The Love You Crave

53.

“You weren’t lying,” the technician says. “I’ve never seen anything like that before.”

“Do I get some sort of prize?”

“If you do, it won’t come from us.”

“Story of my life,” I say.

I exit the room and find Jeff standing with his back to my locker.

“Any problems?” I say.

“Were you expecting any?”

“I wasn’t sure what to expect.”

“They had you in there forty minutes,” he says. “Is your brain that much larger than you thought?”

“Yeah.”

“Did it hurt?”

“Nope.”

I think about pressing the button now, to see if the MRI worked, but then a scary thought crosses my mind. Specifically, I wonder how much damage I might do. Assuming the chip in my head has been erased, I’m safe. But when I press the button on the ceramic device four times, two hundred and twelve chips are going to explode, wherever they are in the world!

Some of the chips are bound to be attached to explosives.

Plastic explosives-plastique as we call it-is soft and easily molded by hand. How easy? Explosives engineers call them “putty explosives.” So a group of terrorists on the same plane can each walk into an airplane lavatory carrying small bits of plastique and add their bit to the others that have been placed underneath and behind areas that aren’t easily visible. Like under the sink. Push a chip into the plastique, and you’re looking at a bomb that can be detonated from virtually anywhere in the world.

Even this locker room at the MRI center.

Here’s how my brain works: what if the airplane lavatory scenario is in place on Miranda’s flight? When I press the button, maybe the plane explodes, and I wind up killing 300 innocent people, including Miranda, simply because I’d been hoping to kill a couple dozen terrorists. Would I be able to live with myself?

I doubt it.

So there’s that. On the other hand, the longer I wait before pressing the button, the more time the terrorists will have to set bombs in and around high profile targets!

Want to see how the dark side of my brain works?

What if I’m being set up?

What if George was a terrorist, and the whole lady-walking-into-a-lamp post event was staged for my benefit? A good mastermind could have put that into play. Now that I think about it, George was awfully quick to tell me there was no need to meet his arms dealer. What if there was no arms dealer? What if his terrorist buddies have truckloads of plastique stashed all over downtown Las Vegas? Or maybe the airport? What if the plan was for me to press the button four times and cause the destruction of tens of thousands of innocent people?

I’d love to be the one to press the button. I just wish I could believe the only ones who’ll get hurt are the bad guys. Unfortunately, in real life it doesn’t always work that way.

I get dressed and sit on the bench in the locker room, check my phone messages, see that Miranda has texted me her flight information. She’ll be here in two hours and forty-five minutes, which means she hasn’t left New York City yet.

I look at Jeff. “You want some breakfast?”

“If it’s real breakfast,” he says.

“What’s real to you?”

“Rooster knees and grits.”

“A diner?”

“That’ll do.”

“Bennie ought to know a place.”

Jeff calls Bennie to tell him we’re ready to be picked up.

“No problem,” Bennie says. “I’m just around the corner.”

I retrieve the gift-wrapped present from Norma, the receptionist, and shake it to make sure the device is still inside. Everything feels right. Is that a good or bad sign?

See how I live?

Back in the locker room I open the gift box. The device is there.

Why am I so paranoid?

Because it’s all going too easily.

My guard is up.

Jeff and I head outside. My eyes are scanning the campus, expecting an ambush. I watch the car drive up, wonder if it’s filled with armed agents bent on retrieving the chip. Or killing me. Or both.

IUC’s more of an urban campus, which means there are few trees to hide behind. The gun is no longer in my bag, it’s in my pocket, in my hand. I feel like an old-time gunslinger, ready to start shootin’ the minute some owlhoot draws a bead on me.

Then I feel like an idiot when it turns out the car is perfectly safe.

Jeff appears to be looking at me strangely.

I wonder if my present state of mind has something to do with the chip being de-magnetized. Maybe that did something to enhance my paranoia.

I climb in the limo. Jeff scoots near the front to explain to Bennie what type of diner he’s looking for. While he’s doing that, I call Lou.

“What’s up?” Lou says, cheerfully.

“I need to cancel the flight.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah. I changed my mind.”

“What about the chip?”

And there it was.

I say, “I don’t recall telling you anything about a chip.”

“No?”

“No.”

“You must have.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Then how would I know?”

“How indeed?” I say. I must’ve sounded strange because Jeff turns to look at me.

“You okay?” he says.

I study Jeff a moment. I’ve known him for six years. I generally trust him, but he’s an odd duck, and I don’t trust anyone completely. Maybe it’s because I was lying on the table, vulnerable, for forty minutes, and haven’t recovered from that loss of control yet.

Lou hasn’t come up with a response, so I click the phone off and concentrate on Jeff. From where he’s sitting, I can’t disable him without a full-scale encounter. In other words, he’s too far away for me to strike him before he can react. By the same token, I’m too far away for him to attack me.

Not that he seems the least inclined to do so. Instead, he’s trying to touch his nose with the tip of his tongue.

I’m pretty sure Jeff’s safe. He sees me staring at him and says, “What?”

“Are you still dating that girl, the one with the weird job?”

He laughs. “The hair boiler?”

“Right. Tell me again what she does?”

“She dumps tons of animal hair into giant vats of boiling water until it curls. She dumps the hair in the pot, stirs it, drains it, dries it.”

“I remember she was very pretty,” I say.

“Still is.”

“There was some reason she had trouble getting dates.”

“The smell.”

“Tell me again.”

“Picture the smell of wet, burning, animal hair. She boils it all day long.”

“Boiled hair soup!”

“Exactly. The smell is always in her hair. It even seeps into her skin.”

“Would you ever let her cook for you?”

“Yeah, but not soup.”

“And you’re able to overlook the smell?”

“That’s why we get along so well. I like the smell! Why do you ask?”

“I have no idea.”

“Just making conversation?”

“I guess.”

I spot Kimberly’s voice message on my phone. This time I listen to it. Just as I’m done, I get a text from her. She’s in Dallas, waiting on her connecting flight. But it’s on time.

“Jeff, we need to cancel breakfast.”

“What’s wrong?”

“My daughter’s on her way to Vegas.”

“Right now?”

“Right now.”

“What about Miranda?”

“I can’t wait that long.”

He grins. “Want me to meet her at the airport for you? Make sure she’s okay?”

“Not on your life!”

I press the speed dial for Miranda. She answers, saying, “Donovan, I’m so sorry! Our plane’s been delayed. But I’ll be there before one o’clock.”

“Honey, that’s actually good news.”

“I don’t understand. You don’t want to see me?”

“Of course I do! But I just found out my daughter’s on her way to Vegas to pay me a surprise visit.”

She laughs. “That would’ve been awkward.”

“I’ll make it up to you.”

“Damn right you will,” she says.

“I look forward to it.”

“Me too.”