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DeVoe leaned forward. "You don't know that, Julius. You only tested it on rabbits and monkeys, then you buried it in the ground twenty-three years ago and ran off." |
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"If the boy dies," his wife said, "the first thing the mother'll want is to move out. When it's done and all blown over, we get the agent to resurface the offer and get in there and neutralize the stuff before it spreads." |
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"And I suppose you'll get Roman's guy to make it look like another accident." |
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"That was a mistake," DeVoe said. |
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"He shot Marcus Wiley and his daughter," Julius said. |
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"Roman said he didn't have a chance. We'll make sure he does it right this time." |
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"And how do we do that?" Julius asked. "The guy's a hired killer without a name or face. If he screws up again . . ." He shook his head, as though disgusted with himself for even talking this way. |
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"He's only in it for the fee, which, you'll recall, is contingent upon performance. Like it or not, it's the only leverage we've got." |
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Claire gave Julius a shut-up look, then said to DeVoe, "It's going to have to be soon. Once they start testing him, they're going to connect the ends." |
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DeVoe nodded. His hope was that the kid's condition was so anomalous that nobody would think of environmental testing until they ran out of other possibilities. The virus would mask itself as a hormonal disorder that could even be deduced as genetic. The last place they'd check to look was the tap water. |
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"If the virus has entered his system," Julius said, trying to come to grips with reality and forestall the solution of DeVoe, "it will probably prove fatal. Why not . . . let it run its course? We can still take the place over" |
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"Too risky and too unpredictable. The longer he hangs on, the more they know about his condition. Look, I don't like it either. He's a kid, but the reality is, it's him or us. President Morgan Reese is the closest thing to an actual Greenpeacer without the Birkenstocks. If he's linked to the leakage of a genocidal hormone festering in the public-water supply, we're dead, all of us." |
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"But nobody's going to trace it to Morgan Reese?" |
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