She slapped the steel doorframc with the flat of her hand.

The clinic's door opened with a shudder.

Jane had structure-hit the door earlier, on her way out of the clinic. She'd distracted her security escort for two vital seconds and craftily jammed the exit's elaborate keypad lock with a quick, secret gush of glue. Jane had palmed the aerosol glue can, a tiny thing not much bigger than a shotgun cartridge. Glue spray was one of Carol's favorite tricks, something Carol had taught her. Carol could do things with glue spray that were halfway to witchcraft.

Despite the power outage, the door's keypad lock was still alive on its battery backup-but the door mistakenly thought it was working. Smart machines were smart enough to make some really dumb blunders.

Jane closed the door gently behind her. It was chilly inside the building, pitch-black and silent and sepulchral. A good thing, because she'd immediately begun to sweat like crazy in the stifling gloves, hood, overalls, mask, and boots. Her armpits prickled with terror sweat as if she were being tattooed there. Cops-or worse yet, private-industry investigators-could do plenty with the tiniest bits of evidence these days. Fingerprints, shoeprints, stray hairs, a speck of clothing fiber, one lousy wisp of DNA...

Jane reached inside her paper suit through a slit behind its hip pocket. She unclipped the penlight from her webbing belt. The little light clicked faithfully under her thumb and a reddish glow lit the hail. Jane took a step down the hall, two, three, and then the fear left her completely, and she began to glide across the ceramic tiling, skid-dancing in her damp paper boot covers.

She hadn't expected burglary to be such a visceral thrill. She'd been inside plenty of ruined buildings-just like everyone else from her generation-but she'd never broken her way into a live one. A rush of wicked pleasure touched her like a long cold kiss on the back of the neck.