Page 68 of Midnight Embrace

But the Star Trek theme kept playing.

“Don’t answer that,” Raul said again.

She checked her cell. “It’s Toby.”

That woke him all the way up. He sat up straight in bed, black hair tousled, a dark shadow of stubble darkening his jaw. He looked so incredibly sexy she nearly forgot to breathe.

Raul moved to sit next to her. Her glance fell to his lap where, amazingly, he was starting an erection. He shrugged and pulled the covers over his lap. “Don’t pay him any attention. Put Toby on speakerphone.”

She fumbled for a moment, still sleep-ridden and distracted by Raul.

“Tobe?”

“Emma!” Toby voice came amplified out of the speaker. His hair was tousled and he had huge dark circles under his eyes. He sounded excited and scared. Both. And looked worried. “Listen, sorry I conked out on you. But I was just now going over the data again and I think I have pinpointed at least the date.”

“The date?” she echoed stupidly. It felt like her head was on a time relay. “What date?”

“The date of whatever event is supposed to trigger the short selling.”

She sat up straighter, wide awake now. “Do you know what the event is?”

“No.” Emma could hear the disappointment in Toby’s voice. He looked away for a moment, as if ashamed. “But like I said, I know when it is. It’s the moment that the short selling begins to take effect. And there will be a cascade effect for at least three days.”

“So when?”

“10:30 a.m. today, June 10. And I have a horrible suspicion we’re going to see markets completely wiped out. Not to mention that the event might be something awful.”

Yes, she thought. To place huge bets on short sales, whatever it was would be something awful. Maybe worse than 9/11?

She shuddered, threw back the covers and fumbled with her feet for her slippers. The drumbeat of anxiety beat in her chest, but she didn’t know what to do with her anxiety. Something bad was going to happen very soon, but … what?

Earthquakes and tsunamis couldn’t be predicted months in advance, so it had to be man-made. And the head of a drug cartel was involved, so it couldn’t be good.

“Toby – the date and the time … are you sure?”

On her cell screen Toby looked determined and worried. “Almost. I’d say yes but there’s always Heisenberg.”

Raul was at her shoulder, staring at the cell monitor. Emma edged the cell in such a way that the camera didn’t broadcast the fact that he was naked. Though they were together in a bedroom at six a.m. She sighed. Toby wouldn’t care. If anything, he complained that she didn’t date enough.

Raul bumped her shoulder with his. “Who is this Heisenberg?”

“It’s an uncertainty principle.”

“A what?”

“It’s a lower bound on the product of uncertainties of a pair of conjugate variables. Usually, it takes the position and momentum to be the conjugate variable.”

Raul sat back, sorry he’d asked.

“Man, I wish someone else could look at this stuff. Maybe we’re too close to the data,” Toby said.

“Nobody at PIB,” Emma said, alarmed.

“No. God no.” Toby scrubbed his face. “Anyway, what I have right now is that something will happen that will earn someone or a consortium of someones at least a trillion dollars and the data shows that that something will happen in a few hours. Today. That’s my best analysis.”

Emma’s heart had taken up a desperate drumbeat. “Wait. Stay on the line.”

She kept the connection open but closed the video function. She was hastily dressing and Raul took his clue from her and was pulling up a pair of jeans. Looking at Raul, she said, “I’m going to call Felicity and Hope in on this.”

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