Programmed for Peril

to!”
    “Mel, you have to let me! What you swallowed is very bad for you. It’s like... poison.”
    She led her daughter to a comer of the bathroom. Together they knelt, as though in prayer. Trish worked her fingers into the girl’s mouth, then on back, searching for the gag reflex. At the first spasm she kicked and squirmed. Trish bent her over, whispering softly. “Mel, you have to!” She thrust her fingers deeper. Moisture passed her hand, dripped to the floor. Juices only.
    She held her hand in place until spasm mounted on spasm. The squirming child’s stomach emptied onto stained linoleum. Trish didn’t relent until dry heaves told her that purging was complete.
    She bent over the disgusting puddle with the intensity of a sorceress who has just cast the bones.
    She found no capsule.
    She wiped the shaking girl’s mouth with her skirt. Either the capsule had passed out of reach further into her digestive tract, or... it didn’t exist. She put Melody on the bed and stared down at the unconscious Carson. Would he bluff?
    It was tempting to think so. She turned over what she knew of his character, sane and mad. Which lay at the bottom of his heart, empathy or the will to punish?
    He had killed his brother for his imagined disobedience.
    What chance was there that he would spare a child?
    Trish answered her own question with a soft groan. She looked at her watch. Three minutes to five.
    Where was the timer? It wouldn’t have to be large. No bigger than a walnut, possibly. It could be hidden anywhere in this wretched, dim apartment. She looked around at the debris Uttering the floor.
    She knelt beside dead Champ. Teeth gritted and lids half lowered, she went through his pockets. Nothing but lint and used toothpicks. About to rise, she knelt again and pressed a kiss to his cooling hand. She was alive because of him. Her “Champ” indeed! He had worn her standard with lunatic love.
    She rose and moved toward Carson, then hesitated. He had been far away, playing Dino. He couldn’t have carried the timer with him. It had to be in these two rooms somewhere. But where?
    She began to rush about the apartment, pawing at parts, sweeping shelves clean with anxious hands, searching for a device whose exact appearance was unknown. She was on the verge of panic. She whirled to look at Melody, who lay white-faced and spent on the filthy blanket. Somewhere in her gut lay the seed of pathetic, premature death.
    Two minutes to five.
    Even in this tiny hole there were too many places to hide a small electronic device. And Carson would have ordered Champ to hide it where she would be least likely to look.
    Where would that be?
    She thought of one place.
    She dropped to her knees by the side of the bed. She grabbed dead Nicholas’s bony arm and pulled his puffing corpse out into view. Swallowing her rising gorge, she drove her hands into his pants and shirt pockets.
    They were empty.
    Beneath protruding eyes his mouth was only barely open. She moved his jaw to widen the space; rigor mortis had passed. The timer could be lodged within. Her face twisted with revulsion as she slid her fingers between his teeth. She scooped within the dead pit between tongue and palate.
    Nothing!
    Her daughter was going to die.
    She sobbed and tore her hand free. She slapped it against the side of her jumpsuit, as though to brush away the dry touch of death.
    Amid frantic desperation something niggled. She turned back to the yellow note. What had he written, exactly? She read the sentences again. I’ll trade the timer’s location for my freedom, or a tune.
    Forget his freedom! His world had dwindled to the few grimy boards on which he lay... . or a tune. A tune? What tune?
    She understood Carson well enough to know nothing was casual or accidental with him. Further, he had always been fond of testing her imagination and creativity. Blend that with his sense of the diabolical, and she had...
    A puzzle.
    A last straw at which to grasp—in the little over a minute left until five o’clock. Less if her watch and the timer differed.
    A tune the two of them had in common meant nothing by itself. It would have to be sung or played to mean anything. To do anything. Do what? Carson’s words told her: It would reveal the timer’s location.
    She began to nibble the ends of her fingers. What tune? She cast her mind back over the years with Carson. Tunes? There had been hundreds! From classics to the latest heavy metal. Carson devoured—and