Roselyn stood, pushing in her chair with a knee. “It could be. I mean, think about it. It costs, what, $800 million to bring a drug to market? And that’s just the average. Not to mention years of research—sometimes decades. With enough financial motivation, I could see someone leaking data to the competition.” She shrugged. “We could have a spy right here and not even know it.”
Roy Hubbins’ face swam before her. Maggie swallowed. “Yeah. That would be awful.”
Roselyn gathered her things and hugged them against her chest. “Beyond awful. Anyway, I’m taking off. My mom’s having oral surgery. I’m her designated driver today and Lifetime movie companion tomorrow until I escape for the company gala. See you then?”
“You know it.” Maggie said good-bye and made her way back to her desk. The knot that had snarled in her stomach yesterday returned, tightened, going from slip-knot to hangman’s noose. She wiggled her computer mouse and logged on. As she waited for her computer to warm up, she reached for her phone and brought it to life with the touch of her finger.
The icon for the meeting reminder app seemed to look back, mocking her. There was no number, no new message. But a feeling of disquiet filled her. Again she remembered the woman who had appeared in the same way on her phone, what had happened to her. She thought about the new stranger on her phone and what might happen to him.
On impulse, she wiggled her computer mouse, opened an internet browser and typed the URL of the local news station in the search bar.
She watched as regional stories rotated through the carousel.
Student Advances to National Spelling Bee.
Mayor to Speak at Benefit.
Annexation Planned.
Then finally: Local Man Killed in Auto Wreck.
Maggie felt her scalp tingle. She clicked. The photo of the man on her phone took center stage on her computer screen. He mugged for the invisible photographer, laugh lines bracketing brown eyes, fist propped under a goateed chin in a mock GQ pose.
The feeling of recognition was overwhelming. Almost as overwhelming as the sense of déjà vu. Another appointment reminder with a stranger. Another death reported in the news.
She began to scroll.
Suddenly there was a pair of hands on her shoulders, squeezing, massaging. Maggie tried to turn around, to see whose hands were on her body. The grip tightened. She felt warm air against her ear.
“Just relax,” Miles whispered, his lips an inch from her ear. “I’m really good at this.”
Maggie shrugged off his hands and spun around, her heart pounding, her body on high alert.
Miles smiled. The expression looked like an afterthought, something donned for the situation, like a tie for work. “Didn’t mean to startle you. You just looked tense.”
“Oh.” Maggie wanted to rub her shoulders briskly, to wipe off the feeling of Miles’ hands. Instead she put on her own smile. She was the new girl. He was the big boss’s son. She had to play nice. “Nope, not tense. Just busy.”
Miles looked at her computer monitor. “You don’t look busy. You look like you’re surfing the Net.”
Whoops.
“Oh this?” Maggie poured on the nonchalance. “I have the local news set as my home page. I was just about to log onto Bioconjugate Chemistry.”
Miles nodded slowly. He’d forgotten about his smile, and it slid off his face. He put it back on. “I thought you were going to update your online dating profile or something. You’re probably into the kinky stuff.” The smile broadened, turned wicked. “The quiet ones always are.”
Maggie’s stomach turned. “No online dating,” she said evenly, continuing her act of indifference “Just work.” She began to turn around. “Speaking of…”
Miles stared at her a moment. “I’ll let you get back to it. Just remember, these…” He wriggled his fingers. “…are always available.” Miles backed out of her cubicle then popped his head back in. “Oh, and don’t forget about that drink invitation. It’s always open.” Then he was gone.
Maggie closed her eyes and let out the breath she didn’t know she was holding. What the hell was that? Was Miles just socially tone-deaf? Trying to be funny? Or was he the king of creeps?
Given their earlier encounter on the trail and the ease with which Miles put his hands on her, Maggie’s money was on the latter. And it wasn’t like she could do anything about it. A friendly massage. Some office banter. He’s just trying to be nice, she’d be told. Don’t take it too seriously, she’d be advised. It was a song she’d heard before, a tune she guessed most women were familiar with. And right now, she couldn’t afford to make waves.
