We all know the numbers. The National Science Foundation did all but stick a laughing emoticon on our last grant proposal when we asked for a single MRI setup. I run some rough calculations in my head and come up with a figure.

Lorenzo nods. “Twenty-five million sounds about right. But that’s not what bothers me.”

“Me neither,” I say.

We lock eyes, the three of us, alternately, and I know we’re thinking the same thing. Every piece of equipment is new, shiny, recently installed. And all of it is exactly what we need to work on the Wernicke cure. You don’t set up a lab with twenty-five million dollars’ worth of apparatus in three days. Also, there was that animal smell in the first room. The mice and rabbits have been here a while.

They’ve been here longer than the president’s brother has been in intensive care.

“It’s almost as if they already knew,” Lin says. “As if they’d planned for it.”

I look around, moving from the biochem lab, past the MRI and PET scan rooms, toward the open area housing small equipment. In our world, small doesn’t mean cheap.

“We need to talk,” I say, addressing them both, but I know I’m looking at only Lorenzo.

Chapter Thirty

THIRTY

Lin leaves us in the small-equipment area, with an excuse about wanting to check out the Tesla MRI tubes. For a woman as petite as she is, she has eyes that can bore into me like the punch of a heavyweight boxer. Be careful, those eyes say.

“Come with me.” Lorenzo crooks a long finger and stays quiet until we’re back in the biochem lab at one of the sinks. He turns the water on full blast, then leans on the black epoxy resin counter. Then he taps his right ear and looks up at the ceiling. “Cameras,” he mouths.

I get it. If there are cameras, there are bugs as well. I lean in toward him and pretend to read the report he’s taken from his breast pocket. It’s a utility bill, but I focus on the page as if it’s Fermat’s last theorem.

“You told them we’d be ready in a month? Why?” I say.

“Because Morgan wasn’t going to ask for you. Or Lin. He didn’t want any women on the project. I guaranteed him we’d have a successful trial before the president left for France, but only if you two were on the team.” After a moment, he adds, “And we’re already there.”

I don’t know whether to kiss him or slap him. “You know what happens to me when we’re finished, right? And to Lin?”

Lorenzo looks down at my wrist, at the faded ring of an old burn encircling it. “I know.”