“Jump,” she whispered.
And she released his hand and he leapt from the rocks and it was many seconds before she heard him hit bottom.
34
Dr. Salix put his feet on his desk and rotated his chair toward the window as he spoke to Sherry by phone. “I spoke with the technician in Boston this morning. The roentgen equivalent of point oh-one is negligible, Sherry. In fact, it was little more than a therapeutic dose a cancer patient might receive. Your lungs and bone marrow are clean. You are fine, young lady.”
Sherry thanked him and put the cell phone back in her pocket.
“He says I’m negative.” She laughed and put her face against Brigham’s shoulder, tears streaming from her eyes.
She took Brigham’s arm and they walked across the rolling lawn of Arlington National Cemetery. She could hear a jet ascending from Ronald Reagan National Airport, a siren somewhere in the city across the Potomac River.
Her thoughts wandered, with the clop of hooves on pavement as black horses drew the casket to the grave. She could imagine the last of the cherry blossoms swirling around the wind with the words of the chaplain. She heard the sharp click of heels as the seven-man honor guard presented arms. She winced as three volleys were fired across the grave. She cried as the bugler played Taps from the top of the hill. She shook as Brian Metcalf presented her with the triangular flag from Thomas J. Monahan’s casket.
Then Brian put his arm around her waist and walked her back to the car.
She remembered thinking how thankful she was to have seen his face.
epilogue
Edward Case hung up the phone and wheeled his chair to the window. The office was cool, the air-conditioning lifting pages of documents on his desk.
Outside it was a beautiful sunny day. The kind that toasts the tips of knee-high wheat and spreads honeysuckle scents across porch swings and vine-covered rural road mailboxes.
He saw the limousine coming, far above the fields, it was black, and two Pennsylvania state police cars escorted it in a cloud of dust. There was one before and one behind, their solemn blue lights flashing in the grilles.
He lifted a picture from his desktop, a very young and a very sure-looking man with his meerschaum pipe in his teeth, smiling for the cameras, rakish tilt to his white homburg. Case nodded and set it back down.
The government had severed the contract for MIRA research and gathered all traces of equipment. They could afford to do that now. They had bought and paid for the technology. It was already theirs.
He watched the limo getting closer down the lane. Now he was about to sign away his position as CEO of Case and Kimble.
It wasn’t really a choice. The FDA’s approval for Alixador was being held until the ink was dry on the document.
They were also going to take away his Lancaster estate. That and assets totaling $880 million, which would be held in escrow for settlements sure to arise from the government’s imminent disclosure of what took place in Area 17.
And he did it all to avoid prosecution and what would certainly be a literal life sentence in prison.
The Nobel Prize winner would be permitted to retain his brownstone in New York City.
And live out his life in obscurity.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I wish to thank Cindy Collins for her patience and prodding and most competent critique of my manuscript.
To Barbara Collins for the test drive.
To all the people at Simon & Schuster, but especially to Michele Bové, Colin Fox, Nancy Inglis, Nicole De Jackmo, Marcella Berger, Louise Burke, and Kathy Sagan of Pocket Books.
To my agent, Paul Fedorko.
To fans everywhere.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
George D. Shuman is author of 18 Seconds, Last Breath, and Lost Girls. A retired police lieutenant from Washington, D.C., Mr. Shuman went on to executive positions in the luxury resort industry and professional security consulting before settling in the mountains of southwest Pennsylvania to write full-time. He has two grown children, Daniel and Melissa, who live in South Carolina. To learn more, visit his website at www.georgedshuman.com.
Table of Contents
Colophon
ALSO BY GEORGE D. SHUMAN
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Contents
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
epilogue
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Second Sight Page 25