Russell Andrews - Aphrodite

"But how does the FBI come in?" Deena asked. "Why do they care if Kransten's happy and protected?"

"Maybe they're not trying to protect him," he said. "Maybe they want what he has." Justin saw it now, the vague outline of the puzzle, one little piece beginning to fall into place. "All right, let's think the unthinkable," he went on. "Kransten's researchers have come up with something that can extend people's lives. A pill, injections, some kind of formula for treatments. Whatever it is. Looking through the products that have been developed and are being developed, it actually doesn't seem that crazy. According to Roger's notes, they're really on the verge of major breakthroughs in oncology, inflammation, the ability to decrease strokes and heart attacks. So let's say he's got it. For some reason, he's keeping it a secret. But the FBI knows about it because Helen Roag, who worked for Kransten, was telling them. But why? Why was she telling them? And what good is it to the FBI?"

"Helen Roag'll know." Deena frowned. "Except she's gone."

"Yeah. But whoever she's been calling in Washington might know, too. So let's hope that my old pal Wanda's as smart as I'm giving her credit for being."

Deena looked at her watch. "We only have about twenty minutes to wait." As Justin pulled into a restaurant parking lot, she said, "Why are we stopping here?"

Justin just smiled and Deena shook her head in amazement.

"Your mother… the mother I met… she used to like to go to the House of Pancakes?"

"It was her secret shame," Justin said. "She loved the chocolate-chip pancakes and she'd sneak out here and have them. She could never tell my father. I was the only one who knew. And that was only because I was in here with some friends-this was one of our stoning hangouts- and I saw her one day." He pulled the key out of the ignition. "Give me five minutes. I've got one more thing to do."

It took him under five minutes, using the mini-Swiss army knife that served as a key chain for the new car key, to remove the Toyota's license plates and swap them for a set on another car in the lot. "That should buy us a little time," he said. "There's nothing distinctive about our car, and now the license plates don't match the description. That's about as invisible as we're going to get."

"If we ever get out of this mess," Deena said, "I'm giving up yoga and becoming a crook. This is very educational."

He took her arm and they walked together into the IHOP, headed toward an inner booth away from the window. They ordered coffee, said they were waiting for someone else, and after another ten minutes a second waitress came up to them.

"This might sound kind of crazy," the waitress said, "but are you expecting a message from your mother?"

Justin nodded and the waitress handed over an envelope. There was handwriting on the outside of the envelope and Justin read it, shook his head in admiration, then pushed it across the table so Deena could read it too. His mother's scrawl said:

I think someone's following me. So, since they heard you say that I had to kill time, I'm going to sit and have some coffee inside. And maybe have some chocolate-chip pancakes. I'm writing this in the car-don't worry, no one can see anything. I'll slip it to the waitress when I pay my check. Then I'll drive around town for the rest of the day and make someone crazy, I hope. She signed it: Lizbeth. Crossed that out and put: Mother.

Justin ripped open the envelope. Inside was a faxed note from Wanda Chinkle. This note was also handwritten. It read:

You're one smart son of a bitch. Helen Roag was calling Frank Man-waring.

But you knew that, didn't you?

My career's fucked. Get these guys for me, will you? -Wanda

Deena put her head between her hands and sighed. A long, deep, hopeless sigh. "Great," she said. "Now all we have to do is figure out where Frank Manwaring is and how we can talk to him. Why don't we just try to go meet Prince Charles-it'll be about the same thing."

"Maybe not," Justin said. "What's today's date?" When she told him, he said, "I know where Manwaring is. I don't know how the hell we get to him, but I know where he is."

"Where?"

When he told her, she looked at him in amazement. "Well, I know how we can get in to see him," Deena said. And when she told him how, he not only gave her the same amazed look, he leaned over and kissed her. A long, celebratory kiss.

When the kiss finally broke up, Deena asked, "Am I the first girl you ever kissed in the House of Pancakes?"

He thought for a minute, then shook his head. "The third," he told her. "But this one was by far the best."

Gordon and Wendell Touay were in the small gym in their house, the narrow rectangular space that had originally been built as a laundry room off the garage. Gordon was spotting Wendell's bench press. He was up to his eighth rep at three hundred and twenty-five pounds when the cell phone rang. The special cell phone. Gordon looked down at his brother, helped him ease the bar into a resting position. Then Gordon picked up the phone, flicked it open, and said, "Yeah."

"They're alive," Alfred Newberg said.

Gordon didn't say anything. The muscle in his right cheek began to twitch. It pulsed in and out. Did it again. In and out…

"You're fired," Newberg said. "You no longer work for this company."

Gordon slapped at his cheek with his right hand. "I don't think you want to do that," he said.

"It's already done. You are no longer employed by this firm. Your weekly payments have been terminated."

"We'll finish the job," Gordon said.

"You're free to do whatever you want. But whatever you do now you're on your own. You don't work here anymore and you will never work here again."

Gordon Touay's right hand closed into a fist now. He kept it clenched so tightly that his entire hand turned red, then white as the blood supply was cut off.

"Whichever one of you idiot freaks I'm talking to," Newberg said, "I'm assuming you are about to fly into a psychopathic rage. So let me explain something to you. It is not an accident that you have never been allowed to contact me or know where we are. If, by some slim chance, you have been clever enough to learn anything at all, understand that we've done video surveillance on you over the years. If anything happens to me, those tapes will be delivered, along with your names, phone number, and address, to the proper authorities. Your activities have been chronicled in great detail. And, believe me, there is no possibility of connecting those activities to this office. If you so much as try to contact me, you will be arrested immediately and spend a very long time in jail." When Gordon didn't respond, Newberg added, "This conversation is now over," and hung up.

Gordon closed up his phone, slowly turned to his brother, who was still lying on his back on the bench, his feet planted firmly on the ground. Gordon repeated Newberg's words. Then he went back to the bench, added twenty more pounds of weight to the bar, stood over his brother, and began to spot him for his next set of repetitions.

"We're going to find them," Wendell Touay said slowly, as he forced his first rep upward. "That's what you want to do, isn't it?"

Gordon nodded. "We're going to find them and we're going to kill them."

Wendell finished his tenth rep, laid the bar to resting position. He grabbed a small towel, wiped the sweat from his forehead and then his bare chest. He smiled. "I can't wait," he said to his brother.

Then they were both smiling. Justin drove the Toyota along Highway 27, past the town of Water Mill, and they both saw the road sign pointing to a turn on the left and reading: east end harbor 7 miles. He drove past without turning.

"It's a little creepy to be back here," Deena said. "I used to think of this place as so normal. A nice, all-American town. Now I think of it as someplace to be running away from. It feels sinister to me. It doesn't feel like my home anymore."