“Do you have a moment to talk?” Pia asked.

“I think so,” Paul said. He leaned over the ER desk and asked the head nurse if there was any other case waiting for him. Paul’s role was mainly supervisory unless the ER was overwhelmed. In that situation he saw cases cold. The nurse gave him a thumbs-up sign, meaning for the moment he wasn’t needed.

“Come on!” Paul said to Pia. He led her down the hall into a doctors’ lounge. Inside the windowless room were several club chairs, a couch, and a single desk. The desk was occupied by a resident physician dressed in rumpled scrub clothes, looking much more like the ER doctors Pia was accustomed to seeing from her medical school experience. The doctor was doing paperwork and didn’t look up when Paul and Pia entered.

“I think Nano had something to do with the blood disappearing,” Pia said quickly and quietly once they had seated themselves. “In fact, I’m sure of it.”

“What makes you think so?” Paul studied Pia’s face. Her comment sounded paranoid to him. He also noticed something else. She wasn’t maintaining eye contact.

“It’s really just a hunch.” Pia looked over at the doctor at the desk. He was paying them no heed. “The place has a lot of secrets, I’m coming to find. The security is extraordinary. I’d not given it much thought until now, but it seems excessive, even considering the need to protect nanotechnology patents. I mean, there are iris scanners. It’s like the Pentagon or the CIA, for shit’s sake. And on top of that, it’s not just runners who have some sort of association with Nano. This afternoon, while I was out supposedly to jog but really to reconnoiter the Nano complex, I saw a couple of cyclists with Nano logos who I think were also Chinese, being followed by other people I assume work at Nano: one on a motorbike and others in a white van with heavily tinted windows.”

“Cyclists?”

“Yes, Lance Armstrong types: professional-looking with all the paraphernalia, including flashy racing bikes. And I discovered that Nano has two fences, the inner fence you saw with razor wire, for chrissake, and another fence a couple of hundred yards back in the woods that’s camouflaged. I didn’t even see it until I literally walked into it.”

“You were out in the woods?”

“Yes. That’s where I was when you called me. I was going to walk around the property to find out where the other entrances are. There has to be at least one more way into the place.”

“Okay, but I don’t see how that adds up to Nano stealing my blood sample.”