Page 124 of Gone Before Goodbye

“Yes.”

“So Ivan flew out. A location tracker won’t follow him in the air.”

Steve continues his exam with patience and skill. Maggie remembers the first time Trace brought Marc and her to Apollo Longevity. She had scoffed at the excess, at the exaggerated “fountain of youth” promises, constantly touted with the fascinatingly contradiction-in-terms phrasing of “anti-aging.” The wealthiest people in the world flew in just for whatever treatment was currently in vogue, and—Maggie’s personal opinion—even if well-intentioned, the vast majority were modern-day snake oil of one sort or another.

“You can get dressed,” Steve tells Nadia. “We can talk more in the consultation room, but I can tell you now that the operation is a complete success. I see no reason to be concerned.”

“Thank you, Doctor.”

Nadia meets Maggie’s eyes. Her eyes move to the computer monitor on the desk, then back toward Maggie. Maggie nods.

“We’ll wait in the other room while you get dressed,” Steve says. “Doctor McCabe, a word outside?”

Perfect, Maggie thinks. “Of course, Doctor Schipner.”

Nadia’s plan is simple, though a long shot. There is a computer terminal in the examination room. Nadia knows Trace’s username and password. While Maggie stalls and distracts Steve, Nadia hopes to log on and see what she can find.

Of course, there are a thousand things wrong with this plan. TracePacker’s login may not work anymore. There is probably nothing important to see—do they think there’s going to be a message saying, “We’ve kidnapped Trace Packer. Here is his current location”?—and there might be trip alarms when she signs on or something like that.

But then again, who knows? She and Nadia are “spies” now, right? This is what spies do.

Steve escorts Maggie down the corridor. Up ahead she sees the one elevator that led down to the WorldCures floor.

“I wasn’t kidding in there,” Steve tells her. “You did great work with her.”

“Thank you.”

“And we both know you could have done this exam yourself. You didn’t need to bring her in.”

“I wanted to make sure,” Maggie says.

“Make sure what?”

“I wanted a true specialist to back up my work,” Maggie says. “And who better than the Boob Whisperer?”

Steve grins. “That’s just marketing.”

“Okay, sure.” Then with a shake of the head she says, “Boob Whisperer.”

“You’re making jokes,” Steve says, “because you don’t want me to ask the obvious.”

“That being?”

“Why did you do this surgery in the first place?”

“I could ask you the same question,” she says.

“Pardon?”

“This is a longevity clinic, not a cosmetic surgery center.”

“You don’t see the natural partnership? I mean, when you think about it, what I do here is one of the things that actually does reverse aging.”

“What about ozone therapy?”

He laughs. “Ozone therapy is old news. We have twelve rooms that do EBOO therapy now.”

“EBOO?”