into their former, familiar rhythm. DuBois sat again, perfectly contented as if there hadn’t been a crisis at all, although after a moment, he did lean forward to pull Justin’s hospital robe closed again.
“Stop up there,” he told the driver.
“Why?” The man risked a look back over his shoulder.
“I want to run into the drug store,” the doctor said, “and get some popcorn.”
In the silence that followed, the others stared at him open-mouthed.
“Does anyone else want anything?” DuBois asked as if this might be the reason for their looks.
Mary Williams drew in a breath, no doubt getting ready to rip him an entire series of new assholes, and Jacob intervened before the situation could degenerate.
“Our first priority is to get him hooked up,” he told the man and put as much authority as he could into the words.
DuBois looked disappointed but subsided, and so did Mary.
Jacob took a deep breath and tried to calm his racing heart. That had been a close call in more ways than one.
The ambulance driver had done his job well and the car didn’t catch up with them again. When they pulled into the lot at PIVOT’s rented offices, there was no one else around at all and Tad breathed a sigh of relief. Jacob and the driver swung the doors open, and Tad and Mary were ushered professionally to one side as the paramedics began unloading Justin with far more speed than they’d used at the hospital.
Everyone, it seemed, had been unnerved by being followed.
Still, he was glad to see they were as professional as they had been before. They maneuvered the hospital bed out of the vehicle and toward the double doors that led into the interior.
This was the moment he had dreaded. When Dr. Goli had refused to oversee a transfer from a hospital bed to a more usual gurney, he had quietly promised himself he’d do anything he needed to do to keep Justin safe. If she wouldn’t oversee it, they’d do it there, at the labs.
Now, he was rethinking that decision—especially when he saw the lobby of the building. He told himself that it was rented and the other tenants might be why the trash overflowed the bin and the stairs looked grimy.
But it wasn’t exactly inspiring.
The transfer took all the paramedics, including those waiting inside with the gurney, and he had to expend his entire measure of self-control not to wince as they did so. At his side, Jacob Zachary stood rigidly with his hands locked behind his back. He suspected that the engineer tried to keep himself from looking worried.
That wasn’t inspiring either.
The elevators took them up one floor before the paramedics wheeled the gurney down a long hallway. One of the fluorescent lights was out and another flickered like something from a horror movie.
At the end of the hallway, Jacob held the door open for them to wheel Justin through a kitchenette—with a rusted table and chairs pushed to one side to provide a clear path—and into a dimly-lit space that was half-lab and half-offices.
Mary’s mouth opened in shock and she grasped Tad’s hand tightly.
“This?” she whispered. Her voice quavered. “This is where they’ll have him?”
Her whisper was barely audible to him, and none of the others heard it at all. In the corner of the lab section, two other PIVOT employees waited—Nick Ryan, who Tad had met earlier that day, and a woman with dark hair and long-lashed black eyes, dressed in black jeans under her lab coat.
The second transfer began immediately. Wires were switched while the machines shrieked and sank into their calm rhythm by turns, and the woman lifted Justin’s arm with surprising care to slide one blood pressure cuff off and another on. Her fingers were gentle as she placed electronic pads on his ribs, but even she stood back to let DuBois take over when it came time to place the brain wave sensors.
“I can’t watch,” Mary whispered. “I can’t.” She hid her face in Tad’s jacket. “The bruising, it’s—”
“Mrs. Williams.” Jacob stepped forward to hold his hand out and stood considerately between her and the activity in the lab. “May I get you some tea? I can explain all the steps that are taking place if you’d like, but you won’t have to see it.”
It was a kind offer and one Tad appreciated more than he could say. He squeezed Mary’s hand as she left with the young man and drifted closer to the bed. She couldn’t watch but he couldn’t