Thibodeau looked at him. Done sounds fine, he thought. Except they weren’t.

“We never did talk about the personal field equipment,” he said.

“No,” Ricci said. “Maybe we’ll make some time later.”

Thibodeau wasn’t sure why he found himself opening his desk drawer and reaching into it. He supposed that uncertainty was, in its way, a fitting note on which to end their little let’s-get-reacquainted talk, which had left him wondering about a lot of things . . . foremost among them the point Ricci had been trying to make, and now his own.

“Might want to keep these handy,” he said, and tossed a couple of aluminum squeeze tubes from the drawer onto his desktop. They were about two inches long—the size of toothpaste samplers.

Ricci picked them up.

“What’s inside?” he said.

“Guy from special development got them to me a couple days ago,” Thibodeau said. “It’s wound closure gel. We’re getting ready to deliver a ton of it to the military—they already issue something like it to their forward combat troops, but this’s supposed to seal the skin better’n any other kind of dressing, keep it clean and breathing until an injured soldier get to a MASH unit. The idea’s for all our field personnel to carry the stuff, too. Case somebody gets his hide perforated way I did a few years back.”

“How come you’re giving them to me now?”

“I got to read over the test reports this week, decide whether to approve ’em for issue,” Thibodeau said. It was a truth that felt like a lie. “Thought you might want to have your say.”

Ricci examined the tubes in his palm a moment, then dropped them indifferently into the pocket of his sport jacket.

“Decide whatever you want,” he said. “I’ll stick them inside my shaving kit in case I nick myself.”

Thibodeau shrugged without response, watched Ricci leave the office, then sat looking at its closed door in silence for long minutes afterward, trying to figure out for sure what had passed between them.

In the end, however, he was only positive that it scared the living daylights out of him.

“Looks like we’re ready to go,” Julia Gordian was saying. “If anyone has questions for me, I’ll be glad to answer them after explaining how this works.”

This being the cat test, which was about to commence in a restrictively small back room at the Peninsula Adoption Center. Besides a couple of plastic chairs and wicker kitty bed in which Leona the Grouch was now curled, it was occupied by Vivian the Grey, the Wurmans, and Julia herself—a close-quarters environment that was no fluke whatsoever, since forcing Viv and Leona to invade each other’s private space would give Julia a very good idea how the dog would behave in a similar, but uncontrolled, household situation.