When Noah flinches as if he’s been slapped, Cole steps from the room, leaving the door open behind him. It takes effort not to look back.

15

Off Highway 287

The Thunder Derm, as Luke calls it, makes a sound that reminds Charlotte of a tennis ball cannon, and when Luke fired the device into her arm, it startled Cyrus Mattingly so badly she could hear him let out a yelp on the other side of the divider. The device looks like a bulky, handheld ray gun out of a fifties sci-fi movie, only the central chamber is composed of a fat, transparent vial designed to quickly extract her paradrenaline-charged blood.

Luke’s already withdrawn five vials of her blood. Just one more to go.

He’s practiced with the thing a bunch in the lab, using Graydon-generated materials that somehow mimic the approximate tensile strength of her flesh during a trigger event. To hear him tell it, the real danger’s to himself, apparently. The gun’s pretty unwieldy, thanks to the amount of force that needs to be packed behind its artery-piercing needle, and a misfire into his own leg could kill him.

On the night they first met, Cole ordered a terrified lab tech to draw Charley’s paradrenaline-filled blood with a large but fairly standard hypodermic needle. The tech later confessed that due to her capacity for rapid healing while triggered, he strained his wrist driving the needle in, and worse, when they got to the lab, they discovered he’d barely managed to fill the vials. The fact that she and Cole can now laugh about this story is a testament to how far they’ve come and how much they’ve learned about each other in just a year.

But she’s not laughing now.

The wait’s taking too long, and the word others is pulsing through her mind.

Charlotte watches the device fill, sucking blood directly from an artery with a speed and force that would kill a normal person within minutes. That’s why the Thunder Derm is housed inside a titanium case and locked by a code only Luke knows. Only now does she realize she’s not sure if that’s actually the thing’s technical name or just a nickname Luke thought up for it while playing around in Graydon’s labs.

Luke would be the first one to admit that much of his training feels like play. He comes home from most of his stints at Graydon bright-eyed and talking a mile a minute about all the cool things he did there. Even now, he’s got an energy she rarely saw in him before Cole officially brought him into the fold.

“You good?” she asks him.

He nods, but he’s still focused on the task at hand. The blood-filled chamber is now sealed and ready for removal. Luke pops it out and tucks it into the foam-lined case.

“You sure?” she asks.

“Of course. I mean, what did I have to do other than drive?” He gives her a sincere-looking smile.

“At least you had people to talk to,” she says.

He looks her dead in the eye, smile fading. “That I did.”

She knows that look; it’s the one Luke makes when he’s biting his tongue, but it’s not always accompanied by this kind of steady eye contact, and that’s what really gets her attention. He wants to tell her something, but he can’t, and whatever it is has to do with whoever he talked to during their drive. That’s a very short list of people, and Bailey’s probably close to the top. If both of them removed their earpieces and TruGlass lenses, they could discuss it. But that would incur Cole’s anger, for sure. Another reminder that everything they’re doing, everything they’re saying, even everything they’re looking at is being constantly monitored, in some cases by people they’ve never met and probably never will.

“Could you do me a favor?” he asks. “When you have a moment, of course.”

“What is it?”

“Could you get those snakes out of here? I know they’re not venomous, but I have a feeling they won’t fuck with you after what you did to their friend.”

“As soon as I have a moment, sure.”

She changes out of Hailey Brinkmann’s pajamas and into the black T-shirt Luke brought her along with a pair of Charlotte Rowe’s favorite jeans.

“Charley . . .”

Luke reacts to the voice, too. Cole’s addressing them both.

“I’m here,” she says, rising to her feet.

“I apologize for the delay.”

“OK.”

“Charley, we’ve discussed your request in detail and given it the utmost consideration, I can assure you. After weighing all of the implications, we have two possibilities we can pursue in this moment. One, you continue the interrogation verbally, with his blindfold on. Or you let us take him into custody so we can ascertain what the meaning of his last statement was.”

“We don’t have time,” she says.

“We don’t know that, Charley.”

“Others. He said others. Other drivers like him, other victims like me. What else could it mean?”

“I’m not disputing that, but we don’t have proof they’re all heading to the same place.”

“It doesn’t matter where they’re headed. What matters is that it’s happening right now.”

“Again, we don’t know that, Charley. He could be talking about abductions that are next week or next month or next year.”

“Then why would he be so sure we couldn’t stop them? If the others don’t start their sick shit until next week or the week after, why would he be sure we can’t stop them by then? What he’s really saying is he thinks we’re too late, and that’s got to mean it’s already in motion.”

“Charley . . .” There’s a note of fear in his voice that silences her. “We know things about each other, you and I. Personal things . . .” He pauses suddenly. Is he inviting her to disagree? Is he just nervous about what he wants to say next? She’s got no idea, so she says nothing. “I don’t invoke the memory of my father very often. I don’t know, maybe it’s because he left me with big shoes to fill and I don’t want to remind everyone how big. But I know this isn’t what you wanted to hear. So, I’m asking you to remember the story I told you six months ago. About what happened to me when I was a boy . . .”

Charlotte’s so startled by this turn, she looks to Luke to see if she’s hearing correctly. Luke shakes his head. He, too, knows the story Cole’s referring to; half of it anyway. And like her, he seems to have no idea why their boss is bringing it up now. Cole also doesn’t sound like himself. Not the version she’s used to working with, at least. The Cole speaking to her now is the same one who takes to the stage in front of the press to make a dazzling pitch for a new stomach drug that’s not much of an improvement over the old one despite its snazzy marketing campaign.

“Please, I implore you. Remember what my father did when he found out. Remember what he didn’t do. He didn’t give in to his desire for revenge. He forgave those boys, Charley. You can find forgiveness, too, I’m sure of it.”

Luke’s still holding the Thunder Derm in one hand, but he seems like he’s forgotten about it altogether. She realizes that by looking at him, she’s revealing his facial expressions to Kansas Command, so she turns abruptly to one side. He does the same.

She knows what she has to do.