Articles liés à Flawless
L'édition de cet ISBN n'est malheureusement plus disponible.
Afficher les exemplaires de cette édition ISBN
Book by Spanogle Joshua
Les informations fournies dans la section « Synopsis » peuvent faire référence à une autre édition de ce titre.
Extrait :
Chapter One
THE HEAT WOKE ME.
I became aware of perspiration through my scalp, of a rusty orange glow behind my closed lids. I opened my eyes and saw crisp light dance through a palm tree outside, saw it play across the living room floor. There was an immediate sense of disorientation: Palm tree? Living room?
Why was I on the couch?
Right. Brooke. Nasty fight.
I raised my head off the chenille pillow, felt as though someone were grinding my brain beneath their boot. Unwisely, I tried to remember events of the night before. First, dinner and a bottle of that high-alcohol zin California vintners seem to be addicted to these days. Then the party with Brooke's friends. The glass after glass of good Scotch pushed into my hand.
It was all coming back.
The friend of Brooke's friend--the lawyer in jeans and French cuffs who thought he knew how to fix health care in the country. He'd droned on about the free market and incentives and how forty-seven million uninsured "isn't really that many." Eventually, I couldn't take it anymore. I'd bellied up to the conversational bar, armed with a killer buzz and a self-righteous 'tude. I saw Brooke's face fall when I opened my mouth, but I couldn't stop myself. "Idiot" was mentioned somewhere along the way, then "do your homework," then "moron." The next thing I knew, Brooke's hand was tugging mine and we were at the door, saying our good-byes.
Oh, and after beating a retreat from the party--Brooke whispering to our host, "I'm so sorry, he's been under a lot of stress," me shooting back, "It's stressful teaching a rock to think"--we got into the car and I still couldn't quit. "What a dickhead," I said. "What a complete dickhead." Little did I know that the hostess of the party was trying to make the gent in the French cuffs.
Terrific work, McCormick.
I closed my eyes and tried to sleep again, but there was the sunshine and, now, some shuffling. The bedroom door opened, then the bathroom door opened and closed. Didn't even catch a glimpse of Brooke.
In my defense, my hard-drinking days were long gone, the guy was an idiot, and I actually had been under a lot of stress. I had just effected a cross-country transfer in life, from Atlanta to San Francisco. Not only was this a big red-state-to-blue-state shift, the move also marked a kind of a break point in my career. I'd been finishing up a two-year stint as an officer in the Epidemic Intelligence Service at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and would have been happy to work with the organization for a few more years. Initially, they said they'd love to have me stay at headquarters in Atlanta, that they wanted to groom me for more administrative duties. Not only did I not want to touch anything like an administrative duty, I certainly didn't want to be in Atlanta.
The humidity makes me break out.
Despite the offer of further employment at CDC, my ride there had been somewhat rocky. Granted, the year before, I got a few feathers in my cap for solving a case that extended from Baltimore to San Jose, but those feathers had been plucked from ruffled institutional poultry. Not to mention that I decided to blow off a meeting with my superiors--a meeting in Atlanta at which I was to be honored--following the whole tragic fiasco. Technically, I was AWOL at that time, since the CDC and U.S. Public Health Service still had some vestiges of the Navy from which they were born. That storm blew over when my boss got in touch with me at my rented vacation house and convinced me to be on the next plane back East if I ever wanted to have a career to gripe about. I returned to Atlanta for one day, then flew back to California to finish the vacation.
After that, the rest of my tenure as an EIS officer was a hodgepodge of the mundane and the exciting: work in the office, three weeks in Angola to help deal with the Marburg virus mess there. Crunching through databases one week, spraying bodies with bleach in 110-degree heat the next. Another day in the life, right? By the end of my two years, things actually seemed to be on the up-and-up. Negotiations about where I would find myself seemed to be going well; there were a couple of non-Atlanta positions in which I was interested, a couple of people who were interested in me filling those positions. At that time, though, CDC was under assault by an ideological executive branch filled with fanatics who had little use for the truth. Reports were being edited, science was being politicized, all that crap. Scientists and epidemiologists don't generally cotton to lying and manipulation, so CDC had been slowly bleeding good people. When a friend of mine quit in protest after crucial data in a report she wrote had been dropped--she'd shown that condom education had no effect on promiscuity--I followed her out the door. I can't abide idiocy, which can make for problems in a government employee.
