“Mmmm.” Rick dropped back a step, a hand over his mouth. “I can’t read code.”
Trisk’s expression soured. He couldn’t read code, and yet here he was, the new CEO of Global Genetics. “Only those who share a common ancestor with humans will be affected,” she said. “It’s safe.”
“Vampires share a common ancestor,” Rick said, his suspicions returning.
“I took that into account,” she said. “I was the best in my class, Mr. Rales,” she added, proud of her skills. “Even at artificially high levels, Daniel’s virus will do nothing but make you and anyone else sick. Multiple safeguards keep it tactical. I wouldn’t have even bothered to make us invisible to it, but I didn’t want to take the chance that an immune-depressed elf baby coming out of gene therapy might get a pimple from being exposed. Look, you can talk to my boss if you want,” she said, exasperated. “Sa’han Ulbrine, not Dr. Hartsford.”
“I did,” he said, lips parting to show teeth. “Ulbrine is why you and Dr. Plank are alive.”
Threat, threat, threat, she thought, not impressed. The only thing more suspicious than a living vampire was a dead one. “You’re not going to slow down the trials, are you? Rales, he’s worked too hard for this. It’s perfect. I made sure of it. It cannot harm us. I’d stake my life on it.”
“Good. Because you have.” Rick frowned, but his expression suddenly shifted, the hard mistrust falling from him to show a comfortable camaraderie. Shocked at the change, she floundered, at a loss for words as the cafeteria door opened. Clearly he’d felt whoever it was coming before his or her shadow had touched the glass, and it creeped Trisk out.
“Mr. Rales!” Barbara burst forth, clucking like a mother hen. “I should have known you’d be out here hiding with Dr. Cambri. She’s such a wallflower. Come in and meet everyone you missed yesterday. It’s Daniel’s birthday and we have cake!”
Mouthing a soft platitude, Rick let the woman lead him away, giving Trisk a threatening stare as he crossed the threshold and was taken in among the naive, fragile humans like a cat among mice. He was here to watch her, but he’d play if he thought he could get away with it.
Turning, Trisk walked briskly to her lab, her mind pinging from the threat of Rick’s presence to Daniel. She needed to talk to Quen. He knew more about vampires than she did, and if he came out to spend a weekend, Daniel might misunderstand and stop trying to make a date with her.
Better than a hundred awkward conversations he wouldn’t believe anyway, she thought glumly, feeling even more guilt-ridden than before.
3
The scent of salt and low tide was almost lost behind the reek of burnt cooking oil and overdone shrimp as Kal handed the keys of his Mustang convertible to the valet. “Keep it somewhere available and in the shade,” he said as he gave the old man an extra twenty.
“Yes, sir!” the valet exclaimed, jogging to the front of the car and carefully getting in.
It was unusually hot for Daytona Beach in early October, making Kal more drowsy than he normally would be, even at high noon. He uncomfortably adjusted his tie as he waited for a second valet to get the door for him. Sa’han Ulbrine, too, would be sleepy this time of day, making Kal question why he wouldn’t wait until the sun went down, but perhaps it had been easier to get a table at the exclusive restaurant now than at night, when the waterfront came alive and the Sandbar would be packed.
The inside was no cooler, loud and noisy with wealthy snowbirds. A few businessmen were bellied up to the bar as if it was their second home, drinking their lunch and comparing notes. Resigned to an uncomfortable hour spent justifying the slow pace of his research, Kal approached the host. A couple ahead of him were trying to get a table on the patio, arguing that they’d had reservations.
Sighing, Kal rocked back on his heels to wait. The large placard beside the restrooms touted a live band playing everything from the Beach Boys to Buddy Holly, but it was probably the restaurant’s location on the water that made it such a hot spot. Finally the couple were coaxed by free drinks to a less desirable table. “Kalamack,” he said, impatient as the host made eye contact. “I’m meeting someone. Reservation under Ulbrine for two.”
Immediately the man’s bored expression shifted to one of excitement. “Yes, sir. Your party is here already. Would you like me to take your hat?”
Kal shook his head, reluctant to hand it over as it sported one of his orchids, cut from his tissue-grown plants. “No, I’ll keep it. Thank you,” he said as he pushed forward to follow the man into the restaurant proper.
His grip on his hat tightened. He could think of only one reason the enclave would want to talk to him away from his work, and it probably had everything to do with that brilliantly researched and written paper that Trisk had published last week in an elf-exclusive journal. It made his work look clunky and almost criminally timid, but even a pared-down virus was potentially dangerous in his view. Far safer to use bacteria to introduce new genetic code than a virus that couldn’t be stamped out with antibiotics if it took on a life of its own. All he needed was a clean host bacterium, and he and his team would be poised to create an entire line of genetic fixes to keep his people alive for another generation. He had gambled his career on it.
Pace stilted, he wove through the crowded restaurant, not liking the loud chatter brought on by too much wine too early in the day. Trisk had a product on the shelf, but it was her theory to use a stripped-down virus to introduce new material to both somatic and germ cells that dogged him, not her drought-resistant, shippable tomato that was tart and firm even after weeks from the field. The human-based journal featuring her T4 Angel tomato claimed the desired traits had been introduced by careful splicing, but Kal was betting that a donor virus, not mechanical butchery, had introduced them.