Laurie dragged her suitcase into her tiny bedroom and spent a half hour organizing things. After a quick shower, she donned her robe before making herself a simple salad. Although she hadn't had any lunch, she still wasn't particularly hungry. She brought the salad and a glass of wine out to her desk in the living room and turned on her laptop. While she waited for it to boot up, she finally allowed herself to think about what she had learned from her father. It had taken effort to avoid thinking about the issue, but she had wanted to be by herself and have access to the Internet as well as be more in control of her emotions. She knew she didn't know enough to be able to think clearly.

The problem was that medical science was racing ahead at breakneck speed. Laurie had been to medical school in the mid-eighties and had learned a significant amount about genetics, since that was the time of the heady breakthroughs in recombinant DNA. But since then, the field had mushroomed geometrically, climaxing in the sequencing of the 3.2 billion base pairs of the human genome as announced with great fanfare in 2000.

Laurie had made it a point to stay reasonably current with her genetic knowledge, particularly as related to her specialty of forensics. But forensics was only interested in DNA as a method of identification. It had been discovered that certain noncoding areas, or areas not containing genes, showed dramatic individual specificity such that even close relatives had differing sequences. Tests taking advantage of the specificity are called "DNA fingerprinting." Laurie was well aware of this and appreciated it as a powerful forensic tool.

But the structure and function of genes were other issues entirely, an area where Laurie felt unprepared. Two new sciences had been born: medical genomics, which dealt with the enormously complex flow of information within a cell; and bioinformatics, which was an application of computers to such information.

Laurie took a sip of her wine. It was a daunting process to try to make sense of what she learned from her father; namely, that her mother carried the marker for the BRCA1 gene and that Laurie had a fifty percent chance of having the same marker. She shuddered. There was something unsettlingly perverse about knowing that she might have something potentially lethal hiding out in the core of her body. Throughout her life, she'd always felt that information was good in and of itself. Now she wasn't so sure. Maybe there were some things that were better not to know.

As soon as Laurie was connected to the Internet, she googled "BRCAl gene" and got five hundred and twelve sites. She took a bite of her salad, clicked on the first site, and started reading.

five

"Whoa!" chet mcgovern murmured in appreciative homage to the female form he was watching out of the corner of his eye. It was the woman he'd mentioned to Jack that afternoon, and she was dressed in the black bodysuit he'd described. He guessed she was in her late twenties, but he couldn't be sure. What he was sure about was that she had one of the best figures he'd ever seen. At the moment, she was lying prone on a bench, using a machine to work her hamstrings and buttocks. The accentuated curve of the small of her back and the rhythmical rippling of her butt as she did her repetitions gave Chet a shiver of delight.

Chet was about twenty feet away, craftily using free weights in front of a mirrored wall so that he could get close without arousing suspicions. He'd seen her in body-sculpting class, as he had on Friday, but this time, spurred on after having mentioned her to Jack, he'd followed her into the weight room, where there was still a handful of people even though it was after nine P.M. It was Chet's intention to connect with her and ask her to have a drink in the hope that he could get her phone number. Most of Chet's dates were women he'd met at one of the multiple health clubs he frequented. For him, ogling women was not just a spectator sport.

The woman finished with the machine she'd been using. Wasting no time, she got up, glanced up at the wall clock, and then hustled down to the next machine to work the pectorals. Seemingly in a hurry, she started right in. Chet had watched her in the mirror, and in the background, he caught sight of one of the club's employees entering the room. Chet knew him reasonably well from pick-up basketball and sensed that he was a savvy dude, especially since he had some kind of supervisory role. His name was Chuck Horner. Stepping up to the free-weight rack, Chet deposited the weights he had been using and walked over to the employee.

"Hey, Chuck," Chet said sotto voce, "do you know that chick using the pectoral machine?"

Chuck craned his neck to see around Chet. "The looker? The one with the pixie face and a body to beat the band?"

"That's the one."

"Yeah, I know her. I mean, I know her name, since she comes in here all the time, and I happened to sign her up for membership."

"What's her name?"

"Jasmine Rakoczi, but she goes by Jazz. Quite a body, wouldn't you say?"

"One of the best," Chet admitted. "What kind of name is 'Rakoczi'?"

"It's funny you should ask, because I asked the same thing when she joined. She said it was Hungarian."

"Is she tight with anybody that you know?"

"I've no idea. But I can tell you she's a pistol. She drives around in a black Hummer. I should warn you: She doesn't do much socializing, at least not around here. Are you thinking of trying to make a move?"

"I'm thinking about it," Chet offered casually. He turned around to look at Jazz working her pectorals. She wasn't fooling around. Perspiration glistened like little diamonds on her tanned forehead.

"Five bucks says you can't get to first base."

Chet turned around to look back at Chuck. A wry smile appeared on Chet's face. Getting paid for what he wanted to do was a good incentive to overcome his hesitation. "You're on!"

Back at the free-weight rack, Chet lifted off several more weights. He was now committed to approach Jazz, but it wasn't without a certain amount of anxiety, especially with the daunting tidbits he'd learned from Chuck. In truth, Chet was not quite as bold as he liked to portray himself.

While standing in front of the mirror, doing curls with the free weights, Chet tried to think of some way to approach the woman that would leave him an out if he needed it. Unfortunately, he couldn't think of anything clever, and fearing she might suddenly finish and disappear into the women's locker room, he made his move.

In reality, it wasn't much of a "move" at all. He merely walked over when he thought she was almost done with her current machine. By now, his mouth was dry and his heart was thumping in his chest. Encouragingly, he managed to time his approach just about right. As he stepped in front of her, she stopped her repetitions and took her arms off the machine's grips. Taking the towel from around her neck, she wiped off her forehead using both hands, covering her face and breathing deeply from exertion.

"Hi, Jazz!" Chet said cheerfully, trusting she'd be instantly curious how he knew her name.

Jazz didn't respond except to slowly lower the towel to progressively reveal her features. She skewered Chet with her burnt umber, deeply set eyes. Up close, she wasn't pixie-like. Beneath a helmet of dark hair that was damp from her workout, her features had a hint of the exotic. What Chet had thought was tan was naturally dark skin that made her teeth appear particularly white. Her eyes were slightly almond-shaped, and her nose had an almost imperceptible aquiline bend. All this would have been acceptable to Chet, except for the mildly hollow cheeks and her expression. Those cheeks made her look mean, while her expression was intimidatingly brazen, like those he'd seen in photographic portraits of marine recruits.