4:00 pm

Tuesday night, I told Max I worry about her, and today she has given me plenty of reason to. I haven’t heard from her since our phone call yesterday afternoon. I know better than anyone how well Max can take care of herself, but when I don’t hear from her for over twenty-four hours, I can’t help but be concerned. I’m beginning to think that the Lempkin job has gone sideways. She hasn’t responded to my pages all day. She didn’t go home this morning or show up for work today. I spoke to Cindy a few minutes ago and she didn’t seem concerned, but then she didn’t know about Max’s job last night. I’ve even checked the police arrest records. They don’t have anyone in custody matching Max’s description, but that doesn’t give me much reassurance. If she did get into trouble with Lempkin, I doubt that he would just turn her over to the local authorities. For that matter, those bounty hunters may have intercepted her. There are just too many loose threads and unanswered questions. If I don’t hear from her in the next ten minutes, I’m going to start an all out search.

5:00 pm

Max appeared just as I was about to start my search for her and informed me that the Lempkin job had, in fact, gone sideways. It was only the fact that she was standing in front of me in one piece that kept me calm enough to find out exactly what happened.

Max’s night began with Diamond throwing a wrench into the Lempkin job and ended at the research facilities of Synthedine Corporation. It took us the better part of an hour and Sebastian’s considerable resources to unravel the tangled Diamond/Synthedine connection and bring us to the real issue at hand. Now I have much more to worry about than a failed box job. The bounty hunters Synthedine hired weren’t after Max, they were after Diamond. She was one of the subjects in Synthedine’s prison testing program. They had infected her with a deadly and highly contagious ‘designer disease’, as Sebastian called it. She has been off her medications for two weeks and is on the brink of infecting everyone she comes into contact with. No wonder they want her back so badly. When Max heard that, she flew out of Sebastian’s like a shot. She didn’t even consider the fact that she has also been exposed to Diamond. All she could think about was Original Cindy.

Max may be worried about Cindy, but I’m worried about Max. There is no way I’m going to endure a repeat of the last twenty-four hours, sitting in the dark, not knowing if she is dead or alive. The least I can do is to attempt to track her activities. At least I’ll know where she is and if she gets into trouble, I might be able to offer some assistance.

7:00 pm

I just got the break I’ve been looking for.

I spent the last two hours following Cindy and Diamond’s trail. I didn’t page Max because I knew that with Cindy’s life on the line, she wouldn’t bother to look for a payphone just to update me on the situation. So instead I called Jam Pony and between Normal and Herbal, got a semi-coherent story about Cindy and Diamond heading for Mexico on a bus. I downloaded the local Greyhound bus schedule and found a few buses that they could possibly be on. After one hundred years, that company is still plugging away, operating on a shoestring budget, running antique buses. I’m not surprised, though, that they survived. Since the pulse, other means of travel have become exorbitantly expensive. There were no buses heading directly for Mexico, but there were buses leaving for L.A. every hour between 4:00 and 6:00 pm. Diamond and Cindy could easily have been on any one of those.

I just received a report over the informant net about several men in anti-contamination suits pulling over a bus about an hour outside of town and loading all the passengers into other vehicles. There was even a helicopter on site. This is it. Synthedine. I would never wish that company any success, but for all our sakes, I hope to God that they managed to get to Diamond and Cindy on time. In all likelihood, they have taken them back to Synthedine. From Max’s description of the place, I am certain that they have the resources to contain Diamond’s disease. I’ve tried to hack into Synthedine’s system, but I haven’t been able to confirm that Diamond and Cindy are in fact being held there. That facility is a lock box. I will continue trying to access their computer systems. Hopefully, I will be able to glean some additional information. Still, my biggest concern is that I have no clue where Max is.

8:00 pm

I was finally able to tap into Synthedine’s maintenance system and monitor their environmental controls, electricity, heat, light, air circulation, and alarm system. Everything appeared to be running normally until a few minutes ago when an alarm was triggered in one sector of the facility. There is definitely something going on, but I have no way of knowing exactly what it is. Contamination, a drill, or Max? Despite my best efforts, I am back in the same place I was earlier today. I can do nothing more than worry and wait.

9:00 pm

Max finally called. She was able to get Cindy safely out of Synthedine. They are both okay. Thank God.

Max told me she wanted to spend some time with Cindy, but she also assured me that she will drop by later tonight. After the events of today, I can’t wait to see her. I need to see with my own two eyes that she is okay.