Chapter 3
Tuesday morning dawned and Mickey reached for the phone, dialed the Serendip switchboard, and called in sick. Then she sat awake for a while wondering to whom the absence would be reported. She fell back asleep shortly after concluding she really didn't care.
At 8:30, her mother rapped lightly on the door before pushing it slowly open. "I'm leaving for work," she announced, standing in the doorway and waiting for a response. "How's your foot this morning?"
Mickey abandoned the idea of feigning sleep and groggily rolled onto her arm and looked up at Beverly. "Foot's okay. Head's foggy." She was surprised how thick her voice sounded as she spoke. Her mouth felt pasty.
Beverly smiled sadly at her. "I feel like I should stay home with you."
"Mom, no, you can go. It's just the pain pill. It knocks me out."
Not sufficiently mollified, her mother entered fully into the room and sat down on the edge of the bed. "Oh, Michelle," she said in a commiserating sort of way. She pulled Mickey's tangled curls back from her face and sat there silently for a minute, just idly twisting her hair in a ponytail at the back of her head. Then she let go of it and sighed. "What happened yesterday? It must have been something big if you broke your foot and I had dinner with the great Austin James." She smiled to herself before continuing. "Did you and Austin have some kind of disagreement? You don't usually run off and leave him wondering where you are. You two have been pretty good at looking after each other."
Mickey couldn't stop a smile from rising up and bubbling into a short laugh. "You make it sound like we're married, Mom. I'm just his assistant. We do have separate lives, you know."
"His work wife, maybe," Beverly asserted with a glint in her eye, derailing any descent into melancholy Mickey might have been contemplating with the thought of separate lives.
"Not even close. Stop it."
"Not that there's anything wrong with that. You're both young, single—"
"Mom!"
"—attractive. Why not?"
"Oh, please, get me another pain pill. Knock me out!" Mickey pulled herself upright and dropped her legs over the side of the bed, sitting shoulder to shoulder with the older woman, who currently was near doubled over in laughter. Mickey couldn't help but laugh in spite of herself. "I told you he sleeps in a tool chest, didn't I? What kind of marriage do you think that would make?"
Beverly sighed deeply, giggled once more, and attempted to reply with a straight face. "A crowded one, I imagine."
"Is this your warped way of trying to make me feel better?" Mickey bent down to open the Velcro straps on her immobilizer boot so she could scratch her itchy ankle. In between straps, she nudged Beverly once with an elbow. "Get your mind out of the gutter."
Beverly sobered. "I will, but in all seriousness, what happened yesterday, besides the broken foot?"
Mickey retightened the last strap and sat upright again. Her deep blue-gray eyes were troubled. "I don't know, Mom. I lost my job."
"What?! Why?"
"He quit the company. He just up and quit, in the middle of the day, and he never even told me. And I can still work for Serendip, but it will just be a file room clerk or receptionist or something. You don't even need a college degree for that. My pay's going to go down about half, and I doubt I'll move up again. The executive director and the board just barely tolerated Austin. Why would they want to put his personal secretary back in an executive position, the one person who actually understands the way he thinks and still likes him?" She shook her head and looked down at her hands, tightly clasped in her lap. "I'm probably just as crazy as he is by now, spending all that time with him."
While she was still speaking, Beverly suddenly rose to her feet and crossed the room back to the doorway. "Michelle, he left you something. I almost forgot. Hold on." She darted out of the room and returned just moments later with a plain, white, business-sized envelope. Bringing it to Mickey and setting it in her outstretched hand, she added, "He said it would explain everything you needed to know for today. At the time, I thought he meant he had instructions for you while he was out of town, but now…"
Mickey hurriedly ripped open the flap and extracted a lined notecard from the envelope. In Austin's tight, boxy script was printed a single word, "Severance." She stared at it, mentally argued with it, and stared some more.
"What does it say?"
Mickey stood up slowly, closed her eyes briefly, and finally reached for her bathrobe. "I need to get ready. I'm going in to Serendip today."
"He wants you to go to work?"
She frowned. "He wants me to quit."
In the end, she went to Serendip only to submit a letter of resignation to Graham McKinley at the desk of his ever-aloof secretary. Anticipating his being too busy to be seen by a drop-in, Mickey included in her letter an invitation to call her at home should he need her signature on any parting documents. She made the effective date immediate, which seemed fitting in light of Austin's waiver of advance notice.
