TUESDAY

1

Dawn sat alone at the kitchen table and sipped a Diet Pepsi. Nothing else would stay down during her first couple of hours after rising.

Were you supposed to get morning sick this early in a pregnancy? Did it mean something might be wrong with the baby?

She didn't know. But then, she didn't know a thing about being pregnant. All she knew was that she hated feeling this way. How long would it last? Not the whole nine months—please!

And school. She'd missed yesterday and could so not bring herself to go today. Not that graduating would make much difference once they finished their video game idea and got it sold, but she'd worked hard for four years and totally wanted that diploma to show for it.

She bit back a sob. She felt so alonel God, she wished she had someone to talk to about this. Couldn't mention it to any of her friends—it'd be totally all over school in like two seconds. Under normal circumstances Mom would have been the obvious choice, but these circumstances were nothing like normal.

She shook her head. Still couldn't believe it. Coming on to Jerry. Her mother had gone crazy. That was the only possible explanation.

Well, crazy or not, she was so never speaking to that woman again.

Which left her with no one to talk to about being pregnant—at least no one who'd been there. Oh, she could talk to Jerry about it all day, but he didn't seem to care about what she was going through. All he wanted to talk about was the baby and how he was going to rule the world.

Sometimes she thought Jerry was as crazy as Mom.

And where was he, anyway? He'd said he had an important meeting in the city with some people from Electronic Arts—or "EA" as he called it—but left her home because the time wasn't right yet to bring her into the picture, what-ever that meant. Was that really where he was? Normally she'd take him totally at his word, but she'd noticed that somehow every Tuesday he'd disappear for about four hours or so. He always had a plausible reason, but it occurred to her that his meetings always seemed to be timed for late morning to early afternoon.

Coincidence or…?

Or what?

Did he go to AA meetings? No, he wasn't an alcoholic. He drank only beer and never got sloshed. NA? Nah, he didn't even do weed.

A real uncomfortable thought snuck up on her: What if he was visiting a parole officer or something like that? Yeah, that was what Mom would say. Totally. But no way…

Come to think of it, what made her so sure he wasn't an ex-con? What did she really know about him? She'd asked him about his family but he'd totally killed the subject by saying no brothers, no sisters, folks dead, 'nuff said. Like he'd come out of nowhere.

She realized the same could be said of her. She'd never seen even a photo of her father, and now, in a way, she no longer had a mother.

All she had was herself.

And a baby.

Oh, God, a baby. I don't want to have a baby.

She couldn't go through with it. She had to do something about it… something to stop it.

But she couldn't let Jerry know. God, he'd have a fit. She'd have to do it on the sly and tell Jerry she'd miscarried.

Without giving herself time to think, she rose to her feet. A wave of nausea rolled through her stomach as she headed for Jerry's computer. Yeah, she had to do something about this. She'd look up the nearest abortion place. Had to be a zillion of them around.

2

"Doctor Vecca?"

Julia looked up to see her assistant standing in the doorway.

"What is it, Toni?"

"Mister Bethlehem is here. He wants to see you. Says it's important."

Jeremy? Why on Earth—?

Oh, yes. It was Tuesday—time for his weekly injection of D-287. The clerical staff—and most of the medical staff, for that matter—knew him by his new identity. The personnel in the max security section who knew Jeremy Bolton thought he'd been transferred and they'd have no contact with an outpatient like Jerry Bethlehem.

But even so, Julia preferred that he spend as little time as possible at Creighton.

"Send him in."

A moment later Jeremy strode through the door and slammed it closed behind him. He looked frazzled. That made Julia a bit uncomfortable. A frazzled Jeremy Bolton could be a dangerous Jeremy Bolton, even with his trigger gene suppressed.

"Get Levy in here," he said. "We need a powwow."

"Something wrong?"

"Yeah. Lots."

Julia didn't like the sound of that.

"Care to share?"

"Damn fuck right I care to share. Soon as Levy's here I'll be sharin like crazy."

Normally the idea of allowing an inmate, even one as special as Jeremy, to give orders was unthinkable, but she decided to make an exception in this case. She wanted to find out what was upsetting him and then send him on his way as soon as possible.

Julia buzzed Toni. "Call Doctor Levy and tell him I need him for a conference with Mister Bethlehem."

Jeremy stepped to her window and stood staring out at the grounds.

"Coffee?" she said.

He shook his head. "Just Levy."

Rather than twiddle her thumbs while they waited, she turned to her computer and called up the Jerry Bethlehem file. Yes, he'd been receiving his injections as scheduled, and he'd been testing negative for drugs—any THC or opiates in his urine and the clinical trial would be cancelled. Couldn't allow drugs to muddy the water.

Jeremy was being a good boy.

Aaron came in a few moments later. He looked almost as spooked as that night last week when Jeremy had tried to kidnap him.

Get over it, she thought. Jeremy's dangerous but not that dangerous.

"Good morning, Aaron," she said, indicating one of the chairs on the far side of her desk. "Jeremy has something to say to us."

Aaron seated himself gingerly, as if he feared the cushion might be wired with electricity.

"What's up?"

Jeremy had ignored his arrival. He turned now and fixed each of them in turn with his ice-blue stare.

"That detective is still fuckin with me. I thought you told me you were gonna get him off my ass."

Damn that man. Just a few minutes with that Robertson character had been enough to convince her he was trouble. When she'd run his license plate and found it defunct, she'd been sure. First Gerhard, now another one. Couldn't these idiots simply take the money and mind their business?

"Fucking with you how?"

"First he tells my girl's mother that I killed Gerhard, and now he's doin DNA testing on me."

Shock shot her to her feet. She slammed her hand on her desk.

"What?"

She glanced at Aaron who looked as alarmed as she.

"You heard me," Jeremy said.

She dropped back into her chair as an icy tremor shuddered along the walls of her heart. It couldn't be for oDNA—no one knew about it and Creighton had the only means to screen for it. Still…

"What—" She swallowed around a dry tongue. "What sort of DNA testing?"

Jeremy suddenly looked uncomfortable. "Just looking into my family tree, that sort of thing."

"What did he find?" Aaron said.

"Nothin. JNothin to find. Thing 1 want to know is, where's he gettin this in-formation?" That cold look again, shifting from Julia to Aaron. "You got a leak here?"

Julia forced a laugh. "Here? You must be joking!"

"This ain't no jokin matter, lady. Because I got to thinkin about how you two've been awful damn interested in my DNA and my family tree ever since I got here, and now along comes this detective, right out of the blue, and all of a sudden he's got the same kinda interest. Kinda makes you wonder, don't it?"

Aaron cleared his throat. "We paid him not to do any further investigation on you." He turned his watery gaze on Julia. "Didn't we, doctor."