Arianna opened her mouth. “Why didn’t you ever tell me?”
He shrugged, reddening. “I—” He cleared his throat again. “Well, all of her things were there, and I meant to clear them out, but it was just—I just never … and then somehow I got in the habit of going up there … and it became impossible to move anything.…”
The group looked at him with sympathy, and he scowled. “I’m fine.”
“Have you gone recently?” Arianna asked gently.
“Not for a few years.”
“How big is it?” Megan asked.
“A one bedroom. First floor in the back of a dirty old town house.”
“I bet it’s worth a fortune now.”
He shrugged as if the thought had never entered his mind.
“It sounds fine for us,” Emily murmured. “If you’re okay with that.”
He nodded listlessly. “But I don’t think it’s livable.”
“Because her stuff’s still there?”
“Yeah.” He looked down at his hands; ropy veins crisscrossed wrinkles like a contoured map. “Anyway, I have to stay in the lab all week.”
“I have an idea,” Megan said. “Sam, it’s your call, but I’m used to going and inspecting old properties, and it would be a cinch for me to get the place set up, so you don’t have to deal with it. If you’ll let me?”
He looked relieved. “Fine.”
“But I’ll have to get rid of stuff,” she added.
“Just do it,” he muttered. “It’s about time.”
“Thank you so much, both of you,” Arianna said, meeting their gazes. She hoped that her expression could convey the depth of her gratitude that words could not.
“We can’t stay there forever, though,” Emily said. “They’ll be looking for us.…”
“It’ll be fine for a little while,” Arianna said. “We can probably hold out there until things settle down, and then we’ll have to think about—about leaving the country.”
Megan looked as if she wanted to cry.
“I’m all for it,” Sam said. “Let’s get the hell out of here and go somewhere where we can live in peace. Canada?”
“It is the closest,” Emily said. “We could get fake passports and just slip over the border.…”
Arianna felt too overwhelmed to take in the idea of being a forced fugitive, of leaving the only city she had ever called home. “Let’s go back for a second,” she said. “We still have so much to work out first.”
Dr. Ericson cleared his throat. “Like how we’re going to get up to this apartment, and how to get Dopp off your back long enough to do everything.”
“Too bad none of us have cars,” Emily said. “And finding a cab would be too unreliable. Plus what about GPS tracking? We have to be careful about that.”
“I could rent a car for the night,” Megan said softly. “It’s cheap and they wouldn’t know to trace it to any of you. Then after the transfer, I could drive you there and drop you off and then return the car.”
“Perfect!” Arianna exclaimed, and then remembered to lower her voice. “God, Meg, I should pay you for all this. What would we do without you?”
“Don’t be crazy,” Megan responded. “I know you’d do the same for me.”
“Okay,” Dr. Ericson said. “So what about Dopp? We’re looking at about forty-five minutes to an hour for the transfer.”
Arianna felt her relief dissipate just as quickly as it had come. “That’s a long time.”
“And if he sees you go into the clinic after hours,” Dr. Ericson said, “won’t he want to follow you inside?”
“I know. But I don’t know what we’re going to do.”
“What about Trent?” Megan asked.
“What about him?” Arianna demanded, feeling heat in her cheeks.
“He has access to Dopp.”
“So?”
“So don’t you think we could use his help?”
“I knew it was going to come down to this,” Arianna said. “But how am I supposed to face him?”
“He’s a traitor,” Sam spat.
“Well, in a way he is, and in a way he isn’t,” Megan said. “If it weren’t for him warning you about the crackdown, you would not be sitting here right now.”
“But I just don’t know how I can bring myself to talk to him. It’s worse than a breakup. It’s like I never knew him to begin with.”
“Be practical, Arianna.” Megan shifted on the couch and gave her a severe look. “He might be the only person who can help us. And it seems as if he was only trying to protect you.”
“Are you defending him?”
“I’m just saying I can understand what happened. I know you, and I know that you would have cut him off long ago. And then he wouldn’t have been able to help you at all. It’s too bad, but he had to lie.”
“No one has to lie,” Sam snapped. “It’s a choice.”
Megan frowned at him and then looked back at Arianna. “Look, I understand why you’re mad and hurt, but would it have hurt you more if he’d told you the truth a month ago?”
Arianna sighed, wishing she could get up and pace. Yet the lower half of her body remained as inert as her desire to face Trent. Just before the group arrived, she had ignored a text message from him. But what troubled her more—what she had not dared to announce—was that a tingling sensation, the specter of paralysis, had begun in her forearms.
“I’m tired,” she mumbled.
“You should take a nap,” Dr. Ericson said. “Definitely conserve your energy as much as possible before Friday.”
“And take the day to think,” Emily added.
“But not much longer,” Megan said.
Arianna nodded, grimly wondering where she would be in a week: Sam’s old apartment? A prison cell?
Her deathbed?
TWENTY
Dopp felt cramped. His long legs were sprawled across the empty passenger seat, with his feet pressing up against the door and his knees bent. His head rested against the tinted window and slid down the glass at intervals. In between the two front seats was a digital dashboard with the radio interceptor and speakers, and on the glove compartment lay a solar-powered laptop. Attached to his belt, in a holster, was his tougher-than-steel
