Additionally, the Big Guys were working on “minimizing the threat” posed by the “loss” of the biotechnology. Their motto was more or less “Contain! Contain! Contain!” They wanted this threat contained to Bayport, and they wanted it done yesterday. As such, they were keeping a close watch on all of the airports and bus stations, and they’d set up roadblocks on the way out of town.

“Okay,” I said out loud, “you’re making sure Amelia can’t get through to Peyton and that she doesn’t get out of town, but where is she now?”

The most disturbing thing about reading the Big Guys’ files wasn’t the complete lack of writing skills; it was the fact that they didn’t have an answer to my question. They knew Amelia wasn’t at Peyton, and they knew she hadn’t skipped town, but beyond that, they weren’t even looking.

In my twisted mind, all of this information led clearly to a single conclusion, a solution as clear as 4 to 2 + 2. The Big Guys could watch Peyton. They could contain! contain! contain! to their hearts’ content. That wasn’t enough for me. The costs of this mission had been huge. Too much had happened for me to just shrug it off. Somebody had killed Jacob Kann. Somebody had stolen a weapon I’d been sent to retrieve. Between the explosion, the car last night, and the security gorilla with a gun this afternoon, I’d had not one, not two, but three near-death experiences while on this case.

I didn’t want to contain the threat. I wanted to eliminate it, and that meant finding Amelia Juarez, even if I had to do it myself.

“Somehow, I pictured you being bigger.”

The voice shocked me out of my almost meditative state of thought. It was light and female and coming from directly behind me.

Please, I thought, let that be Bubbles.

I swiveled around in my chair, and a girl—no, a woman—with dark, glossy hair and even brown eyes stared back at me.

For a single instant, I stopped breathing, and my mind refused to process what I was seeing. Soon, though, it became perfectly clear. I didn’t need to find Amelia Juarez. She’d found me.

“What are you doing here?” I kept my voice low, lest Noah burst into my room and attempt to flirt with someone who would in all likelihood kill him for the effort.

“Same thing you are,” Amelia replied, leaning against my wall. She had this blatantly casual air about her, as if she routinely showed up in my bedroom and the conversation the two of us were having wasn’t strange in the least.

“I live here,” I told her, stalling for time as my mind tried desperately to come up with a plan. I scanned her body, trying to identify whether and what she was packing, and then examined the distance between us. If I could take her down before she could draw a knife or a gun or, God forbid, the nanobots, this case would finally be over.

“That’s not a good idea,” Amelia said, her voice still light and airy, her posture never changing.

“What isn’t?”

I mentally prepared myself to attack.

“Attacking me.” Without another word, Amelia shifted her position, and just as I was preparing to throw myself at her, she drew a gun. “I don’t want to use this.”

I snorted. “That makes two of us.” If I could just keep her talking, if I could get her off balance…

I mean, really, what’s a fourth near-death experience when you’ve already had three?

“I have an offer for you.”

Of all the things I expected Amelia to say, which ranged from “Meet your doom” to “It’s not my fault; I had a bad childhood,” that definitely wasn’t one of them.

“An offer?”

“Allow me to explain the concept. I give you something you want, and I get something I want in return.”

I knew what I wanted: the nanobots. I couldn’t begin to imagine what she thought I could give her.

“I know who has the weapon you’re after.” Amelia’s tone never changed. It would have been more appropriate to a discussion about the weather than one on technobiological warfare. “I know when they’re planning to use it, and who they’re planning to kill. If you and I can come to an agreement, then nobody has to die.”

I stared at her. “So either I help you or you kill someone?” That didn’t sound like much of a deal to me. “I don’t think so. And for the record, I know who has the weapon, too.” I took a step forward, playing the odds that she wouldn’t actually shoot me for a single misstep. “You do.”

“Are you all this dramatic?” Amelia asked. “Or this stupid?”

I was getting really tired of people calling me a drama queen.

“Allow me to break this down for you. I’m not going to kill anyone. I don’t have the weapon. I’m honestly not sure why you think I do.” There was no humor in Amelia’s voice, nothing that made her words come across as anything but cold, hard fact. “What I do have is information that you need, and all I want in return is a promise.”

Her words confused me so much that I honestly wasn’t sure whether she was speaking English or not. Did she really expect me to believe she didn’t have the nanobots? Of the other TCIs, one was in custody, one was dead, and the last one was wandering aimlessly around a park. If Amelia hadn’t stolen the weapon, that meant there was another player on the scene, and really, what were the chances of that?

“Give me one good reason I should believe anything that comes out of your mouth,” I told her, vaguely aware of the fact that it sounded like something out of a horribly cheesy movie.

“Believe me because it’s true,” Amelia said, “or believe me because if I had the weapon, your bedroom is the last place I’d be right now. Take your pick.”

When she put it in those terms, I realized she was right. If she’d been the one to steal the nanobots, she’d either be sneaking her way into Peyton or halfway to Tahiti by now. Neither of those scenarios involved a detour by my house.

“If you didn’t steal the weapon, who did?” I didn’t really expect her to answer, but I couldn’t help thinking out loud. I’d been so sure that Amelia was the person in black that I hadn’t spent any time thinking of alternative hypotheses. Amelia had the motive, she had the intel, and she had the ability to pull the whole thing off. Other than the girls on the Squad, I couldn’t think of anyone else for whom that was true.

To my surprise, Amelia had an answer to my question. “If I had to guess who stole the nanobots, I’d go with whoever blew up Jacob Kann’s car.”

Originally, the Big Guys had suspected Hassan of the bombing because he’d had the other TCIs under surveillance. Until about forty-five seconds ago, I’d thought Amelia had probably set the bomb herself. Now, I wasn’t sure what to think.

“You’re saying that you didn’t take Kann out?” I had to ask.

Amelia snorted. “He’s an idiot, and a womanizer, and he was under the impression that he was going to have sex with me, but I wouldn’t have killed him.” Amelia never took her eyes off me and the gun never wavered, but somehow, she managed to look exactly like the twins did when they started filing their nails out of boredom in the middle of one of our meetings. “As much fun as chatting is, can we get on with it? I don’t know who stole the weapon, but I do know they’ve disposed of it, and I know who has it now. If you’re very, very nice to me, I just might tell you who it is.”

“Why would you do that?” I couldn’t fathom her reasoning. This whole interaction was so insane that I half-expected my clothes to disappear, revealing that this was just the latest in a long line of twisted naked dreams.

“You act like this is the first time I’ve dealt your people in,” Amelia huffed. “Without me, your bosses wouldn’t have Hector Hassan in custody right now, Jacob Kann would have bought the weapon from Ross days ago, and Peyton, Kaufman, and Gray would have intercepted Kann, taken the weapon, and killed Ross just because they could. I’ve been playing the players and throwing kinks in the firm’s plans for days now, and this is the thanks I get? I’m not sure you deserve my offer.”

“Kinks?”