The Mask Collectors by Ruvanee Pietersz Vilhauer

Author:Ruvanee Pietersz Vilhauer [Vilhauer, Ruvanee Pietersz]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Medical, Suspense, Literary, Fiction, Thrillers
ISBN: 9781503903678
Google: VBR1uwEACAAJ
Amazon: 1503903664
Publisher: Little A
Published: 2019-06-01T23:00:00+00:00

28

GRACE

Saturday

Grace called her parents in Colombo. They had found out that Duncan’s flight had arrived, but Duncan had not yet got in touch.

“May not be at the hotel yet,” her mother said. “Everything takes longer, no, if they are traveling with a child.”

“True,” Grace said, trying to sound casual. “Could you tell him to call me if he gets in touch with you first? I really need to talk to him about something.”

When Grace called the hotel half an hour later, a polite young woman said that Mr. McCloud had checked into room 352. She connected Grace to the room, but no one answered the phone. Grace left a message for Duncan. She called again, at half-hour intervals, with no success. He probably went directly to some meeting, she thought. They must have had to take Janie. She probably would not hear from him until the evening, Sri Lanka time. That meant she would have to wait until the morning to talk to him.

She heated the leftover Thai food from the night before and ate dinner with CNN on. A story about another corruption scandal dominated the news. A senior police official had been arrested on federal corruption charges relating to a local political campaign. She sighed, listening to descriptions of the gifts the official had received in exchange for looking the other way as laws were broken in plain view. She flipped the channel, looking for something more positive, but it was the top of the hour, and commercials were on every major channel. A woman dancing through a field of butterflies after taking an antidepressant medication, an elderly man enjoying a romantic date by the ocean after taking a drug to combat erectile dysfunction, a young dad able to play with his infant daughter after taking a decongestant. Then it occurred to her that soon Symb86 would be on these channels too. She’d feel differently about the ads then. She turned back to CNN, where a reporter was describing terrible flooding in Texas.

She turned her computer on and checked her inbox. Still nothing more about Duncan’s firing. That had definitely been some hoax. It made her shiver to think that she’d almost got shot on a wild-goose chase.

There was still information she needed to finish the grant application, but there was nothing in her inbox from Gigi. This was the problem with relying on students to get work done. No sense of urgency. Then it occurred to her that Gigi might have emailed her again from her ridiculous Gmail address. The message would have been flagged as junk. She couldn’t remember what the email address had been. Something like sillychick71 or hotgirl94. She had told her research assistants repeatedly that graduate students with such unprofessional email addresses would not be taken seriously. She opened her junk mail folder, her jaw clenched with irritation. She skimmed the subject headings. Just the usual spam. Then one caught her eye: From a friend of Angie Osborne. She clicked on it, frowning.

The message was from ssam4782@gmail.

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