On the personal front, my life was just about as complicated. Not that it was bad--it was actually quite good for a guy whose batting average with women hung in the low double digits. After an idyllic month seaside with Brooke, I went back to Atlanta. She stayed in California, grinding away at the Santa Clara Department of Public Health. Somehow, we managed to keep the bicoastal relationship alive for almost a year. A paycheck decimated by transcontinental plane tickets was proof of my feelings for the woman. When I finished with the EIS, I tried to get Brooke to move. Anywhere but Northern California, I begged her. The last place on the planet I wanted to be was the Bay Area; even Baghdad looked attractive by comparison. If push came to shove, I would have stayed in the Southeast, pimples be damned. San Francisco was a place so filled with personal baggage I got a backache just thinking about it. But Brooke was pretty well ensconced, so I moved west a month before that tete-a-tete with the moron lawyer. No job, no place of my own. I made the move for love.
It was, perhaps, another mistake.
"You going to look at apartments today?" Brooke asked.
She stood in the archway to the living room, arms crossed in front of that athletic body, blond hair pulled back in a ponytail. Tight white T-shirt. Cotton panties, no pants. She looked very sexy and very pissed.
"Subtle, Brooke."
"I just don't know if this is working," she said. "You living here."
I rolled my head on the pillow, toward the boxes and duffels piled against the wall of Brooke's living room. All my life, contained therein. "At least it will be cheap to get these back East."
"I don't mean here, California. I mean living here, here. My house. You know what I mean."
"I'm not living here, sweetie. Unless you consider my toothbrush in your bathroom living here."
"Nate . . ."
"Brooke . . ."
She sat on the chair at one end of the couch, affording me a generous glimpse of the panties. She caught me looking and crossed her legs.
"Okay," I said, "I may be having a little difficulty with the transition--"
"A little difficulty? You've already alienated half my social circle."
"Be a circle-half-full person, Brooke, not circle-half-empty."
"Can you stop joking for once? Jesus."
"I need a glass of water." With superhuman effort, I pulled myself off the couch and shuffled into the kitchen. I was worried my head might explode, which would mean quite a cleanup for Brooke and which would undoubtedly annoy her more. Brooke's cat, Buddy, skittered from the kitchen when he saw me, freaked maybe about the exploding head. I found water and Tylenol and shambled back to the sofa.
"I already apologized for last night," I said. "About two billion times. I'm not apologizing again."
"I'm not asking for another apology, Nathaniel." Nathaniel.
I took a big gulp of the water. "So what are you asking for?"
"I don't know." She looked around the house. It was a two-bedroom on the outskirts of Palo Alto, a town halfway between San Jose and San Francisco. The digs were nicer than my apartment in Atlanta, which looked like it had just rolled off a conveyor belt in Shanghai. No, Brooke's place was all hardwood floors, white walls, and good light. She'd done a decent amount of nesting, and the house had all the girl-touches: MoMA and Ansel Adams prints, high-maintenance plants, and, despite the cat's best efforts, not a speck of dust or hair to be found. Brooke was a public health doctor, after all. Oh, and then there were the bikes, the backpacks, the ice axe and climbing rope. Those things were, thank God, in the shed, so I wasn't constantly reminded that she had one-upped me in the masculinity department as well. I could still beat her at arm wrestling, though.
So, in terms of basic comfort, her place was ideal. Unfortunately, it was also near the university where I'd spent the glory days of my medical career before getting kicked out.
"I got this place because it was bigger," she said, "so, you know, if things worked out . . ."
My emotional antennae, numb as they are, sensed danger. "Things aren't working out?"
"No, it's not that. Or maybe it is that. I got it because I thought maybe you could stay . . . for a while. So there'd be enough room."
"I thought you got it because it was closer to San Francisco, where I was going to find an apartment."
"That, too."
"Well, which is it?"
"It's both, Nate. It can be both, can't it?"
"Sure, but maybe it would be better if we'd communicate these things."
"Would that have changed anything?"
"No, I guess not . . ." I geared up for some relationship-speak. "Look, we're just getting used...
Présentation de l'éditeur :
THE HEAT WOKE ME.
I became aware of perspiration through my scalp, of a rusty orange glow behind my closed lids. I opened my eyes and saw crisp light dance through a palm tree outside, saw it play across the living room floor. There was an immediate sense of disorientation: Palm tree? Living room?
Why was I on the couch?
Right. Brooke. Nasty fight.
