“It would be, if we were planning to deal with anyone but security, the janitorial staff, and Dr. Wynne. Security won’t stop anyone the scanner says is allowed to be there, and janitorial doesn’t care. We’ll get past them.”

“That leaves us with only the automatic systems to navigate.” We’d gone over all of this before. I was so thrown by her appearance that my mouth was running on autopilot.

“So we’d better hope the servers haven’t been updated.” Was that doubt in her voice? It could have been. It didn’t really matter either way. We were miles past the point of no return, and she was as committed as the rest of us.

“Good.” I stood. “Let’s get you across the hall to Becks. If we’re going to invade the Centers for Disease Control, I want to do it while I’m at least remotely clean.”

Kelly nodded and ducked back into the bathroom to grab her street clothes before following me to the room across the hall. It was the mirror image of the room we’d just left, with the exception of Becks. She was sitting cross-legged in the middle of one of the room’s two beds, field-stripping a sniper rifle I hadn’t even been aware she had. I raised an eyebrow.

Becks looked up, hands continuing their work as she glanced at Kelly and gave an encouraging nod. “That’s good. You look like a CDC flunky.”

“Thank you?” said Kelly, raising an eyebrow.

“That’s good,” I assured her. “A sniper rifle, Becks? Really?”

“Better overprepared than totally screwed.”

“Fair enough.” I took a step backward. “You’re on Doc duty until Mahir gets out of the shower. As soon as I’m done, we can regroup and get some grub.”

“Good,” said Becks, and smiled. “I’m starving.”

“Yeah,” I said, a little dumbly. Looking at her smile, I felt a small pang of regret. We could never have really been lovers, no matter how much she wanted it or how much I tried; that just wasn’t what I was wired for. But sometimes, when she smiled at me like that, I wished things could have been different.

I realized I was staring. “Later, Doc,” I said, and left.

My shower was an exercise in minimalism. I spent no more time than was legally necessary under the spray of bleach and the steaming water that followed. If anyone checked the hotel’s records, they’d see that the rooms had been let to four occupants, and that all four had gone through proper decontamination procedures before leaving the grounds for any reason. That’s the sort of detail people don’t always think about, and that makes it the sort of detail you shouldn’t forget for any reason. Follow the rules whenever possible. That makes it a lot more surprising when you break them.