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  Sanchez was her usual negative self. “Are you kidding? I can hardly keep my eyes open.”

  Her eyes were indeed drooping. And her hair had declared its freedom about halfway through the day. All these wild waves of black hair bracketed her gorgeous face.

  “But it’s still light out,” Rick countered. “I guarantee as soon as you lie down, you’re going to be wide awake. You need a little nip first. Then a long shower. By that time, it’ll be dark and you can sleep like a baby.” He even cradled his cheek on his folded hands.

  She bought it.

  The four drifted out to a small patio at one end of the catwalk that overlooked the garden. After pouring a healthy shot of spiced rum into four glasses, Rick clinked his against Judith’s. “Congratulations. Not here twenty-four hours, and the villagers are lighting torches. Think they’re holding a secret meeting in Michael’s apartment to discuss who’s going to toss us out?”

  “Shit, man. I couldn’t help it.” Judith swirled the booze around her ice and then took a big gulp. “That little bitch had it coming.”

  “John called her an unfortunate child this afternoon.” Rick said.

  Devin tossed back his shot. “That’s no child. I’d say she’s been all growed up since she was about twelve.”

  “It’s still a sad situation,” Sanchez said. “The poor girl’s been left on her own, and she’s learned that the easiest way to get what she wants is to cause a scene.”

  “And what’s with her and Michael?” Devin wondered out loud.

  Judith clicked her tongue. “What a scumbag. Did you catch how he calls her Katherine? Probably to convince himself she’s older while he’s fucking her.”

  “Poor Mai.” Sanchez rubbed her finger around the rim of her glass. “I hate it that she feels like she has to put up with someone like that.”

  “What is it with women?” Judith sounded disgusted. “Always thinking they aren’t complete without a man.”

  “You have a man,” Rick teased.

  “Yes, but I don’t need him.” She pinched Devin’s cheek. “He’s more like my boy-toy.”

  She grinned and he snapped his teeth like he might bite her finger.

  “I’m disappointed in Michael,” Sanchez said. “Kat’s too young to understand, but he should know better.”

  Rick and Devin guffawed.

  “And he’s such a poser,” Devin added.

  “You mean our tour?” Sanchez asked.

  “Yeah, that too. But when we were talking about guns earlier? That was total bullshit.”

  “It was?”

  “Oh, yeah,” Devin said. “Somewhere along the line, I guess Michael decided he wanted to try hunting. So he went out and bought an expensive gun, with a fancy Swedish scope, probably spent a fortune on boots and jackets and all the little accoutrements that the guy in the store told him he had to have. But I bet he only went hunting once or twice. When it didn’t turn out like he thought it would, he threw all that crap in a closet with his skiing gear and golf clubs. He sure as hell never bagged a deer.”

  Sanchez was curious. “How do you know that?”

  “Well, for one thing, any guy who does serious hunting always has at least one great story that he can’t wait to tell you, the first deer he bagged, falling out of a tree stand, something. And most hunters start out with a used gun like their granddaddy’s old Rigby. Even if they upgrade to a newer, more sophisticated rifle, they’ll still tell you about that crap first rifle. I didn’t get any of that from Michael.”

  “I’ll tell you this.” Judith stabbed a finger at Devin. “He better be in that garden working tomorrow, or I’ll drag him out there by the balls. And if he gets in my face again…”

  “Hey, now,” Devin said. “I thought you promised to ease up on the hostility. Sounds like this naughty girl needs some discipline.”

  “She needs something,” Rick mumbled.

  Devin stood and wrapped an arm around Judith’s waist. “Let’s just go see what that is, shall we?”

  Once they left, Rick wagged an eyebrow at Sanchez. What the hell. He had at least a ten percent chance.

  “Are you kidding?” Her chair scraped against the metal grate floor, echoing in the glass dome. She shook her head in disgust as she snatched her glass off the table.

