On the dirt road leading away from Dr. Sutter's farm, Brennan pulled over. The little Miata sank absurdly low in the dusty rut, but that was all to the better. Brennan wanted to be hidden.

"I don't know about you, Shal, but there's something odd going on in that farmhouse. And I don't need Emma to tell me that they're working a major cover-up. This place may have been designed to stay under Genomex's radar, but that's not the whole story."

"You've got that right," Shalimar agreed. "Did you see that farmhand?"

"Yeah. He looked kind of fishy, but I couldn't put my finger on what it was."

"I could," Shalimar said grimly. "Lots of things. Like, no dirt under his fingernails. If he's been out in the field day after day, clean fingernails are a dream for retirement. And the calluses on his palms were from handling an AK-47."

Brennan was impressed, and said so. "Anything else, Sherlock?"

"You bet. He smelled of gunpowder. Not of growing things."

Brennan whistled. "So we have a fake farm. I don't blame Dr. Sutter for choosing this as a hideout, but she knows that she doesn't have to hide anything from us. She could have told us a little more about the set up she has here. We're on the same side."

"Or are we?" Shalimar asked. "She gave us the bum's rush out of there, couldn't wait to get Benji to her lab. Adam said that the serum would be good for another four hours as long as it stayed refrigerated. There was no reason for her to be that anxious. Or in that much of a hurry."

"Unless she was hiding something," Brennan agreed. "What say we take a look around the homestead?"

Shalimar bared her teeth in a parody of a grin. "Lead on."

For the feral, prowling through the corn field was pure heaven. She led the way, Brennan following in her tracks, barely disturbing the stalks. Even a covey of rabbits simply stared at them, not certain if running was the right thing to do from these odd humans. Shalimar took the long way around to the barn, cutting through the woods in order to approach from the back side. They crept up to the open window.

Some parts of the barn they had seen: the makeshift garage for the car, and the cow in the single occupied stall. It looked up at them with boredom in every ear twitch and went back to munching its hay.

But the back end of the barn, the part that was hidden from casual view, told a different story. Brennan was no country boy, but he was fairly certain that the cow wasn't interested in the exercise equipment and he had yet to see a chicken working out on a punching bag hanging from the rafters. A collection of edged weapons was locked up in a cabinet to one side, and a thoroughly modern bow and a quiver of arrows was stuck carelessly in the corner. And then they saw it: a crate filled with AK-47's, pried open and two or three bearing evidence of recent use. He raised his eyebrows at Shalimar.

The feral was just as puzzled as Brennan. She made a gesture: let's call Adam.

Brennan agreed. Things were too complicated.