First Thrills - Lee Child [136]
Pam’s mouth had gaped open when the Town Car pulled past the open gate and into John’s driveway. She had never seen a private home this large before. The school where she taught was not as big as this building. The same man who had ten years ago insisted they keep the heat off during a snowstorm could not own this stunning mansion.
“Pam!” Cindy, the gorgeous, young Pilates instructor/whore, had said. She looked Pam right in the eye, but Pam knew that as she’d walked down the front steps toward the car the woman had taken in her wide hips, the wrinkles at her eyes, and the inappropriate braid.
“He’s been waiting for you,” Cindy told her. She had a bag of ice in her hand, the sort of thing you’d have if you sprained an ankle.
There was a man in a dark suit leaning against a white van that was parked in the shade of one of the many trees. NuLife was written across the door, the print small and unassuming. Pam imagined they didn’t advertise much considering the morbid nature of their jobs. She had looked up the lab—if you could call it that—online when John had told her about it. Their secret facility in Arizona held dozens of heads and bodies in stasis, all awaiting reanimation. Fees were listed on the site as well. A neuroseperation (or decapitation, as it was known to the rest of the world) ran around two hundred thousand dollars. The whole body cost over half a million. For an additional fee, you could even store personal objects with the body so that when they were reanimated, they had some of their favorite things to remind them of their “first life.”
“Let’s just get this over with,” Pam snapped, and Cindy seemed surprised. Yes, Cindy was young enough to be John’s daughter, but she’d certainly read Biological Healing. Surely, she’d paid close attention to the chapter that talked about Pam’s coldness after Zack’s death, the way she had turned away from John, blocked him out and denied him the one thing that would bring them back together.
Sex played a large part in Biological Healing—not just sex, but lots of it. Sure, Pam and John had gone at it like bunnies until Zack was born, but then, as with most couples, their lives had changed when they had a child. Who knew that John was so interested in screwing? Certainly not his ex- wife. Apparently, it was the elixir of life, the succor through which both John and Pam would have reclaimed their marriage, if only she hadn’t been such a frigid, uncaring bitch. The fact that John hadn’t been able to perform the one time after Zack’s death that they had tried to have sex, had also somehow been left out of the book.
“You’ve killed me,” he had said after that failed attempt, rolling onto his back, more bereft about his flaccidity than he had ever seemed about Zack. “You have finally killed me.”
If only she had.
Cindy led her into the house, which had the largest set of oak doors Pam had seen outside of a castle. The foyer was huge, their footsteps echoing up to an enormous chandelier as they walked into what must have been the living room.
“They’re from NuLife,” Cindy said, indicating a man and a woman sitting on a couch beside the fireplace. They had coolers stacked around them, the kind you would find at a family picnic, and they were each scooping ice into baggies similar to the one Cindy held in her hand.
Cindy said, “They’re just waiting.”
“Waiting for—” Pam started, but Cindy interrupted her.
“He’s in his study,” she said, leading the way down a long, art-lined hallway. The Pilates instructor’s shoes were strappy little things, the kind that Pam had never been able to wear because they made her back hurt. The flip-flip of the sandals echoed in the hall as they made their way to the back of the house. Outside, there was a