“She looked fine. Fresh-faced. She was smiling.” Ramón’s gaze drifted as he remembered, taking himself back to a night Luke had relived a thousand times. “I watched her from across the room, looking for any negative side effects. She moved from person to person, fully engaged. I couldn’t tell if that was the coke or the prototype, but I felt cautiously optimistic.”

“I guess that didn’t last long,” Luke said.

“It didn’t.” Ramón shook his head and sighed again. “Things turned bad soon after.”

Lisa had glided across the dance floor, stopping occasionally to interact with associates and fans—an air-kiss here, a selfie there—before shuffling up alongside Ramón.

“How are you feeling?” he asked her.

“Good . . . yeah, good.”

“Any nausea? Head pain?”

“No, I . . . no pain, but my left eye is ticking.” She blinked a few times, her painted lashes flashing up and down. “Does it look like it’s ticking?”

“No,” Ramón replied. “You look good. Any positive effects, aside from what you would normally feel with the sugar? Clearheadedness? A heightened focus?”

“No, I . . . maybe, I don’t know. I’m having a good time.” She smiled at him. “Listen, I’m going to go find my husband. We had a fight earlier and I want to make it up to him.”

Lisa swished away from Ramón, skirting the bar to find Luke on the other side. She sprawled into his arms, whispered in his ear. They laughed, kissed, then downed a shot of tequila each. Ramón watched, paying close attention to Lisa’s movements. She jerked once—an abrupt twitch of the shoulders. She also pressed the heel of her hand into her left eye, perhaps to suppress the mysterious ticking sensation.

“You left the bar shortly after that,” Ramón said. “This was somewhere around two in the morning.”

“One fifty-two,” Luke said, recalling the time stamp on the grainy surveillance photo that Detective Kraemer had shown him.

“I followed you outside,” Ramón said. “I wondered if you were leaving for the night, but you crossed the parking lot and went into the woods.”

Luke’s throat clicked dryly. He looked at Lisa, grasping at foggy memories: the sweet, woody fragrance of the trees, the smell of Dolce & Gabbana perfume. A kiss? He thought so, yes. Long, warm, and soft, and the words she’d spoken—just above a whisper: I don’t think it’s working. She hadn’t been talking about them, their marriage. No, it was the drug she had charging through her brain, the one for which she had just become test subject number one.

“You didn’t go far into the woods,” Ramón said. “I could see you from where I stood at the edge of the parking lot, next to my van. I saw you stumbling around a little, ducking beneath the branches. I watched you kiss.”

Luke nodded.