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    The intensity of his anger astonished him. In the office, the lab, he could not meet her eyes. He saw the truth in all its ugliness: he had hired her because he wanted her. And believed, in some deluded way, that she wanted him too. In weak moments, self-pity overwhelmed him. He began to feel that she had taken advantage of him , his all-too obvious fascination with her. Unfounded, of course; but the feeling dogged him. Their hour-long weekly meetings seemed interminable; he found excuses to cancel them, which seemed best for all concerned.
    The sight of her filled him with resentment, and such sentiments had no place in a lab.
    Meanwhile Cristina toiled away on her transgenic mouse. The work proved more difficult than expected. XIAP was not cooperating; she'd had some difficulty turning off the gene in the mouse's stem cells.
    Such glitches were common in gene manipulation; but as the months passed, Frank grew nervous. He began to see apoptosis as a long shot, his interest in it a spell of temporary insanity. He'd made lousy hires before, but never for such a contemptible reason. An old dog's fascination with a beautiful young woman: was anything more pitiful? His motives would be obvious to anyone paying attention; the lab techs and postdocs, Betsy Baird and Margit, all must have seen him for the fool he was.
    Meanwhile, Kevin Cho had stayed on at Stanford. He'd been snapped up—didn't it figure?—by Frank's old buddy Neil Windsor. Cho was studying signaling proteins in the growth pathway—far less risky than Cristina's apoptosis work. Frank understood that he'd missed a rare opportunity. A blind man could see that Cho was destined for a hit. Cho was as close as Frank had ever come to a sure thing.
    Then, at long last, Cristina's luck shifted. After months of manipulating stem cells, she succeeded in turning off the gene. She had the knockout! And twelve weeks later, her transgenic mice showed mammary tumors—a direct result, presumably, of deactivating XIAP.
    And in a stroke his judgment was vindicated. Cho had been the safe choice; but Frank McKotch was not timid; Frank McKotch had never shied away from risk. Beneath Cristina's comely surface was a true scientist, and only he had seen it. The postdocs, the lab techs, even Steve Upstairs: all would be awed by his perspicacity, his uncanny prescience.
     
    Frank sat in the bar of the Charles Hotel, waiting for Neil Windsor, staring out at the snow. A storm was moving in from the west.
    Gwen had phoned him from the Pittsburgh airport to tell him that her flight was delayed. A couple of hours only, but Frank resented the holdup. They'd have to drive directly to South Station to meet Billy's train, fighting rush-hour traffic, then go straight to dinner. Frank hadn't seen his daughter in a year, his son—was it possible?—in three. At least we have tomorrow , he thought. They would spend the morning and afternoon together before the kids left for their mother's house in Concord.
    He glanced around the bar. He felt summoned here against his will. Grohl had closed early for the holiday, and Betsy Baird had left at noon. After he and Gwen hung up, the phone rang again immediately, and Frank answered without thinking. When he heard Neil's voice, he knew that he was trapped.
    Now he sat nursing a martini, fortifying himself. He would make small talk with his old buddy: swap some gossip, ask about the wife and kid. A new round of massive DARPA grants had just been awarded; Neil would know who'd gotten the nod. There was plenty to talk about besides the academy, Kevin Cho, and the Nature paper, the bolus of resentments that sat inside his gullet, the betrayals of the past.
    He startled when Neil clapped him on the shoulder.
    "McKotch! Man, are you a hard guy to track down."
    Frank rose."Jesus, it's good to see you." To his surprise, he meant it. He was always startled by how familiar Neil looked, how much like his old self. Nearing sixty, he was as scrawny as ever; his