TD's head dipped in a slight nod -- the response seemed to be what he'd been looking for. "I'd like to advance you to the next step."
Leah wouldn't turn to meet Tim's eyes.
"Really? Like become a Pro?"
"We've only asked a few people -- the Neos we see as very capable -- to come to our ranch Monday for a special three-day retreat."
Leah froze, her shoulders and neck tensing.
"You see, this thing here today" -- TD flared his hands -- "this is only the beginning. A test model, no more. We're really optimizing -- the Next Generation Colloquium we've been planning is new-platform software. Right now I'm interested in one thing and one thing only: selecting from the hundreds and hundreds of Neos the right few with the vision to take that next step with us. I'll be honest -- we had closed the first platform, but we'd love to have you included."
Evidently Tom Altman's $90 million portfolio had checked out. The ingenious ploy -- Inner Circle as bankroll for The Program's expansion -- allowed TD to sidestep the encumbrances of attaining funding, repaying loans, or answering to a board. Even the process of weeding out the pikers he'd made profitable. Three hundred people at five hundred a pop -- Tim's dad should have dreamed it up.
TD bent his head sympathetically. "What's wrong? I sense your hesitation. You can share it with me."
"I...well...I've just always believed in taking things slow," Tom Altman stammered.
Leah resumed wrapping a cable around her hand.
"That Societal Programming is precisely what stands in your way." TD's eyes, piercing and relentless, seemed fixed on a spot three inches behind Tim's head -- a vintage technique for hypnotic induction. Tim relaxed his pupils, letting TD's face blur. "If you want to be free, you have to overwrite it."
Tom Altman mused on that, squirming a bit in his chair. "It's just a lot all at once, and I'm still a little hazy from my whole...experience. Can I give it some thought?"
"I'm sorry, Tom. It's a onetime opportunity. Things are moving really fast for us. And, hey, it's just three days. We're not asking you to sign over your house or anything."
Everyone laughed, and suddenly Tim was aware of their audience. Tom Altman joined in late and a touch eagerly. "There is more I want to find out" -- Leah's cable wrapping grew furious -- "about myself, I mean." Leah half turned, and Tim risked a glance at her profile.
TD nodded at Skate, who slipped out through the curtain, then he turned his intense focus back to Tim. "Today you were introduced to this new practice. This new reality. You have a responsibility to yourself now. But" -- he slapped his knee and leaned forward -- "maybe you're not ready after all."
Tom Altman steeled his neck a bit too dramatically. "I am ready."
TD rewarded him with a delighted grin. "Glad to have you on board."
"How do I get there?"
"Oh, we don't have people just drive to the ranch." TD's lip twitched at the vulgarity of the thought. "Randall will pick you up. Where do you live?"
"I've been knocking around between friends' guesthouses, actually." Tim added in a whisper, "Divorce."
TD smiled understandingly. "Precipitated by your daughter's death?"
Tim affected more agitated body language. "Sort of. You could say so."
"Well, we'll have plenty of time to explore that later." TD bit his lip. "Randall can meet you here at the hotel Monday morning? Why don't we call it eight o'clock?"
Skate reappeared with Jason Struthers of Struthers Auto Mall, keeping him on deck near the curtain.
Still light-headed and weak, Tim stood.
TD shook his hand. "Welcome to the future."
Chapter
twenty-one
Driving home in the sunrise, Tim struggled to keep from nodding off. He felt blurry and dissociated, and his body couldn't comprehend that it was early morning. Unfortunately, his 5:00 A.M. wake-up call had made Will Henning no less animated. He'd gotten all blustery at the identification of Betters -- at last a target. When Tim related his decision to abort the snatch, Will's voice hardened, giving Tim an idea of what kind of tyrant it took to push a $100 million film through production.
"How dare you flip the script on me. That wasn't your goddamn call to make. I am the client here."
"I'm a deputy U.S. marshal, sir. The Service doesn't have clients."
"You're back in the Service because of me. One call to Marco, you'll be driving a rent - a - cop cart at the Beverly Center."
"If you think that's the most promising way to meet your objectives, go for it."
"You think you can hardball me? I dealt with Marlon fucking Brando in the seventies." Tim laughed involuntarily. A gravelly exhale from Will. "You lying piece of shit."
"I promised I'd help Leah. Not kidnap her."
"We both know there's no difference right now."
"The only legal justification for taking Leah into custody against her will is if she's in imminent danger. She's not. She's in her right mind, there was no evidence of physical abuse -- to be honest, I was impressed with her capabilities."
"You neglect to mention that her 'capabilities' landed her in a mind-control cult."
"And yours made you a Hollywood producer. I'm sure there are plenty of people who'd take issue with that choice."
"Don't fuck with us, Deputy. Emma's beside herself. We haven't slept in --"
"Sir, with all due respect, you are not the victims here."
"Now you're a shrink."
"No. It's just something I found helpful to remember in the wake of my daughter's murder." For once Will remained silent. Tim pulled into the garage and turned off the engine. His shoulders throbbed, sending pangs to the base of his skull. "Good-bye, Will." He snapped the phone shut and pulled himself from the Hummer.
Trudging through the kitchen, Tim swirled the punch cup he'd smuggled out of the Radisson, making the cherry beads of residue dance. He set the cup and an appropriated brownie on the table and moved to the living room, where Bear's slumbering form occupied the couch. Boston lay on the floor beside Bear, matching his heavy breathing, and Tim felt a stab of appreciation for their dutiful waiting.
In the bedroom Dray sat propped up on a wedge of pillows against the headboard, static-edged dialogue notched a few clicks too high on the TV. Dead asleep.
