“How was your flight?” the cabbie said.
“Excuse me?”
“Your flight.” The cabbie grinned into the rear view mirror. “How was it?”
Wendy let go of the button on her cardigan that she had been worrying since getting into the taxi. “Fine,” she said. She glanced at a passing street sign. Second and Balboa. Almost home.
“Not much traffic tonight,” the cabby droned through his surgical mask. “The cab stand at SFO was almost empty. Pretty weird. Nobody flyin’ cuz of TL, I guess.”
“I’m sorry,” Wendy said, “but I have a lot to think about right now. Do you mind?”
The cabbie pulled down the brim of his baseball cap. “No,” he said. “Not at all.”
Wendy reached into her pocket and pulled out a pad of paper. The words “People to Call” were written at the top. The list was blank.
“Eighth and Balboa,” the cabbie announced. Wendy got out of the taxi and made her way up the steep steps of the Victorian. The apartment door creaked open as she reached in to turn on the light. Suddenly, Wendy realized the door was still moving—but she wasn’t pushing. She glanced back behind her and simultaneously reached into her purse. She grabbed a canister of pepper spray, then spun around and thrust her arm forward, unleashing a stream of the irritant directly into her attacker’s face.
“Cheese and rice!” the assailant yelled as he backed away from Wendy and fell to the ground, his hands covering his eyes. “I was just holding the door for you!”
Wendy assumed a defensive posture, her feet shoulder-width apart and the spray still at the ready, aimed down at the tall blond man on the ground. “Who are you?”
The man remained inert, making little snuffling noises. “I’m Scott Durrant. Jason’s friend. I got a message to meet you here.”
Wendy’s mouth opened as she dropped her packages and knelt to help Scott. “Oh, my gosh, I’m sorry!” she said as she pulled a tissue from her purse and tried to wipe his face. “Scott! Jason’s told me all about you. I just didn’t expect you. Let me help you in the house.”
Wendy reached down and grabbed Scott under the arms and half-hoisted him to a standing position, his eyes still closed. “Man, that stuff burns,” he said.
“It’s supposed to,” Wendy said as she moved Scott into the kitchen and began wiping his eyes with a cold wet washcloth. After several minutes Scott was able to open his eyes, but he still had groups of angry red welts on his cheeks. He stuck out his hand and smiled. “I’m Scott Durrant.”
Wendy took his hand and pumped it up and down. “Again, sorry . . . .”
Scott grinned. “I’ll be fine—” he paused, then grinned more broadly “—D-Day.”
Wendy’s head was in the refrigerator and her back was to Scott. “Excuse me?” she said over her shoulder.
“D-Day,” Scott repeated. “That’s you, isn’t it? Your on-line name?” Scott gingerly touched his cheek. “Now I see why.”
“I’m sorry, you’ve lost me,” Wendy said. “The only D-Day I know is a technician at the place I work named Denise Dalton—except they just fired her.”
“Ah,” Scott said, nodding, “now it begins to make sense. See, I went surfing on the Internet looking for someone who knew about Jason, and I got this message from someone called D-Day. Told me to find you. That’s how I got your address.”
Wendy removed a can of Coke from the refrigerator and handed it to Scott. “Why were you asking about Jason?”
“Jason told me to come and find him if I hadn’t heard from him after Marcus—”
“Dr. Marcus? Craig Marcus?”
“The same. Anyway, after Marcus took Jason away in the middle of the night. I assume you know the whole history, right?”
Wendy nodded.
“I hadn’t heard, so I started looking.” He opened the Coke and downed half the can, then held it against his cheek. “Looks like I found you.”
“Why did D-Day—Denise—tell you to find me?”
Scott grinned his big horsey grin and belched. “You tell me,” he said.
“Look,” Wendy said, moving toward Scott and shaking a finger at him. “These are dangerous people we’re dealing with, and I want to be careful.”
“Tell me about it. You know a little gorilla that drives a black Mercedes?”
Wendy nodded. “The Driver. He’s Phillip Porter’s chauffeur. You had a run-in with him?”
Scott took another swallow of Coke. “Umm hmm.”
“And you lived?”
Scott nodded. “Barely,” he said.
“Look,” Wendy said, “I don’t have time right now to tell you what’s happened since Dr. Marcus took Jason. I just know I need to get Jason out of The Complex immediately—and I need some help.”
Scott’s brows jumped up when Wendy mentioned The Complex. “The Complex,” he said. “D-Day said something about that.” Scott reached into his pocket and pulled out the map D-Day had e-mailed to him. He spread it out on the table and smoothed it with his palms. “I don’t suppose you know what the big red ‘X’ is, do you?”
Wendy bent over the map and studied it for a moment. “The ‘X’,” she said, “is The Complex.”
“Wow. D-Day did good,” Scott said, tapping the latitude and longitude coordinates. “She must have GPS’d it on her phone the last time she was there. There’s an app for that, you know. How do you get there?”
“They usually fly us in on a charter jet to an airstrip about a hundred miles away. Then we take a bus out to the site.” Wendy sat on the kitchen counter and rubbed her eyes. “We need a plane,” she said. “And we need to go tonight. I’m off for two weeks, but we can’t wait. Plus we have to be there by 5:00 a.m. so we can take the bus in to The Complex with the new crew coming on.” Wendy laughed. “Yeah right,” she said. “I don’t suppose you’re a pilot.”
Scott grinned. “As a matter of fact,” he said, “I am.”
Wendy stared at him. “You’re kidding.”
“Nope. I’ve got a Cessna 185 out at the Oakland Airport that’s all fueled up that I use to fly over to Tahoe. Jason and I used to fly up there almost every weekend to play poker—” Scott’s countenance clouded “—until he married Linda.”
Wendy nodded. “I understand. She’s a real prize.” She folded the map and put it in her purse. “So, will your plane get us to Arizona in time?”
Scott choked on his Coke. “Wait a minute, sister,” he said, spluttering. “You mean right now?”
Wendy widened her stance and folded her arms. “Right now,” she said.
“Look, we’ve got to file flight plans, check the weather—this isn’t like a weekend puddle jump up to Tahoe!”
Wendy nodded. “I see,” she said. “So you can’t do it.”
“Oh, no,” Scott said, backing away, “no you don’t. You’re not going to use that female reverse psychology on me!”
Wendy moved after him. “Scott, you need to understand what’s going on. Jason is the cure for TL. The cure! Porter and Marcus are killing him. If we don’t get him out of there, he’ll be dead—and the rest of the world loses the cure. You understand that, don’t you?”
Scott continued backing up until he bumped into Wendy’s couch. “Look, I’m just a computer programmer. You didn’t have Walter trying to kill you.”
Wendy stopped approaching and closed her eyes. “You’re his friend, Scott,” she said. “You promised.”
Scott sat on the edge of the couch without speaking for several seconds. “Now I know why I never got married,” he said. He stood and hoisted his pants up around his skinny waist. “All right,” he said. “Let’s do it.”