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Dew lowered the table leg to his side, then dropped it on the floor. He still couldn’t move his right arm. The b.l.o.o.d.y, giant-size man lay crying on the floor, big body shaking with sobs.

“I’ll get someone in here to clean you up,” Dew said. “Then go back to your room. I’ll come talk to you there. We’ve got work to do.

Dew walked out of the room.

b.i.t.c.hES GET St.i.tCHES

Clarence leaned his head into the communications trailer. Margaret smiled at him. She couldn’t help it. She had thought him handsome the first moment she saw him. Now, after three months on this a.s.signment and more than a few nights in his bed, she found him gorgeous. She was falling for him. No, she had already fallen for him. She didn’t know if it would be a temporary romance, if when this insanity ended they simply would go their separate ways. Maybe their attraction was just an outlet, a way to deal with the death that surrounded them on a daily basis.

Maybe he was with her because she was the only woman on the project. That thought had crossed her mind more than a few times. She was older, twenty pounds overweight, and while she still got plenty of attention from men, it wasn’t as much as she used to get. Was she already in love with him? She pushed the thoughts away—if she let it go that far and he didn’t love her in return . . .

“Doc,” Clarence said, “Dew says you need to go to the office.”

“I’m a little busy,” she said. “Tell him if he wants to see me, he can come to the trailer. Then I’ll get rid of him, and you can give me a nice shoulder rub.”

Clarence shook his head. “Uh, no can do, Doc. You need to get to the office, and bring a first-aid kit. Seems Dew and Perry had it out.”

“Oh, no. Do we need an ambulance?”

“You’re going to have to see this for yourself,” he said. “Don’t worry, I’ll go with you.”

Margaret looked through the comm room’s cabinets. There was a first-aid kit in here somewhere. . . . She found it, grabbed the white plastic box by its built-in handle and ran out of the trailer toward Room 207.

In a way, Clarence had made her question her life choices, even as she rode a rocket-train of career success and quite literally stood in the path of a potential global catastrophe. She was the man, for lack of a better term, something she always longed to be, but thanks to her feelings for him it was starting to ring empty. When this was over, if they separated, what did she have to look forward to? Her spa.r.s.e apartment in Cincinnati? A place she really used only for sleep, because she worked all the time?

“You don’t need to be afraid,” he said as they reached the room. “I’ll be right here with you.” He opened the door for her.

“Afraid? Why would I be afraid of Dew Phil—”

Her voice broke off when she saw Perry Dawsey curled up in a fetal position, bleeding like a stuck pig.

“Like I told you,” Clarence said, “I’ll be right here.”

She couldn’t believe it. Dew Phillips had beat up Perry Dawsey? Beat up wasn’t really the term for it. Thrashed him to within an inch of his life.

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