“That’s pretty sophisticated.”
Anselm shrugged, “depends. The way things are now, a lot of stuff that required a doctorate twenty years ago is child’s play today. I don’t think that we’re dealing with someone sophisticated here.despite the technical prowess, this was clumsy in so many ways I’m starting to lose track.”
“How so” Gwen asked, curious.
Anselm glanced around the hospital halls, not wanting his conversation to become part of the local rumor mill, and then began to tick things off on his fingers. “First, a sophisticated person would have covered their tracks better. It’s hard to do, but this person didn’t even try. It’s like he didn’t think anyone would look at the instruments.”
“Maybe he didn’t think anyone would find the body.”
“Even so, it’s clumsy.” Anselm shook his head, “also, there was the fact that Ron was attacked at all. Why Ron”
Gwen shook her head, “Personal motive is always possible.but I take it that you’re thinking something else.”
“The same day I arrive to locate Abdallah” Anselm shook his head, “Too much.”
Gwen wasn’t certain she agreed, but on the other hand there was remarkable little crime in Tower City. Those who lived in the Shanties wanted to be there, and had made a conscious decision to come to the middle of the outback. That made a big difference when you compared it to cities where people grew up feeling trapped by the world in which they had been born.
What little crime they did have was mostly of the youthful variety. Joyrides where a problem, though easy enough to track given the paucity of local vehicles, as were the Thermies and their occasional `challenges’ like free climbing the tower. Some domestic crime existed, of course, but that was rare too.
In fact, she was pretty certain that this event was the Project’s first attempted murder.
So perhaps Anselm was right, the seeming odds weren’t exactly screaming in favor of this being an isolated event.
“So you think that Abdallah Amir is behind it.”
That was where Anselm grimaced and shook his head, “It doesn’t fit. Abdallah is more careful than this. He doesn’t make mistakes very often, and when he does it’s almost never something this blatant. In London, we closed in on him because his inside man in the Japanese Embassy got clumsy, made a call on a tapped line. No, this doesn’t have his touch.”
“What does Mr. Amir do then”
“He specializes in nuclear terrorism.” Anselm replied after a moment’s thought. “Which, to be honest, makes me wonder what he would be doing here anyway”
Gwen nodded in agreement. It didn’t make much logical sense to her, to be certain. What would a nuclear terrorist be doing around a Solar Power Plant There weren’t even any nuclear materials for hundreds of miles, barring the hospital’s diagnostic equipment and some smoke detectors.
“No one would think to look for the world’s leading nuclear terrorist in the middle of the world’s largest solar power plant,” she offered. “Maybe that’s why.”
“It’s possible, but I’m not buying it,” Anselm shook his head. “Not before Ron’s `accident’, and certainly not now.”
Unfortunately, Gwen couldn’t say with any degree of honesty that she was buying it either.
Adrienne Somer tried to breathe evenly through the shakes, as she sat at the side of the bed her husband laid in. He looked lifeless to her, a long distance from the man she’d woken up with just that morning. The man who had been so excited about sailing the ultimate thermal, and had begged her to come along. She’d begged off, telling him that she had to meet Agent Gunnar that morning, but the truth was that she hadn’t wanted to go up that high.
She did parasailing herself, on occasion, as well as many of the sports that Ronald was so enthused about, but she wasn’t as committed to it as he was. For her it was a diversion, a way to relax after a stressful case. When she wrapped a case, gave her testimony in court, and closed the file she liked to do something, anything, to clear it from her system.
She’d gone diving in the Med, skiing in the Alps, and had met Ron on a trip to Colorado where she had tried parasailing, for the first time.
He’d been, well, far more into the adrenaline rush than she was.
Ronald loved the rush, lived for it, even. He got a small hint of it in court when he won a case, but he’d always said that it was on the edge where he felt alive.
He didn’t look alive now.
Adrienne wondered how he’d felt when it was happening, the situation gone out of control, the winds beating at him, tearing apart his only lifeline. Had he felt alive then Had it been worth it, in some bizarre way, to him
It wasn’t worth it to her.
She reached up and pushed the hair back from his forehead, careful not to touch the gauze packs that covered both his eyes. The doctor had said that he had suffered corneal damage from the ice, and that surgery would be required. There was a lot of surgery in Ron’s future.
“Come on, Ron. Honey.I love you. Please don’t die on me,” she whispered.
How many other people had uttered those words Please don’t die on me. It was the same line you heard in ever second movie out of Hollywood, a phrase that had always sounded kind of made up to Adrienne, in the past.
Now she just wanted him to listen to it. To hear it.
All she had to listen to was the steady beep, beep, beep that, along with the hiss of gas, told her he was still alive. His heart was beating, he was breathing.
Then his hand moved.
Her breath caught in her throat, and she grabbed his hand quickly.
“Ron” She asked, softly but urgently. “Ron”
“Love you, too.”
His words were slurred, almost incomprehensibly, but it didn’t matter. She knew what he’d said, and didn’t need mere sound to carry the words to her. She gripped his hand and he squeezed back.
“Can’t.” He licked his lips, “Can’t see.”
“You have bandages over your eyes. Do you know what happened” She asked softly.
His head moved slightly. “Fell.”
“That’s right. You did.” She was trying not to sob.
It would have been in relief, perhaps, but he didn’t need to hear her crying. Not now.
“‘K.,” he started to say something, the beeping on the monitor suddenly jumping all over the place.
“Don’t talk. You need your rest,” she told him, looking over as the nurses’ station began to buzz with activity.
The nurses were rushing in now, his heart rate had alerted them to his change of status and they were milling around, as they checked everything over and over again. One of them made to move her away, but Ron wouldn’t let go of her hand.
“Kamir,” he whispered, his voice so soft she almost missed it.
“What What’s kamir” She asked, leaning over a nurse.
“Who.” He started to say, but his grip was growing slack then and his voice slurred badly.
Adrienne looked over to see a nurse pull a syringe from the IV connected to his arm and recognized it as morphine. Ron’s hand fell away a moment later, his faculties slipping away as the drug powered through his system. She knew from personal experience that keeping your mind focused while on morphine was nearly impossible. It didn’t actually kill the pain, just made it something the mind couldn’t focus on.
She let him go and let the nurses push her aside finally.
Ron was sleeping again, but he’d been awake. He’d known her, he’d said he loved her.She’d told him the same.