“Will do. Anything I can get you?”

“Not unless you have a spare phone. Abe’s out on the coast again.” Abe was Anne’s husband, a financial consultant; he made it to Blind Lake maybe one month out of three. The marriage was troubled. “Local calls are okay, but I can’t get through to L.A. for some reason.”

“You want to borrow mine?”

“No, not really; I tried Tommy Gupta’s; his didn’t work either. Something wrong with the satellites, I guess.”

Strange, Charlie thought, how everything seemed to have gone just slightly askew tonight.

For the fifth time in the last hour, Sue Sampel told her boss she hadn’t been able to put his call through to the Department of Energy in Washington. Each time, Ray looked at her as if she had personally fucked up the system.

She was working way late, and so, it seemed, was everybody else in Hubble Plaza. Something was up. Sue couldn’t figure out what. She was Ray Scutter’s executive assistant, but Ray (typically) hadn’t shared any information with her. All she knew was that he wanted to talk to D.C., and the telecoms weren’t cooperating.

Obviously it wasn’t Sue’s fault — she knew how to punch a number, for God’s sake — but that didn’t prevent Ray from glaring at her every time he asked. And Ray Scutter packed a killer glare. Big eyes with pinpoint pupils, bushy eyebrows, flecks of gray in his goatee… she had once thought he might be handsome, if not for his receding chin and slightly pouchy cheeks. But she didn’t entertain that thought anymore. What was the expression? Handsome is as handsome does. Ray didn’t do handsome.

He turned away from her desk and stalked back to his inner office. “Naturally,” he growled over his shoulder, “I’ll be blamed for this somehow.”

Y³, Sue thought wearily. It had become her mantra in the months she’d been working for Ray Scutter. Y³: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Ray was surrounded by incompetents. Ray was being ignored by the research staff. Ray was thwarted at every turn. Yeah, yeah, yeah.