The voice shocks me. Its echo, cold and quiet, bounces off the interior walls of the elevator. I will the doors to open, and after a few interminable seconds, they do, onto the bone white hallway of the lab floor. My key card is still inside my purse, buried underneath lipstick and wallet and all the other crap my fingers find first.

Lorenzo, I think. I need to find Lorenzo.

My heel catches in the gap between floor and elevator; such stupid things, high heels are. Jackie always said they were as sinister as that old Chinese custom of foot-binding. Fucking high heels. Made by some asshole of a man to hobble a woman, make her walk two paces behind him, she said, twirling a sandaled foot while sitting on the sofa. But I’m not walking anywhere right now; I’m facedown, half of me inside the elevator, half of me on the tile of the corridor. More than hobbled.

Cheek to the ground, I can see the locked lab door only ten feet away, and I scramble to my feet. A cold hand, heavy as a meat hook, grips my arm and pulls.

“I’m fine,” I croak. Or I think I do.

“Careful, Dr. McClellan,” the voice belonging to the meat hook says.

I’m up now, key card clenched in my fist, running to the main door of the lab, footsteps behind me. Poe isn’t as quiet as he was. I slide the card into the slot; nothing happens.

There’s a laugh behind me, a soft laugh that makes me jump and drop the key card.

And that hand again, its long fingers digging into my shoulder, turning me around.

“You all right, Gianna?”

I turn and sink into Lorenzo’s chest. Behind him, the corridor is empty. Poe is gone.

Chapter Forty-three

FORTY-THREE

We can’t risk turning on the MRI machine again, so Lin and Lorenzo suggest a different plan when I tell them we need to talk.

“You’re sick,” Lin says as we approach the security checkpoint. “We’re taking you out to your car.”

She’s to my right, pretending to support me, while Lorenzo has an arm around my waist. Our purses and briefcases are searched, and a uniformed man—army, I think, but he could be a marine—pats us down one at a time.

“They’re clean,” he barks to another man, and a light above the doors turns from red to green. “Have a nice weekend.” The soldier says this as if he hasn’t just spent five minutes groping us, as if this were any other office building in Washington.