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bed, appreciating its heft. It should be enough.
    Shoving a few days’ worth of clothes into a canvas duffel, he grabbed his phone and took one last look around the place. Two years here, and it still felt as impersonal as a motel room.
    It was all he wanted. Or deserved.

 
     
     
     
    Chapter Two
     
     
    The pain began in Chiana’s bones and radiated outward. This, she imagined, was what radioactive poisoning felt like, the sensation of muscles melting while the nerves strung across them sang a macabre opera of agony. Gasping as a new wave soared through her, she pulled the Mustang off the road in a spew of gravel, braking from sixty to nothing in seconds. The car perched at a right angle to the highway, its front end nearly in the ditch, the rear end bare inches from the white line that marked the shoulder. Lost in agony, Chiana was oblivious to the rain that started as a mist twenty miles ago and the curtain of squalling wind and pounding rain limiting visibility to mere yards.
     
    If Wil had been going any faster, he could have missed her. As it was, he was nearly past the Mustang before he realized the poorly parked car looked like Chiana’s. He braked and made a U in the road, pulling up behind her. Only a few yards separated the vehicles, yet he was completely soaked by the time he reached the Mustang.
    His expensive loafers sinking in the muddy gravel, he yelled her name and pounded on the window.
    Chiana didn’t respond. Wil yanked on the door handle, bracing himself when she tipped out toward him. His heart sank at the lines of pain and fear etched in her face and the sobs escaping from her on tiny breaths.
    Wil wasn’t a strong man. He feared he couldn’t support Chiana if he got her out of the car, let alone carry her to his sedan. He decided not to try.
    “I need you to move over,” he said, crooning the words. “You slide over, I’ll get in and we’ll go where I can take care of you.”
    She didn’t seem to understand. Again he said, “Move over, Chiana,” and this time she tried to slide sideways over the gearshift to the passenger side. Wil leaned in to help her, hoping his hands under her shoulders wouldn’t worsen the pain.
    An eternity later, she was in the other bucket seat. Wil slid behind the wheel, fastening his seat belt but not hers. In her condition, the pressure of the nylon band across her body would add to her agony. He was an excellent driver with no intention of killing himself, or her.
    She needed a particular form of help that only he could provide. But not here, along the side of a road where anyone could see. Even in a blinding rain, there was a chance a cruising trooper or concerned motorist might stop to make sure everything was okay. He eased the Mustang back onto the road and looked for a more private spot.
    Wil found one a couple of miles down the road. The wide spot that opened into a farm lane looked like the kind of place where someone afraid of driving in the storm would pull over. He fumbled along the steering column until he found the four-way flashers and started them blinking.
    The red flashes against the rain outlined the surrealism of the moment as he prepared to undertake an experiment in the very worst of conditions. He wished they were in the sterile environment of his lab, with an array of equipment to fix whatever went wrong and easy access to his records. The leather interior of the car would have to do.
    Even so, he could attempt to follow medical procedures. He felt Chiana’s sweat-slicked forehead, attempting to guess her body temperature. Really hot, which wasn’t a scientific description but would have to do. He moved his fingers to the side of her neck to catch her pulse and was startled at how fast and thready it was.
    He pulled the sheathed syringe from his pocket and studied its yellow contents in the gray light. Untested and perhaps dangerous, it might be her only hope.
    Offering the standard doctor’s fib, “This might sting a little,”