Flex Read Online Free PDF Page B

her future would be a hard, hard thing.
    “Paul, look – you’ve been in lockdown mode for two weeks. That’s understandable. Kit tells me it’s a pretty standard response to trauma. But now she’s stabilized, you – you have to start helping her.”
    “I’m doing everything I can to help.”
    Except ’mancy. Not ’mancy.
    She arched one perfectly plucked brow. She’d always seen through him. “Everything?”
    “…yes.”
    She tossed an envelope onto his lap. Paul recoiled – the Beast! – and it tumbled off, sailing underneath the bed. Imani sighed, slid one high-heeled foot underneath to retrieve it, then pressed the paper into his palm.
    Paul squeezed his eyes shut: if I don’t look at it, I can’t hurt her–
    “Just tell me what it is,” he hissed.
    “Oh, for Christ’s – they’re refusing her reconstructive surgery,” Imani said hotly.
    Shocked, he looked. The clauses twitched under his fingertips, shamed: Samaritan rejected a perfectly good claim because the treatment would cost half a million dollars, and the surgery wasn’t “necessary to life-sustaining functions.”
    The clauses wriggled invitingly: But we could make them fund it …
    He shoved the thought aside, smelling chlorine. “How did you get this?”
    “While you’ve been bathing Aliyah in pity, I’ve been bombarding Samaritan with requests,” she shot back. “With Kit’s help, I’ve got four world-class plastic surgeons willing to testify this technique is the only way to repair Aliyah’s features. Half a million dollars. Yet your employers think ‘a face’ is an unnecessary expenditure . And the man who Kit tells me is the best in all of Samaritan Mutual at pushing claims forms through? The man every cop on the NYPD came to when a bureaucratic obstruction needed to vanish? That man has been treating every piece of paperwork like it’s a rattlesnake.”
    Paul imagined how he’d force a claim through Samaritan Mutual’s layers of tight-pursed bureaucrats – and as he did, he felt the universe Flex invitingly...
    “No,” he muttered, quashing the urge.
    “ No? ”
    “No, no, I mean, of course I’ll–”
    “I tried to do the right thing when you lost your foot, Paul. I played the good wife, dispensing sympathy. I thought you’d come back to me. But you didn’t. You gave up .”
    “I’m sorry – it’s not your–”
    “I won’t let you give up on Aliyah. You work for an insurance agency . Her insurance agency. And by God, you’ll pull every string or I’ll fight you for sole custody.”
    You want her to be safe, yet you’re asking me to use magic I don’t know how to control!
    “That’s not fair – you don’t–”
    “I don’t care, Paul,” Imani snapped, exhausted. Then her face softened; half the reason their marriage had chugged along for as long as it did was they could never stay mad at each other.
    She leaned in. “…is it the ’mancy, Paul?”
    Paul stiffened.
    “I know that…” Imani wrung her hands. “…that killing that ’mancer broke something inside you. And your apartment must have been ablaze with magic – if you saw things in the fire, it’s okay to talk. I’ve asked Kit, he says he can get Samaritan Mutual to pay for PTSD treatment–”
    If she knew I was a ’mancer, I’d be locked up in the Refactor , Paul realized . It must be something else…
    Paul shook his head, stupefied by the facts. “…They think a ’mancer was responsible for the fire?”
    “Someone’s dosing people with fatal levels of Flex and setting them loose. We were lucky Aliyah survived the attack – Kit thinks it may be a terrorist ’mancer at work. But… you’ve tracked down ’mancers. For Samaritan. So, you know how they think. Is that…” Imani swallowed. “Is that why Samaritan is refusing Aliyah’s treatments, Paul? Acts of God and magic?”
    That was the line of most insurance companies, who loathed ’mancers. Insurance companies profited by making bets on nice,