Michael Palmer - Fatal

"Given what we know about prion infections," Keller said, "I really don't see how."

"Well, we'll talk about it when we get there. Thanks, Joe."

"I'm so relieved you are okay," Keller said. "Oh, by the way, the police had no trouble finding the man who killed your drowning victim, Roger Belanger. His name was Halliday. That was what the 'H' was for. They were friends and business associates. The police believe they fought about money. Halliday invited him over to his place to make up. He wrote a check and the two of them had a few drinks. Once Halliday got him into his pool, he got his hands around Belanger's throat and dragged him to the bottom."

"Process," Nikki said.

"Exactly," Keller concurred.

By the time Nikki set the receiver down, Matt had pulled on a new, blue sweatshirt with YALE block-printed on the front.

"Mornin'," she said.

"Mornin', yourself."

She motioned at the sweatshirt.

"Did you go there?"

"No, but while you were trying on things in that Target store last night, I bought some stuff for me. This was one they had in my size."

"Believe it or not, I remember. Well, sort of. Where did you go to school?"

"Good ol' WVU. The Mountaineers. That was the only college we could afford. Turned out to be a great place."

Nikki felt certain she recalled a nurse telling her that Matt had gone to Harvard Med, yet he didn't feel that minor factoid was worth tossing in. She gave him high marks for modesty, as if he needed any more high marks after what he had done for her.

"You sleep soundly," she said.

"People have noticed that from time to time, yes."

"If you have trouble walking today, it's from me kicking you to wake you up."

"The nurses at the hospital quiz me when they call, to be certain I'm awake. They don't know that I've mutated so that I can now answer most of their questions, even the complex mathematical ones, in my sleep. Do you remember much of last night?"

"Unfortunately, I think I do. I hope I thanked you enough for rescuing me the way you did."

"I have a thing against losing patients. So, what was that call all about?"

"I phoned my boss, Joe Keller, to tell him I was alive and well, and to see if anything had turned up in Kathy's microscopic."

"And?"

"You're not going to believe this, Matt. Kathy had spongiform encephalopathy. Joe's absolutely certain of that, and believe me, he's, like, never wrong."

Matt sank back onto the bed, incredulous. He was hardly an expert on the various versions, but he was keeping up on the condition in the medical literature — at least as much as his cramped schedule would allow.

"Prion disease?"

"Yes," Nikki said. "Quick point of interest — most people pronounce it pry-on, the way you do, but Stanley Prusiner, who won the Nobel prize for describing the beasties, pronounces it pree-on. I heard him speak a year or so ago."

"Pree-on it is. This is incredible. Do you think my two cases had SE as well?"

"How can I not?"

"Well, what in the hell?… What about the neurofibromas? Anything special about those?"

"Apparently there was. Joe Keller is sort of a stain freak. He might try a dozen different staining techniques on a piece of tissue just to see what shows up. He tells me Kathy's facial lesions take up this one obscure stain differently from the usual Elephant Man type of fibromas."

"I just don't get it."

"Neither do I. But listen, Matt, the way I see it, maybe you're still on the right track. Before we jump to any conclusions, let's go up to Boston and see what Joe has to show us."

"Give me a few minutes to get put together and we're off."

"Only as far as the nearest IHOP, though. I have this sudden, insatiable craving for pancakes drenched with maple syrup."

"IHOP, she wants," Matt mumbled as he headed to the bathroom. "First she lays prions on me, then she wants IHOP. What kind of a woman is this, anyway?"

Nikki was impressed with his attempt at cheeriness, but she knew Joe Keller's revelation had stung. From what Matt had told her last night, he was determined to expose the directors of the Belinda mining corporation for all the shortcuts they had taken over the years, and all the people they had harmed along the way. The bizarre cases were just the catalyst he had been looking for to bring them down — proof that mishandling of organic toxins was causing serious biologic injury. But it was going to be hard connecting the mine with prion infection. Well, she reminded herself, nothing was decided yet.

If there were answers, though, Joe Keller would have them.

Matt returned to the room scrubbed and shaved and looking very good. He had stripped off the Yale sweatshirt and replaced it with a black T and the denim jacket he had been wearing when he rode to the cabin in the woods and rescued her. Nikki liked the change. He was much more denim than Ivy League.

"Ready to go?" he asked.

She stood and set her hands on his shoulders. His eyes immediately found hers.

"You were very cool and very brave last night," she said.

"If I had thought about what I was doing, I probably would have fainted."

"I doubt it."

There was much more that she had planned to say, much more she wanted to know about him, but suddenly she was on her tiptoes, her arms around his neck.

"Thank you, Matthew Rutledge," she whispered. "Thank you for saving my life."

Maybe she had known all along that she was going to kiss him. Maybe she had promised herself, clinging to him on that motorcycle, that if they survived and somehow escaped, she would kiss him whether he wanted her to or not. Still, the actual act of placing her lips against his, briefly and tenderly, was as surprising to her as it was exciting. She drew away just far enough to read his eyes, and saw no doubt in them. Their second kiss was deeper, more prolonged, and more passionate. His muscular arms enfolded her as his lips and tongue explored hers. She set her hands against the sides of his face and ran her fingertips over his cheeks and jaw. When at last they broke apart, she could barely stand.

"I don't remember the last time I wanted to kiss a woman so much," he said.

"In that case, I'm glad I came along when I did."

"Very funny. Actually, that was very funny. You know, I have no recollection of the exact words, but doesn't kissing my patient violate some paragraph or other of that Hippocratic Oath we took?"

She kissed him again, this time playfully.

"Call it mouth-to-mouth resuscitation," she said. "I think my HMO might even cover it."

He looked over longingly at the bed, but made no move to lead her there.

"There'll be time," she whispered gently. "I promise you that. But right now we have work to do."

"Work to do, pancakes to eat. God, but you kiss splendidly."

"As do you. Tell you what, we'll practice every hundred miles or so, just in case we can perfect the art a little more."

"That certainly would do wonders for my road rage. Oh," he added, "here." He handed over the Yale sweatshirt. "I actually bought this for you. It's a large, but that's the only size they had."

"And why Yale?"

"Because that's the only one I could find that didn't have some silly foreign version of an English phrase on it, like Sport Tough or Big Run."

"Well, you're much more West Virginia than Yale anyway, and coming from me that's a high compliment."

"How so?"

She pulled on the sweatshirt, then kissed him on the cheek.

"Because," she said, underscoring the four block letters with her palm, "I graduated from here."

Nattie and Eli Serwanga lived in a modest Cape in an integrated neighborhood of Evanston, just up the Lake Michigan coast from Chicago. Ellen sat at the dining room table, sipping tea with honey and trying to remember the last time she had felt this sad. There was the situation with Rudy, and the incredible guilt and humiliation she was feeling over having opened his letter. But that situation paled in light of what these two had been through. As they talked, she flashed over and over again to Dr. Suzanne O'Connor's incredible account of the horrors of her battle with Lassa fever.