Chasing the Dime Read Free

attached to a phone line when he wasn’t working on it. For the same reason he carried no cell phone, pager or personal digital assistant. Though he had one, he rarely carried a laptop computer, either. Pierce was paranoid by nature — just a gene splice away from schizophrenia, according to Nicole — but also a cautious and practical researcher. He knew that every time he plugged an outside line into his computer or opened a cellular transmission, it was as dangerous as sticking a needle into his arm or having sex with a stranger. You never knew what you might be bringing into the pipeline. For some people, that was probably part of the thrill of sex. But it wasn’t part of the thrill of chasing the dime.
    He had several messages but only three that he decided to read this night. The first was from Nicole and he opened it immediately, again with a hope in his heart that made him uncomfortable because it verged on being maudlin.
    But the message was not what he was looking for. It was short, to the point and so professional that it was devoid of any reference to their ill-fated romance. Just a former employee’s last sign-off before moving on to bigger and better things — in career and romance.
    Hewlett,
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    I’m out of here.
    Â 
    Everything’s in the files. (by the way, the Bronson deal finally hit the media — SJMN got it first. nothing new but you might want to check it out.)
    Â 
    Thanks for everything and good luck.
    Â 
    Nic
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    Pierce stared at the message for a long time. He noted that it had been sent at 4:55 p.m., just a few hours earlier. There was no sense in replying, because her e-mail address would have been wiped from the system at 5 p.m. when she turned in her scramble card. She was gone and there seemed to be nothing so permanent as being wiped from the system.
    She had called him Hewlett and he wondered about that for a long moment. In the past she had used the name as an endearment. A secret name only a lover would use. It was based on his initials — HP, as in Hewlett-Packard, the huge computer manufacturer that these days was one of the Goliaths to Pierce’s David. She always said it with a sweet smile in her voice. Only she could get away with nicknaming him with a competitor’s name. But her using it in this final message, what did it mean? Was she smiling sweetly when she wrote this? Smiling sadly? Was she faltering, changing her mind about them? Was there still a chance, a hope of reconciliation?
    Pierce had never been able to judge the motives of Nicole James. He couldn’t now. He put his hands back on the keyboard and saved the message, moving it to a file where he kept all her e-mails, going back the entire three years of their relationship. The history of their time together — good and bad, moving from co-workers to lovers — could be read in the messages. Almost a thousand messages from her. He knew keeping them was obsessive but it was a routine for him. He also had files for e-mail storage in regard to a number of his business relationships. The file for Nicole had started out that way, but then they moved from business associates to what he thought would be partners in life.
    He scrolled through the e-mail list in the Nicole James file, reading the captions in the subject lines the way a man might look through photos of an old girlfriend. He outright smiled at a few of them. Nicole was always the master of the witty or sarcastic subject line. Later — by necessity, he knew — she mastered the cutting line and then the hurtful line. One line caught his eye during the scroll — ‘Where do you live?’ — and he opened the message. It had been sent four months before and was as good a clue as any as to what would become of them. In his mind this message represented the start of the descent for them — the point of no return.
    I was just wondering where you live because I haven’t seen you at