The Select (29 page)

"We got it."

Verran let out a long, slow sigh. At
last. All this grief over a lousy bug.

"Where are you now? You made it out of
town okay?"

"No problem." He sounded pumped, half
delirious with relief that he'd come through without getting
pinched. "We're at a rest stop on the Delaware pike. We took him
outside on the beach. It was too perfect to pass up. He put up a
fight but we nailed him good. Then we ducked under the boardwalk,
ditched the ski masks, and reversed the jackets. Kurt ran north to
his car and I went south to mine, just like we planned. Nobody gave
us a bit of trouble. Very smooth, Chief. Very smooth."

Of course it was smooth, Verran
thought. You plan out all your moves ahead of time, it always goes
smooth. Even if the AC cops could have got out an APB in time,
they'd have been looking for two guys of unknown race wearing black
or dark blue windbreakers. A lone white male driving out of town in
a red jacket wouldn't get a second look.

"And the cops? You give them a
call?"

"Didn't have to. The hotel fuzz was
coming to the rescue just as we were leaving."

Perfect
.

"Where's Kurt now?"

"He's in his car not ten feet from me,
waiting to get home."

"Good. Both of you come straight here.
I'm proud of you guys."

And besides, Verran wanted to see and
feel that rotten lousy defective bug in his very own hand.
Tonight.

SIXTEEN

"At least I didn't lose any
teeth."

Tim sat on the bed with an ice pack
against his right cheek. Quinn knelt beside him, her hands clasped
between her thighs, still shaking inside. The room was warm but her
hands felt cold; she felt cold all over.

"You could have lost
your
life
."

They'd been to the hotel infirmary
once, in and out of the hotel security office twice—she had to say
the Taj Mahal had been genuinely solicitous, even though the
mugging had occurred off their premises—and to the Atlantic City
Police department and back. They had filled out forms, given
descriptions, and recounted the events leading up to and during the
attack until they were both sick of talking about it.

The consensus was that it had been a
random mugging, but Quinn remembered that feeling of being watched.
She hadn't said anything to the police about it, though. But she
suspected the two attackers had watched them win heavily, seen them
go outside to the deserted boardwalk, and made their
move.

Tim fingered the tears in his sport
coat with his free hand.

"Look at this. Torn to shreds." He
looked at her, reached out and rubbed her arm. His warm touch felt
good. "You okay?"

She nodded. "I only got shoved around
a little. But I feel completely worn out." She felt as if she'd
been inflated to twice her size, and then had her plug pulled. A
dull, throbbing headache topped it off.

"I know what you mean. But you got
more than just shoved around. That goddamn creep!"

She didn't want to talk about it, even
think about it. She put her hand over his. "You were very
brave."

He snorted.
"
Brave?
They had
me down on my back and were punching my lights out."

"No. I mean after, when the big guy
was attacking me. I know they hurt you, but still you got up
and...came to help."

"I couldn't very well lie there and
let him maul you, could I?"

"But you were hurt."

"Yeah, but I've seen all those John
Wayne and Clint Eastwood movies. They sort of make you feel there
are things you should do even though you know you're going to get
hurt."

Quinn slid closer and leaned against
him, resting her head on his shoulder.

"Does this hurt?"

"I'd say that's just what the doctor
ordered."

Quinn felt oddly warm,
with rushes of heat coursing through her. Short of breath too. All
the good feelings she had for Tim crowded close around her,
pressing her to him, and all the doubts and reservations she'd had,
all the irritations he caused were gone, blown away. They didn't
matter any longer. Tonight they'd walked together through a fire.
She felt
joined
to this man.

She lifted her head and kissed him on
the lips, gently.

"Sorry," she said. "I don't know why I
did that." And that was true. She hadn't planned it, or even
thought about it. She'd just...done it.

"Do it again," he said softly. "But
easy on the lower lip. It's killing me."

And what followed came very naturally,
very slowly, with their clothes being shed bit by bit, like old
skin, and the heat building incrementally but irresistibly till it
pulsed and throbbed with an incendiary life of it own as they
joined like longtime lovers who'd known each other
forever.

*

Quinn lay face down on the sheets and
shivered in the dark as Tim's fingers traveled lightly up and down
her spine. On one trip they continued further down and he ran his
hands gently over her rear.

"I always knew you had a—"

"Don't say it."

"—nice butt."

"You said it."

"It's true."

"I have a caboose butt on an Olive Oyl
body."

"No, you've got a Bluto brain. You
need therapy for your distorted body image."

She lay quiet, her thoughts in
turmoil, as he continued his feather-light caresses.

"What have we done, Tim?" she said
finally.

"What comes naturally."

"I'm serious."

"You mean, have we ruined a beautiful
friendship?"

"Exactly."

He moved closer, sliding against her
right side, crossing his knee over the backs of her thighs. His
lips brushed her ear.

"I hope not. I desperately hope not.
But we can't pretend this didn't happen."

"I know."

"Do you want to stop and never do this
again?"

"No. God, no. But every time you stop
by the room, are you going to want to be like this? Am I? I didn't
want to be involved, Tim. I really didn't."

"Are you involved?"

Quinn turned toward him and felt his
chest hair brush her nipples as their legs entwined. She couldn't
remember feeling this way about anyone else. Ever. This had to be
love.

"Yes. Yes, yes, yes. Are
you?"