Maggie turned her attention back to her computer monitor. Right. The reminder. The death. She looked over her shoulder then continued scrolling.
The article was short, terse:
Collinsburg resident Carson Parks was pronounced dead at the scene of an accident on Ridgecrest Drive at approximately 2:20 this morning. The car collided with a concrete noise abatement wall that bordered the neighborhood of Ridgecrest Heights, resulting in fatal head trauma, a police spokesperson said. No other vehicles were involved. An open bottle of Smirnoff Vodka was recovered from Mr. Park’s car.
Mr. Parks served as a social worker at New Horizons, one of the area’s three homeless shelters. A memorial service will be held next Sunday, August 9 at Restful Waters Memorial Gardens at 10:30 a.m.
An inset photo showed paramedics working to pry apart what had once been a door in the twisted ball of metal. Maggie held her phone next to her computer screen, reconciling the man on her screen with the corpse in the car.
Two reminders. Two deaths. One an accident. One a wrong-place-wrong-time scenario. Nothing to tie them together.
Nothing except the phone in Maggie’s hand.
Chapter 7
“Maggie?”
Maggie flinched. For a moment, she thought Miles had returned. Then she realized the voice was female.
Zartar peered around the corner of Maggie’s cubicle. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to startle you. I was down on the first floor and saw a cute guy asking for you at Reception. You have a secret boyfriend or something?”
“I don’t have a boyfriend,” Maggie said, her mind on two dead strangers and the phone that connected them.
Zartar crossed her arms in front of her chest. “Well, there’s a guy waiting for you downstairs. He says he’s taking you to lunch?”
Maggie looked at her watch. Had she been so preoccupied by the reminder that she sleepwalked through her entire morning?
“So who’s the mystery man?” Zartar pressed.
Maggie opened the phone’s gallery app, clicked on a picture of Constantine and turned the screen toward Zartar. “This guy?”
Zartar grabbed the phone, pursing her mouth into duck lips as she examined the photograph. “Yes and yum. What’s the story?”
Maggie shrugged. “Just a friend.”
“Friend with benefits?”
Maggie grabbed the phone back. “A friend-friend. My best friend, actually. Since middle school.”
“Whatever you say, you lucky, lucky girl,” Zartar said, sashaying off.
Maggie found Constantine seated on an austere chair in the lobby. He was pretending to read a biogenetics journal.
He wore a dark blue vintage shirt and tan shorts. His olive skin was peppered with new beard growth and his eyes were a warm brown beneath thick, dark lashes. Maggie had never thought of Constantine as handsome, although objectively she knew it was true. He’d always had female admirers in high school and college, but he never seemed interested in seeing how many notches he could add to his bedpost. He seemed to prefer hanging out with Maggie and quoting Monty Python.
They trotted out to the company parking lot and Maggie folded herself into Constantine’s 1977 Datsun B210. She slammed the door, then palpated her neck. Her lymph n
odes weren’t swollen, but she was certain she could feel something coming on. She grabbed the film canister and popped three Vitamin C tablets into her mouth. She swallowed without water.
Constantine watched her as he started the car. “How’s that chronic hypochondriasis coming along? You know, I gave to the Hypochondriacs’ Association last year in your honor.” He put a fist to his lips and stifled a fake sob. “Until there’s a cure for things that need no cure.”
“You’re going to feel terrible when I die from some horrible disease.”
Constantine eased the car from the parking lot to the street. “Can I go ahead and feel terrible now? I hate to procrastinate.”
Maggie rubbed her tongue against the roof of her mouth in a futile effort to scrape off the chalky vitamin residue. “I’m under a lot of stress, okay? I’m sort of freaking out.”
Constantine turned to look at her. She could see the concern in his eyes. “What’s wrong?”
