The Messiah Code Read Free Page B

had almost perfect recall. In many ways she was more prepared to face up to what had happened than anybody. Jasmine had even heard the little girl ask Tom on more than one occasion how he was coping. It was this courage, and the fact that Holly was doing well, that made Jasmine so angry with her father.
    Her eyes searched Tom's long face as she watched him and the other pallbearers lay Olivia's coffin beside the grave. The more she looked into those blue eyes, the more she saw something other than grief there: fear, or something close to it. Every time Tom looked at his daughter, Jasmine became more and more convinced that what she had found in the lab this morning had been his work.
    It had to have something to do with the tumor the Swedish surgeon had found in Olivia's brain, when he was examining her. A tumor that by all accounts would have killed her, even if the killer's bullets hadn't. Tom's mother had died of a similar cancer about thirty years ago; Jasmine knew that. It hadn't taken a shrink to know that this was one of the main reasons Tom had applied his incredible intellect to curing the disease, not only qualifying as a surgeon at Johns Hopkins two years ahead of his peers but then completing a Ph.D. in genetics at Harvard with more ease than it takes most people to graduate from high school. Still, just because his mother and wife had similar cancers, that didn't justify running a full gene scan on Holly.
    As Tom moved away from the coffin, Jasmine cast her mind back to her third year at Stanford. Over twelve years ago now. She thought she was so smart until she attended that talk given by Tom Carter, M.D., Ph.D. Tom was in his early thirties then and already a force in genetics--seeing gene therapy as the way ahead for curing cancer and inherited disease. At the time, his company, GENIUS, specialized in gene therapy trials and the development of genetically engineered proteins, such as recombinant Interleukin 2 and growth hormone. The company was relatively small, but already growing in size and reputation.
    Tom's talk at Stanford had been entitled "The Use of Computers in Decoding the Human Genome." Jasmine remembered how she had stifled a laugh when this tall, gan
    gly guy with wild hair stood up to speak. But she stopped laughing as soon as he began talking about his vision of a hybrid computer/microscope that could read an individual's entire genome from the copy stored in the DNA of one body cell. The machine he was talking about would be able to decode every single one of a person's hundred thousand genes from one hair follicle. Tom Carter had wanted to do nothing less than decode the software of the human race. At that moment Jasmine had known she had to work with him, and be part of his vision.
    Over three years ago they had realized that vision and created the Genescope. But now just the thought that Tom was using it on his perfectly healthy eight-year-old kid made her seethe. Whatever his reasons were, and however brilliant he was, there were times when Tom Carter could be plain stupid.
    Tom limped over to them from the coffin, and stood between Alex and Holly. As the priest began to say his words, Tom reached down to take Holly's hand.
    Jasmine tried to catch Tom's eye, but he would only look straight ahead at the grave. There was still time, she told herself. Even if he had run the scan, she could still stop him from reading the results.

    T om was oblivious of both Jasmine's stare and the utterances by the priest at the head of the grave. He could think only of Olivia and his guilt.
    Meeting Olivia and marrying her had been his greatest, and most undeserved, piece of good fortune. He had always been clueless with women, regarding them as a charming, but confusing distraction from his work. He still couldn't understand how he had managed to attract the few girlfriends he had. All had been intelligent and most beautiful, although he had never pursued any of them. As they might some problem child, they