Making the decision to actually resign hadn't been as easy as she had initially expected. Doubt crept in while she sat parked on the street across from Austin's warehouse, chewing on an apple from home and watching a crew of workmen evacuate the contents of his former residence into a semi-trailer. The finality of it hit her then, and for a short time, she considered staying on at Serendip just to spite him.
That lasted only long enough for her to reach the parking lot at Serendip, when she acknowledged this wouldn't have been her current destination had she absolutely decided against resigning the organization. She was stuck in indecision, sitting in that lot. And thinking about finding another job led to thinking about finding her last one, and she remembered that first day, when she and Austin saved the city, unbeknownst to any of its dwellers, from a mad AI program that had taken over city utilities.
She had been so angry with him at the end of it. She'd spent the better part of forty-eight consecutive hours faithfully taking dictation for him on a series of legal notepads, her arm in a cast, only to have him tell her after it was all over to throw them out; he had perfect recall and didn't need them. His response to her ire was void of anything that resembled remorse.
"It got you involved," he countered with a shrug. "You needed that." And then, with those eyes that could register a focus worthy of an electron microscope, he added, "Life's a problem for you."
He had called her out on her insecurities, and when she responded in kind, he was genuinely pleased with her, not threatened. In fact, he seemed delighted to find somebody who was able to pin him down, to get what kind of human being he was, even if she was still far from appreciating the singularity of having that understanding.
That day marked the beginning of a new way of being for her, one that called for greater engagement, greater endurance, greater ingenuity, and most of all, greater willingness to let go of the reasons why and just act. He let her into his world and on some level, it was like her life began.
So she resigned from Serendip, not because Austin James left her, but because Austin James knew she was capable of greater things than sitting behind a desk answering phones and fetching coffee. He wasn't issuing an order; he was inviting her to forge a new path, to embrace what her next life might be. He was offering her a severance from the things that would hold her bound.
Three days later, her optimism had plummeted. She was updating her résumé and starting to clip out employment opportunities from the daily newspaper. There had still been no word from Austin, leaving her to understand that he truly did leave and might never return. The idea was depressing her more than she cared to admit.
The phone rang in the middle of the morning, while she was considering whether to fill out applications or go for a jog, and it was Graham McKinley's secretary, Jean.
"Mr. McKinley would like to see you. How soon can you come?"
Mickey's eyes widened in surprise. "He wants me to come there?"
"As soon as possible, yes. Please come right away, if you can."
She didn't rush, remembering the last time he'd invited her for an appointment. But this time, her caution was unnecessary. Graham must have been watching for her because he met her halfway between the elevators and the glass doors of the third floor executive suite. "Miss Castle, follow me, please." He turned and motioned in the direction of the offices, where he was already headed.
She was more curious than concerned. She'd already quit, what else could he do to her? She followed him all the way to his office, and when he opened the door, she saw the room was already occupied by one other person. She should have been concerned, after all.
"You!" the tall, silver-templed man dressed in a tailored pinstriped suit barked when he saw her and rose abruptly to his feet. "You know what he took with him. Where is it?"
"Ah," she said, finding no other words to accompany the sound. She turned to Graham for assistance, but he had only sunk heavily into his chair and ran a hand nervously into the graying blond hair at the nape of his neck. She looked again at the other man, whom she immediately recognized as the director of the genetics division, Carl Sykes. If his regard for her was anything like his regard for Austin right now, she might have been justified in hobbling right out of there on her immobilizer boot before the shooting started.
He was glowering, and refusing to be seated. "You know he was in my office," he accused, pacing a few steps and pointing a finger at her. "You know he was looking through my files."
She glowered back. "No, Mr. Sykes. I don't actually know what you're talking about."
He turned his attention to the executive director. "McKinley, Austin James stole intellectual property from my office. I know he did. That is a criminal act. If he profits off that material I could have him arrested, not to mention sued. I told you he and his secretary were here just last week, nosing around and asking about my projects. That man has been obsessed with me. And now I hear he's gone and signed on with that upstart genetics firm in Chicago, and now she's resigned, too. This isn't suspicious to you?"
Mickey's mouth fell open.
"Carl," Graham sighed, dropping his hand back down on his desk. "Do you have any reason to think Austin took a file of yours aside from his coming to your office last week?" He turned his eyes to Mickey. "Miss Castle, to the best of your knowledge, did Austin take any papers from the genetics office when you were there with him?"
