“I don’t know.” She shook her head and bit her lower lip. “I don’t know much of anything right about now. But I do think he kept his promise to tell Mom we’re okay.”

“I wish I could talk to her myself,” Frank said. “I just hope this gets over and done with sooner versus later. The whole idea of your mom alone, your life being disrupted, and hell—I don’t even want to think about the ranch and what’s going on there.”

Kathy grabbed her father’s hand and gave it a squeeze. “Oh, you know Mom—she’s probably driving Buck and the other guys crazy, running them all through their paces.”

Frank laughed. “You’re probably right. I hope so. It’ll help her keep from going plumb loco.”

A woman in fatigues called from the door of the mess hall. “Franklin and Katherine O’Reilly, are you in here?”

Frank waved, and the woman motioned for them to join her. Kathy took her father’s arm as they crossed the mess.

“A doctor just arrived at the clinic,” the woman said. “He needs both of you right away.”

Frank and Kathy glanced at each other, and without a word, they both began running toward the clinic.

###

Juan felt worse than he had in ages. His throat was dry and his head was throbbing. The last week had been pure torture.

For seven days, he didn’t once leave the FBI laboratory facility. And during that time, he’d worked almost nonstop. Sure, he’d snatch fifteen minutes of sleep here and there between DNA polymerase chain reaction sessions, but then he would wake up and get right back at it. There was just so much to be done, and so much riding on it being done quickly.

He and his team had started by growing much more of Kathy’s and Frank’s original, unmodified DNA. Then they’d carefully snipped out segments of that DNA and used them to replace portions of the experimental DNA sequences that had caused all of the trouble.

With shifts of trusted assistants working day and night alongside Juan, nearly a half year’s worth of lab work had been completed in the span of a week.

And they’d done it. They’d developed a new gene therapy virus.

Or at least, so Juan hoped. There hadn’t been time to run any clinical experiments. He’d broken every rule imaginable getting things done as quickly as he had. He didn’t have much choice in the matter. They had at most another day or two before an “accident” was going to happen. He’d taken the results of their lab work and hopped on the first flight to Vegas.