  Sitting back, Rick smiled. That went pretty well. Sanchez knew he was coming on to her, so they were on the same wavelength. Her outrage was over the top, which meant she’d expected it. And he got to watch that fine ass as she stormed away.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  It was still dark when a computer-generated voice startled Taeya out of a sound sleep to announce that sunrise was in thirty minutes. She tracked the voice to a small digital clock in the wall that also served as a night-light. According to Mai, the idea was to be in the garden at dawn to get a couple hours’ work in before breakfast.

  Taeya dressed quickly. She wanted to brew a pot of the coffee Rick found at Starbucks. But the aroma of coffee already filled the air as she made her way to the kitchen. Rick was just pouring a cup when she walked in. He handed it to her.

  Wasn’t he full of surprises? Like last night when he suggested the drink and a hot shower to guarantee a good night’s sleep. And earlier, when he’d defended her and the CDC when Michael brought up the lack of vaccines.

  What hadn’t been surprising was his lame come-on out on the terrace. Men were so predictable. Odd, though, that he hadn’t walked her to her door and tried to weasel his way inside.

  “Thanks,” she said as she took the cup. After blowing across the top, she took a quick sip. That first bite of caffeine cleared her head.

  Judith and Devin wandered in, drank tall glasses of plain water, then stood at the counter as though waiting. As soon as the others came in, Judith pounced.

  “I don’t know how things were handled before,” she said, “but that garden is in terrible shape, and I expect everyone to help out.”

  John looked a little panicked, but Taeya didn’t see any reason why he shouldn’t help. She wasn’t sure if Michael was even listening.

  John and Taeya were assigned to tie up sagging pole beans. Rick was one plot over, crawling on his knees, gathering bugs again. Michael sauntered out, grabbed a hoe and wandered over to Rick.

  He held the hoe handle like a golf club, shifted from foot to foot as he lined up the blade next to a weed, then swung the hoe and lopped off the top of the weed.

  “Mind if I play through?” he asked.

  “Hey, man,” Rick said. “You can’t do that. The weed will just grow back.”

  Michael cocked his head to the side. Rick reached over and pulled the weed out. “You have to get the roots.” He dropped the weed in a bucket. “We’re saving them to feed the goats.”

  “How clever.” Michael lined up the hoe at the next weed, lopped off the top, but then bent over and pulled the rest out.

  “I used to be a plus handicap player, back in the day,” he said. “Do you play?”

  “No.”

  Taeya remembered Devin’s hunting story from last night.

  “Then I guess you’re not too impressed with my handicap.” Michael leaned on his hoe. “You see, the golfing association came up with handicaps as a way to level the field between players of different proficiency. Normally a handicap shaves points from your score.”

  Rick harrumphed and crawled farther down the aisle.

  “But with a plus handicap, you typically shoot under par and have to add points.” Michael planted his feet in a wide stance, clutching the hoe between his legs. He was actually posing. Did he think Rick might want to snap his picture or ask for his autograph?

  “I played miniature golf sometimes,” Rick said. “Those windmills can be a real bitch.”

  Taeya smiled.

  The haughty smirk on Michael’s face twitched. He rotated his shoulders before aiming at the next weed. Taeya wondered how soon he would find an excuse to wander off.

  At least John was sticking with it. Taeya
tied another string onto a cross wire and wrapped one of the pole bean’s sticky tendrils around until it caught hold.

  As she worked, she chatted with John. “So your father taught English and your mother taught music at this little private college. I’ll bet dinner discussions were stimulating. Steinbeck and Strauss.”

  “It did soften my edges a bit,” John said. “I grew under the glow of a computer monitor so the refinement was not wasted.”

  “What did your parents think of you going to MIT?”

  “Oh, they certainly understood that my expertise was in technology.”

  “And is that where you turned into this bad boy?” She flicked a finger through his shaggy gray hair.

  John grinned as though flattered. “Do I look like a bad boy?”

  She shrugged. “You kind of remind me of a guitar player from the old days.”

  “Jerry Garcia, right?” Wrinkles deepened at the sides of his eye as he grinned. “I’m surprised you even know who he was.”

