After the better part of two days spent driving down empty highways and eating out of truck-stop diners, all four of us smelled like road trip—that funky mix of stale corn chips, sweat, dirty hair, and ass that seems to show up any time you drive more than a couple hundred miles in one stretch. We had two rooms, which meant two of us could shower at once, after all four of us had cleared the blood test required to get inside.

Somehow, even though one room was supposed to be for the men and one for the women, Becks and Kelly managed to snag the first showers. It was like a magic trick. I asked “Does anybody want a shower?” and they were gone, disappearance punctuated only by the steady hiss of the water.

Mahir and I settle in the room where Kelly was taking her shower, again, just in case. We were too close to her home ground for us to want her left alone. The motel security could be worked around, and I didn’t trust her to shoot her way out of a paper bag if something happened while she was unguarded.

I sat on the edge of one of the two queen-sized beds, rubbing my face with one hand like I could wipe the exhaustion away. It never worked. “So the Doc says most folks get to work around nine. The janitorial staff arrives at seven. That gives us two hours to evade one of the best security systems in the world, get inside without taking any blood tests that would announce our presence, and make our way to Dr. Wynne’s lab.”

“Correct,” said Mahir. Paradoxically, he looked less tired than he did when he first arrived in Weed. The bastard. I hadn’t been able to get any real sleep in the van—too many years of training telling me never to let my guard down in the field—but he’d been out like a light every time he didn’t need to be working on something. The rest had been good for him. He was going to need it.

“Is it just me, or is this essentially fucking impossible?”

“If they haven’t changed the timing of the security sweeps since Dr. Connolly’s death, it’s going to be bloody difficult, but no, I wouldn’t call it ‘fucking impossible.’ Fucking impossible requires rather more in the way of, I don’t know, ninjas.” Mahir smiled. It was a small thing, half-buried in stubble and his own natural restraint, but it was there. “I’m not sure where one goes about ordering ninjas.”

“Same place you get the submarines.” I looked toward the bathroom door, listening to the sound of running water for a moment before I asked, “Does this shit ever end, Mahir? I mean, really, is there a point where we get to say ‘enough’ and let things go back to normal?”

“No.”

I blinked at him.