Maggie took a deep breath. “Things just got weirder with my phone. Last night, I got another appointment reminder for a meeting I didn’t schedule with someone I don’t know.”
“Another reminder?”
“Except that’s not the weird part. Or not the really weird part. The guy who showed up on my reminder is dead, killed in a single-car accident. I just read the article online.”
“What?” He pulled into a parking space in front of Sensei’s Sushi Shack and killed the engine. He stared at her, something like fear behind his look of incredulity. “Please tell me you’re kidding.”
Maggie produced her phone, showed him the meeting reminder, then logged onto the internet and showed him the article.
“Shit,” he said under his breath.
“My thoughts exactly.”
They got out of the car and walked toward the restaurant in silence. The sign at the entrance told them to seat themselves. They took a booth beside a conveyor belt carrying tiny payloads of tuna rolls and salmon sashimi. Constantine took two blue plates from the conveyor belt and began mixing wasabi and soy sauce.
He loaded sushi into his mouth and chewed. “Let me get this straight. You’ve got two appointment reminders and two deaths. Basically, you’re batting a thousand.”
“Problem is, I don’t know what I’m playing. Or who’s playing with me.”
The waitress came and took their drink orders. She returned thirty seconds later and deposited a large plastic glass of Dr. Pepper in front of Maggie and a cup of coffee in front of Constantine.
Maggie looked at Constantine. “Coffee with sushi?”
Constantine grinned and took a sip. “It sounded good.”
Maggie rolled her eyes and drowned her sushi in a lake of wasabi-laden soy sauce. “Do you think I should call the police?”
Constantine dragged a paper napkin across his mouth. “And tell them what—you have a direct line to Death? The whole thing is weird. Maybe very weird. But the fact is, both deaths were accidental, and there’s no reason to believe they had anything to do with each other—or your phone.”
Maggie set her chopsticks down. “But don’t you think it’s odd that people I don’t know appear on my phone one day and are dead the next? Doesn’t that give you pause?”
“Hell yes it gives me pause. It gives me stop and rewind, too. But it’s not evidence of anything criminal. You need actual for-reals evidence, some kind of information beyond ‘hey, this is freaky’ before calling the cops.”
Maggie took a long drag on her Dr. Pepper, then sighed. “I guess you’re right. But I can’t just sit here and do nothing. I mean, what if the reminders don’t stop?” Maggie looked at her plate. “What if people keep dying?”
The last word died in a whisper. Tears pricked the backs of her eyelids. She blinked rapidly and took another sip of her drink.
Constantine waved his hand in a get-outta-here gesture. “That’s not going to happen. Let me take a look at your phone and see what I can do about these reminders.” He grabbed another napkin and wiped his hands. “Meanwhile, you can say hello to my little friend.”
Maggie put her hands on her hips. “You’d better be channeling Scarface.”
“Guess again.”
“Tell me you didn’t.”
“I can’t do that because I did.” Constantine dropped the crumpled napkin on the table and reached into his pocket. He produced a hamster, like a rabbit out of a hat. “I couldn’t leave poor Miss Vanilla at home.”
“Put that thing away before you get us both thrown out,” she whisper-shouted.
“She is not some ‘thing,’” he said indignantly. He lifted the caramel-hued animal out of his pocket and put her small pink nose to his slightly crooked one. “Miss Vanilla and I will pretend we didn’t hear that, won’t we?” The hamster’s whiskers twitched. “She hasn’t been out at all today. It’s good for her to see people. Besides, I bring her into your dad’s restaurant all the time. He doesn’t seem to mind.”
“That’s because he doesn’t know. Or he pretends not to know.”
“Oh. Well, Miss Vanilla was lonely. I could see it in her eyes.”
“You’re probably violating a whole book of health codes. At least put her back in your pocket.”
“No one understands, do they, Miss Vanilla?” Constantine cooed to the hamster. He sighed and tucked her back in his pocket.
“Can you please be serious for five seconds?” Maggie said.
