He wasn’t sure if it was a good time, since the thing Nikola wanted Cora to do was, as he understood it, largely out of her control. She couldn’t force it, she either sensed something or she didn’t. He had taken her home the previous night, cleaned her up and fed her, and made his plea to get out of the country with him, which she’d refused. She was close, she said. She knew he was nearby, she just had to figure out where and what he was up to. They’d actually slept, which he had not expected to happen, but the following morning, she didn’t seem any closer to her goal. It was already Saturday afternoon. The piece had to publish no later than Sunday morning.

He had to get out of the country.

“I’ll go ask,” he said and headed upstairs.

Cora was seated in the middle of his bed, looking through the glass of the balcony door, knees drawn to her chest, her bony arms around her legs. Any progress they’d made in the last couple of months getting her back to a healthy weight had crumbled in forty-eight hours.

“I can’t wait any longer,” he said. “I have to go. Please, come with me.”

“No, not yet,” she said, eyes still to the door. “I’m so close to figuring it out.”

“Cora, do you not understand? I have to go!” He sat down next to her, delicately taking her hand in his. He could feel the bones sticking out of her wrist. “This piece has to publish. Whatever Ampersand does or does not do, the Third Option cannot pass, and the only way I have to fight that is with words. Illegal words. I have to leave.”

She looked at him, piteous and even a little defensive, and he felt a hairline crack in his heart widening. “I’ll join you later. Nikola won’t let them catch me. He can take me wherever he takes you after I do this thing. I know something is about to happen. I know he’s about to do something stupid.”

He sighed, trying to blow out the hurt, how little she was considering his feelings in all of this. “What do you mean, ‘something stupid’?”

She winced, shaking her head as though the answer were buried somewhere in her mind, but she just hadn’t found the right patch of dirt to dig in. “You remember what I said? About Obelus needing a new body?”

Obelus. That thing’s name hit like a slap to the face. She had known all about Julian’s big revelation. She had been there when those CIA agents had died. Had she known there was a possibility that this could come up at the hearing?

“Yeah, Obelus,” he said. “I wish I had known before the hearing.”