Susan Phillips - Hot Shot

"Daddy." Susannah's eyes clouded with tears. "He came to me when I was dying. Oh, Paige, Daddy came to me."

Paige patted Susannah's hand. "Go to sleep, Suze. You go to sleep now."

"I'm going to kill her!"

Pain had taken over every part of Susannah's body. She squeezed her eyes tight and wished that whoever was making so much noise in the hallway would be quiet. The sedative was powerful, and it took her a while to realize it was Mitch talking. Only a faint gray light seeped through the window. Why had he come to visit so early?

"How could she have done something so stupid?" His voice sounded like a jackhammer at dawn. "I mean it, Paige. As soon as she wakes up, I'm going to kill her."

"Shhh," Paige hissed. "You're acting like a wild man. Yank, make him be quiet."

After Mitch's angry bellow, Yank's murmurings were like a soft breeze. Susannah drifted back to sleep.

When she awakened several hours later, bright sunlight was streaming through her window. Intermingled with the stiffness in her muscles was a piercing sense of joy. She was alive for a new day.

The mattress sagged. She turned her head and saw Yank lowering himself to sit next to her. His clothes were wrinkled, his hair rumpled, his face lined with worry. At the sight of that dear sweet face, everything inside her broke apart. "Oh, Yank…"

Mitch had his hand on the doorknob when he heard Susannah's moan. His eyes were bloodshot, his hair standing in spikes on his head. He had been by her bedside all night and had just stepped out for a moment to help Paige deal with an overly aggressive reporter. Now he yanked open the door, overwhelmed with the irrational notion that her soft moan was a death rattle. He shouldn't have left, not even for a moment. He hadn't watched her carefully enough, and now she was going to die.

As he rushed into the bedroom, the scene in front of him gradually came into focus. She was curled up against Yank's chest as if he were the only man on earth. Mitch felt as if someone had given him a sucker punch right in the gut.

Yank lifted his head and saw him. He smiled his gentle smile. "Susannah's awake."

"Yes," Mitch said, his voice cracking with emotion. "Yes, I see."

Susannah stiffened against Yank. He laid her back on the bed. She turned toward Mitch.

"Hi, Hot Shot," he said, trying to make it easy for her by keeping his voice light.

She held out her hand. "Mitch."

He walked over to her, sat down on the side of the bed and curled her fingers through his. At the sight of the bandages on her wrists, he wanted to weep.

"I didn't think I'd ever see you again," she murmured.

He squeezed her hand tighter, pressed his eyes shut. "No more detective work, honey. Promise me."

Paige came into the bedroom leading a housekeeper and maid, all of them carrying trays ladened with food. "The police picked Cal up at a private airfield an hour ago, and the house is surrounded with three more television crews. No one is talking to anybody until everybody's had breakfast."

They didn't feel like eating, but none of them had the nerve to argue with Paige when the feeding urge was upon her.

In the aftermath of the scandal, FBT had a public relations nightmare on its hands, while Susannah became the Valley's Joan of Arc. Before a month had passed, her face had appeared on the cover of three national magazines. She sparred with Ted Koppel on Nightline and appeared on all three network morning news shows.

Would you buy a new computer from this woman?

You bet.

The publicity brought in an avalanche of orders for the Blaze III, and SysVal scrambled to get back to full staff to process them.

In the meantime, FBT struggled to extract itself from a public relations nightmare. Having its former CEO in jail waiting to go on trial for industrial sabotage and attempted murder definitely wasn't good for a company's image, and the corporation's stock tumbled to the price of a haircut. The state of California canceled its contract for the Falcon 101 and ordered the III. Investment money poured in to SysVal, as well as the initial payment on a huge financial settlement from FBT.

Although it was early evening, the SysVal parking lot was still half full as Sam pulled in. He turned off the ignition and sat in the car for a few minutes without moving. Six weeks had passed since Theroux had tried to kill Susannah. Sam had stayed away from SysVal while the worst of the media circus had gone on, but time was running out, and he had to make his move.

Since early spring he had devoted every minute to launching his new company. The concept was so beautiful, he couldn't believe he hadn't thought of it years ago. One night he had been handing over his credit card at a restaurant when it had hit him. He had stared down at that slim piece of plastic and felt as if the top of his head had blown off. What would happen if credit cards were embedded with microchips?

Aw, man… He had almost started to cry as he envisioned the beauty of it. The way the world did business would change forever. Ideas had flashed through his mind like lasers at a rock concert. An electronic credit card could handle bank transactions, dial a telephone, take care of parking meters and vending machines. A person's entire credit history could be stored on the card, their medical history, their fucking life history. The card could function as a door key, an ignition key, a security pass. His head had reeled. Jeezus…

He had more investors waiting in line to bankroll him than he needed. Money was no problem, but people were. He had gone on a raid, picking up some of the bright youngsters that SysVal had laid off, stealing a few programmers from Bill Gates at Microsoft, a top executive from Intel. He had seduced a marketing whiz away from Apple. The Valley was churning with bright, young talent, and he had gone after the best. By mid-summer, he had money and he had a staff.

Now he needed Yank.