I raised my head off the chenille pillow, felt as though someone were grinding my brain beneath their boot. Unwisely, I tried to remember events of the night before. First, dinner and a bottle of that high-alcohol zin California vintners seem to be addicted to these days. Then the party with Brooke's friends. The glass after glass of good Scotch pushed into my hand.
It was all coming back.
The friend of Brooke's friend--the lawyer in jeans and French cuffs who thought he knew how to fix health care in the country. He'd droned on about the free market and incentives and how forty-seven million uninsured "isn't really that many." Eventually, I couldn't take it anymore. I'd bellied up to the conversational bar, armed with a killer buzz and a self-righteous 'tude. I saw Brooke's face fall when I opened my mouth, but I couldn't stop myself. "Idiot" was mentioned somewhere along the way, then "do your homework," then "moron." The next thing I knew, Brooke's hand was tugging mine and we were at the door, saying our good-byes.
Oh, and after beating a retreat from the party--Brooke whispering to our host, "I'm so sorry, he's been under a lot of stress," me shooting back, "It's stressful teaching a rock to think"--we got into the car and I still couldn't quit. "What a dickhead," I said. "What a complete dickhead." Little did I know that the hostess of the party was trying to make the gent in the French cuffs.
Terrific work, McCormick.
I closed my eyes and tried to sleep again, but there was the sunshine and, now, some shuffling. The bedroom door opened, then the bathroom door opened and closed. Didn't even catch a glimpse of Brooke.
In my defense, my hard-drinking days were long gone, the guy was an idiot, and I actually had been under a lot of stress. I had just effected a cross-country transfer in life, from Atlanta to San Francisco. Not only was this a big red-state-to-blue-state shift, the move also marked a kind of a break point in my career. I'd been finishing up a two-year stint as an officer in the Epidemic Intelligence Service at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and would have been happy to work with the organization for a few more years. Initially, they said they'd love to have me stay at headquarters in Atlanta, that they wanted to groom me for more administrative duties. Not only did I not want to touch anything like an administrative duty, I certainly didn't want to be in Atlanta.
The humidity makes me break out.
Despite the offer of further employment at CDC, my ride there had been somewhat rocky. Granted, the year before, I got a few feathers in my cap for solving a case that extended from Baltimore to San Jose, but those feathers had been plucked from ruffled institutional poultry. Not to mention that I decided to blow off a meeting with my superiors--a meeting in Atlanta at which I was to be honored--following the whole tragic fiasco. Technically, I was AWOL at that time, since the CDC and U.S. Public Health Service still had some vestiges of the Navy from which they were born. That storm blew over when my boss got in touch with me at my rented vacation house and convinced me to be on the next plane back East if I ever wanted to have a career to gripe about. I returned to Atlanta for one day, then flew back to California to finish the vacation.
After that, the rest of my tenure as an EIS officer was a hodgepodge of the mundane and the exciting: work in the office, three weeks in Angola to help deal with the Marburg virus mess there. Crunching through databases one week, spraying bodies with bleach in 110-degree heat the next. Another day in the life, right? By the end of my two years, things actually seemed to be on the up-and-up. Negotiations about where I would find myself seemed to be going well; there were a couple of non-Atlanta positions in which I was interested, a couple of people who were interested in me filling those positions. At that time, though, CDC was under assault by an ideological executive branch filled with fanatics who had little use for the truth. Reports were being edited, science was being politicized, all that crap. Scientists and epidemiologists don't generally cotton to lying and manipulation, so CDC had been slowly bleeding good people. When a friend of mine quit in protest after crucial data in a report she wrote had been dropped--she'd shown that condom education had no effect on promiscuity--I followed her out the door. I can't abide idiocy, which can make for problems in a government employee.
On the personal front, my life was just about as complicated. Not that it was bad--it was actually quite good for a guy whose batting average with women hung in the low double digits. After an idyllic month seaside with Brooke, I went back to Atlanta. She stayed in California, grinding away at the Santa Clara Department of Public Health. Somehow, we managed to keep the bicoastal relationship alive for almost a year. A paycheck decimated by transcontinental plane tickets was proof of my feelings for the woman. When I finished with the EIS, I tried to get Brooke to move. Anywhere but Northern California, I begged her. The last place on the planet I wanted to be was the Bay Area; even Baghdad looked attractive by comparison. If push came to shove, I would have stayed in the Southeast, pimples be damned. San Francisco was a place so filled with personal baggage I got a backache just thinking about it. But Brooke was pretty well ensconced, so I moved west a month before that tete-a-tete with the moron lawyer. No job, no place of my own. I made the move for love.
