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be ready for you in ten minutes," the assistant director said as he stuck his head in her office door.

    "Thanks," Cotten said, looking up. The weekly taping of her Relics show was about to begin and she had to get to makeup. Maybe this whole Calderon thing was a waste of time anyway, she thought. What was she dealing with here? A couple of guys strung out on drugs, breaking into a business of some sort to steal narcotics. One got sick and died—the other so paranoid that he may be beyond help. She felt sorry for both, but she wondered if she had invested too much time in it already.

    Still, there was something nagging at her gut. Why had he chosen her?
    The reasoning that she was a familiar face on TV made some sense. But he could have given his two-word message to anyone and requested they tell her. Even more than his efforts to find her, the thing that kept nudging her mind was the message itself.

    Black Needles.

    He didn't say, bad needles, as in contaminated or dirty hypos. He didn't

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    say I'm sick, get me to a doctor. With his last breath he said, Black Needles.

    Then there was Jimmy Franks. Obviously on drugs and out of touch with reality as he rambled on. He kept referring tothey. Who were they? Why did they make Calderon sick?

    "Cotten?"

    She looked up. The assistant director again. Waving, she said, "Sorry—on my way."

    Cotten picked up her copy of theRelics script and headed out of her office to the studio and makeup.

    Four minutes later, and with only seconds to spare, she dropped down into a forest-green wingback chair on theRelics set, smoothed her skirt and blouse, gave the sound engineer a voice level, and took in a deep breath. Her guest, a French forensic scientist from the University of Paris, sat on a matching couch to her right. Behind her was a backdrop graphic displaying a dark, mysterious-looking composite photograph showing ghostly tunnels and partially excavated tombs with the word Relics scrawled on what looked like ancient parchment. As the stage manager counted down, Cotten smiled and gazed into the camera, its lens hidden behind the teleprompter. The script rolled from the bottom to the top of the teleprompter screen and she read, "Good evening and welcome to Relics, the weekly SNN investigation into ancient man and myth, folklore, and legend. Pieces of our past that just might shed new rays of light on our future."

    Electronically superimposed over her shoulder, an image of a small bone appeared.

    "Is this the rib of Saint Joan of Arc or a fake, what some think is actually a bone from an Egyptian mummy? Tonight we attempt to answer that by traveling back in time to the small town of Rouen, France. The year was 1431, and a young girl was about to be burned at the stake.

    "And well also discuss new test results on recently discovered pollen samples taken from the famous Shroud of Turin. Could the samples be from a rare thistle plant thought to have been used to fashion the Crown of Thorns worn by Jesus Christ at the Crucifixion? All this and more onRelics."

    Cotten leaned back in her chair. "We'd like to welcome a new sponsor tonight—Blaze PCs and their new generation of wireless notebooks. Blaze notebooks bring you blazing speed with their exclusive octocore processors from—"

    The scrolling script paused, waiting for Cotten to continue. She stared at the words. Composing herself, she continued, "Their exclusive octocore processors from T-Kup Technologies."

    ***

    "Blaze doesn't make T-Kup processors," said the SNN international sales manager. "They just use the technology. You know, like Intel or AMD."

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    Cotten sat in the sales manager's office. "Where is the Blaze corporate office?"

    "Singapore."

    "And T-Kup?"

    "Seoul, South Korea. A bunch of engineers from Samsung decided to put together their own chip manufacturing company. In business for a couple of years—claim to have the fastest processing chips around—eight cores, whatever that means."

    "So does T-Kup