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brain. My Ph.D. thesis was on dementing pathologies. Dementia is a very interesting pathology, the brain winding down. Understand it and you understand how the brain works, only in reverse. I worked at a research lab at the University of Chicago and published some papers on dementia. Millon Laboratories recruited me on a one-year contract to examine some test subjects who were undergoing an experimental protocol. Some of the patients showed almost complete recovery of function. Millon will be looking at billions of dollars in profits if it comes up with a cure for dementia. There are more than ten million patients suffering from dementia worldwide. That number is set to double in twenty years. So you can understand this is a huge priority for the lab.”
    “But there was a problem,” Mac said. The basic interrogation technique was repetition. Have the subject repeat the story over and over again, and if there’s something that’s a lie, it will come out.
    “Yes, there was. Functional and behavioral. Some of the patients . . . made no sense. Scientifically speaking. And I discovered that I was being followed.”
    “Whoa,” Jon murmured in his ear.
    “Followed?” Millon’s security system must suck if a civilian—a nerd to boot—busted them. “How so?”
    She sighed. “I’m a scientist, which basically means I’m a trained observer. People forget that about us. I kept seeing a couple of men, rotating. They thought that glasses or hats made a difference, but they didn’t to me. And my computer was hacked several times on the days I was studying the special patients. I keep a little trapdoor open, just in case. It’s called Red Hat and it is absolutely reliable.”
    “She knows her computers,” Jon said in his ear. “Red Hat’s a really good sniffer. Not many people know about it.”
    “And I set little traps.” She shook her head, long, shiny hair rustling on her shoulders. “I can’t believe they fell for it but they did. I’d leave a stack of printouts on my desk, then leave for half an hour. And sure enough—they’d have been moved. Not by much, once by only a tenth of an inch, but like I say, I’m observant. There was nothing in the printouts of any use to anybody. All my observations went into a highly encrypted thumb drive. They were really stupid and really easy to fool.”
    Her voice was sarcastic. Whatever had happened between her and Millon’s security, she had only contempt for them.
    “Okay.” Mac nodded. “Let’s get back to Patient Nine.”
    “Yes,” she agreed, “let’s.”
    “Do you have a description?”
    “I do, of course I do. But I fear that the man I describe wouldn’t be recognizable to anyone who might have known him in his previous life. I’d say he’s lost about forty percent of his body weight and he has had numerous surgeries.” Her lovely features tightened, a cloud passing over the sun. “The surgeries weren’t in his clinical file, which is unacceptable. I asked the administrative department and got nothing but crap runaround.” Those full lips pursed, her displeasure clear. “The records were lost, then at another office, then hadn’t been digitized, which is nonsense . . . it was always something. He’d undergone an extensive set of surgeries, at least five that I could count. It was right there on his body, plain as day.”
    “Where?” Mac asked.
    “What?” Her head whipped up, more shiny hair shifting on her shoulders. It was an amazing color, all natural. He’d been wrong to think it was just brown. It wasn’t. There wasn’t a chemical product on earth that could color hair about twenty different colors, from ash blonde to chestnut to black, going through the whole gamut of red. The ceiling light was right overhead and her hair was so shiny he looked away not to be blinded.
    “What?” he said instinctively.
    “Boss,” Nick murmured in his ear. “Not a good time to go mentally AWOL.”
    Mac clenched his jaw, ashamed that Nick had