The hundred-and-twelve-year-old blue-hair manning the station smiled up at him so warmly, he felt like an asshole for reducing her to nothing but her age.

“Let me find her room for you.”

As her twiglike fingers did a hunt and a peck over the keyboard, he thought of how much faster his own had been back at his apartment. He’d figured the name Devina was unusual enough in the modeling trade that if he Googled it on his laptop, he’d find Vin’s girlfriend—and what do you know, it wasn’t tough. Although she went by her first name in her professional trade, she and Vin had been photographed together at a fund-raiser for the Caldwell Courier Journal about six months ago, and there it was, Avale.

“She’s in twelve fifty-three.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” he said with a little bow.

“You are so welcome. Just go up on those elevators by the gift shop.”

He nodded and strode over to the lifts. There were a bunch of people waiting in a group, all of whom were tracking the little number displays over the three doors, and he joined the fray.

Seemed to be a race between the one all the way on the right and the one in the middle.

The center elevator won, and he piled in with the rest of the people, joining the scramble of reach arounds as he punched in his floor and then oriented himself facing the digital number readout above. Bing. Bing. Bing. Doors opened. People shuffled. Bing. Doors opened. More shuffling.

He got out on twelve and did not say anything to anyone at the nurses’ station. It had been easy to get this far, maybe too easy, and he wasn’t volunteering for any bottlenecks. Hell, it wouldn’t surprise him to find a CPD uni outside 1253…but there wasn’t. There also weren’t any family or friends milling around the closed door.

He knocked softly and leaned in. “Devina?”

“Jim?” came the quiet voice. “Hold on a minute.”

As he waited, he glanced up and down the corridor. A cleaning cart was parked in between Devina’s and the room next door, and an upright cupboard on wheels was coming down toward him—which given the smell of wax beans and hamburgers as it passed, meant it was lunch. Nurses were walking here, there, and everywhere, and down at the far end, a patient was taking baby steps in his johnny, his hand on his IV pole.

Looked like he was taking the thing out for a walk so it could pee on the doorjambs.

“Okay, come in.”