As he pocketed his keys and began to walk across the lot toward the building, he thought how sweet life had turned for his former partners. Hardly a week passed without another story in the newspapers about them. He tried not to resent the fact that the press had cast him as a villain because he'd bailed out of SysVal when it was in trouble. Since he'd sold his partnership at a deflated price, the bail-out had cost him millions, but he'd still made a fortune and he didn't care. Money wasn't the game. The game was vision. SysVal had gotten old and respectable. He wanted a challenge, a new adventure. He liked to be in on the beginning of the game, not the end. Some people weren't capable of business as usual, and he was one of them.

God, he was glad to get out of there. He could feel his blood pumping again.

But he needed Yank working with him. He couldn't imagine going any further without Yank's engineering genius behind him. He knew he had to stay patient while SysVal rode the crest of its publicity wave, but before long the company would stabilize, and he could have everything he wanted. Yank would freak when he found out what Sam was working on, and as long as Yank was certain that SysVal was safe, Sam would have no difficulty convincing him to come to work for his new company.

But Yank wasn't all Sam wanted. As he approached the entrance, he shoved his hand impatiently through his hair. His divorce was going to be final soon, and he had to move quickly.

His heart began to beat faster. God, he loved a challenge, and this was going to be the biggest challenge of his life. He could get Susannah back. What was it she had once said about him? That he had the ability to make sensible people do impossible things. Now he had to convince her that he'd settled down. Life was exciting again. He no longer had anything to prove by screwing around with other women, and he was finally ready to cope with a kid. Those were his bargaining chips.

Maybe it was good that they'd had this time apart, because now he understood how much she meant to him. Before she'd left him, he had been bored, restless, and he'd blamed it on her. He'd lost sight of how smart she was, how sweet. He hadn't felt complete since the night she had walked out on him. She seemed to have taken part of himself with her.

The last few times he had tried to talk to her on the phone, she had brushed him off, so he had decided to use Yank to get to her. Drop in on him at work. Make it seem casual. He had to get more aggressive with Yank anyway. This way he could kill two birds with one stone.

He didn't have any trouble getting past the SysVal security desk. Even at seven in the evening, the halls were bustling with activity, and he shot the bull with some of his former engineers before he left to find Yank. Somebody said he was eating dinner.

As he made his way toward the small kitchen in the back of the building, the loudspeaker blared. "Whoever ordered thirty-six pizzas and a box of Milk Duds, pick your order up in the main lobby now."

He shoved his hand in his pocket. It felt good to be back. And then he scoffed at himself. That was the sort of nostalgic bullshit that kept people from moving forward.

As he approached the kitchen, he saw Yank and Susannah sitting across from each other at one of the blond wooden tables. A picnic basket was propped between them. Too fucking cozy for words.

Ever since he and Susannah had split up, he'd been worried about Yank's feelings for her. He knew that years ago Yank had had a crush on her, but he'd never taken it very seriously. He'd even gotten a kick out of the way Yank used to look at her. Now he wondered if he'd been too casual about the whole thing.

Susannah laughed and Yank smiled back at her. He looked like he wanted to eat her right along with the piece of chicken on his plate. Since when had Yank ever taken time out from the lab to eat dinner?

Susannah saw Sam first and her smile faded. Her lack of welcome hurt. Jesus, he still wanted her. She was part of him, for chrissake.

"Sam." Yank put down his fork, stood, and held out his hand. As Sam shook it, he sensed a wariness in Yank, and that hurt almost as much as Susannah's lack of welcome.

He heard someone moving behind him and realized they weren't alone. Susannah's sister Paige stepped forward opening a wine bottle with a cork screw. He had only seen her once before, the night she and Susannah had walked in on him with Mindy. He could tell right away that she was a real bitch.

"My, my. Don't you look spiffy with your pants on." She ran her eyes up and down his body.

He wanted to slap her right through the wall.

Susannah didn't reprimand her sister for the wisecrack, and that really pissed him off. It scared him, too. What if he couldn't make her care again?

"Have a seat, Sam," Susannah said. "I think we can come up with an extra piece of Paige's chicken."

He sat, but refused the food. As Susannah reached for her napkin, he saw the faint scars on her wrist and remembered what she had gone through the night Theroux had tried to kill her. He felt rage, and something else he didn't want to identify. Maybe some kind of guilt bullshit.

Yank asked Sam what he had been doing, and Sam began telling him about his new company. Before long, he had thrown off his sport coat and was pacing the room, his fingers splayed, his arms making arcs in the air as he talked and talked and talked.

Hallelujah and amen! Brother Love's traveling salvation show was back on the road.

Susannah watched him without much expression, but Yank hung on to his every word. When Sam finally stopped talking, he noticed that Yank's eyes had grown unfocused, and he could sense his old partner's excitement as he pondered the miracles of engineering necessary to transform a wafer-thin credit card into a tool that could interface with the world.

Even Paige had lost her superior look. She had set down her wineglass and was staring at him as if he had just dropped in from another planet.

Susannah had noticed Yank's reaction, too, and she immediately rounded on Sam. "What do you want? Why are you here?"

He had forgotten those hair-trigger reflexes of hers, and he realized too late that he had miscalculated by talking to Yank when she was present. God, she was feisty. He had only wanted to pique Yank's interest, not steal him away in front of her.

But he could feel his adrenaline pumping at the idea of going into a battle with her again. Jesus, he loved a good fight. He had too many yes-men around him now. Not enough scrappers like Suzie. She liked everything up front, so why not give it to her? Why not have his fight and let her know what he wanted? That way she couldn't ever accuse him of having gone behind her back.