But one way or another, stabilized Loki or not, by this time next month Luc Monnet would be in France.

He found himself whistling contentedly—when was the last time he had whistled?—as he waited impatiently for the last test subject to be paid and shoved out the door.

Luc wanted to get home. He had wine to pack.

3

“This can’t be true,” Nadia said, her mouth going dry.

“Take it or leave it,” Jack said with a shrug.

Nadia stared at him in dismay. Jack had dropped into the diabetes clinic unannounced this morning and said he had a progress report. Nadia had brought him back to her office where they could have privacy. He’d sat down and begun telling her this surreal tale about Dr. Monnet sneaking off to some warehouse in Brooklyn where he oversaw a group of men who bashed walls and each other…

How could she accept such a bizarre tale from a near-stranger? It was too much. Insane.

Jack looked tired. She wondered if he might be into drugs, hallucinogens maybe. That would explain his story.

“I don’t mean to doubt your word, but—”

“I think he was testing Berzerk,” Jack said.

“What’s that?”

“Street name for a new designer drug I’ve been hearing about.”

“An illegal drug?” Nadia felt a surge of anger. She wanted to ask him if he’d been sampling some himself, but bit it back in time. “Oh, now you’ve gone too far!”

“I saw it in action the other night,” Jack said. “During the preppy riot. The way Monnet’s ‘participants’ acted last night reminded me of those homicidal preps I saw.”

“But not Dr. Monnet!”

Jack shrugged again. “You wanted a connection between your doc and the Serb. There you go.”

Feeling queasy, Nadia leaned back in her chair and squeezed her eyes shut. Milos Dragovic, reputedly dealing in anything illegal that turned a buck… Dr. Monnet, partner in a drug firm… a relationship between the two of them, hostile or not, what else could it be but drugs?

“All right,” she said, opening her eyes. “If he is involved with this Berzerk stuff—and I’m not for an instant conceding that he is—it’s because he has no choice.”

“Whatever you say.”

“You think he’s a willing participant, don’t you.”

“I have no agenda here. I’m just telling you what I saw.”

“And I saw Dragovic roughing up Dr. Monnet!”

“Could have been a disagreement over how to split the profits.”

Nadia clenched her teeth to hold back a scream. “He is not in this willingly. Dragovic is holding something over him.”

Jack leaned forward. “OK. I’ll work on that end. But maybe you ought to be nosing into things at your end. If your guy is manufacturing something illegal like Berzerk, he’s probably using company equipment to do it.”

“All the production is done in… Brooklyn.”

Jack was nodding. “Yeah. Right down the street from the punch ‘em-up warehouse.”

Nadia sighed. “It looks bad, doesn’t it.”

“It do. It do indeed.”