Then he was passing into the lobby of Wahredua Regional, where the light was steady and low and golden, and he found the bathroom and peed for approximately an hour. It was actually forty-one seconds, almost double the average pee time of an adult male, and he allowed himself the exaggeration because he felt a flicker of pride.

At the sink, he took his time washing up—face, hands, neck, even a few quick wipes under his arms. The rest of his day, after discovering Dulac and shooting Rasmussen, had been a series of protracted questionings, delays, and bureaucratic bullshit. By the time Riggle and Park had finished interrogating him—Riggle, in any case, still seemed to believe that Dulac and Somers were guilty, and Park’s opaque reactions told Hazard nothing helpful—Hazard had driven over to Wahredua Regional, only to spend hours being shuffled between nurses’ stations, administrative offices, and too-small chairs in busy hallways. By midnight, Hazard figured the staff was probably about to open their own off-Broadway show, they were so fucking good at tap dancing.

Even Lela Mae, Hazard’s source inside the hospital, had proved only partially helpful; Hazard had called her personal number, demanding an update on Dulac, and she had disconnected before he could finish. An email from a burner address had come almost an hour later, but instead of the usual dossier of reports and charts, it was just a few lines of text:

Serious but stable.

ICU.

Police.

The first line was the most important; Hazard hadn’t been sure if Dulac would survive whatever Rasmussen had sedated him with. Those kinds of drugs, especially the heavy hitters, were easy to get wrong, and Rasmussen wasn’t a nurse anesthetist. After Hazard had gotten that information from Lela Mae, he had found the ICU and spotted one of Riggle’s new hires on the door. He had decided to give it a few hours, hoping someone he knew would take the post next, and gone to sleep in the van.

Now, drying his face with paper towels, Hazard considered, his next step. If one of the new hires was still watching Dulac’s room, Hazard wouldn’t have a chance of getting in to talk to Dulac. And that was a problem because all of Hazard’s leads had hit a dead end. Somers was on the run, and God only knew if he was ok. The Keeper still had Mitchell and Nico. And Hazard had no clue what to do. Part of him recognized that this feeling of directionless uncertainty was partially due to exhaustion—his eyes were still grainy, and his jaw cracked as he yawned—but another part also knew that he was right about his situation: he might come up with a new plan, he might check traffic cameras in Golden City or spend a few days trawling the neighborhood around Mitchell’s apartment, but the truth was that he had used up his good leads, and anything else would be luck.

He left the bathroom and made his way back to the ICU. He had set his alarm for four in the morning because it was the time when most people let their guard down; even staff who regularly worked an overnight shift were starting to wind down, anticipating the end of work and a chance to go home and sleep. When he got to the hall with Dulac’s room, Hazard stopped, and he felt something that made him dizzy, made him blame the late night and the exhaustion and his half-asleep brain: he felt like the universe was aligning.