Mickey shook her head. "No. No, he just asked him some questions."
"What kind of questions?"
"About Edgar Johnson, about his death, and he asked a—"
"He asked about old genetics work I did prior to Serendip," Sykes interrupted impatiently, "just like he was doing again Thursday. And now one of my archive accounts from that period of time is missing. Who else would take it?"
Mickey pressed her lips together angrily. "Mr. Sykes," she said evenly, despite the trembling frustration she felt brewing in her gut, "if Austin James wanted information from your file, he wouldn't need to steal it. He'd spend ten seconds looking at it and commit it to memory." She turned back to Graham. "He wouldn't take it. He wouldn't have to."
For a moment, the two men looked at each other and neither spoke. Then Graham let out a breath. "It's true," he confirmed.
Sykes was silent for a long, tense moment, his lips pressed together. He looked like he desperately wanted to argue further, but had no words to support the effort. Then he swatted the air with his hand as at a bothersome fly. "I thought we settled all this last Thursday," he said to Graham bitterly. He moved toward the door, stopping to throw a reproachful scowl at Mickey. Once more, he stabbed a finger at her, close enough this time that she stumbled backwards a step. "You just tell that boyfriend of yours to stay out of my business or I'll have him ruined." He turned on his heel and stormed from the room.
"He's not my boyfriend!" Mickey called after him. "And I can't tell him anything if I don't know where he is." She glanced at Graham, still sitting speechless behind his desk. "He went to Chicago?"
On her way back out of Serendip, perhaps for the last time, she thought about her first encounter with Carl Sykes, the infamous office visit with Austin. She hadn't been entirely forthcoming with Graham back in his office. Although Austin hadn't taken anything she was aware of, he had done some clandestine snooping one day, the second day after learning of the death of Edgar Johnson.
It had been early in the morning, before seven, when Austin had paged her that day. She was up, but had just stepped out of the shower. The precedent he had set was that he wouldn't require her before nine or ten on any given day, not because he was such a night owl, but because anytime was as good as another since the man didn't sleep. Or at least he had no ordinary block of nighttime sleep that one would expect of a normal person.
Austin had what he called 'fragmented REM cycles.' In essence, it meant he slept only one complete sleep cycle at a time, or about ninety minutes, several times in twenty-four hours, and achieved even that with the help of a tool cabinet, or more scientifically deemed a 'sensory deprivation chamber.' Mickey thought his condition sounded horrid, but Austin was cavalier about it. He called it a necessary concession to his state of savant grade cognitive aptitude and eidetic memory, and essentially an even trade. Mickey called it tragic and said she'd take dim intellect and a curbed memory for a nine-hour stretch of sleep any day.
He had asked her to hurry; he needed to be at Serendip before 8:00, an unheard of request from him. She had acquiesced and succeeded with no small effort in getting to the warehouse to pick him up in plenty of time to meet his unusual demand. Nonetheless, he was already cranky and curt, standing outside by his car in the early morning sun and glaring, when she pulled into the warehouse lot.
"Where were you? I've been out here for twenty minutes," he complained, dropping the keys in her hand and folding himself into the passenger seat of the station wagon.
Mickey expertly slid into her seat, dropped her bag at his feet, and turned the key in the ignition in one fluid action. "Austin, you only called me thirty minutes ago. I can't teleport."
"No one can teleport; it doesn't exist. Your hair's wet."
Exasperated, she glared back at him, sitting next to her ramrod straight and buttoned to the throat in a plain black shirt, his no-nonsense motif. "If I really could teleport, maybe I would've had time to dry my hair this morning. And I'm stopping for coffee on the way—grumble all you want to; you can't stop me." She pulled into gear, eyes on the road, and didn't let him see she hadn't missed the quiver of a barely-contained smile at the corner of his mouth. She suspected he'd be disappointed if she didn't at least pretend to be put-out.
They had arrived at Serendip before 8:00, as he had requested. Austin was on a mission that morning, taking long, rapid strides en route to a destination known only to him. With a firm grip on her fast food coffee cup, Mickey hurried to keep pace with him, grateful for the wait at the elevator so she could catch a breath and a swig of her coffee.
Together, they reached the glass double doors to the Genetics Division. There, Austin came to an abrupt stop, and turned to his secretary. She pulled up almost as fast as he did, but still managed to step partway on his foot. He didn't seem to notice.
