"Why was I afraid you'd back off? You're really doing it because you're pissed. Okay, you've got a right. But I've brought you something I think you ought to at least look at." He was unzipping his fanny pack and taking out a Gerex Corporation envelope, folded in half. Christ, he thought miserably, why is she doing this to me? I've got to keep the door open. "Read this and then give me a call tonight, like you promised. It'll tell you more about him." She hesitated before taking it. It was thick with papers and she was planning to spend the day visiting Nina. "I think I've heard enough already." "Just look at his CV. Van de Vliet's. He's done a lot of things. You've got to take him seriously." He urged it into her hand. "Look at it and call me. Please." She took it, and then she reached down and patted Knickers. "Come on, baby. Let's go up." He watched her disappear into the lobby and start shooting the breeze with the doorman, some red-haired jerk with a ponytail who'd just come on duty. Damn. Maybe the best thing would be just to chloroform her and let her wake up in the lab. W.B. needs her. Chapter 2 _Sunday, April 5 8:20 A.M. _"Okay, you'd better take it from here," Winston Bartlett declared to Kenji Noda over the roar of the engine. He had lifted his feet off the pedals and was unbuckling the cockpit seat belt. He liked having a turn piloting his McDonnell Douglas 520N helicopter on the commutes between his corporate headquarters in Lower Manhattan and his medical research park in northern New Jersey, but prudence dictated a more experienced hand on the collective during descent and landing. For that he had Noda, formerly of the Japanese Defense Forces. A tall, wiry man of few words, Noda was also his bodyguard, chauffeur, and curator of his museum-quality _katana _sword collection. With the sharp, delicious aroma of the pine forest below wafting through the cabin, Noda quickly put aside the origami he'd been folding, to center his mind and slid around a special opening in the bulkhead. He strapped himself into the seat, then took the radio headphones. The sky was the purest blue, with not another craft in the visual perimeter. They were, after all, over a forest. As Bartlett settled himself in the passenger compartment, he thought about where matters stood. There was the very real prospect he had rolled the dice one time too many. The daily blood tests at his clinic in New Jersey were showing he was disturbingly close to using up his nine lives.