It was now almost eight o’clock in the morning, and as Joe drove them back to the McCallister estate, she held Pat’s free hand without even considering that she was doing so until they were almost home. It felt…right. Comfortable. After last night, they couldn’t reset the clock, couldn’t take that giant step backward, even if she wanted to…which she didn’t.

Whatever was ahead, she’d keep moving. Maybe it would end badly, or just end, period, but one thing was certain: the ride was bound to be…extraordinary. And bumpy. It was insane that she’d finally reached that breathless, intense space with Patrick, and had the world crash down on them almost immediately, but she had the sense that any relationship with McCallister was going to be driven hard by adrenaline.

Maybe he might say the same about her.

Bryn checked her calendar on her phone and sighed. “I have the job for Pharmadene this morning,” she said. “Don’t give me that look, Patrick. It’s fact-finding. It’s not dangerous; it’s just fact-finding. All the file asked me to do was go in, meet with the owner, and ask some questions about invoices. It’s nothing. It’s white-collar crime, at worst.”

“Sure,” he said. “That’s why they’re sending the woman who can come back from the dead. Because it’s not dangerous. You’re not going without backup, and I’m not in shape to help.”

Joe held up a hand. “Yeah, backup, that’d be me. No bullshit, Bryn. I’m not going in with you, but you’re going in wired for sound and vision, and I won’t be far.”

“Wait a minute. Aren’t I your boss?”

“Sure, in a certain time and place. This ain’t it. The good news is, probably no big deal for me to run a wire up your bra anymore, now that I’ve seen you naked.”

She glared at him, and he gave her a slow, delighted smile that she couldn’t ultimately help but return. Especially when he gave her that wink.

Liam wasn’t waiting by the door, as he usually was. Bryn walked up the stairs behind Patrick, mainly to be sure he didn’t collapse, as Joe passed them, taking three steps to their one. By the time they’d reached the second floor, he’d already checked with Liam and stepped out of Annie’s room to give a silent thumbs-up.

“I need to check her,” Bryn said. “I know she’s fine, but—I need to do that.”

Patrick nodded, as if he understood. He probably did. She squeezed his hand a little and stepped into her sister’s bedroom. Annie wasn’t on the bed, as she’d expected, or at least not on the big, king-sized Victorian four-poster; she was, instead, strapped to a hospital-style gurney with thick Velcro restraints at her ankles and wrists, plus longer straps over her chest, waist, and upper thighs.

She looked as calm and peaceful as her own memorial statue. “God,” she whispered. “Is she all right?”

Liam was sitting in an armchair a few feet away, with a handgun on the marble table beside him. From the looks of it, he had it cocked and ready. He put down his book and said, “She’s resting quietly. Don’t worry. She’s fine.”

“Is she—” Bryn bit her lip. “Is she breathing?” Because neither dead nor alive really applied in this particular case.

“Yes, very slowly. She’s in a medically induced coma while we administer the new doses.” Sure enough, there was an IV on the stand next to her, leading straight into her arm. “She’ll be all right, I think. But it may take some time—you should clearly understand that.”

Annalie had been through hell itself for six months. All right was a dream Bryn didn’t even try to imagine. She’d settle for breathing for now. She smoothed her sister’s hair and kissed her pale forehead gently, then bent to whisper in her ear. “It’s okay,” she said. “Annie, listen to me: it’s okay. I know you couldn’t help what you tried to do. I know Mercer did this to you, and I promise, you’re never going to be this helpless again. You’re going to wake up in control of yourself, and nobody will ever be able to make you do something like this again.” She felt a blinding impulse to cry and forced it back as she blinked back the tears. “I love you to bits, you know that? I hope you do.”

Bryn pressed another kiss to her cool cheek and took a deep breath as she straightened. Liam was watching and didn’t look away or pretend to misunderstand her distress. “It’s possible she can hear you,” he said. “I hope that’s so. She’s in need of all the comfort she can get, I think. I’ve been reading to her, just in case.”

“Watch her,” Bryn said. “And…watch over her, too. I’ll be back soon.”

He nodded. “No harm will come to her. Just be sure none comes to you, either. She needs you, Bryn, probably now more than ever.”

“I’ll be watching her back,” Joe said from the door. He held up a tiny device. “If you want to get this done, time to get dressed, boss.”

She nodded and followed him into her bedroom.

