I hold out my hands, palms up, then ball them into fists, enraged. “Worse than frying her memory with a fucking motherboard!?”
“There was some chain reaction.”
“Meaning?” My fists are still clenched.
“A handful of patients suffered sudden degradation of their memory assets.”
“You mean: their memory cells? These aren’t widgets.”
“Right. It’s been described to me that they contracted a virus. Somehow the interaction between computer and human stimulated a cascade of cell loss.”
“A wildfire,” I say.
He nods.
“But if the computers reported a ‘wildfire,’ they must have been programmed to look for it. Its creators must have known this was a possibility. That makes this something less than an unforeseeable accident.”
I ring my fingers around the wine opener in my pocket. “So why did you try to kill her — and me?”
Chuck puts out his hands, trying to calm me. I take another step forward. He scoots to the edge of the couch and, without taking his eyes from me, opens the drawer in an end table. He pulls out a gun.
“The only thing I’ve ever tried to kill, or killed, has been helpless wildlife.” He cradles the gun casually, the threat only implicit.
“Who then? Who tried to kill us?” I demand.
He sighs. “You said it yourself. The Swiss.”
I shake my head. Not grasping this.
“Falcon,” he says flatly.
“The Swiss giant trying to buy Biogen?” Incredulous.
He shifts back to his computer. He moves the cursor and double clicks on something on his monitor. Moments later, the PowerPoint presentation disappears, and a new image appears — the hooded man who tried to shoot us and set me on fire.
“That’s the Swiss guy?”
“Sven something. Works for Falcon. If they’re going to buy Biogen, they can’t afford to have a messy secret experiment exposed.”
“Did they kill Adrianna?”
“My guess is they’ve detained her, not killed her. No reason to. They’re not indiscriminate killers.”
“But they’ll kill a demented grandmother who can’t reveal any information, and her grandson who doesn’t know a damn thing? Or didn’t until now. Why?”
“That part is personal.”
I shake my head — I don’t understand his meaning.
“Adrianna has made a long-term investment in another person, and she’s deeply emotionally committed to seeing it pay off.”
“English!”
“She’s playing the role of aunt to the boy. As long as they threaten his safety, she won’t compromise their secrets.”
“Newton?”
He nods.
“And Grandma and I don’t have anything to live for?”
He closes the top of his computer.
“Two different issues,” he says. “Your grandmother — she can’t be stopped from talking because she can no longer understand reason, or be coerced or blackmailed. Ironically enough, because she has dementia, she’s a liability for what she knows, even if she doesn’t know she knows it.”
“What does she know?”
He shakes his head. He wants to say something else but seems to change gears. He says: “You’re a liability for a different reason.”
“Because I’m a journalist.”
“Because you’re a junkie for the hunt. I’m guessing here, inferring a little. But if I were them, I’d find you threatening because you live for this kind of action. No personal connection or promise of wealth or intimacy is as interesting to you as the chase. That makes you beyond blackmail or reason.”
I close my eyes and clench my teeth. I let out a loud, frustrated exhale. I’m seeing an image of Grandma and then, surprising to me, Pauline. He has no idea how wrong he is about my intimate connections and my will to fight for them.
“None of this explains why they didn’t kill me when they had the chance.”
“What do you mean?”
I tell him about Grandma’s abduction. Whoever took Grandma left me alive, with her care file. He takes it all in. I can see from the machinations in his jaw that he’s working it out, His face shouts stress and concern, displeasure.
“The Swiss took her?” I say, a statement as much as a question.
“I’ll help you find out, Nat. I promise you that.”
“Chuck, you’ve still not explained your interest — the military’s interest.”
“I’ll show you.”
Toting his gun, Chuck starts to walk out of the room. I follow, feeling the sharp tip of the wine opener in my pocket.