Chapter 26 · Key Number Eighteen

The clinic door needed an eighteen-digit code. Charlotte had seventeen.

She stood three feet from the keypad, close enough to smell the ozone from its processor hum, far enough that her fist wouldn't connect if she lost her grip on reason. Marcus leaned against the wall beside her, hands in his jacket pockets, watching her finger hover over the enter key like this was all some kind of joke.

"You know I have it," he said.

She didn't look at him. "Yeah."

"And you know I'll give it to you."

"After what."

His breath was steady, controlled, the way it always got when he was working an angle. "After nothing. I want in that room same as you."

Now she turned. He was close. Closer than she'd realized. His shoulder almost touched the doorframe and his eyes held that flat gray calm that used to mean someone was about to have a very bad day. She could smell coffee on him, old and bitter, and gun oil from the Sig he'd pulled off Ivy's guy two loops back.

"Lisa said you're the reason she's gone," Charlotte said.

Marcus didn't blink. "Lisa's nine years old and scared. She'll say anything.