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“What is it?” Mike asked. “You look like you’ve swallowed your tongue.”
“No, it’s good news, I think.” She handed him the phone and watched as he skimmed the email.
“This guy just randomly wrote to you?” Mike frowned. “I don’t like that.”
“Well, if you were diagnosed with Barks-Howard’s and you were doing research on the condition, you’d probably turn up my name pretty quickly,” she pointed out. “There aren’t a lot of people writing on the subject.”
“All right, but how did he get your email address?”
“It’s on the hospital website.” She plucked her phone back out of his hands. “You don’t need to be so suspicious, Mike. This could be a good thing.”
“You don’t think it’s weird that the exact thing you’ve been looking for just happened to fall into your lap?”
“Sometimes good things do happen,” she said. “I’m not going to get all suspicious about it.”
“What are you going to do, then?”
“I’m going to write him back.” She hit reply on the email. “I’m going to see if he’d like to meet up and discuss the details of whatever it is he’s offering.”
“You should at least take someone with you.” Mike had always been protective of her. “You shouldn’t go meeting some guy who contacted you online all alone. I could come.”
“Don’t be silly. That would be completely unprofessional,” Amy said. “I’m not going to bring my big brother on a business meeting. I know how to stay safe. We’ll meet somewhere public. A coffee shop.” She was already typing. “Somewhere in the city. Someplace classy.”
Mike groaned.
“I meet with potential investors all the time,” Amy said. “You need to stop treating me like your kid sister and recognize that I know what I’m doing.”
“It’s not whatyou’redoing that worries me. It’s what this guy might be doing. Who knows what he really wants?”
“Look, if he’s a real Barks-Howard’s patient, he’ll have medical documentation, which I’ll ask to see right away in order to understand his case,” she said. “If he doesn’t have any documentation, I’ll just leave. Okay?”
“Okay,” Mike said, not sounding like he thought it was particularly okay. “I just don’t understand why he wouldn’t stick with the doctor he already has.”
“Because there’s no cure for this,” Amy said. “Staying with his current doctor would be like giving up. Letting the disease take him. If I had been diagnosed with Barks-Howard’s and I had enough money to throw at the problem, I’d be doing exactly what this Adriano Canali guy is doing. I would be looking for someone like me. Someone who actually stood a chance at helping to solve the issue.”
“You really think you can help him?”
“This has been my life’s work,” Amy said. “If anybody can do it, I can. And this is the opportunity I’ve been waiting for all my life. This is the moment I might finally be able to make a breakthrough that’s been eluding me for years. With a little bit of disposable money and a willing subject, I think I can crack this, Mike. I really do.”
Her brother nodded slowly. “I guess you have to try,” he said.
Amy let out a sigh of relief. “I’m glad you see it that way.”
“But once you cure this disease, you’re going to take some time off, right?”
Amy laughed. “I’ll do my best,” she assured him. “I wouldn’t say no to a nice long vacation once the time is right. I just need to get this done first.”
CHAPTER3
AMY
Mike left town two nights later, with firm admonitions to Amy that she should think twice before meeting up with strangers and that she should choose a well-lit public place in which to do it if she insisted on going through with the meetup.
Amy, who had been corresponding regularly with her prospective patient since receiving his first email, had arranged to meet him at a coffee shop in downtown Denver. The night before the meeting was due to take place, however, something happened that completely distracted her from Adriano Canali.
It was probably inevitable, living in the home her mother had owned since Amy was a child, that eventually something would go wrong. Still, the flood in the kitchen had her frozen for a moment. Then she scrambled to get her brother on the phone, not knowing what to do.
“Sounds like a burst pipe,” Mike said. “Do you need me to come back?”