It was, perhaps, another mistake.
"You going to look at apartments today?" Brooke asked.
She stood in the archway to the living room, arms crossed in front of that athletic body, blond hair pulled back in a ponytail. Tight white T-shirt. Cotton panties, no pants. She looked very sexy and very pissed.
"Subtle, Brooke."
"I just don't know if this is working," she said. "You living here."
I rolled my head on the pillow, toward the boxes and duffels piled against the wall of Brooke's living room. All my life, contained therein. "At least it will be cheap to get these back East."
"I don't mean here, California. I mean living here, here. My house. You know what I mean."
"I'm not living here, sweetie. Unless you consider my toothbrush in your bathroom living here."
"Nate . . ."
"Brooke . . ."
She sat on the chair at one end of the couch, affording me a generous glimpse of the panties. She caught me looking and crossed her legs.
"Okay," I said, "I may be having a little difficulty with the transition--"
"A little difficulty? You've already alienated half my social circle."
"Be a circle-half-full person, Brooke, not circle-half-empty."
"Can you stop joking for once? Jesus."
"I need a glass of water." With superhuman effort, I pulled myself off the couch and shuffled into the kitchen. I was worried my head might explode, which would mean quite a cleanup for Brooke and which would undoubtedly annoy her more. Brooke's cat, Buddy, skittered from the kitchen when he saw me, freaked maybe about the exploding head. I found water and Tylenol and shambled back to the sofa.
"I already apologized for last night," I said. "About two billion times. I'm not apologizing again."
"I'm not asking for another apology, Nathaniel." Nathaniel.
I took a big gulp of the water. "So what are you asking for?"
"I don't know." She looked around the house. It was a two-bedroom on the outskirts of Palo Alto, a town halfway between San Jose and San Francisco. The digs were nicer than my apartment in Atlanta, which looked like it had just rolled off a conveyor belt in Shanghai. No, Brooke's place was all hardwood floors, white walls, and good light. She'd done a decent amount of nesting, and the house had all the girl-touches: MoMA and Ansel Adams prints, high-maintenance plants, and, despite the cat's best efforts, not a speck of dust or hair to be found. Brooke was a public health doctor, after all. Oh, and then there were the bikes, the backpacks, the ice axe and climbing rope. Those things were, thank God, in the shed, so I wasn't constantly reminded that she had one-upped me in the masculinity department as well. I could still beat her at arm wrestling, though.
So, in terms of basic comfort, her place was ideal. Unfortunately, it was also near the university where I'd spent the glory days of my medical career before getting kicked out.
"I got this place because it was bigger," she said, "so, you know, if things worked out . . ."
My emotional antennae, numb as they are, sensed danger. "Things aren't working out?"
"No, it's not that. Or maybe it is that. I got it because I thought maybe you could stay . . . for a while. So there'd be enough room."
"I thought you got it because it was closer to San Francisco, where I was going to find an apartment."
"That, too."
"Well, which is it?"
"It's both, Nate. It can be both, can't it?"
"Sure, but maybe it would be better if we'd communicate these things."
"Would that have changed anything?"
"No, I guess not . . ." I geared up for some relationship-speak. "Look, we're just getting used...
A former medical detective for the Centers for Disease Control, Dr. Nate McCormick had seen enough suffering to last a lifetime. Now he’s left the CDC, determined to begin a new life with his girlfriend in San Francisco…until the vicious murder of a biotech researcher—an old friend—hurtles him back into the medical world he’d left behind. While the police hunt for a killer, Nate starts sifting through evidence, determined to find what his friend did to provoke his brutal death. And the truth he ultimately discovers far exceeds the very worst he had imagined.
As a circle of treachery tightens around Nate, and the woman he loves is thrust into the line of fire, patients surface with agonizing stories to tell. Nate is about to make the most startling discovery of all: a secret alliance between crime, science, and a billion-dollar industry determined to hide its victims at any price. For Nate, that price will be the one person most important to him—unless he can expose the flaw in a perfect conspiracy of medicine and murder.
From shocking evidence revealed under a microscope to the shattering testimony of those betrayed by the ruthlessness of the medical industry, Flawless takes us on a terrifying, adrenaline-charged journey. Taut, thrilling, and relentless, it will leave you pondering its questions long after the last page is turned.
