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shoulders free. She jumped up, but before she could turn and face him, he had both hands on her buttocks, his fingers probing as he boosted her toward the steps.
    Lori screamed. She scampered up two steps toward Beth, whose eyes were mostly white.
    “Mommy! Stop him, Mommy!”
    Lori turned to face him.
    “Lady, it’s all up to you. You can calm down and not give me any trouble and you and the kid won’t get hurt. And neither will your husband.”

Chapter Five
    When Bill Lormes said the job was his, Curt Reedan smiled and reached for his wine glass. He sipped merlot, savoring the flavor of his private toast to success, a toast to the completion of another stage of his career plan. “I’m looking forward to the job,” he said as Brian Applenu refilled his wine glass, although it was still three-quarters full.
    Sold at last, Curt thought. Now they could get down to the details of the job. Selling, there was always too much selling, although he felt himself getting better at it.
    Curt shoved his chair back from the dining table, unfolded his long legs, and heard the familiar pop in the left knee. He glanced at the plush surroundings: a fourteenth floor Miami Beach hotel suite overlooking the Atlantic, the dining area set back in a corner away from the living-room area. He looked at Bill Lormes, who sat to his left, then glanced at Brian Applenu at the other end of the dining table from Lormes.
    He spoke to Lormes, who had introduced himself as the president of Margine Nuclear Technology. “From what you’ve told me, I shouldn’t have any trouble computerizing the machining operations. But we haven’t really talked about what your company does. What’s your product line?”
    Lormes studied Curt’s face. Curt had sensed Lormes’s eyes on him throughout the meal, gray, penetrating eyes, watching him like a suspicious boss. “Our product line, as you put it, is atomic bombs,” Lormes said, his voice, a heavily accented rumble suddenly stripped of its businessman-to-businessman joviality of their earlier conversation.
    Words started to form, then froze on Curt’s parted lips. He pumped out a too-loud laugh. “Oh, you’re joking,” he said, emitting more of his salesman’s laughter.
    Lormes’s steel-gray eyes flashed above the white napkin he used to wipe at the wrinkles around his mouth. “It’s no joke.”
    “What are you, government? I think my security clearance is still active.”
    “We’re not government.”
    Curt sucked a deep breath to counter the alarm that pressured his chest and squeezed air from his lungs, leaving him partially winded. His head snapped from Lormes to Applenu, then back to Lormes. Who was this guy? Lormes’s craggy face labeled him in his sixties, but his slick brown hair and the tailor-fitted gray pinstripe draped across his bulky shoulders probably knocked off ten years. Up ‘till now, they hadn’t discussed specifics of the job, but that wasn’t unusual.
    Margine Nuclear Technology was a legitimate firm. It had to be. When he received the e-mail inviting him to lunch, Curt looked at their website that described nuclear-related work they did at their plant in Blacksburg, Virginia. He figured they were located there to be near AREVA, the French nuclear company. Also, Lormes said they had talked to two of Curt’s clients, and said he came highly recommended. They wouldn’t do that if they were not for real. Both Lormes and Applenu called him last week to get him to visit their Blacksburg plant as soon as possible. When they found out he couldn’t visit for two weeks and that he was giving a talk at the ASME meeting in Miami Beach, they made plans to meet him here.
    “I don’t understand,” Curt said. “Atomic bombs?”
    “It’s simple enough,” Applenu said, his words precise, delivered with a British accent that seemed more pronounced than when they talked on the phone. “We’re going to build some atomic bombs, and we need you to help us computerize some