  Taeya pulled up another length of string and tied it. “My mother had a wild streak in her. She loved listening to the oldies station on satellite radio. Of course, my brother and I never knew just what a wild child she’d been until I came across an old picture in an album. She and some guy—not my father—were at a music festival. She let it slip that the concert was one of those weekend events. The more I pressed for details, the more embarrassed she got. Seems she and the boy shared a tent. And she was only sixteen at the time!”

  John gasped and Taeya nodded. “I know. My brother and I were shocked.”

  The crosswire she was tying string onto jerked, and Taeya glanced over. John’s hands trembled as he tied off his own string. His face was flushed.

  “You okay?” she asked.

  His next breath wheezed in a high-pitched whistle. He pitched forward, bracing his hands on his knees.

  “John!” She crouched in front of him. “Have you been stung by a bee?”

  He shook his head, his eyes watering as he fought for his next breath.

  She swung around to get Rick. He was already leaping over the plant bed. Devin dropped his shovel and came running, too.

  “What happened?” Rick yelled.

  Taeya pressed two fingers to John’s neck. His pulse was racing. “Let’s get him to sickbay.”

  Devin and Rick carried John, with Taeya running ahead, her feet rumbling on the metal stairs. With no way of knowing whether John was suffering from angioedema or experiencing an anaphylactic reaction, her only choice at the moment was to reduce the swelling of his airways, and hope he could tell her something. If he went into arrest, she’d be lucky to save him.

  Behind her, John’s gasping sounded like a sea lion’s bark. She slammed open the door to sickbay and by the time Devin and Rick laid him on the examining table, Taeya had a syringe of epinephrine ready.

  Then she snapped an oxygen mask onto his face and checked his heart rate. Within seconds Judith and Mai burst in, looking just as concerned as Devin and Rick. The room was getting a little crowded, and everyone was huddling around John.

  His airway slowly cleared but his panting got worse. He struggled to sit, and yanked at the oxygen mask. Panic attack.

  “Everybody out! Now!” Taeya ordered.

  Rick was wrangling with John to keep him still. “But he’s—”

  “Just go!”

  Rick looked just as panicked, his eyes wide, his face pale. Taeya remembered him losing his wife and son. Touching his arm, she lowered her voice. “He’ll be okay.”

  Once everyone left, she pressed her hand on John’s forehead to make him lie still, and gave him a smile.

  “John, listen to me. We’ve both been rushing around, but now we’re going to calm down and take slow, deep breaths.” She filled her lungs and blew out slowly to demonstrate.

  His eyes scanned wildly around the room. “John!” She gripped his hand and squeezed until he focused on her. “That’s right. Now here we go.” She coaxed him through several breaths before she reached over for the blood pressure cuff.

  As she slipped it on his forearm, she noticed a smattering of red dots on the inside of his arm. She raised his shirt and scoffed. His chest was covered in rash. He tried to pull his shirt back down.

  “John.” She stretched his name out in an accusatory tone. “You appear to have some sort of allergy.”

  He avoided her eyes.

  “And this has happened before.”

  He nodded. His breathing had slowed, and when she checked his heart, the arrhythmia was subsiding.

  She crossed her arms, waiting for an explanation.

  He pulled the oxygen cup away from his mouth. “It’s a form of dysautonomia. A malfunction of the autonomic nervous system. My body just can’t seem to handle the heat.”

  “And you were out in that blistering sun working? Why didn’t you tell us?”

  “We all had assignments. I felt I should do my part.”

  Taeya glowered at him. He’d been intimidated by Judith.

  “Judith would have understood if you’d told her you couldn’t work.”

  John looked sheepish. “I seriously doubt that.”

  “Oh, I get it. You’d rather risk your health than oppose Judith.”

  He winced. “I wouldn’t put it quite so cowardly.”

  As soon as Taeya had John stabilized, she went back downstairs to report on his condition. Rick dropped his jar of bugs and dashed over. And when she said he could pay John a visit, he took the stairs two at a time.

  Judith’s guilt over forcing John into the heat quickly jumped to rage at Kat.