“Okay, okay.” Constantine extended his hand. “The phone, please.”
Maggie placed the phone on Constantine’s palm. He flipped it over as if trying to ascertain its sex, then turned it over and entered the password Maggie gave him.
Before majoring in computer science, Constantine had been pre-med. When he told his parents about his new major, they reacted like he’d told them he was going to clown college. They eventually came around and supported his career plan, lobbing only a few passive-aggressive remarks at family gatherings.
Maggie watched in silence as he poked and prodded her phone. “Uh-huh,” he said to himself. “Yep.” He tapped and pinched and swiped the screen. “Okay.”
“I hate to interrupt this scintillating conversation with yourself, but what?”
Constantine turned the screen toward Maggie. “I accessed your calendar. It looks like whoever had this phone before you installed a custom app that’s configured to talk to the cloud.” He opened the app and showed her the settings. “It’s linked to the previous owner’s other calendars, which means that whenever Outlook or Google or whatever are updated to add a meeting or appointment, the data is transmitted to that person’s various devices: laptop, tablet, phone.”
“Which goes back to your theory of the incomplete wipe?”
Constantine nodded. “Right. If the internal memory on this secondhand phone wasn’t adequately wiped, it could still be syncing to the previous owner’s calendar.”
They were both quiet for a moment. “So someone’s calendar is syncing with my new phone—which is their old phone?” Maggie asked. “And now we’re both getting reminders?”
“Seems like it.”
Maggie furrowed her brow. “Does this other person know I’m getting reminders?”
“I doubt it. Since the phone ended up at a phone recycler, the previous owner probably thinks it’s in a million pieces or has been wiped of any data. I don’t think this kind of thing would be on anyone’s radar.” He watched Maggie twirl her hair, then chew on her straw. “Don’t stress out or anything. I can’t seem to hack in to see whose phone this was, but I know the guy who sold me the phone. If you’re that worried about it, maybe he can help us.”
“Friend of yours?”
“Friendish. We worked together at Zeitgeist IT. After we got laid off, he started selling used smartphones out of a hole-in-the-wall shop in midtown. I’ll give him a call.”
Con
stantine returned Maggie’s phone, brought out his own and dialed. He waited, then rolled his eyes. “Voicemail,” he said. “Totally boring, too.” This from a man who considered voicemail performance art. Constantine left a message for his friend to call him or Maggie, slowly reciting their numbers.
“Done. And done.”
Maggie grabbed a crab roll from the sushi conveyor belt and shoved the whole thing into her mouth. “I don’t know about that,” she said with her mouth semi-full.
Constantine looked at her blankly. “Don’t know about what?”
She swallowed. “That we’re done. I mean, we can’t just sit around waiting for another reminder. And another…death.”
“There’s still no proof the two are related,” Constantine said.
“But you know the chances of this being mere coincidence are about nil.”
Constantine was silent.
“We have to do something, Gus. We have to figure out what’s going on. Find some sort of explanation beyond coincidence.”
He spread his hands wide. “Okay. What do you suggest?”
Maggie tapped her nails on the counter. “Well…I have an idea, but you’ll have to be my date.”
“Ooh.”
“To a funeral.”
“Oh.”
“The funeral for the guy who died in the crash is a week from Sunday. Maybe we’ll learn something more about him or even the original owner of my phone.”
“You want to crash a funeral of someone you don’t know on the off chance you might, possibly, maybe find out what’s going on with your phone or who owned it?” Maggie nodded.
Constantine sighed. “Fine. Just don’t make me steal a hearse.”
Chapter 8
Maggie had nearly forgotten about Saturday night’s gala.
No biggie.
It was only the most important event Rxcellance had ever hosted.
Fortunately, Zartar called to see what she was wearing. When Maggie described the sensible, versatile shift dress she’d bought on sale three years ago at J. C. Penney, Zartar showed up at her apartment ten minutes later insisting Maggie borrow a slinky gray dress with a halter top and beaded waist.
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