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He led her inside, making himself let go of her hand as they stood in the vestibule. It was overheated and much too small, and the loss of her fingers in his felt like a flesh wound. He keyed in a code, waited for the buzzing sound and the lock to release, then pushed his way inside the second door.

Together, he and Bethan jogged up five flights of stairs to the very top floor, where he keyed in another code to the only door on the landing.

“Wow,” Bethan said as they walked inside. “Isaac really knows how to live. In all these places he doesn’t actually live.”

“I don’t actually know if he owns this one.” Jonas shut and locked the door behind them, then input his fingerprint and security code into the system. “But he likes to keep safe spaces wherever he goes. Or we might go.”

Bethan walked farther inside. Turning a circle, she took in the big windows, the simple but comfortable-looking furnishings. And when she turned all the way back around and faced him again, he almost thought that she would say something. The way she had back in the lab. And he braced himself, because he couldn’t allow it. He couldn’t process it, not yet. Not now.

But instead, her eyes glinted. “Where are the weapons?”

“That’s my girl.”

And she grinned, but she shook her head. “None of that. It’s day three or nothing. You made the rules.”

Jonas nodded, but he discovered that he was smiling, too. And that it didn’t feel new, or unused, or unusual. He knew that was all her doing.

They made short work of the safe house’s offerings. They upgraded their clothing to better tactical gear, because the closets were fully stocked and ready. They found and activated new comm units. Then they both loaded up on weapons, as many as they could reasonably conceal.

By the time they hit the streets again and headed south, it was almost possible to forget that they were running on borrowed time. Jonas reminded himself that forty-eight hours to the onset of symptoms was a madman’s estimate. At best.

They arrived at a converted brownstone in Chelsea a little while later. Once a private home in some distant, historic version of this city, it was now visibly broken up into apartments. It sat on a block lined with more of the same, a line of once-grand brownstones with big staircases out in front of all of them, looking steep and unwelcoming to Jonas’s eye.

“This is the problem with New York City,” Bethan saidmildly, gazing up at the building before them, flush against its neighbor. “With a little more time, maybe I could find a way in the back. Otherwise, there’s only the front door.”

Jonas eyed the door. “But no need to announce ourselves.”

He had every intention of picking the lock. But when the two of them made it up the front steps, a harried-looking woman in business attire came out, flinging the doors wide in front of her. Bethan smiled brightly, in a way that reminded Jonas of California, and held the door for her.

And that easily, they were inside the building.

“Do people in these apartments think they’re safe?” Jonas asked when the doors to the outside were shut tight behind them and they both stood there a moment, listening. Getting a feel for the place.

Bethan shrugged. “I think they expect the outer door to be a barrier, but I also think they have numerous locks on their individual apartment doors.”

He didn’t quite make a face, but it was close. “I prefer living in the woods.”

She grinned up at him. “You prefer being the most dangerous thing around.”

“If you can’t be the apex predator,” Jonas said, scanning the small hall they stood in. It smelled like someone’s meal. He headed for the stairs. “You’ll get eaten by the apex predator.”

“You should make that your Christmas card,” Bethan said sweetly, and followed him up.

The address they’d been given indicated an apartment on the second floor. Jonas moved swiftly and silently up the stairs, Bethan behind him. He glanced back and wasn’t surprised to see she had a gun in her hands, ready to protect their rear should anyone approach.

There were two apartment doors on the second-floor hall. Jonas stopped at the first and listened, hearing the faint sound of a television set from within. Then he movedon, soundlessly, to do the same at the second door. Where everything was ominously silent.

Bethan melted into place, covering him. Jonas flattened himself against the wall. Then he reached out laterally to test the doorknob, expecting to find it locked up tight.

But when he turned the knob gently, it gave. The door swung open.

He froze, waiting for a gunshot. A shout. Some indication that someone was on the other side, waiting, and using the open door as a trap. Because what else could it be?

Very slowly, he counted to five in his head.

“Good news,” Bethan said very quietly from her watchful position. “We’re already infected.”

There was really nothing about that he should have found amusing, he knew. But Jonas still found himself biting back a laugh as he pushed the apartment door the rest of the way open.