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“You’re welcome. You can anticipate a good review… on Goodly… Google, I mean…”
“Yes, I believe we are ready, Dr. St. Claire.”
“Yeah, you better…” See, this was the problem with the thiopental. It made you too agreeable. “… get the questions done. I’m running out of time before I lose… consciousness.”
He should probably be more scared. It was doubtful he was coming out of this conversation alive, and he didn’t think anybody was going to find his body—
“I need to know how to get into C.P. Phalen’s house, Dr. St. Claire.”
Annnnnnnnnnnd there it was. No surprise.
“You try Zillow?” Gus laughed a little, then had to cough his throat clear. “Have you seen theSNL… skit they did on Zillow—”
“You are going to tell me the code to the entrances. And then we can be finished with our business.”
Gus’s scrambled-egg brain spit out an image of the blond woman in question, so tall in those heels she always wore, the black suits tailored onto her body, her hair all camera-ready. Fucking Phalen. She’d been too important to him from the second he’d first met her—and then things had gotten so much deeper that he’d had to quit her underground lab and defect to her biggest competitor. And the punchline? In the law of unintended consequences,it appeared he was taking Vita-12b with him thanks to her paperwork.
Not that he was going to be alive much longer.
Their goodbye had sucked, he thought. His and fucking Phalen’s, that was.
But how was it ever going to be a good one? He was in love with her.
“Oh, Hans,” he said sadly. “I think this is the end of the best part of our relationship.”
There was another pause. “My name is not Hans.”
“I’ve Gruber’d you in my head. Just so you know.”
“I’m complimented. Ivan Reitman is one of my favorite actors.”
“Alan Rickman, you mean. Reitman didGhostbustersas a producer.”
A soft chuckle was almost a purr. “You are very smart, Dr. St. Claire. And the time for obfuscation is over.”
“Big word, there, Hans—and it’s too bad. I was enjoying our back-and-forth. The initial stupor is receding and I’m feeling quite chatty now.”
“Good. For you.”
As some kind of second phase ramped up, tremors began to go through his body, a buzzy energy making his teeth rattle.
Seizure coming?he wondered.
“Not that you care,” he chattered, “but I hate the fact that Alan Rickman died so young. Andyou know another thing that’s always bothered me? Alex Trebek. Which then makes me think of Patrick Swayze… Michael Landon. John Hurt. Do you know what those five have in common?”
“Dr. St. Claire, we are off track—”
“Pancreatic cancer.” Gus shook his head and felt the facial mask move, the band around his ears shifting. “Silent killer, most don’t find out until it’s too late, and then it’s a fucking bitch with conventional treatments—and even if you do the Whipple procedure, the five-year survival rate is only twenty percent. We need to do better with so—”
A sharp, thin line of pressure across the front of his neck stopped him.
“The codes, Dr. St. Claire.”
Gus swallowed, and felt the blade cut into his Adam’s apple. “Is that a knife, Hans?”
“It is not a pencil.”
“Look at you, quite the jokester.”
