Forever Read Free Page B

Amanda to her car, wondering if Lomen would be at this meeting.
    “Where are we headed?” I asked.
    “Len and Caeran’s. It’s not far.”
    Turned out to be less than a mile, south and east of my place, closer to Nob Hill in an area that was gradually improving. Old houses, many being remodeled or expanded. Mature trees shading the street and nicely landscaped front yards. Beautiful, big back yards.
    Len and Caeran’s place was a single-story house, stuccoed in white with yellow trim. The front yard was xeriscaped and yet completely lush, with drought-tolerant plants framing a winding flagstone path to the front door. We walked up this, and butterflies rose from nearby bushes to dance around us before settling again. A windchime somewhere nearby sang in the breeze.
    Len came to the door and welcomed us with smiles. Her hair—kind of mousy brown—was longer than I remembered, and she wore loose, light, cotton clothes and looked generally more feminine than when we’d first met. In the past I’d mostly seen her at the library where she worked with Amanda, but she’d switched to pre-med in the spring semester.
    The event that had drawn us all together was the attack on Amanda in the summer. Since then, even though we hadn’t spend much time together, we’d shared a silent connection. I wanted to understand that better; I had never heard what became of Amanda’s attacker, though I assumed she’d been apprehended. The “campus killer” murders had stopped after that—until now.
    “Hey, Steve!” Len opened the door wide. “Good to see you. Come on in.”
    The living room had a couch, coffee table, a couple of comfy chairs, and lots of plants. The back of the room formed a small dining area with a beautiful wooden table—looked handmade. Crystals in the window at the back of the room glinted rainbows now and then, though a pergola outside kept the afternoon light from blasting full in through the window.
    No sign of Lomen. Dammit.
    “Make yourself comfortable,” Len said. “Want something to drink? Fuzzy water?”
    Fuzzy, not fizzy? OK.
    “Sure,” I said.
    I sat on one end of the couch. Amanda and Len went into the kitchen and came back with three glasses of sparkling water over ice. Len handed me one, then settled in one of the chairs while Amanda joined me on the couch.
    “Caeran will be out in a minute. I understand you had an exciting morning.”
    “Yeah.” I sipped, not really wanting to talk about it.
    “Did you see anyone in the area?”
    “Not until the cops showed up.”
    Len nodded, then let it drop. “I’m glad you’re willing to join our project. Right now I’m the only one on the research team, which makes us pretty lame.”
    “Adding me won’t improve that by much.”
    “Sure it will. You’re a genius, Steve. Don’t deny it. And you’ve got courage.”
    I wondered why courage was needed for a research project, but let it pass. “I don’t have the training for DNA analysis. I was looking at it online, and it takes a bachelor’s and a master’s, with a whole lot of forensics.”
    “You wouldn’t need the forensics,” Len said.
    “May I ask a possibly-dumb question? Why don’t you just have a lab do whatever analysis you need?”
    She sipped her water. “We want to protect the privacy of the subjects.”
    “Any reputable lab will guarantee that.”
    “Not good enough. This is non-negotiable. We have to do it ourselves.”
    I frowned. “It could take years for you and me to develop the skills we’d need. Seems really inefficient.”
    “That’s OK. This is a long-term project.”
    I leaned back, watching her, waiting for the pitch about getting in on the ground floor of a really big thing. From what I’d heard so far, making money wasn’t the objective. In fact, keeping it quiet seemed to be worth spending a lot more money, and time, than necessary. I wondered if whatever they were doing was somehow illegal.
    Caeran came in from the back of the house. He had his