Eric’s mouth opened as he started to respond, then closed again. He frowned at her, as if replaying in his mind to be sure that he hadn’t misheard, then screwed his face up incredulously. “You can’t be saying that . . . No, this isn’t you. It’s Doug again, isn’t it?”
“No,” Michelle said. “These are my own thoughts—based on what I’ve heard and read, what I know of how the world can be.” Eric was still struggling to take in what she was saying. She went on, “Let’s just assume for the moment that Doug is right about Jack being bought off when he went east, and look at things in that light. Three years later you’ve got DNC working. Everyone in the industry is saying that Neurodyne is on its way to the billion-dollar league. And what happens? All of a sudden Jack’s back in town. Isn’t it a pretty likely bet that he was here to renegotiate the price? But what it really said was he was going to be a security risk permanently.” Eric was shaking his head; but Michelle was committed to seeing it through now and continued, “And then he’s found dead in a hotel room, supposedly of a heart attack—forty-two years old, normal weight, swam and played tennis, no history of coronary complications, nothing in the family. If you were in Ohira’s position, wouldn’t you fire me if I weren’t suspicious?”
“Oh, I can’t believe it. It’s too preposterous.” Eric snorted and waved the whole idea away. “This isn’t Chicago a hundred years ago, for heaven’s sake. Are you sure you don’t watch too many movies? . . . If it didn’t involve a recent tragedy, it would be a joke.”
Michelle stared back at him without smiling. “I very much hope I’m wrong,” she said. “But until we can be certain of that, I’d say it’s something you ought to think about. Anyone capable of going to extremes like that isn’t going to stop at just creating some bad publicity for a piece of technology.”
The mec and the relay had been in a black plastic bag secured with a rubber band. Kevin searched behind the cushions of the couch in the living room that Taki had been sitting in earlier, then craned his neck over the top to peer down between the back and the wall. “Well, that’s just great, Taki. I risk untold wrath and retribution to get it back for you. I guard it with my life for days. And now you’ve gone and lost it again in a couple of hours. What kind of appreciation is this for being the best friend you’ve ever had?”
“Well, it’s your fault for distracting me with all that stuff about game strategies.” Taki stepped back from the table and looked back across the room to the door. “I went there to put the book down, and later I went out through the hall and back to the kitchen. . . . It’ll be in the last place we look, you wait and see. Things always are.”
“Well, of course it’ll be in the last place we look. Do you think we’re gonna keep looking after we find it?”
Taki wandered through to the front hall. “You don’t think it could have gotten mixed up with all that stuff that your mom and Harriet were loading into the car, do you?” he said, looking around. Vanessa had been gone a couple of hours by now.
“Harriet said she hadn’t seen it,” Kevin said, appearing in the doorway behind. It was her night off, and she had gone for the evening too. “Did you put it down out here?”
“I can’t remember.”
Batcat, the only other resident to be home just at the moment, uncurled on its favorite chair, stretched, sat back on its haunches, and blinked at Kevin several times. Not for the first time, Kevin got the uncanny feeling that the animal was telling him he was stupid. The cat straightened up, stretched again, and then jumped down off the chair. Kevin watched as it entered the piano room through the open doorway and crossed the floor toward the stairs leading down to the rear lab.