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"I don't know. A couple hours for preliminaries. Could be days for a final."
"Send word as soon as you confirm the preliminary results. I want to hear immediately."
"Okay." Dr. Chen turned to his work, ignoring them both. Lacroix glided to her side and pointed at the door.
As soon as they were in the corridor, she turned to him and demanded, "What was that all about?"
The gleam in his eyes reminded her of a starving man viewing a five-course banquet. Desperate hunger, tinged with disbelief.
"Dr. Chen is working on a cure for a degenerative blood disorder. Your blood contained one of the structures associated with the disorder. He's checking to see if you have a healthy version of one of the other structures that he can use."
"So I might be part of a cure for something?" Should she believe him? Or was this part of a complex ploy to mislead her, like letting tourists to the big city win the first game of Three Card Monte?
"It's too soon to guess. And I wouldn't want to raise anyone's hopes." He kept his voice level and calm, but she sensed the excitement in him, crackling just beneath the surface. His reaction seemed out of proportion to a simple lab experiment. What was his involvement with the Institute's research? Was his position as Director more than just a job to him? Her stomach churned. Was he looking for a cure for himself? More importantly, why did the thought of him being ill upset her so much?
He held open another door, gesturing for her to precede him. He used his left hand this time, and she caught a glint of light reflected from his wedding ring.
DESMOND HELD open the door, waiting for Ms. Morgan to recover from whatever it was that had stalled her in her tracks. Long years of controlling his emotions let him keep a calm, unruffled appearance, even though he felt like shouting and swinging the good reporter around the halls in a joyous dance. If Dr. Chen was right, Ms. Morgan's blood could hold the key to Gillian's cure.
His little girl might live. He had a chance to defeat the curse that had shadowed him for so many years.
He darted a quick glance at the woman by h
is side. She wore her chestnut brown hair in a sleek bob. No doubt she intended it to be professional. But her delicately boned face and wide gray eyes undercut that impression. She looked more like the traditional pictures of an elf or wood sprite. And she seemed so young, not much more than a child herself. Compared to him, she was a child. But the way she'd aroused his interest by sucking the blood from her finger had been all woman.
He forced his thoughts away from the memory. If Chen was right, he had more important uses for her blood.
"How are the research topics chosen and assigned?" Ms. Morgan asked as they continued down the hallway.
What prompted that question? He tried to scan her surface thoughts for a clue, and ran into a smooth mental wall. Intrigued, he turned to get a direct look at her.
When he'd first met her, she'd been surrounded by the same constant cloud of surface thoughts buzzing and darting around her conscious mind as most people. Although her frank appraisal of him had been flattering, propriety compelled him to strengthen his mental barriers. He'd dropped them when she suffered her panic attack, but he'd lowered them too far. She'd picked up on his mental imagery of being buried alive.
He'd kept the shields firmly in place since then, and hadn't noticed the change in her thoughts. When had they acquired such focus and strength?
"Mr. Lacroix, you didn't answer my question."
Her mental control wavered just enough to allow images of folded arms and tapping feet to swirl past. He smiled. That was it. She'd focused her mind on her story. He'd seen the same thing happen with researchers working on a particularly demanding problem, but he'd never encountered such a complete focus before.
"My apologies. My thoughts were...elsewhere." He felt her mental wall buckle slightly, lulled by his voice. "The researchers choose their own topics. Division chairs present the latest results at monthly meetings, and researchers often change topics to work in areas experiencing greater success."
The warm rush of pride filled him, as he admired his alternative to imposing suspicious research directives. By letting the researchers choose their own topics, but directing more funding toward those that addressed his and Gillian's problems, the researchers accomplished his goals with no knowledge of how the topics related. The person closest to an all-encompassing view was Dr. Chen, but as long as he remained the Institute's golden boy, with virtually unlimited funding, Chen wouldn't question anything.
All the money he'd poured into the Institute would be worth it, if Dr. Chen's tests proved positive. In two hours, they'd know if Ms. Morgan's DNA could provide the key to the healthy blood cell production that Gillian lacked.
Even viewed against the backdrop of his considerable life span, Desmond knew the next two hours would seem an eternity. For Gillian's sake, he must act quickly.
If the test was successful, Dr. Chen would need Ms. Morgan's continued help in developing a cure. Desmond could convince her to stay if he knew what she really wanted. But to do that, he'd have to get through her mental shield that muffled his ability to read her thoughts. He had to distract her, dissolve her focus. And the best way to do that was to tire her out.
He started a circuitous route through the facility. If he arranged it correctly, they could spend the next two hours walking without once retracing their steps. Meanwhile, he would dredge up every inane fact and useless piece of trivia he could remember about the Institute. By the time they finished, she'd be exhausted.
And Dr. Chen would have the preliminary results ready.
REBECCA STRUGGLED to take notes as they walked, stopping, writing, then dashing to catch up. Each time, it took longer to regain the ground she'd lost during her stop. She wished she'd eaten more than just coffee and doughnuts for breakfast. The effects of the caffeine and sugar must be wearing off.
They passed through a mixture of labs and administrative areas, with Lacroix pointing out every conference room and lecture hall. As they passed by the closed door of yet another lab, they were stopped by a gorilla of a man incongruously stuffed into a dark gray business suit.
"Mr. Lacroix, do you have a moment?"
