"Get out here now, my ex boyfriend's gone crazy and he's trying to break in. Seventeen University Circle, apartment Four-B." She ignored the woman's n...arly inaudible response as she listed to the thumping sounds outside her front door. There was a moment of quiet, then Ray wailed and pounded at the door with something. The wood splintered and cracked with each blow. Marla dropped the phone into the bag and pointed the Luger at the door with one shaking hand.The head of a sledgehammer broke. She laughed. "Butterfingers. Here, let me help," Jesse said, bending down and starting to gather items from the carpeted floor. His hand picked up one thing, raised it to his vision, and he frowned. "What's this? Rebecca, where'd you get this?" He held up the crystalline fragment. The green crystals glittered in the room's overhead light. He stared at her as he went to his own trousers, took out his almost identical piece of mineral, and grimly stared at her, exhibiting both separate hands. Her. "Don't worry about it," Uncle Sean told us. "It's just some of the assholes in the other departments that are jealous and trying to get ahead. Don't turn any of them into frogs at the meeting. It wouldn't look good. Just let us do the talking. We have everything under control."Needless to say, we did worry about it - both of us, but didn't let our wives see that we were worried. They had enough on their minds already.Friday finally got here, and we spent the weekend with our Wives and newborn. Leaving me to do the math, as if this somehow made it sound less troubling and less long. She’d be away for more than four weeks. Away from me and with another man for the best part of a month.I felt like the wind had not just figuratively, but literally been knocked out of my body, feeling the need to turn and urgently find the support of a chair to sit in. A month! More than four weeks together with Chris. Together all day in the pressure-cooker of intense meetings. Recuperating and.