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.Kennedy ClinicANGELA WAS SLEEPING soundly when they got back to her room, the monitors alongside the bed showing her heart rate, breathing, and EKG all normal.Low normal, Luke saw, but nothing dangerous.Not yet.The telomerase inhibitors were flowing into her bloodstream, he knew.Now it would be just a matter of time until they started to show some effect.How long? he wondered.A few days, at least.Maybe we ought to stay here instead of trekking across the country.It’d be better for Angie.If Yolanda isn’t so pissed off that she’ll tell the FBI we’re here.Tamara broke into his thoughts.“I’m going to stay here tonight,” she whispered.“Oh?”“I’ve made arrangements with the staff.They have guest rooms for relatives right here in the building.”Luke huffed.“Maybe we should let Yolanda know.”“She’ll know.”He nodded and headed for the door, Tamara beside him.Out in the empty, silent corridor, he said, “I’ll see you tomorrow morning.”“Tomorrow I’m going to put a port in your chest.”Luke’s blood ran cold.“A port? I don’t want one of those things attached to my chest or anywhere else.It’s like having a plastic leech hanging on me.”She gave him a disapproving frown.“It’s better than sticking you every day.You’ll look like a drug addict, with all the bruises.”His face twisted with revulsion.“After the first half hour you won’t even notice that it’s there.”“Yes I will.I don’t want it.”“You’d rather be stuck every day?” Tamara argued.“With a port, I just put the needle into the valve, not in your arm.”“But the damned thing is in my chest all the time.”She sighed.“Your granddaughter has one.You don’t see her complaining about it.”Luke stared at Tamara, then muttered, with a reluctant nod, “You’re the doctor.”“That’s right,” she said.“I am.”Grousing to himself, Luke went out into the cold night and climbed into the SUV.He poked at the GPS box sitting atop the dashboard to find a gas station.Goddamned van gobbles gas like an Army tank, he thought.Once he’d filled the van’s capacious fuel tank, he went into the station’s minimart to pay in cash.And find the men’s room.Fill the gas tank and empty the bladder, he mused.At least I don’t have to fill the SUV every couple of hours.As he left the men’s room, Luke spotted a display of throwaway cell phones next to the cashier’s stand.He took one, paid cash, and bought a hundred minutes on it.Glancing at the clock on the wall, he thought, They’ll be asleep by now.I’ll just leave a quick message on their answering machine.He was surprised when Del picked up on the first ring.“Del? It’s me, Luke.Listen, Angie’s doing fine—”“Luke! Wait a minute, Lenore’s getting ready for bed, but I know she’ll want to talk to you.”He heard Del calling for his wife.Luke fidgeted uncertainly for a few seconds, then clicked the phone off.I told them Angie’s okay.That’s enough.Maybe the FBI can trace cell phone calls, he thought.Nervous, uncertain, he dropped the cell phone in the first trash bin he passed.Then he drove back to the motel and slept fitfully until daybreak.* * *TAMARA WAS WAITING for him in Angela’s room, with a mischievous glint in her eyes.“Good morning,” Luke said softly as he entered the room.“How is she?”“She’s holding her own.We’re scheduled for the scans in an hour.”Luke looked down at his granddaughter.She seemed to be sleeping peacefully enough.“Has she eaten anything?”“Intravenously,” said Tamara.Luke sank into one of the easy chairs.Her lips curling into an almost impish smile, Tamara said, “It’s time for you to get your port.”“Now?”“You gave me a schedule, and I intend to keep it.Now take off your jacket and unbutton your shirt.”He watched her pull a gray plastic port and a hypodermic syringe out of a case on the table, then a small bottle of alcohol and a wiper pad.All in one neat package, Luke said to himself.The vial of enzymes sat on the table beside the case.“I’ve been thinking about Yolanda,” he said, as much to keep his mind off the port and the needle as for any other reason.“I don’t think we have to worry about her.”“Oh no?” Tamara was filling the syringe with the steroid cocktail that Luke had gotten in Philadelphia.“If she’s as interested in me as you think, why would she turn us in? She’d want to keep us here as long as she could, wouldn’t she?”“Maybe,” Tamara half-agreed, as she swabbed a spot on his bared chest with alcohol.Luke said, “No cops have shown up.”“Uh-huh.A little stick now.”He looked away as the needle stung him.He knew it was silly, but he felt as if some alien creature were attaching itself to him, sucking his blood.Tamara taped the port to his chest, then pushed the syringe into the port’s seal, and the hormones rushed into his bloodstream, hot and strong.Tamara smiled down at him and said, “I ought to get some lollipops to give you after each injection.”Luke smiled back, weakly, glad that the little ordeal was over.But he couldn’t work up the courage to actually look at the port, inserted into a blood vessel in his chest.* * *YOLANDA PETRONE WAS at her desk, staring unseeingly at her morning’s schedule on the computer screen.She had called the clinic first thing in the morning, from her home, and learned that the very feline Dr.Minteer had stayed there last night, while Luke had driven back to whatever motel he was staying at.Good, she thought.They’re not sleeping together.Not last night, at least.Hardly thinking of what she was doing, Petrone fished the card Agent Hightower had given her out of her desk drawer.If I call him, she thought, Luke might end up in jail.But if I don’t, he could very well kill his granddaughter.Then she realized that Dr.Minteer was just as guilty of kidnapping as Luke was.She picked up the phone.Boston FBI Headquarters“DR.PETRONE,” SAID Jerry Hightower.“How are you?”Petrone’s voice sounded shaky, uncertain, as she said, “Exactly what are the charges against Dr.Abramson?”Hightower leaned back in his creaking desk chair.His office was so small that some of the other agents teased him about it.“You’d have more room in a teepee,” they’d wisecrack.Hightower, who had spent his childhood on the Navaho reservation in a mobile home jacked up on cinder blocks, merely smiled patiently at his colleagues and replied, “Agents work out in the field, not in their offices
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