She was silent, but his request didn’t seem to set off any noticeable alarms in her.

“No,” she said at last. “We need to do this now. Let me just go and get the injections. I’ll be right back.”

She left him alone in her office. He knew from experience that it would take her only a few minutes to return with the necessary supplies. Before panic could fully set in and paralyze him, Jeremiah did something he’d never done in his life. He stuck a finger in his throat, as far back as he could manage, until his eyes watered and he gagged and he finally vomited all over the carpet, narrowly missing his own feet.

“Oh, my God,” she muttered when she returned. She stopped in midstep and stared down at the mess on the floor, syringes in hand and a look of confusion and mild disgust in her eyes. “Are you ill, Jeremiah?”

“Maybe. With everything that’s happened, I think it might just be nerves,” he said. “God, I hope I don’t have something contagious.”

She looked at him coldly for a moment and then pursed her lips and shook her head.

“Perhaps it might be best if we waited, then. We’ll do this at our next session in a few days. Maybe you should go lie down while I find someone who can clean up this mess.”

He mopped at the sweat on his face and tried not to look as though he’d just dodged a bullet.

“Yeah, I think I will,” he said.

Chapter 32

Back in the apartment, Jeremiah paced the floors. He’d bought himself a few days, maybe, but he no longer had the luxury of meticulous plotting. He had to settle on a plan and make a move. It was time to act.

He’d pretty much decided on stabbing. It was quick, quiet and completely controllable. He’d seriously considered poisoning at first. A lot of murder mysteries he’d read used this as the least traceable method of killing someone, but he didn’t need to worry about that. If he did it right, there wouldn’t be any indication of a murder at all and there wouldn’t be anything to trace. The clone would be gone, and he would take its place. Besides, poison was too unpredictable, and it might take too long. The idea of shooting the clone appealed to him on some level, too. It was violent, explosive, and the idea of blowing the thing away like that gave him a surge of satisfaction. He liked to imagine Charles Scott’s reaction to that kind of violence against his creation. But gunshots would attract too much attention on his suburban street. Besides, Jeremiah had never used a gun in his life, never even held a gun, and how would he even get his hands on one? Stabbing was the way to go, he decided. A knife was a simple, instinctual weapon, and something about the proximity involved in stabbing was enticing to him. He liked the idea of using his own hands to do this. It seemed poetically appropriate.