Dammit.

“Are you good to go?” Kendra asked Sam.

“Yeah, I have a good idea what software package they’re using.” He grimaced. “But I’d feel better if we could access the computer in the personnel office.”

“Too risky. I have faith in you, Sam.”

“Then I can change the rules of time and space if I have to do it.” He added in a low voice, “And I may have to do it. The food services computer may not even be linked. But I’ll do my best.”

Kendra chuckled. “If the Pentagon trusts you to foil the Chinese, who am I to—” She broke off as a pair of headlights speared from the road and swept across the trees in front of them. “Here we go.”

A dark sedan stopped only yards away as the motorized security gate groaned and slowly swung open. The car moved through the gate and turned the corner that would take it to the complex’s subterranean parking garage.

The gate started to swing closed.

“Now!” Eve whispered.

She, Kendra, and Sam bolted for the entrance and slipped through just as the gate clanged shut behind them. They sprinted down the dark driveway and climbed the narrow set of stairs that would take them to the upper-level sidewalk.

“There,” Kendra mouthed as she waved them around the corner to a dark alcove on the side of the building. They ducked into the shadows as they heard the gate opening below them and saw another set of headlights turn into the garage.

“That’s the other kitchen worker,” Kendra said. “The next one will be here in ninety minutes. When he opens that gate, we need to be ready to get ourselves on the other side of it.”

“No pressure or anything,” Eve said to Sam.

“Oh, of course not.” He turned to Kendra. “What now?”

“We wait for that first smoke break. Or for that door to be propped open, whichever comes first.”

Kendra kept watch on the door while Eve and Sam scouted around for any sign of a security patrol. “Security camera down the walkway,” Sam murmured as he spotted the glowing red eye fastened to a tree. “I’ll take care of it.”

He was gone only a few minutes, the red light went out, and Sam was back with them. “All clear.”

Less than thirty minutes later, the door swung open, and a heavyset man dressed in white lumbered toward the outdoor railing. He pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, tapped one out, and lit up.

“He didn’t prop the door open,” Eve whispered.

Kendra shook her head. “Plan B.”

“Right.” Eve bent over and tightened the laces on her tennis shoes. “How much time will I have?”

“About seven seconds once the door starts to close.”

Eve smiled and shook her head. Of course Kendra had thought to time the door’s closing when the man stepped outside.

After a couple minutes, the kitchen worker stamped out his cigarette, picked up the butt, and turned back toward the door. He pulled out a keycard, waved it over the sensor, and pulled open the door.

It would have been a hell of a lot more convenient for all of them if he’d propped the damn thing open, Eve thought. Why wasn’t anything ever easy?

As the kitchen worker stepped inside, Eve quietly bolted toward the door as it swung closed. Shit, she thought in panic. She couldn’t make it. The door was just—

Got it!

She gripped the edge of the door and froze, waiting to see if either of the kitchen workers had heard her or noticed that the door hadn’t entirely closed.

They hadn’t. She heard a door close across the kitchen, and the room appeared empty.

She hoped.

Kendra and Sam were directly behind her. Eve peered through the crack between the door and the frame and saw nothing but a short, dim hallway. From the left she heard running water and clanging pots. From the right, in the direction of the office, there was total silence.

She turned back toward Kendra and Sam, nodded, and crept through the doorway. Kendra and Sam were right behind her. They quickly moved down the hall and ducked into the open office. Kendra silently closed the door and lowered a roll-down shade that covered the door’s large glass pane. They switched on their tiny xenon-bulb flashlights as Sam moved toward the computer and punched the spacebar to wake it up.

“What do you think?” Eve asked.

Sam studied the monitor. “Well, it’s the system I thought they were using. I hoped this user would still be logged in, but he’s not.”

“Is that a problem?” Kendra asked.

Sam pulled a USB thumb drive from his pocket and inserted it into the computer tower next to the desk. “This may coax some of the user history out of this baby.”

While he worked, Eve shined her flashlight around the office. As Kendra had noticed, it doubled as a storage room, with tall metal shelves holding supplies, paper products, and linens. “If the kitchen staff needs something, they might pop in here at any time.”

“I locked the door,” Kendra said. “But I’m sure at least one of those men has a key.”

“More pressure,” Sam murmured. “Hand me that fob, Eve.”

Eve gave him the cream-colored fob she had lifted earlier. He swiped it across the reader, and the computer responded with an approving beep.

“I’m over the wall,” he said, his gaze intent on the screen. “Now let’s see how far I can get.”

His fingers moved furiously over the keyboard as Eve saw scores of user menus and graphical representations of the complex. “Any sign of the patient histories?” she asked.

He shook his head. “Not yet. It looks like I can access everything else in this place except what we want. I’m really afraid it may be on a separate—” His eyes lit up. “Wait a second.”

Kendra leaned closer. “What is it?”

“This is it!” His fingers worked even faster over the keyboard. “It’s not where I thought it would be, but it’s here.”

Kendra suddenly tensed. “Shit.” She backed away from the computer.

“What is it?” Eve asked. But after another second, she heard it, too.

Footsteps in the hallway.

“Quiet,” Kendra whispered.

They held their breaths as the footsteps grew louder outside.

The doorknob jiggled.

Eve saw a shadow appear under the door.

A voice in the hallway called back to the kitchen. “Steve, I need your keys. The damn door is locked.”

Eve looked frantically around the office. There was absolutely nowhere to run, to hide in the small area.

“Sam.” Kendra whispered as she thrust herself back in front of the computer monitor. “Can you control all the systems we just saw here?”

“Yeah, of course I can.”

“Call up two menus. Now.”

He frantically typed while trying to keep the keys from clicking too loudly. “What am I doing?”

Kendra pointed to the screen. “Turn on the sprinklers in the kitchen zone. Can you do that?”

As if in response, the sound of spraying water echoed down the hallway, followed by the shouts of the other worker down in the kitchen. The shadow under the door vanished, and the footsteps pounded away.

Kendra pointed to another part of the screen. “Now cut the lights in this entire zone.”

A second later, the light under the door disappeared.

“Let’s go,” Kendra said. “No flashlights.” She threw open the office door and raced down the completely dark hallway.

Eve struggled to keep up, straining to hear Kendra’s footsteps over the sound of the sprinklers. Kendra was moving through the dark quickly and with complete ease. Almost as if—

As if the woman had been blind for the first twenty years of her life, Eve thought with self-disgust.

Kendra opened the back door and held it open long enough for Eve and Sam to join her on the walkway outside. They sprinted down the stairs and ran alongside the driveway, once again hiding behind the row of trees.

Eve inhaled sharply as she saw the gate looming ahead of them. “It’s open!”

Sam smiled. “I did that, too. Didn’t feel like waiting for the next shift to get here. It will close behind us. I’m known to be a little impatient.”