point in trying to rise above it when so many people didn’t care. In the end, someone’s personal interest would always trump a vague idea of doing the right thing.
No, the people he blamed—the ones he hated—were the ones like Tad Williams who told him to go to hell. Dru hated them for yelling at him as if he didn’t know what went through their heads. He hated them for being stupid and not seeing the world as it really was, hated them when they refused his offers, and hated them even more when they broke.
But at least once they broke he never had to see them again.
He didn’t think about Tad Williams any more while he drove. There was no point, after all. Dru had been the one to bring the news of Justin Williams’s car crash to Raymond White. He’d known what that meant and he hadn’t lied when he told Tad that it didn’t matter which company he backed.
Nothing mattered, not in the end. What mattered was getting what you could while you were here.
Amber and Nick had gone out to get dinner. Well, get dinner and find DuBois, who wandered around outside like a lunatic.
And they’d whisper about him. Jacob knew that. He knew they thought he was too caught up in this and was disregarding the risks. That was the problem with being reasonably intelligent—you knew what other people thought and you knew they were right.
You merely couldn’t stop yourself.
His grandmother had looked peaceful in the ICU. She hadn’t been in pain and he knew that was a blessing. He shouldn’t be angry about it.
But she looked like she was asleep—like she was already dead, and she shouldn’t be. She should be alive and at home while they all tried to make her apple pie and she scolded them for adding too much cinnamon and stealing morsels of the dough. She’d slipped away because there was nothing to call her back and no way to get through to her.
Jacob whirled away from the pod. He wanted to punch something and it couldn’t be this. This was the pod Amber had spent all day tinkering with. It didn’t matter that she doubted it would work or that she was afraid they would be offed by Big Pharma. She was doing this because it was important to all of them that their work meant something—and because it was important to him.
In the same way, Nick had given Tad Williams the real facts rather than the inflated ones. They would do this so that PIVOT could succeed and Jacob could see a family get someone back.
He went to his desk, hesitated, and typed JUSTIN WILLIAMS TAD WILLIAMS into the search bar. It wasn’t long before he’d found a trail through social media. The Facebook page had been locked down and scrubbed carefully—Tad Williams had clearly found a PR firm while running for congress—a LinkedIn page looked like someone else had set it up for him, but a YouTube channel might provide insight.
Jacob hesitated before he opened the page. The autoplay had a run-through of a game he hadn’t seen in ages and before he knew it, he leaned back in his chair, laughed at some of the jokes, and even groaned in mock-horror when the character ran afoul of a cleverly-placed trap.
Movement behind him drew his attention and someone placed an open container of lo mein in his hand. Chopsticks already protruded from it. Amber and Nick drew stools up behind him, watched, and laughed with him. They ate as they watched princesses get saved, Master Chief dodge a particularly worrisome section of the final level in Halo 3, and some of the funnier bloopers from Portal.
When the food was gone and the videos were finished, Jacob leaned back in his chair and smiled at his friends.
“It’s good to unwind,” Nick told him. “None of us have done that enough lately.”
“Honestly, if it had to be something, I thought we’d have found you watching Starcraft tournaments.” Amber popped the last piece of chicken into her mouth and handed her takeout container to Nick, who was collecting them to throw away. “What made you decide to watch vintage game play-throughs?”
“First of all,” Jacob told her, “if Halo 3 is vintage, we’re ancient.”
She laughed and smoothed the hair along the side of her head. “See these grays, friend? We’re ancient. Next?”
“Don’t remind me,” he grumbled. “Second…” He looked at the screen. Justin’s face was frozen in an exaggerated expression and