The elevator doors opened, and they stepped inside. Cohen slid the keycard again into the slot and pressed “18.” Then he reached forward and tossed the card on the carpet outside the closing elevator doors.

Kilburn’s stomach dropped as the elevator ascended. It stopped abruptly but smoothly just before the doors opened on the eighteenth-floor. The hallway was no better lit than the lobby. Kilburn glanced at Lopez, who nodded back, her eyes sharp with vigilance. Brow creased, Cohen nodded once and then stepped out of the elevator.

Once the hum of the elevator died away, they stood in the absolute silence of the hallway. Cohen pointed to his right to the opaque glass double-doors at the end of the short corridor. As they approached, Kilburn saw that the doors were ajar. A brighter light escaped from within the crack.

Kilburn looked over and saw Cohen digging under his jacket and into his waistband. Temples pounding, he realized the detective was unclipping his gun.

Etched in the glass, the door read: R&D LABORATORY. DR. E. HORTON. Cohen looked from Lopez to Kilburn. “Okay?” he whispered.

Kilburn rubbed his palms roughly together and nodded. Lopez looked less certain. Cohen reached out and touched her shoulder gently.

“Go,” she whispered with a thin smile.

Cohen reached for the doors and pulled them apart. He hesitated a moment and then stepped into the small reception area where an unmanned desk was positioned near the back. To the right was another hallway. Kilburn saw the door to the first of several offices that he assumed lined the far wall. Beyond the reception area was another opaque glass door, also backlit.

Cohen pointed toward the wall of offices. They started for them, when a voice called out. “Lina, Graham, Seth, I’m here in the lab,” Martineau’s unmistakably French-tinged accent called from behind the glass door.

“Coming,” Cohen replied.

Martineau’s voice startled Kilburn. The weight of the malice that sprung from within the walls of the lab came back to him. He remembered Annie Mallek’s quiet tears and Gurdev Singh’s despondent wails. Anger gripped him.

A drop of sweat ran down his forehead and past his pounding temples as Kilburn stepped forward and grabbed for the door handle.

63 - Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

63

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Nick Snider scratched his bald head, still unaccustomed to his prickly scalp. Alone in Ellen Horton’s spacious office behind the main body of the lab, he had a flashback to the last time he’d seen the scientist. Cuffed to the steering wheel, Horton had sat motionless in the running car, her expression calm, her faraway eyes refusing to make contact with his.

Bored with the memory, Snider peered out through the cracks between the horizontal blinds. Though the office was dark, the rest of the lab was illuminated by overhead fluorescent lights. Through the gap between the blinds, he surveyed the space again.