be a model student here at The Ingraham?"

"Not quite," he said. "One of the other students at the bull sessions hasn't shown any change in attitudes." Tim didn't want to bring Quinn into this so he changed her sex. "His unchanged opinions made me aware of the change in mine."

"He's not talking about a 'he'," Verran said in a low voice. "He means Cleary, the girl in two-five-two."

"Ah, the redoubtable Miss Quinn Cleary. Her name keeps popping up. By the way, why isn't she here?"

For the first time since the tape had been pulled from Tim's eyes, he saw Louis Verran look up from his read-outs.

"She's not supposed to be here."

"I wanted her brought here," Dr. Alston said.

"Kurt and Elliot are too busy with damage control right now to play footsie with her."

"I specifically told Kurt I wanted her brought in."

Verran swiveled in his chair and stared at Dr. Alston.

"Kurt? You told Kurt to bring her in? He's a fucking animal!"

Tim clenched his fists as a ball of lead dropped into his stomach. Kurt? Who was Kurt?

Dr. Alston sniffed. "He won't do anything rash when he's operating on my direct orders."

"Don't be too fucking sure of that."

Dr. Alston waved Verran off. "Never mind."

Tim said, "If anything happens to her—"

"What?" Dr. Alston said, turning to him. "You'll do what? I'll tell you what you'll do, young man. You'll do nothing but sit here and listen as I explain to you what's really happening here at The Ingraham. And once you've heard the whole story, I'm sure you'll feel quite differently about it."

But Tim couldn't listen. All he could think about was Quinn and what this Kurt animal might do to her.

*

Quinn flicked on the courtesy lights and checked the dashboard clock. 3:02 a.m. The car heater was going, she was warm, but still no Tim.

Her concern was mounting with every passing minute, like a knot, tightening in her chest. Tim...he'd looked so strange, so frightened. And those notes about the room being bugged. Was he having some sort of breakdown?