He had heard it said that obsessive personalities substitute one addiction for another. He figured that by giving up drugs he'd earned the right to two addictions. He'd chosen coffee and chocolate. Hershey's Kisses, actually. He visited with the dispatcher for a moment, downed his coffee, had a couple of Kisses—maybe his last—and excused himself. Instead of going to the john, he headed out to the roof and climbed into the air rescue helicopter. Time for an unauthorized flight. He eased into his seat, carefully avoiding the large wooden box by the door. There was a matching box by the other door. The last anonymous letter had told him to expect the boxes, that they would be in place shortly before sundown. He had hoped that they wouldn't be there, that something had gone wrong. He couldn't make this flight without the boxes. If they hadn't been there, he could have gone back downstairs to shoot the breeze with the dispatcher before going home. His last hope for avoiding this flight was gone.
