‘That makes no difference. I’ll take my chances. My life is no damned good to me without Marion.’
‘Your life means so much in so many ways, Connie,’ Jones reminded her gently. ‘You are more likely than anyone else in the world to hold the key to whatever it is that Paul discovered. You have a duty to survive.’
‘Fuck duty,’ yelled Connie. ‘Fuck duty and fuck RECAP!’
‘Connie, there’s a good chance Marion will recover,’ Gaynor continued. ‘You haven’t lost her yet, remember? And how would she feel if she came through all this, and she’d lost you? If you’d done something foolhardy, something plain darned stupid, whether you thought you were doing it for her or not. If you’d put yourself in unnecessary danger. How would she feel about that?’
Connie sniffed loudly. She looked as if she was fighting back tears again.
‘She’d be pretty angry,’ she replied, in a normal tone of voice again.
‘Yes,’ responded Gaynor. ‘She’d be angry. Like I’d be angry if it was that great lump of meat over there.’ She gestured with one thumb at Dom. ‘I love him like you love Marion, you see. Hard to believe as it may be.’
She shot Dom a piercing look. He wriggled a bit, trying not to smile too much, Jones thought.
‘So,’ Gaynor continued, ‘I do understand, Connie. And I wonder, would you let me help?’
‘How can you help?’
‘Well, I could go to see Marion for you. It’s not the same, I know. But I will report back absolutely honestly, I promise you. And, if she’s conscious, I could give her a message.’
Connie walked to the window and appeared to be looking out. Jones guessed she was seeing nothing at all.
After a few seconds she turned around, and addressed Gaynor again.
‘Deal,’ she said.
‘Right.’
‘Just tell Marion she’s to hang on in there. She’s got to. For me. For us.’
‘I will.’
Gaynor headed for the door.
‘Thank you,’ Connie called after her.
Gaynor turned again to smile and incline her head, very slightly, in recognition.
‘There you go,’ said Dom, after she had left. ‘Told you guys she was special, didn’t I?’
Jones nodded. Dom grinned at her over his shoulder as he headed for the bathroom.
This was all very fine, thought Jones, but all they seemed to have discussed so far was Marion. Connie was in danger whether or not she attempted to see Marion. And Jones herself was probably still in danger too. Then there was the small matter of Paul’s discovery. A mighty step forwards in modern science which was apparently important enough, and presumably threatening enough, to lead people in high places to murder.
One half of Jones wanted more than anything to find out exactly what Paul had discovered. Maybe she even wanted to help Connie continue Paul’s work, though she wasn’t sure about that. The climate had changed, but RECAP and everything it stood for still hovered on the dubious fringes of the scientific world. And Jones had a pretty amazing career. She didn’t want to jeopardize it any more than she almost certainly already had.
How much of a target was she, she wondered? If she decided to go home, perhaps whoever was behind all this would just be glad to see the back of her? Or would they?
Jones was tired. She was frightened. And she was bewildered. Nonetheless, the inquisitive, enquiring half of her, the half that had got involved with RECAP in the first place, didn’t want to even attempt to walk away quite yet.
Her thoughts were interrupted by a series of bleeps from her burner phone. She’d been sent a text. It could only really be from Ed. She thought for a second. Dom had said she shouldn’t use the phone, although she still couldn’t believe that Ed was any kind of danger to them. But this was a text. Surely that was safe enough. In any case, she reckoned the importance of knowing what Ed had to say probably outweighed any small risk that might be involved.
She’d just called up the message when Dom came back into the room.
‘What the fuck are you doing, lady?’ he yelled. ‘Haven’t I told you not to use that goddamned phone?’
‘It’s only a text, Dom,’ said Jones mildly. ‘Surely there’s no harm in picking that up.’
‘It’s the same. And you’re a doctor? What kind of brain you got? You’ve sent out a signal to the nearest mast.’
‘Oh.’
Jones was sure she’d read somewhere that text messages were not easily traced. Maybe she’d seen it on the web, that worldwide home of misinformation. People forget that you can only get out of the web what some other prat has put in it. Jones usually did not forget. However, her thought processes were still not working at one hundred per cent.
Anyway, the damage, it seemed, had been done. The message was now displayed. It was indeed from Ed.
‘Meet me at the cornfield. Ten tonight. E.’
‘Let’s have a look at that.’
Dom snatched the phone from her.
‘E?’ he queried. ‘Ed?’
Jones nodded.
‘The cornfield? What the hell does he mean by that? You know what that is?’
‘I certainly do.’
‘Sure as hell ain’t a real field of corn. Not anywhere round here.’
‘No.’
‘Anybody else know?’
‘I very much doubt it.’
‘Right. I guess you’re gonna want to meet him whatever I say ’bout it?’
‘Of course I bloody well do. Maybe he’s found something out. Maybe he knows something he didn’t tell me before.’
‘And maybe he’s setting a trap for you.’
‘No way. Ed wouldn’t do that.’
‘But what if he’s followed to this cornfield?’
‘Well that, Dom, is a chance I’m going to have to take.’
Fifteen
Jones was suddenly very determined. She felt it was up to her to get to the bottom of this mess, to make it safe for Connie to return to a semblance of normal life again, and to begin to rebuild RECAP, if she so wished. As she knew Paul would want. Although she suspected that the murderous forces responsible for the Princeton explosion would have found Connie in New York sooner or later, her own involvement had so far almost certainly done more harm than good. She resolved to at least attempt to redress that.
Ultimately the Dominator seemed to accept that Jones’s mind was made up, and that she was going to meet Ed with or without his help.
He even arranged a car for Jones to drive to the rendezvous. A big old Ford. Yet another favour called in, apparently.
Jones took the last remaining uncompromised burner with her.
‘Just take care, d’ya hear?’ instructed Dom. ‘And I’ll call you. From a pay phone. There’s no way I’m gonna be able to get another safe cell till tomorrow. So I’ll call at eleven p.m. sharp. Right?’
‘Right,’ responded Jones.
She drove slowly through Manhattan to the Bronx, to the place she’d known Ed was referring to as soon as she’d seen his text. Deliberately, she got there an hour early, and parked the Ford a couple of streets away, so she could walk — or rather limp — the last couple of hundred yards.
The earlier heavy rain had stopped, but this was a dark September evening. No moon or stars. There were few people about, and the place was so different from how it had been on her one previous visit. Somewhere inside her head Jones could still hear the noise from the last time. She could still feel the sense of anticipation, and the way the excitement had built inside her.