Expectation (Ghost Targets, #2) by Aaron Pogue Page B

through the doorway and found Mrs. Barnes perched on the couch. She had her feet tucked up under her, leaning to her right, and Katie couldn't help remembering the short time she'd spent in HaRRE, spying on Eric at home. The memory of him she'd seen would have been sitting right beside Theresa now, propping her up, her shoulder resting lightly on his chest, while he watched the now-dark TV. Katie could see the happy family clearly. She sighed.
    Theresa seemed to pick up a hint of Katie's mood. She sighed, too, and looked around the room. "This was Eric's favorite place. As much time as he spent at the clinic, he loved it here. He loved this whole house, but this spot especially." She stared at the fire for a while, lost in her memories, then looked over her shoulder at Katie with a tight smile. "Come on," she said, and patted the cushion next to her, opposite the ghost of her husband. "Grab a seat. We'll reminisce."
    Katie had to force herself to take that first step forward. Once she was moving it was a little easier, and when she came abreast of the couch she saw the photo album open on Theresa's lap. Not a digital photobook, but an old-fashioned album full of developed pictures, carefully arranged on decorative backgrounds. Katie's mom had kept books like that, years ago. With a sense of mingled fascination and dread, Katie sank down next to Mrs. Barnes. "What's this?"
    "It's our wedding album," she said. There must have been forty pages, thick plastic covers bound together in a three-ring binder with a three-inch spine. She flipped all the way to the back of it. "Our first year, really. This is the last time he was really mine." Three pages from the back of the book was a two-page spread showing a younger, softer Eric receiving his doctorate at Princeton, and then sometime later shaking hands with an army officer in dress uniform. By the background, Katie was ready to guess the second picture was taken on a military base, probably the one right here in town. Below that, in the bottom right corner, was a photo of a huge empty room, cabinets lining the walls. Katie stared at it for a moment, and Theresa watched her. It was a single floor with no tables, but the size was just about right. She caught Theresa watching her eyes.
    "Is that the clinic?"
    Mrs. Barnes nodded. "Seventeen years ago. Before they expanded it to put in Eric's track. I used to have a photo of the grounds outside, too, and that was before the processing center went up on the northwest corner. It was a rose garden back then, that whole corner."
    Her breath caught, and she shook her head.
    Katie said, "How did you get those photos?"
    "I took them with my phone. Do you remember—" She stopped with a tight smile, and wiped the tears from her eyes. "Sorry. That was way before Gevia. I still wasn't supposed  to take pictures, but I was sneaky, and they weren't quite as careful back then."
    Katie turned the page and found a handful of photos of young Eric at work. Most of them showed him sitting in front of a computer monitor in a tiny home office in a much smaller house, wire-rim glasses perched on the bridge of his nose. One had him in the cramped living room, walls done in garish old-lady wallpaper, but sprawled on the same couch Katie and Theresa shared now. In the photo he had open books and bound papers all around him, filling the couch from one end to the other and crowding around him on the floor, too. An old laptop computer sat open on his knees. His head lolled back, though, and his jaw hung comically open. He was sound asleep. Katie snorted in surprised laughter.
    "I bet he loved that picture," she said.
    "He didn't mind too much," Theresa said, the warm honey of admiration rich in her voice. "That's the night he completed the cancer vaccine. He went to work the next day and finished the formula. It hasn't changed since then."
    Katie looked at the picture again, trying to grasp the man's genius. "He was amazing," she said softly.
    "He was," Theresa