"I need you to stay here," he told her.
"Why?"
"So you can run interference for me in case the genetics director shows up before I get back." He checked his watch. "Directors' meeting should be going for another few minutes, longer if someone's complaining."
She cocked her head at him and gave him a withering stare, chiding in a low voice, "Are you breaking into his office?"
"No!" he scoffed, his face contorted in offended innocence. He glanced over his shoulder at the office in question. "Clearly, the door is open. No breaking in necessary."
She made a wry look. "How're you getting past his secretary?"
"What's her name?"
"Um, Diana something. Feder….Fed…"
"Hurry up. Think!"
Mickey waved an admonishing hand in the space between them. "Shh. Let me think!" She scrunched her eyes closed with her fingers pressed against her temples and bent her head. Then her eyes popped open and she hissed excitedly, "Federspiel. Diana Federspiel."
Austin rewarded her success with a cocky smile of his own, and then he turned suddenly away, disappearing around a corner to the nearest corridor. He was back not a minute later, his smile of satisfaction a bit broader. "Wait a second."
The overhead supermarket music was suddenly overlaid by a droning voice. "Would Diana Federspiel please report immediately to Human Resources? Diana Federspiel. You have a package for pick up."
Austin's eyes twinkled at Mickey and her doubtful look gave way to tacit approval. He bit his lip in eager anticipation as the farther glass door pushed open behind them and a well-maintained, dark-haired woman in a navy skirt and blazer hurried past. Austin slipped through the still-open door before it had a chance to sweep closed on its hydraulic arm.
While he was occupied there, Mickey examined the framed photographs of the officers of the department, stopping to spend more time with the director, Carl Sykes. He was a dark eyed, dark haired man with graying temples and an athletic build. In the photograph, he was sporting a cocky grin, almost a laughing appearance. He had bronze tanned skin and an impeccable suit. Mickey blew out a sigh that lifted the curls up off her forehead and she turned around and wandered back down the hall to keep an eye on the elevator.
The steel doors opened three times while she watched. The first time her heart skipped and she anxiously scanned the faces of the exiting passengers, fully expecting either Mr. Sykes or his secretary to step out. The second time, she wasn't quite so anxious. The third time, she stood momentarily frozen as both Mr. Sykes and Diana Federspiel stepped off together. The secretary was giving her boss an earful about a crank call from the general switchboard. Mickey bit her lip, hesitated, and then darted out to meet them well before they reached the double doors.
"Mr. Sykes," she exclaimed, louder than necessary and with a peculiar level of intensity, "I'm so glad I found you. I'm Mickey Castle, Austin James' secretary, and he urgently needs to speak with you. He's in his office right now."
The man and his secretary exchanged perplexed looks and for an awkward moment, neither said anything. Finally, Mr. Sykes replied slowly, "I don't know whether I was aware Mr. James had an office at Serendip. He definitely isn't in the habit of using it."
Diana was quick to chime in once her boss had finished. "Why didn't you just call me to ask for a meeting?"
Mickey smiled as winningly as she could muster. "Well, like Mr. Sykes said, no one's entirely sure where Mr. James has an office. He sent me to bring you there directly." She sobered and looked squarely at Diana while holding her cup aloft. "Can I find you a cup of coffee?"
Suddenly, Austin was there, standing at Mickey's side, extending a hand to his colleague from Genetics. "Carl, hello, so glad I found you."
Reflexively, Sykes took his hand, but his smile was less than the megawatt version in the photograph as he asked, "Didn't you send your secretary to bring me to your office? And now you're here."
Austin laughed easily. "That's funny," he said, leading the way through the double doors back toward Sykes' office, prompting the man and his secretary to follow. "It seems my office has been re-appropriated as a conference room; The Lexington, I believe is what they're calling it."
Mickey followed behind the trio, biting back a smile as Diana exclaimed, "Work on the Lexington Conference Room was completed four years ago."
"Really? Has it been that long?" Austin shook his head. "Time flies."
Diana detoured to her desk before they reached Sykes' office, and Mickey was momentarily ready to settle herself in the lobby, except Austin's hand at the back of her upper arm was steering her into the room, making his preference clear. Austin sat down in a leather upholstered chair some distance from the executive desk, and Mickey sat in another as close to him as she could manage. There was nothing to do now but wait. Austin was clearly leading the encounter.
