The words didn’t hurt as much as I thought they would.

They only made the cold space inside my chest grow larger.

“I need that key, Chloe,” Lucas said, his voice tightening again. “The window for the international clearing house closes in twenty minutes.”

I grabbed a scrap of paper and a blue pen from the bedside table.

I wrote three words in block letters: *ASK FOR TIME.*

I pushed the paper toward Chloe.

She looked at it, then cleared her throat.

“The cloner just hit fifty percent,” Chloe said. “It’s going to be another ten minutes, Lucas.”

A heavy sigh came through the speaker.

“Fine,” Lucas said. “But do not touch the device while it’s processing. If the connection drops, we have to start the encryption cycle all over again.”

“I won’t touch it,” Chloe said.

“I’ll call you back in exactly ten minutes,” he said. “Have the sixteen-digit string ready to read to me.”

“I will,” she said.

“I love you, Chloe,” he said. “Almost there.”

The line went dead with a soft click.

The silence in the motel room returned, heavy and suffocating.