As a circle of treachery tightens around Nate, and the woman he loves is thrust into the line of fire, patients surface with agonizing stories to tell. Nate is about to make the most startling discovery of all: a secret alliance between crime, science, and a billion-dollar industry determined to hide its victims at any price. For Nate, that price will be the one person most important to him—unless he can expose the flaw in a perfect conspiracy of medicine and murder.
From shocking evidence revealed under a microscope to the shattering testimony of those betrayed by the ruthlessness of the medical industry, Flawless takes us on a terrifying, adrenaline-charged journey. Taut, thrilling, and relentless, it will leave you pondering its questions long after the last page is turned.
Les informations fournies dans la section « A propos du livre » peuvent faire référence à une autre édition de ce titre.
- ÉditeurDelacorte Press
- Date d'édition2007
- ISBN 10 0385338546
- ISBN 13 9780385338547
- ReliureRelié
- Nombre de pages496
- Evaluation vendeur
Acheter neuf
En savoir plus sur cette édition
EUR 24,28
Frais de port :
Gratuit
Vers Etats-Unis
Meilleurs résultats de recherche sur AbeBooks
Image d'archives
Flawless
Edité par
Delacorte Press
(2007)
ISBN 10 : 0385338546
ISBN 13 : 9780385338547
Neuf
Couverture rigide
Quantité disponible : 1
Vendeur :
Evaluation vendeur
Description du livre Etat : New. Book is in NEW condition. N° de réf. du vendeur 0385338546-2-1
Acheter neuf
EUR 24,28
Autre devise
Image d'archives
Flawless
Edité par
Delacorte Press
(2007)
ISBN 10 : 0385338546
ISBN 13 : 9780385338547
Neuf
Couverture rigide
Quantité disponible : 1
Vendeur :
Evaluation vendeur
Description du livre Hardcover. Etat : new. New. Fast Shipping and good customer service. N° de réf. du vendeur Holz_New_0385338546
Acheter neuf
EUR 20,79
Autre devise
Image d'archives
Flawless
Edité par
Delacorte Press
(2007)
ISBN 10 : 0385338546
ISBN 13 : 9780385338547
Neuf
Couverture rigide
Quantité disponible : 1
Vendeur :
Evaluation vendeur
Description du livre Hardcover. Etat : new. New. N° de réf. du vendeur Wizard0385338546
Acheter neuf
EUR 26,28
Autre devise
Image d'archives
Flawless
Edité par
Delacorte Press
(2007)
ISBN 10 : 0385338546
ISBN 13 : 9780385338547
Neuf
Couverture rigide
Quantité disponible : 1
Vendeur :
Evaluation vendeur
Description du livre Hardcover. Etat : new. New Copy. Customer Service Guaranteed. N° de réf. du vendeur think0385338546
Acheter neuf
EUR 26,63
Autre devise
Image d'archives
Flawless
Edité par
Delacorte Press (August 28, 2007)
(2007)
ISBN 10 : 0385338546
ISBN 13 : 9780385338547
Neuf
Couverture rigide
Quantité disponible : 1
Vendeur :
Evaluation vendeur
Description du livre Etat : new. N° de réf. du vendeur FrontCover0385338546
Acheter neuf
EUR 29,37
Autre devise
Image d'archives
Flawless
Edité par
Delacorte Press
(2007)
ISBN 10 : 0385338546
ISBN 13 : 9780385338547
Neuf
Couverture rigide
Quantité disponible : 2
Vendeur :
Evaluation vendeur
Description du livre Hardcover. Etat : New. Brand New!. N° de réf. du vendeur VIB0385338546
Acheter neuf
EUR 40,48
Autre devise
Image d'archives
Flawless
Edité par
Delacorte Press
(2007)
ISBN 10 : 0385338546
ISBN 13 : 9780385338547
Neuf
Couverture rigide
Quantité disponible : 1
Vendeur :
Evaluation vendeur
Description du livre Hardcover. Etat : New. N° de réf. du vendeur Abebooks75231
Acheter neuf
EUR 61,57
Autre devise
Image d'archives
FLAWLESS
Edité par
Delacorte Press
(2007)
ISBN 10 : 0385338546
ISBN 13 : 9780385338547
Neuf
Couverture rigide
Quantité disponible : 1
Vendeur :
Evaluation vendeur
Description du livre Etat : New. New. In shrink wrap. Looks like an interesting title! 1.6. N° de réf. du vendeur Q-0385338546
Acheter neuf
EUR 57,70
Autre devise