He didn't waste time on small talk. "I'm here about Edgar Johnson. What do you know?"
Sykes had been leaning back leisurely in his seat, but at this question, he sat up straighter and looked surprised. "He died. I heard about that yesterday morning. Shocking."
Austin waited, and let the silence drag out a while. Then he said abruptly, "I'm interested in what you know about his squash project, the one he brought to your attention."
"That?" Sykes said with a half-smile. "Is that why you're here, Austin? You think someone shot him over hybrid squash?" He laughed, a short bark, leaned forward some more and shook his head. "It was a big nothing. He cross-bred two incompatible strains of squash, which he pilfered from one of our biotech fields, and grew a weed." Then he leaned back again and glanced at Mickey before he continued. "From what I know about Edgar and his son, I wouldn't be surprised if there was a different weed involved in this, and it sure as hell didn't come from any team of mine."
Austin nodded, but otherwise remained stone-faced. "Any chance he pilfered from your NB2 strain?"
The effect of the question was remarkable. Mickey watched the man's face color and his hands grip together more tightly. He was no longer smiling, but he did show excellent control when he failed to take Austin's carefully placed bait. "There is no NB2 at the eastside field, James, or anywhere else in the company that I'm aware of, and there never was. That investigation closed more than a year ago, and as far as I'm concerned, it was nothing but a witch hunt. The subject is closed." Abruptly, he stood. "Is that all?"
Mickey got to her feet, and watched Austin slowly stretch his legs before he casually rose from his chair. "Just one more thing," he said, as though it were an afterthought. His blue eyes were sharp, though, and his smile taut. "The team you sent out to check out the Johnson project, was it successful in obtaining a squash?"
At that, Sykes looked uncertain. "What are you talking about?" he huffed impatiently. "What team? I never sent a team."
"His son told me a group of three who said they were from Serendip Genetics came out to the property, said they were offering to pay Edgar a handsome sum for a couple of the squash for study before Edgar burned the rest. They didn't come from you?"
"No," Sykes said, his eyes shifting from Austin to the door to Mickey. "He never did say where he was growing the squash, and I didn't consider it urgent enough to pursue offsite. That wasn't any team of mine. Now, if you'll excuse me…" He gave Mickey a grim smile as he moved past her to stand at his open door, ushering them both out. "Next time you need to talk, just call my secretary, would you?"
Once they had arrived back downstairs and were making their way toward the front entrance of the building, Mickey had questioned him. "Austin, what in the world is HB2?"
Austin frowned. "Potentially, it's a weapon of mass destruction."
She checked to see whether he was being facetious. He was not.
"HB2 is a laboratory-created virus, basically a complex chain of amino acids. It was developed by a research team in California about ten years ago as a means to feed the world through genetically engineered staple crops."
Mickey frowned. "Acorn squash?"
"Of course not," Austin chided. "Rice, corn, wheat; things like that. The gene sequence itself—the HB2—could be attached to desirable genomes from some particular organism and then injected into the nuclei of the cells of any kind of plant, with the HB2 acting as a courier to get the foreign DNA to assimilate while neutralizing the corresponding native DNA. The intention was to produce fast-growing, drought-tolerant crops for famine-stricken regions of the world. The idea itself had merit."
"But the product didn't work?"
Austin grimaced. "It was hit or miss. Genetic engineering is still in its infancy, Mickey. The potential is there for huge advances—a cure for cancer, reversal of untreatable diseases, the extention of human life by decades. But it's an inexact science. HB2, as it stands, can produce hearty, fast-growing crops that can thrive in desert climates and resist disease. But it can also create plants that invade large tracks of land and produce fruit toxic to the other plants and animals that share its environment. It's highly unpredictable. And that's why HB2-infused acorn squash pollen, after multiple laboratory trials by this particular research team, was rejected by the Food and Drug Administration before it could be used in squash or any other plants grown outside the lab. The FDA permanently banned it due to its potential to mimic viruses that are detrimental to human life." He shook his head in disgust. "And that's why Carl Sykes had no business bringing it with him to Serendip."
Mickey stared at him.
He nodded. "Sykes was a member of that team."
"Oh, Austin, is that what Edgar was growing?"
"I don't know, Mickey. Unless I test seeds from his squash, I have no way of knowing, just a hunch. But somebody out there did get some of those seeds, and they're not confined to a laboratory anymore."
It was a sobering thought.
