Kori started punching buttons on the number pad, but I only caught the first five of them. When she was done, the light flashed red. She groaned and let her forehead thump against the door. “Well, that was a lot of buildup for nothing, huh?” Her smile looked forced, but her relief—just a fleeting glimpse of it—was real. But before I could decide what to say, something clicked behind the locked door and it swung open.

A man in a white lab coat glanced at me, then his gaze found Kori and his eyes narrowed. “Korinne. Didn’t they ban you from the building?” I glimpsed an ID badge hanging just below chest level, but his arms covered most of it when he crossed them, and I could only see his last name. Abbot.

Kori shook her head and clucked her tongue. “There you go thinkin’ small again. I’ve been banned from several buildings. I’m a regular pariah.”

“And who is your partner in exile?” Abbot asked, blocking the doorway with his own body.

“This is Ian Holt, the man whose ass you’re going to be kissing in a few short days. Better practice your pucker.” She shoved him into the room and stalked past him, and I followed when he stomped after her.

“Get out now, or I’ll call security.”

Kori shrugged, half sitting on a table covered in forms and file folders. “Call ’em. And while you’re at it, tell them how you broke security protocol by answering the damn door. Anyone with the clearance to actually be in this room would have his or her own functioning code.” She picked up a clipboard and flipped through the pages clipped to it, too fast to have actually read anything. Then she looked up with her head cocked to one side. “You ever been on Jake’s bad side, Abbot?”

“We all know you have.” He snatched the clipboard from her and tossed it onto another table, then propped his hands on his hips beneath the lab coat, revealing brown slacks and a very poorly chosen button-down shirt. “You fell from grace, and I heard the landing was pretty damn rough. I wasn’t on the guest list, but I heard that you—”

Kori swung before I even saw her pick up a weapon. She grunted with the effort and something I couldn’t focus on slammed into the lab geek’s head. He went down without a sound, out cold, a huge lump already forming on his left temple. “How rough was your landing…?” she mumbled, already squatting next to his still form. And only then did I realize what she’d swung. What had left its manufacturer’s icon imprinted in the skin just below his hairline.

“An ink drum?” I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or back away from her slowly.

“A big ink drum. If Abbot had upgraded his printer when Jake suggested it, he could have saved himself from a concussion.”

“Or maybe a coma.”

Her brows rose in interest. “A coma? You think?” She stopped digging through his pockets long enough to glance critically at his face. “Nice.” Kori stood with a key card in hand. “Bastard deserves that and more.”

“What did he mean?” I asked as she turned toward another door, and Kori went so still I wasn’t sure she was even still breathing. “What did he hear? Why are you persona non grata?”

She clutched the key card like it might disappear if her grip loosened. But she didn’t answer.

“Why do they hate you, Kori?”

“They don’t hate me. Well, some of them hate me. The rest of them…” She turned slowly and looked up at me in shadows too shallow to be useful, thanks to yet another infrared grid. “You know how in school, there’s always one kid who’s just a little better than you at everything? His art gets hung in the hall. He gets to be the line leader, or the door holder, or, if it’s high school, he gets to score the winning touchdown and fuck the cheerleader. You know that kid?”

“Yeah.”

The frown lines across her forehead deepened. “You weren’t that kid, were you? ’Cause that would kinda ruin my metaphor.”

“No. I knew him, though.” I wanted to touch her. I wanted to hold her, or squeeze her hand, but I understood that touching her would make talking harder for her. Might even make her words stop altogether.

“You know how you watch that kid, and you want to be him, but you also kind of want to see him knocked down a peg or two?”

“Yeah.” Why did I have the urge to hold my breath, like that might somehow change the ending to a story we all knew?

“Did you see him fall on his face?” Her voice was harder than I’d ever heard it, and I nodded, feeling guiltier than I had since junior high. “When he fell, did you give him a hand up? Or did you kick him when he was down, to make yourself feel bigger? Or maybe you just watched someone else do that.”

“I…”

“You don’t have to say it, Ian. We’re all grown-ups now. This isn’t high school. But if it was, I’d be that kid, and he’d be the one kicking me.” She glanced at the unconscious lab geek. Abbot. “They all would.”

“And Tower?” I dreaded the answer, even though it wouldn’t tell me anything. She’d painted a vivid picture without giving a single detail. “Who’s he in this metaphor?

“He’s the kid who pushed me down. Hard.” She looked away again and stepped toward a window covered with dusty horizontal blinds ending an inch above the table she’d leaned against earlier.

I didn’t want to ask. Knowing wouldn’t change what I had to do. What I would do. But I wanted to know what had happened to her, and who had done it. I wanted to know if there was anyone I should kill with a little more than the necessary force and pain, when the time came.