“At your first organic opportunity, I want you to find a way to tell Luke that we think the end destination’s Amarillo,” Cole says.

“Organic?”

“All our communications tonight are being monitored by The Consortium, and Julia Crispin’s paying especially close attention because you hacked her network last year and I still haven’t fired you over it.”

“You haven’t fired me because I’m really good.”

“Be that as it may, I don’t want her knowing we’ve got Amarillo in our sights, either, but I want Luke to have fair warning. So if it looks like the operation’s moving in that direction, find a way to tell him without broadcasting it to the entire team.”

“On one condition.”

“Could the people who work for me please stop acting like I’m a used car salesman? These are orders, Bailey!”

“Bring Noah in on this.”

“That’s insane.”

“You need him. If he’s your ally, make him one.”

“Noah Turlington jeopardized my entire company by conducting a rogue experiment on an unsuspecting private citizen.”

“A year ago and now that poor, unsuspecting citizen is getting ready to throttle another serial killer’s ass. Let bygones be bygones already. The dude’s a genius.”

“And he has no conscience or loyalty to anyone besides himself.”

“He made Zypraxon so the weak could defend themselves.”

“He made Zypraxon because his mother was murdered by a serial killer and he’s still not over it. Why are you on Team Noah all of a sudden?”

“My brother’s alive because of him.”

Bailey doesn’t have to polish the flip side of that coin to make it visible: Luke’s alive because Noah took action after a massive security oversight on Cole’s part put Luke in danger, and Bailey helped Noah do it.

“I’m not telling him about this. He needs to earn it.”

“You know, Cole. You dress nice but you’re pretty weird.”

“How so?”

“Well, I mean here you are, this like shadow government, secret billionaire type, making morally questionable decisions like it’s nothing. Then Noah Turlington walks in and you act like you’re a nun getting pawed by a werewolf.”

“Two orders of business here. One, less caffeine. Two, less focus on my personal relationships.”

“You need him, Cole,” Bailey says with a surprising lack of sarcasm. “You do. You’re running a secret wing of this operation because you’re afraid your business partners are setting Charley up to fail. And I’ve never heard you say a kind word about your own mother, and she’s the only family you have. And honestly, I can’t take the pressure of being your only friend. This little face-to-face has already been more human contact than I usually do in a month.”

“We’re not friends.”

“Good, ’cause I was starting to worry.”

“And if things escalate we can’t meet outside again,” Cole says. “Keep updating me on the Amarillo team, but text my phone and go to the bathroom.”

“You just want me to pee all over the floor or on my phone?”

“Meet me in the bathroom, you little cretin. Whatever the update is, write it down on something I can tear up.”

Bailey gives him a thumbs-up and heads back toward the house, seemingly relieved to be freed of direct human contact. For the time being.

Cole’s relieved, that’s for sure.

Footsteps approach again, and for a second, Cole thinks Scott must have been eavesdropping. But instead, he walks right up to Cole and says, “Video call.”

“How much time left in the movie?” Cole asks.

“Twenty minutes.”

“I don’t have time for a call right now. Who is it?”

“It’s them.”

The Consortium. Cole tries not to grimace. He fails.

“Which one?”

“All of them,” Scott says.

This is not good, Cole thinks, not good at all.

A few minutes later Cole’s sitting at the head of his eight-top glass conference table in the office-slash-conference room underneath the main house. It will only take a swipe of one finger across the control panel next to him to put the faces of his three business partners on the flat screen hanging on the far wall. But his finger’s frozen above the touch pad.

“God help me,” he whispers, longing for that simpler time when the prospect of not being able to put The Consortium back together kept him awake at night. The adage be careful what you wish for is popular for a reason. But he’s come up with his own version—be careful of what you say you can’t live without.

And there they are.

At bottom left, Julia Crispin, with her never-a-hair-out-of-place silver bob, whose idea of casual at-home wear is a pearlescent silk blouse and several gold bracelets. She makes cameras and surveillance devices that are mostly invisible to the naked eye. Maybe that’s why she always dresses as if she’s got an audience.

Just to her right, Philip Strahan, former marine, six-term US senator, now the CEO of Force Bolt, one of the largest private security contractors in the world. He wears his baldness like a shiny crown, and there are so many antlers in the frame it’s impossible to tell how many animal skulls are hanging on the wall behind his desk. Cole’s only paid one visit to the man’s sprawling ranch in Whitefish, Montana. What he remembers most is how the living room furniture looked like it might be pretty tasty after a few minutes of being turned over an open flame.

Stephen Drucker fills the top half of the screen thanks to some random decision made by their videoconferencing program. As usual, he’s staring suspiciously at his laptop’s camera as if it’s his first videoconference. When you take into account that his company develops weapons that use the latest technology to kill people as quickly and cleanly as possible, it’s possible Cole’s the one being stared at suspiciously during these calls and not Stephen’s computer. Stephen’s the group’s only international member, as evidenced by his paisley-patterned silk bathrobe and mussed salt-and-pepper hair. It’s late in London.

Over the past year, it’s become a game of Russian roulette to see which one of his newly reinstalled business partners is going to be the biggest pain in the ass. For a while, it was just him and Julia. Which seemed fitting. They’ve known each other the longest, thanks to the allegedly passionate affair Julia had with Cole’s late father. Now it’s the four of them again, the same group Cole abruptly dissolved when their first experiments with Zypraxon killed all the test subjects. They were all traumatized by the initial tests; it’s why Cole shut them down so abruptly and also why it was a struggle to get The Consortium back together even after he’d circulated mind-blowing footage of Charlotte’s early accomplishments—one original member refused to return for a second round. But now that the band’s back together, Stephen and Philip have been acting like Charlotte’s latest field test is some unacceptable security risk and not their reason for existence. It’s not just infuriating; it’s downright suspicious.

“As I’m sure you can see on your feeds, we’re underway here, folks,” Cole says. “Can we make this quick?”