Candi turned onto 158th Street and the traffic eased. Candi didn’t say “I told you so,” didn’t even flick her eyes to the mirror. She didn’t have to. She wouldn’t have a job working for Duke Goodson if she pulled that cheeky garbage and then didn’t get Duke where he needed to be. But it looked as if they would be early. Duke hoped the doctor wouldn’t mind. Not that he cared about how the doctor felt. It was just that people were so much easier to handle when they weren’t cranky.

Except the doctor was bound to be cranky when he heard what Duke had to report.

Oh, well. If things got out of hand, Duke could always try out his new favorite toy, the fizz gun. He’d been itching for an opportunity to test it.

And if it didn’t work, he’d let Candi handle it.

Candi guided the limo into the Bronx Ecological Park. Not the front entrance, the back entrance, for employees only. They parked right next to the farthest structure—the research building. She got out of the car and opened the door for Duke.

“Here you are, sir,” said Candi.

“I can see that for myself.”

“Of course you can, sir.”

Duke waved Candi away. “Go to the snack bar and get yourself a smoothie or whatever it is you eat. I might be a while.”

“I do love smoothies, sir.”

“Stop that.”

“What, sir?”

Duke made a disgusted noise in the back of his throat and went to the door. He punched in some numbers on the keypad, a temporary access code he’d been granted for today’s meeting. He entered the cold, white building that smelled vaguely of lemons, dog kibble, and compost heap. He swept past groups of people wearing lab coats. They peered at him curiously, but he didn’t bother to glare at them. He was in too much of a hurry. He’d decided that being a little early, rather than a disadvantage, was an advantage. He could see what the doctor was up to, if he was doing any experiments on the side, so to speak, instead of the ones he’d described.

But when Duke reached the second to last lab on the left, and burst through the door, he didn’t find anything remotely interesting. The doctor, who was peering into a microscope, simply said, “You’re early.”

“Only a few minutes.”

“Twenty-three minutes, to be exact.”

A fussy one. Duke couldn’t stand the fussy ones. Always scrubbing out fingerprints on the countertops. Complaining about every line of the contract. Probably had an obsession with fonts, for Pete’s sake. Duke made a mental note to use Comic Sans for all future communications. Just to irk the man.

Right now, though, Duke was the only one irked. “What are you looking at?”

“A skin cell from a cuttlefish.”

“Fascinating.”