“And here I always wanted a submarine,” I said.

“Where would you put it?” asked Mahir.

“I’d have to buy a lake.”

“Well, that’s reasonable, I suppose.”

Maggie laughed—a short, sharp sound that had a lot in common with the confused yipping of the teacup bulldogs milling at her feet—and threw her arms around my shoulders, hugging me close before I had a chance to step back. “Come back,” she whispered, voice small and tight and right next to my ear, so only I could hear it.

We’ll try, said George.

“Don’t worry about us,” I said. I hugged her back, feeling awkward until she let go and stepped away, turning her face to the side to hide the tears that were glinting in her eyes. I sighed. “Maggie—”

“Go,” she said.

I swallowed the things I still wanted to say and turned to walk toward the van. Behind me, I could hear Maggie and Mahir exchanging their last good-byes, too softly for me to make out the words. The words didn’t matter, really, because we all knew that we might not be coming back.

Becks was in the passenger seat with a laptop propped open on her knees when I slipped behind the wheel. “File transfer and backup is almost complete; when it finishes, we’ll have files stored in twenty different places, ten outside the United States.” Becks kept her eyes on the screen, fingers tapping out rapid patterns across the keyboard.

I fastened my seat belt. “How solid is the encryption?”

“Solid enough that I wouldn’t want to be the one who was trying to break it. Not unless I had a week to waste.”

“I hope that’s good enough.” I slid the key into the ignition before letting my hands rest on the wheel, trying to feel the shape of it the way I felt the shape of my own van, the one George and I rebuilt almost on our own. It wasn’t going to happen, but I could at least force myself to be comfortable with the idea that I was about to drive across the country in someone else’s car. “Alaric’s going to drop the security keys to Dr. Abbey’s last known e-mail address in an hour and a half. If there’s no response withlf an hour, he’s sending a coded message to Dr. Shoji to let him know that we need to reach her.”

“Do you think it’s going to work?”

“Jesus, Rebecca, I don’t know. This cloak-and-dagger shit was never my first choice for a career. I think it stands a chance, anyway, and if there’s any way we can get this to Dr. Abbey, we should. She’ll know what to do with it.”

“If we don’t come back from Memphis?” Becks kept her eyes on her laptop, but I could hear the tension in the question.

“Pretty much,” I said.