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“Miss?”
They would be so upset with me. What would I tell them?
“Miss?”
Nikki shook out of her thoughts with a start. There he was. Right in front of her.
Harris.
“I… um… may I help you, sir?” she stammered out.
“Yes, I’m here to see a Dr. Redpepper. I have an appointment.”
He wasn’t even looking at her, really, mostly off down the hallway. Clearly bored, clearly wanting this to already be over and done with.
Perfect. The less he looked at her, the less nervous she would be.
“Ah, yes. Mr. Harris. I’m Maria. We spoke on the phone,” she said, leaving the front desk to lead Harris off down the hall. “Follow me, please.”
The hallway was mostly empty, and Nikki prayed that would continue. The last thing she needed was for her supervisor to show up and start asking questions.
“Don’t I need to… check in?” Harris said, looking back at the front desk.
“Nope,” Nikki said. “No. I have that already taken care of for you. We know you’re very busy and we want to be able to get you in and out with a minimum of fuss.”
“I appreciate that. I’m a federal agent and…”
“Oh, how interesting!” Nikki said, patting him on the arm. “Any wild and crazy cases going on?”
“Well, I can’t discuss any ongoing operations.”
“Right, right, of course. I didn’t mean to pry. Everything can get so routine around here, I was just hoping for a little excitement. All right, here we are. Exam Four.”
“This is the place?” Harris said, looking inside the room before entering.
Exam Four was a proper exam room with a door, unlike the curtain areas, which were really just large, wide areas filled with beds separated by flimsy fabric curtains for a modicum of privacy. Nikki had picked Exam Four for a reason. A room with a door, that would give enough privacy, and also was temporarily not being used due to maintenance issues.
“Yes, just sit on the exam table for me,” Nikki said, a little relieved to have Harris hidden away in the room and out of the hallway. “You can put all of your personal items here on the table and I’ll weigh you.”
Harris emptied his pockets onto the small table, next to a tray full of random instruments someone had left behind from a previous encounter. While he was distracted, Nikki textedNOWto Devil, hoping he’d been following instructions and staying out of sight in the bathroom.
Harris held up his cell phone as a question. “Do I need to turn this off?”
“No, no,” Nikki said, trying not to get excited at the sight of the target of her secret mission. “You can just set your phone right there with the rest of your things.”
Nikki mechanically went through the motions of weighing him, barely registering his dismayed comments at gaining a few pounds. Her eyes were on Harris’s phone. It was right there. All she needed to do was to get Benny’s virus phone within six inches and leave it there for three minutes. A little red button would light up on the virus phone when it was done.
It seemed so easy when you said it like that, but trying to get Harris separated from his phone and not looking at it for a full three minutes was starting to feel a little bit like climbing Mount Everest. The desk with his phone on it was right next to the exam table. As long as he was sitting on it, he could see his phone. They were going to have to turn him around somehow.
Where are you, Devil?she thought to herself, and as if those thoughts had conjured him, the door to Exam Four swung open and Devil was there.
“And be sure to take those twice a day,” he said to someone in the hallway as he walked through the doorway.
Who is he talking to?Nikki wondered, but said, “Ah, Doctor Redpepper. This is Steven Harris.”
Nodding serenely, Devil said, “Mr. Harris.”
“Thank you for seeing me on such short notice, Doctor.”