  She asked Mai for her PDA, and after she found what she was looking for, she stomped up to the kitchen. Taeya followed, just to make sure Judith didn’t get carried away.

  After punching in the code to Kat’s apartment, Judith carried a pitcher of cold water up the spiral stairs and tossed it on the sleeping girl. The shock woke her up screaming.

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  “Waking you up,” Judith snarled.

  Kat scrambled off the wet sheets, wrapping a blanket around her naked body. Good Lord, had Michael been here last night?

  “You said if I didn’t eat, I didn’t have to work.”

  “The rules have changed,” Judith snapped back. “You’re going to work in that garden, if I have to put a choke chain around your neck and tie you to a stake.” Judith pointed to the little digital clock on the wall that announced sunrise. “Now, you’ve got five minutes to get dressed and be out there. Or I’ll be back with the leash.”

  Kat showed up seven minutes later in a halter top, short shorts, and ridiculous platform sandals.

  “Come on, Kitten.” Judith shoved a bucket into her hands. “I’ll show you how to weed.”

  She knelt down beside a bed of green beans, but Kat remained standing, with arms crossed.

  “I think you can see better down here.” Judith took Kat’s hand and jerked her to her knees. “These are beans.” Judith brushed a palm over the broad leaves. “These are weeds.” She plucked one out. “You crawl along here, pull all the weeds, and put them in the bucket.”

  Judith stood and brushed off her knees. “You should be able to get this row done in fifteen minutes.”

  “You’re full of shit, you know that?”

  Bobbling her head, Judith looked down at the girl. “Actually, I’m not. We aren’t getting enough protein to be full of shit. I’m about a quarter full at the moment.”

  She walked away. But she kept track of the time, and made sure Kat knew she was keeping track. At the end of fifteen minutes, Judith went over to inspect her work. As she ambled down the row, she pointed out weeds.

  “Missed one here. Couple here.”

  When she got to Kat’s bucket, she frowned. There were young bean plants tossed in among the weeds.

  “Guess you need another lesson on what a bean plant looks like.” Judith delicately pulled one of the plants out, and crouched next to
the girl. “See the broad leaf, the little point at the end. Now that doesn’t look at all like foxtail, does it?” She plucked a piece of the grass-like weed from the bucket.

  “I told you I couldn’t do this.” Kat scrambled to her feet and brushed her knees off.

  “Oh-ho! You think if you prove to me you can’t do it, I’ll let you go?” Judith hopped up with the bucket, and pushed Kat back to the beginning of the aisle. “You’re going to replant every one of these.” She dumped the bucket of weeds and gingerly picked out the bean plants. Finding a bare spot, she dug her fingers into the soil, pulled out a handful, and packed it gently around the roots of the plant.

  “I can’t dig with my hands!”

  “Sure you can.” Judith latched onto Kat’s wrist, dragged her to her knees again, and jammed her fingers into the dirt. “See? Those nice long nails work better than a trowel.”

  In horror, Kat looked around for help. Her mother sneered and went back to work. Mai pushed out a bottom lip in an exaggerated pout. Taeya gave her a little shrug and went back to her pole beans. Michael was nowhere to be found.

  “And since you’ve disturbed the roots, you need to carry water over here and give each one of these poor guys a good dousing.”

  “This is bullshit!”

  “Watch it, Kitten.” Judith patted Kat’s head and stood. “Or I’ll let you clean out the goat pens tomorrow.”

  Taeya had just gotten started back on the pole beans when Kat wailed and rolled back on her haunches. She stared at one of her fingernails, then boo-hooed as she ripped the broken tip off and threw it at Judith.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  What a great afternoon. Rick and Sanchez held hands for a while. Well, actually, he’d grabbed her hand and dragged her down the basement stairs to show her the inner workings of the Biosphere. But she hadn’t fought to get away from him.

  Then John talked him through tearing down a clothes dryer and fixing a roller. He even coaxed Rick into climbing up the mainframe to replace an oxygen sensor that was on the fritz. He hoped that feat came up in a conversation sometime when Sanchez was around.