Free BZRK Reloaded by Michael Grant Page B

have another lab in New York?”
“Not in New York,” he said, and offered no further explanation.
She ran down a list of equipment. To each item Nijinsky said, “Yes.”
“Well, aren’t you clever little conspirators?” she asked sarcastically. “Yes, if everything is as you say, yes, I can do it. But why should
I?”
“What do you want?” he asked.
“So many things,” she said with a hard laugh.
Silence again, as the truth seeped into her consciousness. The
truth was a pain in her heart. “What do I want? Don’t. Don’t take him
from me. Don’t send your bugs into me, and don’t cut the wires, and
don’t find his last biot and take it from me.” Tears had already rolled
down her cheeks. “It’s all I have of him.”

SEVEN
    A short elevator ride for two billion dollars.
“Sadie. It’s good to see you,” Stern said. He shook her hand firmly.
Her hand was not empty. His eyes barely flickered as he palmed the
note.
“Same, Mr Stern,” she said. “This is my friend, Keats.” She stumbled over the word friend. They weren’t exactly friends, were they?
They barely knew each other.
“My friend,” she repeated, as if needing to emphasize it.
Stern was head of McLure security. He’d sat by her bed when she
was recovering from injuries following the assassination of her father
and brother, and as far as Plath felt she could trust anyone, she trusted
him. He gave Keats the same dubious, sizing-up look her father would
have.
The lawyer, Don Jellicoe, was an older man, tall, spare, with
a hovering grin and an open collar. He rose to shake her hand as
well.
The office was a corner, with windows that looked out on the
Empire State Building and, beyond it, at the Tulip—Armstrong cor
porate headquarters.
She had been there, seen it from the inside. She had watched her
wiring take effect on Benjamin Armstrong. She almost flinched,
thinking they could see her now.
She stared, probably too long, then looked with exaggerated and
unconvincing calm around the room and turned her back on the
Tulip and the memories.
A younger lawyer sat discreetly in a corner. The remaining person in the room was Hannah Thrum. Thrum was middle-aged but
looked younger, expensively but conservatively dressed. She had a full
face and somewhat droopy eyes that seemed at odds with the wellcoiffed businesswoman look.
Thrum was the interim chairman of the board of McLure Holdings, the parent corporation of McLure Labs.
“Can I get anyone some coffee? Water? Tea? We have it all,” Jellicoe offered, very genial. Keats asked for coffee, Thrum ordered
a sparkling water, and the younger lawyer raced off to get both.
    “So,” Jellicoe said. “We have copies for you, Sadie, and for you, Hannah.” He handed iPads to each and tapped his own to bring up the
document. “We have the small matter of two billion dollars.” He
grinned. “Give or take a dime.”
    That drew only tense stares. Jellicoe sighed, a little deflated.
“As you can see, it’s quite a long document. But I wondered if we
could dispense with a literal reading of every single word and you
would allow me to summarize?”
    Keats surprised everyone by speaking up. “Of course Pl— Sadie
would get a full copy?”
“Yes, of course,” Jellicoe said, and seemed amused.
“Go ahead, Don,” Thrum said. Like this was her meeting.
“Well, the long and short of it is that Sadie is the sole surviving heir.
She inherits the bulk of the estate. There are some bequests for some
of Grey McLure’s friends, relations, employees, and charities. All told
those bequests are quite substantial, amounting to something on the
order of two hundred million dollars in McLure stock and cash.”
Keats whistled, then apologized.
“It’s worth whistling at,” Jellicoe allowed. “So is what’s left to
Sadie.” He looked at Sadie, raised his Saruman eyebrows, and said,
“You inherit the rest of your father and brother’s shares of McLure.
Added to those you already own, you hold