“You put her up to that?” I asked, aware that my words were beginning to slur.
Jacob pressed a hand to my chest and gave a simple shove. I fell back, landing hard on my ass. He laughed again.
“Feeling a little ill, brother? You might want to check your pump. Those things are so easy to hack, a fatal flaw you might want to look into the next time you design one. If you survive this little trip.”
I pushed myself up on my elbows, the effort more than it really should have been. I was out of breath, the world spinning and my stomach turning on itself.
“What did you do?”
“Nothing. Just had your pump empty the contents of the reservoir into you. I figure if you changed your infusion set last night like you were supposed to, that that would be about…what? A hundred units? Two hundred? Enough to put down an elephant, anyway.”
He reached down and started digging through my pants. He tugged my cellphone out and slid it into his own pocket.
“I didn’t want it to come to this, Lucien. I would have preferred to sit back and watch you deal with the financial ruin of the business. But you wouldn’t back off. I had no choice.” He put his foot on my shoulder and pushed me down to the floor. “You should have kept your nose out of it.”
“You won’t get away with this.”
He stared at me a long minute.
“I know you’re trying to say something,” he said, “but I have no idea what it is.”
And then he laughed as he walked off. A moment later I heard the door slam.
Shit, shit, shit!
I tugged at my shirt. My hands weren’t working properly, so it took twice as long as it should have. I tugged for what seemed like forever. My fingers brushed the tubing of my infusion set. I wrapped it around my fingers and pulled. I felt the pain, so I knew it came free. But I had no idea when Jacob had hacked the insulin pump or how much of the reservoir had been deposited into my body. He was right that I’d changed the infusion set recently. But it was in the morning, so there would have been…I wasn’t sure how much insulin in the reservoir, but not as much as he thought. Maybe a hundred and fifty units. Enough to kill me. But if not all of it was delivered…
I had to get into the kitchen, had to drink like a gallon of juice. I had to do something to counteract the effects of the insulin. I had to bring my blood sugars back up.
I had to…had to…
Chapter 38
Adrienne
I dialed the phone again, but again it went straight to voicemail.
“Your dad?” Rachel asked.
“No. Lucien. He’s not answering his phone.”
Rachel reached over and took the phone from me.
“That’s unusual. He knows how worried everyone gets when he doesn’t answer the phone. Once mom drove four hours to his college dorms because he didn’t pick up. She thought he was in a coma on the floor or something.”
I glanced at her as she dialed the phone again. When she got the same response I’d gotten, she frowned, staring at the phone like it would tell her why he wasn’t answering.
“We should go by his house.”
“He’s probably out looking for me,” I said.
“Yeah. But it’s possible he forgot to eat or something because he’s worried.”
“Isn’t he supposed to be meeting your partners at the bed and breakfast?”
“Yeah. In about five minutes.”
“That’s probably why he’s not answering.”
Rachel made a funny little movement with her head. “Maybe.”
I glanced at her. “You’re starting to scare me.”
“I should call my mom. Have her go check on him.”
I gripped the steering wheel, remembering that moment when he went low, the way he’d looked at me when he asked for a box of juice. Was it possible he went low and no one was there? If his concern for me caused him to get really sick, I would never forgive myself.
“We’re going right past the turn off for his house. We could stop really quick—”
“That’s probably a good idea.”
“Does this happen often? Does he go low a lot?”
“No,” Rachel said, rubbing the phone against her thigh. “Not anymore. It used to, back when he had to take shots all the time. But I don’t think it really happens much now that he has the pump and the CGM thingy.”
“That’s good.”
“You really like him, don’t you?”
I flipped on the turn signal and gripped the steering wheel again, chewing on my bottom lip as I considered her question.
“Yeah,” I said slowly. “I think I do.”
“I know he likes you. The way he looked at you over the weekend… He’s never looked at anyone quite like that. Not even Kelly.”
“Kelly?”
“She was the girl he dated all through college. Everyone thought they were going to get married, but then she broke up with him when she started dating his roommate.”
“Oh, ouch.”
“Yeah. She was a bitch.”
I laughed. “You didn’t like her?”