Michael Crichton - State Of Fear

He felt hands on his shoulders, burning hot hands, and with a grunt he was hauled back into sitting position. "There, that's better." Janis peered at him, her face inches from his. "What's the matter with you? What did you take? Talk to me."

But he could not talk. He could not move at all. She was wearing a leotard top and jeans and sandals. If she moved to one side, she was out of his field of view.

"Peter?" A puzzled tone. "I think something is really wrong. Have you been doing ecstasy? Did you have a stroke? You're too young for a stroke. But it could happen, I guess. Especially with your diet. I told you no more than sixty-five grams of fat a day. If you were a vegetarian you would never have a stroke. Why don't you answer me?"

She touched his jaw, a questioning look on her face. Evans was feeling distinctly lightheaded because he could hardly breathe anymore. It was as if he had a twenty-ton stone on his chest. Even though he was sitting up, the great stone weighed on him.

He thought, Call the hospital!

"I don't know what to do, Peter," she said. "I just wanted to talk to you tonight, and now you're like this. I mean, I guess it's a bad time. But it's kind of scary, too. I have to be honest. I wish you would answer me. Can you answer me?"

Call the hospital!

"Maybe you'll hate me for this, but I don't know what you took that makes you this way, so I'm going to call 911 and get an ambulance. I'm really sorry and I don't want to get you into trouble, but this is freaking me out, Peter."

She went out of his field of view but he heard her picking up the phone on the table next to his chair. He thought, Good. Hurry.

She said, "Something is wrong with your phone."

Oh Jesus.

She stepped back into his field of view. "Your phone is not working, did you know that?"

Use your cell phone.

"Do you have your cell phone? I left mine in the car."

Go get it.

"Maybe one of the other phones in your apartment is working. You need to call your service provider, Peter. It's not safe to be without phoneswhat's this? Somebody tore the phone out of the wall? Have we been having a fit of pique?"

Knocking on the door. It sounded like the front door. "Hell-lo? Anybody here? Hello? Peter?" A woman's voice. He couldn't see who it was.

He heard Janis say, "Who are you?"

"Who are you?"

"I'm Janis. I'm Peter's friend."

"I'm Sarah. I work with Peter."

"You're tall."

"Where is Peter?" Sarah said.

"He's over there," Janis said. "Something's wrong with him."

Evans could see none of this, because he could not move his eyes. And now he saw the first gray spots that signaled the impending loss of consciousness. It took every ounce of energy he possessed to move his chest and fill his lungs the tiniest bit.

"Peter?" Sarah said.

She moved into his field of view. She looked at him.

"Are you paralyzed?" she said.

Yes! Call the hospital!

"He's sweating," Sarah said. "Cold sweats."

"He was that way when I found him," Janis said. She turned to Sarah. "What are you doing here anyway? How well do you know Peter?"

"Did you call an ambulance?" Sarah said.

"No, because my phone is in my car, and"

"I'll do it."

Sarah flipped open her cell phone. It was the last thing Evans remembered.

It was late. The house was dark all around him. Nicholas Drake was sitting at his desk in his home in Brentwood, near Santa Monica. He was precisely 2.9 miles from the beach (he had recently measured it in his car), so he felt secure there. It was a good thing, too, because NERF had bought this house for him only one year before. There had been some discussion about that, because they had also bought him a townhouse in Georgetown. But Drake had pointed out that he needed a residence on the West Coast in which to entertain celebrities and important contributors.

California was, after all, the most environmentally conscious state in the nation. It had been the first to pass anti-smoking laws, almost ten years before New York or any other Eastern state did. And even when a Federal Court overturned the EPA on the issue of secondhand smoke in 1998, saying that the EPA had violated its own rules of evidence and banned a substance they had failed to prove caused any harm at allthe Federal Judge was from a tobacco state, obviouslyeven then, California did not budge. The anti-smoking laws stayed. In fact, Santa Monica was about to ban all smoking outdoors, even at the beach! Now that was progress!

It was easy here.

But as for getting major funds amp;well, that was another matter. There were some rich people in the entertainment industry who could be counted on, but for the real money in Californiathe investment bankers, portfolio managers, CEOs, real estate, trust funders, people with five hundred million to a couple billion, serious moneywell, those people weren't so easy. Those people inhabited a different California. Those people belonged to golf courses that didn't allow actors to join. The big money was in the hands of pioneers and tech entrepreneurs, and they were very smart and very tough. A lot of them knew their science. Christ, a lot of them were scientists.

Which was why they presented such a challenge to Drake, if he wanted that bonus for making his numbers for the year. He was staring at the screen, thinking it was time for a Scotch, when a new window opened and the cursor blinked:

SCORPIO_L: Can you talk?

Speaking of dimwits, he thought. He typed:

Yes I can.

Drake shifted in his seat, adjusting the light over his desk so it would illuminate his face. He looked at the camera lens mounted just above his screen.

The window opened up. He saw Ted Bradley, sitting at his desk in his house in the San Fernando Valley.

"Well?"

"It was just as you said," Bradley said. "Evans has gone over to the dark side."

"And?"

"He was with that girl, Jennifer, who works on the lawsuit amp;"

"Jennifer Haynes?"

"Yeah. She's a wise-ass bitch."

Drake said nothing. He was listening to the sound of the voice. Bradley had been drinking again. He said, "Ted, we've talked about this before. Not everybody likes it when you come on to them."

"Yeah, they do. I mean, mostly they do."

"Ted, this is not the impression we want to make."

"Well, she insulted me."

"All right. So Jennifer Haynes was there amp;"

"She's a stooge for big oil and coal. Gotta be."

"And who else was there?"

"Sarah Jones."

"Uh-huh. She flew up to see the body?"

"I don't know why she was there. She was with a guy named Kenner, a real asshole. Another know-it-all."

"Describe him."

"Forties, dark, kind of butch. Looks military to me."

"Uh-huh. Anyone else?"

"No."

"Nobody foreign? No other people?"

"No, just the ones I described."

"Would you say that Peter Evans knew Kenner?"

"Yeah. Pretty well, I would say."

"So, it was your impression they were working together?"

"Yes. I would say very much together."

"All right, Ted," Drake said. "I like your instincts here." He watched as Bradley preened on the monitor. "I think you may be on to something. Evans could prove a problem to us."

"I'll say."

"He's been one of our trusted attorneys. Why, he was in my office just the other day, getting an assignment from me. If he's turned on us, he could do damage."

"Damn turncoat," Ted said. "He's another Bennett Arnold."

"I want you to stick close to him for the next week or so."

"My pleasure."

"Hang out with him, stay by his side. Buddy-buddy. You know."

"I got you, Nick. I'll be on him like glue."

"I'm sure he'll be at the opening of the conference later this morning," Drake said. And he thought, Or then again, he might not make it.