The daily shot came first, of course, even before she changed clothes. She waited out the grim side effects, trying to decide if it was better this time or worse; she couldn’t tell. It just felt awful, again. Then…gone. Another twenty-four hours of borrowed time, she thought. I’m a life addict.

Patrick would say that they all were, but just now, she didn’t feel in the mood for that slightly disingenuous platitude.

Dressing was a bit of a problem. If it came down to a choice of either a business suit and heels or black cargo pants and ass-kicking boots, Bryn greatly preferred cargo pants.…They were enough like her old uniform fatigues that she didn’t feel like she was wearing some sort of antique, clumsy costume. In dangerous situations—or potentially dangerous ones—she liked to play it safe.

Today, though, she was on Pharmadene’s payroll, and hence the FBI’s, and there was a dress code for these kinds of things. So she put on a skirt that was fuller than she would normally wear, and stretchy, so that she could run and kick if necessary. She matched it with midheeled pumps, a conservative powder-blue blouse, and a jacket that almost concealed the bulge of the sidearm she wore under it, at the small of her back.

Because there was no way she was going in without some kind of weaponry.

“I thought that camera thing went in my bra,” she said to Joe, who waited patiently, back turned, while she finished adjusting her clothes. “Okay, I’m decent.”

“I was just messing with you,” he said, and pinned a piece of jewelry to her jacket—a floral pin, something she wouldn’t have chosen for herself, but at least it matched. And in the center was the tiny device she’d seen earlier in his hand. “High-def camera and audio receiver, state-of-the-CIA-art that I got from a friend of a friend—you know how it goes. It’s got a limited range, and it’s a little hinky in tunnels and such, but this is as safe as it gets. What’s your panic word?”

“Um…magenta.”

“Love me some Rocky Horror Picture Show,” he said, “and that’s good, not something you’re likely to say by accident. If I hear magenta, I’m at your side in less than two minutes.”

“Guns blazing?”

“Let’s try to avoid that. I hear the cops frown on turning downtown San Diego into Dodge City.” He stuck a tiny receiver in her ear, and put his hands on her shoulders and stared into her face for a second. “Good to go?”

“Five by five,” she said.

“I won’t be following,” he said. “You won’t see me. But I’ll be around. Good luck.”

She nodded and bent down to pat Mr. French, who was sitting at her feet, watching all these preparations with a puzzled expression. He stood up, wagging his tail. “Sorry, pup,” she said. “You can’t go this time. Work now.”

He understood something out of that, because he gave her a sad look, turned three times, and plumped himself down on the floor with a depressed expression on his pushed-in face. Then he sneezed.

She was letting everybody down today.

Joe tapped his watch, and she nodded.

Time to go.

She walked out to the cars with him—her sedan was in place, and he’d traded out the truck for something that might have come straight off the rental lot, as nondescript as possible. She didn’t expect it, but Patrick was outside, too, leaning against one of the tall fluted porch columns. “Seeing me off?” she asked. “You ought to be resting. You lost a lot of blood.”

“I’ll rest soon. Bryn, be careful.”

“Always.”

He stepped closer to her and lowered his voice. “The FBI wouldn’t send you if it wasn’t something they know is bloody dangerous.”

Bryn shrugged. “It could be just another bureaucratic miscommunication. Riley was told to find an operative; she tapped me because she didn’t know what the operation was, and she didn’t know its danger level. Agent Zaragosa didn’t tell her. He just told me, and it turned out to be sort of…vanilla.” Privately, she thought Zaragosa simply had wanted to get a look at her and to warn her that even the FBI agents themselves were under surveillance.

“Zaragosa may be playing an accountant, but he’s not a pushover. Do not get in over your head. He won’t fish you out of the deep end.”

“I’m fine, Pat. Joe’s got eyes on me. He’ll back me. And we both know I don’t have much choice. If the FBI decides I’m not cooperative for any reason, they can pull me back into Pharmadene and I’ll just…vanish.” In that white room, where troubles get washed clean away. “I need to do this to keep them off our backs for a while longer.”

They both knew that the government wouldn’t keep the current state of affairs going long; they’d made promises to the former Pharmadene employees they’d saved, the ones addicted to Returné, but what promises had the government ever made that didn’t eventually get broken? This was all locked under tight Top Secret, and if a hundred people or so had to disappear, it could be managed. Efficiently and quietly. Wouldn’t be the first time.