24 Hours

On the Hitachi, Tommy Joe Smith charged the nurse again with the shard of glass.

“The potential applications are limited, thank God, but their necessity cannot be argued. In emergency rooms, psychiatric wards, and prison infirmaries, healthcare workers are suffering grave injury at the hands of violent patients. Now their safety can be insured without resorting to greater violence to restrain the out-of-control patient. Very soon, physicians will be able to use depolarizing relaxants without fear of fatal outcomes or costly lawsuits.”

A collective murmur of approval swept through the darkened room, followed by a wave of applause. Will had known the video would disturb them-as it should have-but he also knew they would recognize the enormous potential of the drug. He glanced to his left and saw Saul Stein grinning like a proud parent.

“As you know,” he said, checking to be sure that the Hitachi showed an anatomical diagram of a hand, “the relaxants work primarily at the myoneural junction, interrupting the normal flow of impulses from the brain to the skeletal muscles…”

He continued almost without thought, thanks to the rehearsals he had done with Karen and Abby. The woman in black was still staring from the front table. She wasn’t smiling exactly, but there was a suggestive curve to her lips that signaled interest in more than drug therapy. He tried to make eye contact with several other audience members, but every few seconds his gaze returned to the young woman. And why not? It was natural for a lecturer to pick out an individual and speak directly to him-or her. It eased the nerves and gave the voice an undertone of intimacy. Tonight he would speak to the woman in black.

Whenever he turned back from pointing out something on the Hitachi, she was watching him. She had large eyes that never seemed to blink, and a mane of blond hair that fell to her shoulders in the style of Lauren Bacall in To Have and Have Not. Blondes had never done much for Will, but this one was different. What struck him-even in the dim spill of light from the big Hitachi-was her remarkable symmetry. His eyes followed the curve of her long legs as they rose to feminine hips, the hips curving into an hourglass waist. Her breasts were not too large, but almost too perfect. The strapless black dress revealed fine collar-bones and strong shoulders. Her neck was long and graceful, her jaw defined, her lips full. But what held him was her eyes. They never left his face, even as he studied her from head to toe.

He turned to the Hitachi to check the video feed, and when he turned back, she shifted in her seat, uncrossed her legs, then recrossed them with the languid grace of a lioness stretching her flanks. The shortness of the cocktail dress gave him a brief but direct sight line between her legs, even from the podium. He felt blood rush to his face. It wasn’t quite Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct-this woman was wearing panties-but she had made sure he could see everything but the brand name on the silk. Those dark panties were a far cry from the white cotton “granny” panties Karen had taken to wearing the past couple of years. As Will dropped his gaze to look at his speech, he realized that he had fallen behind the video. He looked back up and skipped ahead to the proper cue line.

The ghost of a smile touched the woman’s lips.

Huey Cotton stood on the cabin porch, looking into darkening trees as the sun sank behind them. Tiny flashes of greenish-yellow light floated beneath the branches like phosphorescent sparks from an unseen fire.

“Lightnin’ bugs,” he said, his voice filled with pleasure. “I wonder if there’s a mason jar in the kitchen.”

As he watched the little flares winking in the shadows, a soft groan came from inside the cabin. Huey’s smile vanished, replaced by something like fear. He took a deep breath, then turned slowly and looked at the door with trepidation.

“I wish you was here, Mamaw,” he said softly.

The groan came again.

He reached out and opened the screen door, then pushed open the main door and walked inside.

Hickey sat at Karen’s kitchen table, eating a huge muffaletta sandwich and drinking iced tea.

“Damn, that’s good,” he said, wiping his mouth. “You got the dressing just right. Reminds me of New Orleans. That grocery store down in the Quarter.”

“Are you from New Orleans?” Karen asked. She was standing at the island, opposite the refrigerator, packing syringes and insulin into a small Igloo ice chest.

“You hear a New Orleans accent?”

“Not really.” She couldn’t classify Hickey’s speech. There was some Mississippi in it, but other inflections, too. He had to have spent some time outside the South. In the service, maybe.

“We’ll just skip over my biography for now,” he said, chewing another bite of the big sandwich. “Maybe we’ll get into it later.”

Karen was closing the ice chest when the garage doorbell rang.