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mark that is?”
    “There’ll be no hiding then, kids.”

    Buck took the main elevator to the first floor and realized he had to exit past the receptionist. The last thing he wanted was to have her see his Rover. He planned to distract her with a fake emergency, but as he breezed through the lobby toward the front door, a substitute was in her place, a thick, middle-aged woman. Of course! The original girl was taking Leah her purse. Leah had thought to divert her.
    Buck hurried to his car. As he pulled around the side of the building toward the back, he saw the substitute standing at the window, staring at him. He only hoped Stat Girl had not told her to find out what he was driving.
    Buck skidded to a stop on an asphalt apron that led to a basement exit. He leapt from the Rover and opened the door as Leah, her bag over her shoulder, rolled out a gurney containing Floyd Charles with a sheet to the top of his head.
    “He’s gone already?” Buck said, incredulous.
    “No! But people kept their distance, and nobody’s going to identify him, are they?”
    “Only your receptionist.”
    Buck lowered the back seat and Leah slid the whole bed in. “You’re stealing that?” he said.
    “I put more in my purse than that bed’s worth,” she said. “You want to debate ethics or fight the GC?”
    “I don’t want either,” he said, as they climbed into the front seat. “But we’re committed now, aren’t we?”
    “I don’t know about you, Williams, but I’m in with both feet. This hospital has been GC-run for ages. How long was I going to be able to work for Carpathia when there’s no way I’d ever take the mark of the beast? I’d die first.”
    “Literally,” Buck said.
    “Well, I just appropriated a bed and a lot of medicine from the enemy. If you have a problem with that, I’m sorry. I don’t. This is war. All’s fair, as they say.”
    “Can’t argue with that. But, um, where am I taking you?”
    “Where do you think? Take a left, and I’ll take you out around the long way. Nobody will see you from the front of the building.”
    “Then where?”
    “My place.”
    “What if the GC are there?”
    “Then we’ll just keep going.”
    “But if they’re not, you’ll try to nurse Floyd back to―”
    “You’re not thinking, Mr. W―”
    “Quit with the formality, Leah. You put a dying friend in my car, so just run down the program for me.”
    “All right,” she said. “If we can beat GC to my apartment, I’m going to grab as much of my stuff as I can in sixty seconds. You know they’re on their way, as soon as they find me gone from Young.”
    “Then where do I take you?”
    “Where do you live?”
    “Where do
I
live?”
    “Bingo, Buck. I need to hide out. You and yours are the only people I know who have a place to hide.”
    “But we’re not telling anyone wh―”
    “Oh, yes, you are. You’re telling me. If you can’t trust me after all we’ve been through, you can’t trust anybody. I helped you discharge your patched-up pilot, Ritz. And I helped Doc with the miscarriage of guess-who’s baby. How’s that young woman doing, by the way?”
    “Getting better.”
    “There’s irony. Doc helps her beat the poison, and it’s going to kill him.”
    “We lost Ritz.”
    “Lost him?”
    “Killed in Israel. Long story.”
    Leah suddenly fell silent. She pointed directions and Buck lurched along, double-clutching and shifting till he thought his arm would fall off. “I liked that guy,” she managed finally.
    “We all did. We hate this, every bit of it.”
    “But you’re taking me in, cowboy. You know that, don’t you?”
    “I can’t make that decision.”
    She glared at him. “What are you going to do, leave me at the corner blindfolded while you and your compatriots vote? You owe me and you know it. This isn’t like me, inviting myself. But I’ve risked my life for you, and I have nowhere else to turn.”
    Doc’s death rattle began. His labored, liquid breathing pierced