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Vince said, "What you’ve got here is two choices: die easy or die hard You tell me what I want to know, and I let you die easy, quick and painless You get stubborn on me, and I can draw it out for five or six hours"

Dr Hudston stared Except for bright ribbons of fresh blood that banded his face, he was very white, wet and sickly pale like some creature that swam eternally in the deepest reaches of the sea

Vince hoped the guy wasn’t catatonic "What I want to knohat you have in common with Davis Weatherby and Elisabeth Yarbeck"

Hudston blinked, focused on Vince His voice was hoarse and tre about?"

"You know them?"

Hudston nodded

"How do you know theether? Live next door at one ti his head, Hudston said, "Wewe used to work together at Banodyne"

"What’s Banodyne?"

"Banodyne Laboratories"

"Where’s that?"

"Here in Orange County," Hudston said He gave an address in the city of Irvine

"What’d you do there?"

"Research But I left ten o Weatherby and Yarbeck still work there, but I don’t"

"What sort of research?" Vince asked

Hudston hesitated

Vince said, "Quick and painless-or hard and nasty?"

The doctor told him about the research he had been involved with at Banodyne The Francis Project The experis

The story was incredible Vince h some of the details three or four times before he was finally convinced the story was true

When he was sure he had squeezed everything out of the man, Vince shot Hudston in the face, point-blank, the quick death he’d proht-draped Laguna Hills, away froerous step he had taken Usually, he knew nothing about his targets That was safest for him and for his employers Ordinarily he didn’t want to knohat the poor saps had done to bring so rief But this was no ordinary situation He had been paid to kill three doctors-not medical doctors, as it turned out now, but scientists-all of the citizens, plus any et in the way Extraordinary Toh roo SO iht provide hi he would need help to count it The e he had pried out of Hudstonif he could figure out ould like to buy it But knowledge was not only saleable; it was also dangerous Ask Adam Ask Eve If his current employers, the Sexy-voiced lady and the other people in LA, learned that he had broken the most basic rule of his trade, if they knew that he had interrogated one of his victi him, they would put out a contract on Vince The hunter would become the hunted

Of course, he didn’t worry a lot about dying He had too much life stored up in him Other people’s lives More lives than ten cats He was going to live forever He was pretty sure of that Butwell, he didn’t know for certain how many lives he had to absorb in order to insure immortality Sometimes he felt that he’d already achieved a state of invincibility, eternal life But at other times, he felt that he was still vulnerable and that he would have to take y into hiodhood Until he knew, beyond doubt, that he had arrived at Olympus, it was best to exercise a little caution

Banodyne

The Francis Project

if what Hudston said was true, the risk Vince was taking would be well-rewarded when he found the right buyer for the infor had lived alone in a stone cabin in upper Holy Jie County for ten years His only light ca water in the place was from a hand pump in the kitchen sink His toilet was in an outhouse with a quarter-moon carved on the door (as a joke), about a hundred feet from the back of the cabin

Wes was forty-two, but he looked older His face ind-scoured and sun-leathered He wore a neatly trih he appeared aged beyond his true years, his physical condition was that of a twenty-five-year-old He believed his good health resulted froht, May 18, by the silvery light of a hissing Coleman lantern, he sat at the kitchen table until one in thea McGee novel by John D MacDonald Wes was, as he put it, "an antisocial cur century," who had little, use for modern society But he liked to read about McGee because McGee swam in that messy, nasty world out there and never let the murderous currents sweep him away

When he finished the book at one o’clock, Wes went outside to get more wood for the fireplace Wind-swayed branches of sycalossy surfaces of rustling leaves shone dully with pale reflections of the lunar light Coyotes howled in the distance as they chased down a rabbit or other s in the brush, and a chill wind soughed through the higher reaches of the forest

His supply of cordas stored in a lean-to that extended along the entire north side of the cabin He pulled the latch-peg out of the hasp on the double doors He was so fae space that he worked blindly in its lightless confines, filling a sturdy tin hod with half a dozen logs He carried the hod out in both hands, put it down, and turned to close the doors

He realized the coyotes and the insects had all fallen silent Only the wind still had a voice

Frowning, he turned to look at the dark forest that encircled the srowled

Wes squinted at the night-swaddled woods, which suddenly seemed less well illurowling was deep and angry Not like anything he had heard out there before in ten years of nights alone

Wes was curious, even concerned, but not afraid He stood very still, listening Afurther

He finished closing the lean-to doors, pegged the latch, and picked up the hod full of cordwood

Growling again Then silence Then the sound of dry brush and leaves crackling, crunching, snapping underfoot

Judging by the sound, it was about thirty yards away Just a bit west of the outhouse Back in the forest