DAMIEN!"
Damien turned around and saw his attorney walking towards him, grinning, arms outspread. He held up his arms and smiled back. Davison Temple hugged him, then put him out at arms' length to look at him.
"You look wonderful!" he said.
"I feel wonderful," Damien said, with exaggerated casualness. Temple laughed.
"I heard about your new car," he said with another smile, in that slight British accent of his. "Is it much better than the old one?"
Damien shrugged ruefully. "I wouldn't know. Kat won't let me drive it."
Temple laughed again. "Serves you right!"
"Listen, Temple, thanks for retrieving my license plate!"
"No problem. I'm allowed near the wreckage you leave behind, you know. I am your lawyer." [Note--I've just started noticing that there are no italics anywhere in this text. I'm wondering if this was a copy where the formatting went missing somehow. It seems like in this spot it would say, "I am your lawyer," and there are other instances as well. Oh well...this is the only copy I've got.] They both laughed. "But really, I barely escaped with my head! I tell you, as soon as I pulled that thing off and walked away, the car blew sky-high!"
Damien frowned; he hadn't heard about the bomb yet. "Blew?"
Temple frowned as well. "You mean, you didn't hear?"
"Hear what?" Even as he said it, Damien was beginning to understand. "You mean my car was rigged to go off?"
Temple nodded. "I'm afraid so. The police found the remains of a bomb--pretty pitiful remains, considering it was in a wreck first, and then blew up. We thought maybe that was why you were going off the road, unless--"
"I wasn't going off the road," Damien corrected him. "There was some guy trying to force me off!"
"That's what the police thought, too."
"I don't know who he was; I couldn't get a good look. It was dark. And he just came zooming up out of nowhere. All I remember is the car just went skidding, and I saw a tree coming up, and I put up my arms..." Damien broke off, shaking his head. "And next thing I know, I'm waking up in a hospital. [Note--they never make mention of the monthlong coma in this version; interesting.] And now you're telling me there was a bomb in my car? Why the heck would somebody try to force me off the road if they already rigged my car?"
Temple shrugged. "That's what we don't get. But they think maybe you were doing something against--"
"I forced them to change their plan?" Damien concluded. Temple nodded. Damien snorted. "Figures. If they can't get one thing right, then they have to substitute.
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