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At home, Simon met me at the door, escorting me over to the couch, and went to put the kettle on. “Safie gave us your phone back,” he called, from the kitchen. “It’s charging right next to you if you want to check your mail, call anybody, find out what happened on The Walking Dead . . .”

“You know me so well.”

“Pretty well, yeah. Clark’ll be back in an hour, but don’t worry about that—just check your mail and go to bed, okay? You need sleep.”

Had two and a half days of that already, I thought, but didn’t say. Replying, instead, “Always.”

Though just staying where I sat was definitely tempting, given my complete lack of energy. I nevertheless decided to unplug and take the phone into our bedroom instead, where I could do a couple of things at once then get straight into bed afterwards. Opening my laptop, I signed on and clicked through—there was a message from Safie at the top, telling me how once I was safely on the medevac copter she’d gone back to Quarry Argent, making sure to grab everything we’d been promised at the museum before driving home, and that she’d already started to sort through the footage. After which I spent a few minutes deleting at will (spam of all types, much of it from media liaisons who thought I still needed to be kept informed about upcoming movie screenings), then moved on to Facebook, where I sat staring at the update box for a long moment, debating whether or not to tell anyone what’d happened, however obliquely. Could frame it as a migraine episode, I supposed, even make it sound mordantly funny in retrospect. But what if Jan Mattheuis saw it, and got worried? How would that affect the project, or my continued participation in it?

Social media’s a goddamn curse, I’d just began to muse, when I heard the IM tone. I clicked on the icon and watched a box open at the bottom of the screen: hope ur feeling better hospitals r never much fun. And underneath that, like I couldn’t possibly have guessed who it came from—

wrob.

“The fuckitty fuck,” I said, out loud.

“You okay?” Simon asked, from behind me. I jumped then half-turned to find him standing there, a mug of tea in either hand—one of which was obviously for me. I took it, shaking my head, explaining, “Just . . . some random message from Wrob Barney, that creepy asshole. Strength in my hour of trial, or some shit.”

He frowned. “How’d he even know where you were in the first place?”

“Exactly. You didn’t . . .”

But the IM tone interrupted again, just as Simon asked, “Didn’t what?” In the open box, fresh typing appeared, quick and relevant—almost as though Wrob could hear what we were saying—

vinegar house = sick nviroment f/sure

stay away from now on i was u

nobody gonna want t work w/u they think ur

unreliable

Simon and I exchanged a look, Simon’s mouth opening—and at that very moment, on the bed beside me, my phone rang. Simon tilted his head to read the ID. “NFA—Jan Mattheuis,” he said.

“Motherfucker,” I exclaimed, slamming the laptop’s lid shut.

Short story short, it was indeed Jan, and he knew everything.

“I don’t know what you’ve been told, but I’m fine, really,” I found myself saying for what felt like the tenth time that day. “The trip was everything we hoped, got a ton of research done, before and after. Granted, things turned a little crazy near the end, so it’s good we live in the twenty-first century; modern medicine’s an amazing thing. End of story.”

“I’m so glad. You do understand why I had to call, though—right, Lois?”

“Absolutely. You needed assurances my health wasn’t going to impact things negatively, and it’s not—got released today, clean bill of health, no complications. You want more details, I can give you my doctor’s number.”

“Oh, I don’t think that’ll be necessary.”

Thank Christ. “Great,” I replied. “So—back on the horse.”

“When can I see what you gathered?”

“I’m seeing Safie tomorrow. We can probably get something presentable together for Thursday.”

“Make it Friday.”

“Perfect.” I hung up then blew out, shakily. “Jesus Christ, that was . . . did a fuckin’ memo go out? Seriously, who did you tell?”

“Nobody,” Simon maintained. “My parents, that’s it. I mean, maybe Lee might’ve told her friends—”

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