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Anders in the parking garage and followed him to a full-sized custom van with mirrored windows whose chrome roof rack barely cleared the cement beams above. He opened the door for her and she climbed in. Instead of the plush carpeting and upholstered seats the exterior led one to expect, the interior was metal and utilitarian with racks of electronics, monitors, and cable.
    A man wearing a tee-shirt and shorts sat in a pivoting vinyl seat. Anders directed her to a backwards-facing bench seat behind the driver's station, and perched beside her, shutting the door behind them. It was warm in the van, despite the late winter temperatures outside, and Millie shrugged off her coat.
    Anders gestured at the other man. "This is Watson. That's his first name."
    Watson smiled. "I'm named after three famous sidekicks."
    Millie thought about it a second, then said, "Sherlock Holmes's Watson. Uh, and Watson and Crick? Who's the third?"
    Watson grinned. "The most appropriate one—Alexander Graham Bell's assistant, at the other end of listening device. 'Watson, come here, I need you.' "
    Anders waved his hand impatiently. "Give us Ms. Harrison-Rice's bug on speaker."
    Watson pushed a slider bar up and there was a slight hum. When Anders said, "It can pick up those around you, too," his voice echoed out of the speaker. "But, you can turn it off." He held out his hand.
    Millie took the tracker out of her pocket and handed it to him.
    "It comes apart like this." He put pressure on the two faces and slid them in opposite directions. The face popped off and he indicated a slide switch with a zero at one end and a two at the other. "At zero it's all the way off so don't do that. In between, it's just the GPS locator. And all the way to the right, it's a GPS locator and an audio bug." He slid it to the middle position as he was saying this and the speaker stopped echoing his voice.
    Watson pointed at a computer screen that seemed to be a street map of her neighborhood with a flashing dot at the appropriate space. "But we're not getting the GPS coordinates right now, because you're in this ferroconcrete garage and can't get the satellites. That'll change when you walk outside."
    Anders turned the audio bug back on. "Is that satisfactory, Ms. Harrison-Rice?"
    "Right. When I'm with clients, the mike is going off. Otherwise, it'll be on and I'll just have to watch what I say."
     

FOUR
"...that activity is contraindicated."
     
    Something wasn't right.
    Davy was sure of it but he couldn't put his finger on it.
    There was light on the other side of his eyelids. He knew he should get up—Millie got pissed if he spent all day in bed—but he couldn't even make himself open his eyes, much less sit up. Maybe it's a virus. Maybe I just don't want to get into the having-children argument again.
    Millie must've been listening to something on the television or the radio. A distant voice, deep, male, said, "Uh, oh, that looks like an arousal pattern."
    "Where?" A tenor, or was it an alto?
    "That K complex... and those theta waves are increasing in amplitude."
    "Hit him with some more fentanyl IV. Then increase the drip on the fentanyl/midazolam." Definitely an alto, a woman.
    He felt something cold in his arm and thought it odd that it should be in his arm rather than on it and then he went back to sleep.
     
    The TV was on again. It sounded like some sort of daytime hospital soap. "—an infection?"
    "Probably. Either from the IV or the catheter or when we intubated him—something from the sinuses. You can't keep someone sedated this long without depressing their immune system. I've started him on Zyvox and Synercid, and we're working him up with blood cultures, UA, and chest film for now." A man.
    "Dammit—the surgery's scheduled for tonight." The woman from before, the alto.
    "Well, you open him like this—"
    "I know, I know. It's just that the surgical team is not in on it. Getting them together was... difficult." She paused. "We'll abort if his temp