Reverend Carl doesn’t react, only sits back and steeples his hands together, his long fingers forming a perfect isosceles triangle. Maybe he practices this in front of a mirror. “Well, that’s why we’re here today.” He pauses, like he used to do during his televised sermons, a bit of extra razzle-dazzle suspense-building effect.

But I already know what he’s going to say. My eyes wander from his to Patrick’s to the other men in the room.

“Dr. McClellan, we’d like you on our team.”

Chapter Twelve

TWELVE

On our team.

A hundred responses bubble up inside me, ninety-nine of which would mean forced resignation—or worse—for Patrick. But anything approaching agreement or eagerness will never make its way through my brain to my mouth. Instead of excitement, I feel a gut punch of pain, as if Reverend Carl just reached out with a claw instead of words and bored into me. They might need me, but need is different from want. And I don’t trust any of these men.

“Do I have a choice?” I say. It seems safe.

Reverend Carl unsteeples his hands, separating them into a saintlike gesture of prayer. I’ve seen him do this before, on television, when he’s asking for help, for more Pure Women and Pure Men and Pure Families to join his fold, for money. Right now, those hands seem more like the sides of a vise ready to squeeze me until I burst.

“Of course,” he says, his voice overgenerous and falsely kind. “I know how you must feel, how leaving your home and your children to go back into the daily grind must be—” He searches for a word as his eyes search my house. There’s clutter and mess everywhere: three pairs of my shoes where I kicked them off last week, dust on the windowsills, an old coffee spill on the carpet next to his shoes.

I’ve never been an ace at housekeeping.

He continues. “We talked to another scientist, Dr. Kwan, in case we need a backup. You know her, I think.”

“Yes.”

Lin Kwan is the chair of my old department. Or was, until they replaced her with the first man they could find. I don’t need to ask why they haven’t approached him for this project—if Lin had gotten her way, the guy’s funding would have been severed after the first disaster of an experiment. He was that inept.

“So,” Reverend Carl says. His hands are down now, and he’s no longer looking at me, but at the steel cuff Thomas has been holding for the past twenty minutes. “It’s your choice. You can set up a new lab, recommence your research, and move forward. Or—”

“Or?” I say. My eyes find Patrick’s.