"Have been since I first saw you at
orientation last December. From that moment I knew it was going to
be you and me. I didn't know how long it would take or how many
different roads we would travel, but some part of me seemed to
sense that we'd wind up together. You must have sensed something
like that too."

Quinn laughed and hugged him
closer—but gently. "No way! I thought you were an obnoxious brat,
one of the last people on earth I wanted to have anything to do
with. Just slightly ahead of Saddam Hussein."

"Thanks a lot." He nuzzled her throat.
"But I have an idea. A compromise. We'll make it a rule between us
that we don't make love on campus. When we can we'll sneak away to
the No-Tell Motel or something and go nuts, but at The Ingraham we
stay strictly platonic."

Quinn tried to see his face in the
dark. Was this one of his put-ons? She wished she knew because it
sounded perfect to her.

"Where'd you come up with
that?"

"Oh, I don't know. I just put myself
inside a very practical, borderline-nerdy mind and tried to imagine
what that mind could come up with."

She punched him lightly on the
shoulder and he winced.

"Ouch!"

"Sorry. But is that what you think of
me?"

"Isn't that what you'd have come up
with?"

Reluctantly, she had to
agree.

He said, "But there's got to be an
angle we can work with this. Maybe we can apply to Dr. Alston for
extra credit when we make our little off-campus trips."

"Extra credit?"

"Sure. Extracurricular studies in
anatomy. Or how about human sexuality lab? Gotta be worth
something. In fact I think I'm ready to earn a few extra credits
right now."

Quinn slid her hand down his abdomen.
"Yes, you are. Yes, you are indeed."

MONITORING

"What the hell happened to
you?"

Verran was staring at Kurt's swollen,
purpling nose as he and Elliot arrived in the control
room.

"The kid got in a lucky one when I
wasn't looking." He sounded like he had a bad cold.

"Great. Just great. That means you're
going to have to stay out of sight until that thing
heals."

"What the hell for?"

"Because Brown saw you in the student
lot before he left and your nose was fine then. If he knows he
clocked one of the guys who attacked him on the nose and then he
sees you with a freshly busted beak—"

"Aw, he'd never put the two
together."

"Maybe not. But these kids ain't here
because they're dummies. Just to be sure, I'm keeping you on the
graveyard shift till that heals up."

"Aw, Lou."

Verran held out his hand. "Where's the
bug?"

Elliot leaned forward and dropped it
into Verran's palm.

"Safe and sound, Chief."

Verran stared at it. Such a tiny thing
to cause so goddamn much trouble.

"Want me to see if I can fix it?"
Elliot said.

"Are you kidding?"

Verran bent and placed the errant bug
on the concrete floor, straightened, then ground it flat under his
heel.

"That's the last time that little
sonovabitch will give us any grief."

Elliot grinned and headed for his
console while Kurt went to find some ice for his nose. Verran
surveyed the varicolored meters, terminals, and LEDs of his little
domain with quiet satisfaction. Only one problem remained to mar
his serenity: the Cleary broad.

Elliot had run an exhaustive,
comprehensive check on her SLI unit yesterday and had found
everything in perfect working order, but tightass Alston was still
insisting that there had to be something wrong with it. Verran knew
there wasn't. As far as he was concerned, the problem wasn't with
the unit, it was with the girl.

And since it was Alston's
responsibility to screen the students, that put the ball in his
court.

Which was a big relief to Verran. He'd
solved his own missing bug problem; let Dr. Tightass figure out the
Cleary problem.

As far as Louis Verran was concerned,
it was back to business as usual in the control room.

DECEMBER

THE WORLD'S LONGEST
CONTINUOUS

FLOATING MEDICAL BULL
SESSION

(III)

Tim had dragged Quinn to another
session tonight in Harrison's room. He told her the usual: She was
working too hard lately and needed a break. But that wasn't the
main reason. He simply needed to be with her a little
more.

During the weeks since Atlantic City,
despite the awful time he'd had keeping his hands off her, Tim had
stayed true to his word and abided by their agreement, hands-off on
campus. And when he'd suggested some HSR lab—HSR being their code
for human sexual response—Quinn had never turned him down. She'd
even suggested it a couple of times herself. After Thanksgiving
break she'd told him she'd started on the pill, but still she
insisted he wear a condom. One very careful lady.

They didn't get to the Quality Inn
that often, but when they did she left Tim wrecked for
days.

Those nights were like his
wildest dreams come true. For all the no-nonsense prudishness Quinn
projected when she was fully dressed, between the sheets she was a
different species. Her inhibitions seemed to slough off with her
clothes. She approached sex like she approached everything
else—seriously, practically, with boundless enthusiasm. She
attacked it, she
studied
it—that was hardly a surprise—and wanted to try
everything. Very little was taboo. She even rented triple-X videos
for instruction and she and Tim had spent exhausting nights
mimicking the couples on the screen.

But for Tim the sex was the icing on
the cake. It cemented the substance of their relationship, which
for him was simply being with her, sharing her presence. He never
seemed to get enough of her. Between the hours they were required
to spend in class and in the various labs, plus Quinn's job as Dr.
Emerson's research assistant, and the wasted hours grudgingly
surrendered to sleep, there wasn't any time for them simply to be
together. Sometimes they'd study together, holding hands when they
weren't scribbling notes or turning pages, but her presence was too
distracting for Tim to get much done.