The Messiah Code Read Free Page A

begged him to explain what no sane man could. With a relief so fierce it made him gasp, Tom realized she was physically unhurt and squeezed her to his chest.
    "It'll be okay," he said, stroking Holly's face, putting himself between her and Olivia. "It'll all be okay. I promise you." He spoke the words as much for his sake as hers,
    and as the paramedics pushed through the circle of police, all he could hold on to was the fact that at least Holly was unharmed.
    At least she was safe.

    TWO

    Saturday, December 21, 2002
    Boston

    W hat Dr. Jasmine Washington couldn't figure out was why Tom Carter had done it, particularly so soon after the shooting. Perhaps it had something to do with the tumor the Swedish surgeon had found in Olivia's brain when examining her head wound. Whatever the reason, it made her angry.
    The lawns of Mount Ashburn Cemetery were white-gray with frost, the same color as the winter sky. A watery afternoon sun failed to warm the hundred or so people who had gathered in this monochrome landscape to celebrate Olivia's life, and mark her death.
    Jasmine Washington stood between her goddaughter and her tall fiance, Larry Strummer. She was relieved that for once the media was keeping a respectable distance, along with the discreet police presence, some forty or so yards away. In addition to Olivia's relations, GENIUS colleagues, and Tom's peers from the scientific and medical community, Jasmine recognized many of the mourners. The state governor stood alongside the Swedish ambassador, come to show his countrymen's horror and sorrow. Next to them were teachers from South Boston Junior High School, where Olivia had taught English and music. Children from her class were there too, the same class Holly attended. Some were crying, but all kept still and silent. Olivia would have been proud of them.
    Jasmine felt too angry to cry for the loss of her best friend. She'd already cried more tears in the last eleven days than in all her thirty-three years. Jasmine had still been a sassy scholarship kid from the projects when she'd first met Olivia at Stanford. Gaining a prestigious computer sciences scholarship to one of the top schools hadn't seemed such a big deal at the time. As a kid, her strict Baptist parents had banned her from the streets of South Central L.A., so she'd built her first computer when she was eleven and spent most of her formative years prowling the cyber-streets instead. Still, it was ironic that it had been a computer error at Stanford that had roomed her with a blond, artistic WASP from Maine, majoring in English literature. It still made Jasmine smile remembering how, despite being opposites, they had been drawn to each other from the start.
    Jasmine pulled her canary yellow cashmere coat tighter around her shoulders. It was the brightest color she could find for the funeral. Her friend would have approved. She watched Tom, Jack, and the other pallbearers carrying Olivia's coffin to the grave. She winced with Tom as she saw how he favored his wounded leg, no doubt welcoming the distraction of the pain. If she'd hated the last eleven days, then he must have been through the worst kind of hell. Even so, she still couldn't help feeling anger at what he'd done since the killing. Or at least what she thought he'd done. The evidence she'd seen in the lab this morning wasn't conclusive.
    She looked down at her goddaughter, standing silently next to the slender, white-haired figure of her grandfather, Alex Carter. She wondered how the semiretired Harvard professor of theology would explain why Olivia had been gunned down. It had certainly stretched her faith. The Swedish police, and now the FBI, had a theory that it was some antigenetics activist trying to kill Tom. But despite having the killer on film, they still had no real idea of who he was or why he'd done it.
    At least the psychiatrists had been encouraged by how well Holly was coping. Far from blotting out the horror of seeing her mother shot, she