F. Wilson - The Select

"All set?" she said.

"Yeah. Let's get out of here."

Before he closed the door behind them he took one last look. Something had been done to this room, something more than bug spraying. But damned if he could figure what.

MONITORING

Kurt was laughing.

"What's so goddamn funny?" Verran said.

"This whole thing! Here we spend weeks combing the whole fucking campus for this bug you lost and all the time this jerk's been wearing it like a stick pin on his coat!"

"At least it explains why we could never track it down," Verran said.

"Oh, God, I wish I'd a-been there...just to see the look on your face when you saw..." Kurt dissolved into helpless laughter again.

Even Elliot was grinning like an idiot.

Verran ground his teeth. Nothing funny about this, dammit. That Brown kid had been wearing the bug around campus for all to see. What if somebody had recognized it for what it was? Christ, what if Alston had spotted it?

Verran didn't want to think about it.

"Better get a grip on yourself," he told Kurt, "because it's going to be your job to get it back."

Kurt stopped laughing. "Why me? I didn't—"

"Tonight."

"Brown's taking off for Atlantic City tonight, chief," Elliot said.

"How do you know that?"

"Heard him talking with the Cleary girl about it. They're going together."

"Awright!" Kurt said. "Boffing the blonde! Wouldn't mind a piece of that action myself."

Verran motioned him to shut up. "Maybe our luck is starting to change. We can grab the bug back while he's out of town."

"What if he's got it with him when he leaves?" Elliot said.

Kurt snorted. "The way our luck's been running, that's the way it'll go down."

Verran couldn't argue with that. But maybe that could be worked to their advantage. What was the old saying? When somebody hands you a lemon...

"Here's what we'll do," he said. "We'll watch him leave. If he's wearing the same jacket he had on this morning, we'll assume he's got the bug on him. You two will tail him to Atlantic City—"

"And whack him!"

Verran glared at Kurt for the interruption and started when he saw the .38 in his hand.

"Put that away!"

Kurt grinned. "Just kidding, Lou."

He watched Kurt replace the pistol in the bottom drawer of the center console, then continued. "As I was saying, tail him to A.C. and look for a chance to rough him up a little. Make it look like a mugging."

Elliot frowned "What if we see a chance to get it without any rough stuff?"

"Do it anyway."

Kurt ground a fist into his palm. "Awright!"

"I don't know about this, Chief," Elliot said. "We could get pinched."

"Not if we do it right," Kurt said.

"I don't know," Elliot muttered. "I don't know."

Verran knew how twitchy Elliot got at the thought of winding up in a jail cell again.

"It'll be all right, Elliot," Verran said, clapping him on the shoulder. "I promise you."

Kurt grinned. "Don't worry, little buddy. I'll take care of you."

Verran swung on Kurt. This was almost like being a goddam football coach—push one, restrain the other. "No permanent damage, Kurt. Just enough to get the cops involved. And make sure they get involved—even if you have to call them yourselves."

Elliot's expression was baffled. "How come?"

"I've got my reasons."

FIFTEEN

"I hope I'm not making a mistake," Quinn said as she dropped her overnight bag into Griffin's trunk.

She watched as Tim settled her bag next to his own, then slammed the trunk top.

"What do you mean?" he said.

"I mean that we're traveling as friends and there isn't going to be any hanky panky."

He laughed. "'Hanky panky'?"

She felt her cheeks reddening. "One of my mother's expressions. But you know what I mean. I just don't want any... misunderstandings. Understand?"

He hung his head. "You mean we're not going to have the night of wild, Dionysian sexual abandon that will finally give meaning to my miserable life?" He sniffed.

"Open the trunk," she said. "I'm out of here."

He grinned. "Only kidding!"

"You'd better be, otherwise you're going to be one very disappointed medical student."

"Let's go."

As Quinn moved toward the passenger door, she heard a car behind her. A black Celica GT-S pulled into the neighboring spot on her side. With all the empty slots around, she wondered idly why it had to park so close to them. A big blond fellow got out and gave them a friendly nod. He looked vaguely familiar, then Quinn recognized him as someone she'd seen around the security desk in the Science Center. Why was he parking in the student lot? She noticed him looking past her, directly at Tim, almost staring. Then he slammed his door and strode up the incline toward the Administration building.

I wonder if he knows we're going away overnight? she thought. Probably. Everyone else seemed to. You couldn't keep too many secrets at a place as small as The Ingraham.

And everybody seemed to think they were indeed going to AC for the wild night Tim had kidded about before. Judy Trachtenberg had caught her in the hall just a few moments ago, winking and nudging, speaking in a very bad Cockney accent: "Gettin' away for a bit o' the ol' in an' out, are we?"

Quinn supposed it was a natural assumption. She and Tim were seen together a lot, and now here they were going off with overnight bags.

She settled into the front seat, belted herself in, and looked at Tim as he started the engine. She liked Tim, liked him a lot. She had a sense that his occasional sexist remarks and bluff attitude were a male thing, a front to hide the sensitivity perking below the surface. She was sure it was there; he'd let the facade slip a couple of times and she'd caught glimpses of it. Why did he feel he had to hide it?

Romance with Tim, a little sexual cuddling, or even sex...would that be so bad? There was an empty spot in her life, a void that she'd never managed to fill, a subtle, aching loneliness that she kept submerged in the torrent of activity that consumed her daily life. But in quiet moments, sometimes in those early morning hours when she'd awaken before her alarm clock, she'd feel the pang of that hollow spot.

She wasn't a virgin. That had ended in high school with Bobby Roca. She'd been sure he was the love of her life. They'd made lifelong promises to each other, and had wound up in his bedroom one Saturday night when his parents were away for the weekend. Her next period had been late and she'd been scared to death. She'd seen her whole future in medicine swirling down into a black hole and she was desperate for some support, some comfort, someone to lean on, just a little. Bobby had offered all the warmth and comfort of a snake. Worse, he actually blamed her. When her period finally arrived, a week late, she'd told Bobby to take a hike.

There'd been nobody since...nobody important, anyway. Not that there hadn't been opportunities, but she'd never let a relationship get off the ground. She wasn't sure why. Why did she take sex so seriously? So many of the girls at U. Conn had been so casual about it. They went out once or twice and sex just became part of the relationship. Male and female—what could be more natural? She knew it wasn't always so great for them, but neither was it the hardest thing in the world. Why wasn't it easy for her? Why did she attach so much importance to it?

Hadn't most of them been raised the way she'd been—the right man, the right time and place and circumstances?

Tim might be the right man, but this wasn't the right time in her life, and a freebie hotel room in Atlantic City after a night of watching Tim gamble would not be the right place and circumstances.

And overriding all of it was the weight of her concern for her career. She couldn't afford any sort of distraction now. This was not the right time in her life for a serious relationship—the only kind of relationship she knew how to have. Later. There would be plenty of time later. For now she had to remember to keep pulling back from Tim and keeping her eyes—and the rest of her—focused on the future.