Dust Up: A Thriller by Jon McGoran Page B

and as I got out, he said, “I’ll see you soon.”
    Then he drove away.
    The breeze picked up, but it was sticky. Sable disappeared around the corner. Then I was alone, except for a few mosquitoes that had already found me. Each room had a door with a number on it, a window, and a pair of cheap white resin chairs facing the parking lot. I found number seventeen and let myself in.

 
    31
    The room was sparse: a bed, a table with a couple chairs, and a kitchenette. Miriam was sitting at the table wearing the same shades as before, plus a long, coppery-looking wig. When I closed the door, she took them both off, studying me, searching for something. I don’t know if she saw what she was looking for.
    “You came,” she said.
    I nodded.
    “I didn’t think you would. Sable didn’t think so, either.”
    “How do you know him? Sable, I mean.”
    She shook her head. “I don’t know him, not really. Although I guess he’s one of my only friends now. Him and you.” She smiled weakly. “Sorry. It’s been a rough time.”
    I sat down across from her. “How’s he involved in all this?”
    “I was at the airport in Philly, making my big escape. Sable walks up alongside me and says, ‘You know they’re looking for you, right?’ I said, ‘Excuse me?’ and he says, ‘You’ll never make it out.’ So I had no idea who he was, but I said, ‘Then what am I supposed to do?’ And he offered to help me. I was terrified. For all I knew, he was some goon from Energene. But I knew he was right—if I went ahead, the police would get me. At least with him I had a chance. So I went with him. Now I’m here, still alive and free, as far as it goes, so…” She went quiet for a moment. “I want to thank you. Back at the motel in Philly. If you hadn’t been there, they would have killed me.”
    Her gratitude made me feel guilty. If I’d woken up faster, gotten downstairs faster, reacted faster at the first knock, maybe Ron Hartwell would be alive. Of course, maybe I’d be have been killed alongside him.
    “Sorry for all the cloak-and-dagger stuff,” she said. “I didn’t think they’d find me in North Philly. I needed to be sure they won’t find me here.”
    “What do you know about Beta Librae?”
    She shrugged. “Just what Sable told me. An environmental group financed by Gregory Mikel, the investor.”
    “Have you ever heard of them before?”
    “I’ve heard of Mikel. I knew he was an activist. I’d never heard of Beta Librae.”
    “Do you trust them?”
    She shrugged. “I don’t know.”
    “What do you think they want?”
    She let out a bitter laugh. “I don’t even know what I want, other than Ron being alive and us never to have gone down this road. But that’s not really an option.”
    No, that was not an option.
    “I don’t know what they want,” she said quietly. “But they seem to want me to stay alive, and I guess I want that too.”
    She didn’t seem entirely sure. Her eyes went distant again, and moist. I couldn’t imagine what she was going through, but this wasn’t the time to dwell on it.
    “So,” I said, rubbing my hands together. “You said there was something else you wanted to tell me.”
    She smiled sadly, grateful for the interruption of whatever was going through her head.
    “I have Ron’s files. The stuff that made him so suspicious in the first place, and some other stuff. I’m not a molecular biologist, so a lot of it I don’t understand, but a lot I do. And some of it Ron explained to me before—” Her voice caught, and she took a deep breath. “Anyway, to someone with the right background, it would mean even more. And it would be very incriminating.”
    “What does it say?”
    “There’s documents about Soyagene, a report on the stolen shipments, plans for some kind of phase-two rollout starting next week. There’s inventories and production memos—some secret and some not. But there’s also confidential memos and reports about allergenicity, about