"Your father still wants an heir." Gabriel reached in his pocket for a pack of chewing gum and began toying with it on the countertop in front of him. An old man sitting several seats down waved a hand at Lydell and pointed to his empty coffee cup.
"The fact that Alan Harriman doesn't have an heir his problem, not mine. I tried twice to produce a male child for him. The first time I had a daughter. The second time it just wasn't meant to happen. Why doesn't he give it up? Who cares what happens to his fortune after he's gone anyway?"
As she carefully poured the old man a fresh cup, Gabriel laid a finger on the black oval portion of the label and an invisible beam of light the size of a pencil lead stabbed from the fake pack of chewing gum through the eight feet of air and flashed on Lydell's right hip for a brief instant. The laser penetrated her nervous system and resonated with the frequency of her vagus nerves; her blood pressure would drop suddenly, and if Warcup's prediction was accurate, she would faint within sixty seconds.
He smiled as he watched her eyelids flutter, and then changed his facial expression to one of false concern as she collapsed. Another waitress screamed and dropped the dishes she was carrying as Lydell slid to a prone position behind the counter. Gabriel spoke quickly into the communications link at his wrist as he moved around the cash register past the wide-eyed customers.