and started trailing his agent back to the lab.
As Manny started back down the hall Nohar called after him. 'What's wrong with the thing anyway?'
'Nothing much.' Manny sounded like it was pretty major. 'We'd just started to catalog amino acids and the display keeps coming up backward.'
Once Manny had disappeared back into the lab Nohar waved at his redheaded agent, who still looked a little queasy. 'You heard. Doctor's orders—shower.' As Nohar limped toward the showers, he tried to talk to his agent. 'So, what do you think of Agent Isham?'
He answered in a voice as colorless as he was. 'She's a good agent.'
Talk about your stock answers. 'So where is she now?'
'I've been encouraged not to speculate.'
'Loosen up. You sound like the voice-over for a hemorrhoid commercial.'
That got him. Nohar could swear he got a ghost of a smile from the guy. He looked down at the agent who was afraid of needles. 'You bothered by guarding a morey?'
The agent shook his head. 'I've worked with mo-reaus before. It's what our division is trained for.'
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Nohar stopped in front of the doors to the changing area. 'That's not what I asked you.'
Now there was a smile. A small one. 'I suppose not. Perhaps I'm bothered, a little. This is my first assignment, and all the moreaus IVe trained with were federal recruits. Mostly Latin American—'
'Never prepared you for a tiger?'
'They can't train you to deal with everything. I apologize if I've seemed remote. You're an important witness, not a suspect—'
'My name's Nohar Rajasthan. What do I call you?'
The agent held out his hand. 'Agen—Patrick Shaunassy.'
Nohar gripped it and decided there was hope for him. 'Pleased to meet you.' Shaunassy gave Nohar's hand a healthy shake. 'Ditto. You're going to be taking a shower here?'
'Like I said, doctor's orders . . .'
Shaunassy opened the door. 'Well, once I secure the area why don't I go back to the vending machines and get us some coffee?'
Nohar usually detested coffee, but he was feeling the lack of sleep catching up with him. 'Do that, I could use a few cups.'
They entered the changing area and Shaunassy stopped him at the door.
Shaunassy made an economical search of the room and the shower stalls as he spoke. 'Sugar, cream?'
'Both.'
He checked the toilet stalls. 'Anything to eat?' 'Hate hospital food.'
He returned to the door and made sure it had a lock. 'Lock this until I come back. Shouldn't be more than ten minutes. If you're in the shower, I'll wait.' Shaunassy left and Nohar locked the door as requested. Amazing, scratch an FBI agent and there might be a person underneath.
The changing area was a study in white. White plastic lockers with recessed keypads, white fiberglass FORESTS OF THE NIGHT
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squares in the ceiling, white tile on the floor, white fluorescents—the only things in the room that weren't white were the greens Manny had left folded on the bench, and the chromed fixtures in the showers. The glare was irritating, so Nohar killed the lights, letting his eyes adjust to the darkness.
The disinfectant was bad here. It was killing his sense of smell. He wished there was a window in here he could open.
He breamed through his mouth as he removed the latest set of clothes he had destroyed.
He got into a shower, turned on a blast of cold water, and let the mud melt off his body. He found himself thinking, not of the FBI or the whole MLI business, but of Stephie Wen-. All he wanted, right now, was to be in that motel room in Geauga. He was exhausted and had had enough of this bullshit. He just wanted to hold somebody— her—and get some sleep.
There was thirty grand in his account. He wondered if it was worth it.
He killed the shower and stood there, dripping, listening to the drain gurgle and wondering why he had taken the case in the first place. Did he really, subconsciously, want to go to California after Maria? Did he just want enough money to leave this burg? And where was that coffee?
He stepped over to the dryer—he was going to be done before Shaunassy got back—and slapped the large button with the back of his hand. He was enveloped in a nearly silent column of warm air. His abused muscles appreciated it.
Nohar nodded off a bit.
He slipped against the cold tiles and woke up. He shook the sleep from his head and walked out to the changing room. He spared a glance out the little rectangular windows into the hall. He hoped Shaunassy didn't see the lights off and assume he'd left already. He decided he wasn't going to wait behind a locked
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door just for Shaunassy to get back. The disinfectant smell in here was getting to him.
He unfolded the bottom of the greens and pulled them on. They fit around his waist, and they came down to a dozen centimeters past his knees. Nohar still had to split the seam on the bottom of the right leg to fit around the swelling.
The top that went with the pants—came short above the waistline and both arms—looked just plain silly. Nohar left it. While the boots he had been wearing were still intact, he left them. His feet needed to air out and it felt good to give the claws on his feet a chance to stretch.
Still no coffee, damn it.
Nohar opened the door and was no longer immersed in the disinfectant smell.
Now he could smell fresh coffee, the same synthetic-smelling stuff Harsk drank.
Nohar also smelled blood.
He grabbed his Vind from the pile of his clothes and ran—limped, really, the drug Manny had shot into him was keeping him from feeling his knee, but didn't make it work any better—down toward the vending machines, the waiting area, the labs. The first corner he rounded brought him to the vending machines— Shaunassy was dead.
He had slid halfway down the wall between the micro and the coffee dispenser. His right hand had knocked over a brown plastic tray, scattering small bulbs
of cream and packets of sugar into the widening pool of blood. Three cups of coffee had spilled on the linoleum tile floor. The edges of the spill mixed with Shaunassy's blood, pulling swirls of red to mix with the tan—
Nohar's heartbeat was thudding dully in his ears.
Nohar pulled him away from the wall. Shaunassy hit the ground with a boneless splat. His throat hung open and his shirt was drenched with red. He was still warm.
The canine's musk hung in the air.
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Hassan had done this. Probably with a straight razor.
Nohar kept up his limping run to the genetics lab, his breath a furnace in his throat. Why? Why was Hassan doing this?
The hall smelled like an abattoir. The smell of blood seemed to adhere to the back of Nohar's sinuses.
Nohar passed another agent. This one was crumpled in the middle of the hall. Hassan had sawed through the windpipe and had held the throat open. Blood had splattered halfway up the walls. Nohar stepped over the body, and his left foot slipped in the agent's blood. He ignored it and kept running, his foot making little tearing sounds each time he pulled it away from the linoleum.
He took the safety off the Vind and cocked it. The blood smell was getting worse. There was no question in