The face he caught looking back at him from the mounted mirror was as gray as the taste in his mouth. Acid no longer washed through his stomach -- he'd gone past the point of hunger several hours ago. His heart jerked irregularly in his chest, still trying to recover its customary rhythm. Through bleary eyes, he watched his wife sleep, flooded with gratitude for the simple, familiar tableau.
Slowly he felt his body mellow into bone-deep exhaustion.
Dray's lids parted slowly. Her smile was so effortless and uncomplicated it moved right through him. She held out her arms and said in a sleep-cracked voice, "You're back."
She embraced him around the waist, and he ran his fingers deep through her hair, scratching, a sensation she loved when she felt tired or lazy. "Let me look at you." She pulled back. "Jesus Christ. You didn't look this bad when you held recon in a Bosnian tree fort for six days. What did they put you through?"
He managed to bumble out an incoherent summary. He was circling back through the Guy-Meds for maybe the third time when Dray nodded. "I get it."
"You waited up?"
"Tried. We thought you'd be home yesterday afternoon. I got stressed, and so I called Bear, and we sat up and pretended to watch a couple John Waynes."
"I couldn't call. There weren't phones."
She threw back the sheets. "Get in here." As he slid into bed, she leaned forward, swallowing hard. "I don't feel so hot. I trusted Bear with take-out sushi."
"Big mistake."
"Maybe my last." She watched him closely, brushing the hair off his forehead, the relief in her eyes palpable.
He lay back on his pillow, which felt inordinately lush. "It's a whole thing out there. A factory."
"I'm glad you decided to walk away. No matter what she's gotten herself into, she doesn't deserve getting duffeled to the curb and waking up daddy's little captive. We'll figure out the money. We always do." She kept smoothing his hair off his face. "Timothy, are you all right?"
"I don't want to leave her in there. I can't."
Dray's eyes flared a bit. She seemed to need a moment to tamp down her reaction. "She's lucky to have you. Leah."
"She doesn't have me. You have me."
Her voice kept its edge. "You know what I mean."
"There are dozens of people being controlled."
"Willingly."
"It's not willing, Dray."
"Calm down a bit. Let's talk this through. Going up to the ranch puts you in even greater danger."
"That's the job. We put ourselves on the line to protect people. That's what we do. Not just when it's convenient."
Dray pushed herself up so she was sitting cross-legged. "No, we put ourselves on the line to uphold the law."
He stared at the floor.
"There's no crime here," she said.
"I'll find one."
"Bill of Rights be damned." She softened her voice. "You went down this road before, Timothy. If you pursue this and there is no crime..."
Tim turned away from her.
"...you'll end up on the outside again."
Now that he'd returned to a place where he could expect safety and sanity, his frustrations were welling up. "This guy's pulling in money hand over fist, and he's hell-bent on expansion. I'm not gonna let it happen."
"Are you sure that's what this is about?"
His eyeballs ached with fatigue. "Huh?"
Dray tilted her head at the hall, a gesture that had come to indicate Ginny and the loss of her. He flashed on his taking on Kindell's voice at the colloquium and a chill moved through his insides.
"Come on, Dray."
"You don't feel protective of Leah?"
"I do now, that's for sure. She covered for me and took some vicious punishment for it. That kind of thing is built in to a person. A kid like that deserves something better."
"Every kid deserves something better -- but they don't receive it from the federal authorities. Thank God."
"She's brainwashed, Dray."
"Right. So she could betray you whenever -- maybe she already has. You really want to put your life in this kid's hands? They could be waiting for you up there, tying the noose as we speak."
"She wouldn't."
"Oh, right. Because she has such good judgment? Either she's controlled, in which case you can't count on her, or she's not controlled, in which case she's there by fully exercised choice and you have to back off and leave her be."
Tim was tempted to acknowledge the sense of that statement. Instead he offered, "If she rolled on me now, she'd be punished even worse for not telling earlier."
"To this lay observer, she seems like a glutton for punishment." Dray bit the inside of her lip and rolled it between her teeth. "What's she look like? In person?"
"She's taller than I thought. Sort of a willowy build --"
"Willowy?" Dray's tone was a sure indication that he'd misstepped. "She's willowy?"
"Well, kind of slender, yeah."
Dray moved her book from her lap to the nightstand. The lamp rocked a bit on its base. "Okay, willowy. What else? Does she have flaxen hair, too?"
"Where the hell is all this coming from, Dray?"
"I don't know. Why don't you ask Leah and her willowy build?" The triangle of skin above the stretched collar of her T-shirt had flushed. "Why are you so impassioned about this case?"
"Seeing this event..." He looked down at his hands, which rested meekly on the turned-back sheets. He dozed off for an instant but caught his head as it dipped.
Dray's eyebrows lost themselves beneath her bangs; the heat had gone right out of her. After a moment she pushed two fingers into the ring of his fist, and he squeezed them. He took longer and longer blinks until he could no longer keep his eyes open. The last thing he sensed before drifting off was the caress of Dray's lips on his cheek.
A paw covered his entire shoulder, shaking him awake. Tim rolled over, sliding an arm across his eyes. "What time is it?"
Bear's voice -- "High noon, podnah. The old man wants to see you."
Tim groaned and leaned forward, his joints aching. Evidently Will hadn't waited long to air his grievances to Tannino. "At home?"
"At the barn. He's been running the show through Saturdays for a while now. Taking advantage of availability pay. Some of us have already put in a half day."
Tim blinked into the light. Bear was contentedly munching a brownie.
"Where'd you get that?"
"Kitchen table. Why?"
"It's evidence, you dolt."
Bear stopped midchew and angled the brownie to reveal the near-perfect missing semicircle. "Hahng ohn." He scurried to the bathroom. Tim heard a plop, then the flush of the toilet. Bear reentered, using the inside of his shirt collar to wipe his mouth. "Okay," he said. "So no one ever has to know about that."