If, on the other hand, Bailey tells his lawyer and God joke—What’s the difference between a lawyer and God? God doesn’t think he’s a lawyer—that’s a sign that while the bunker’s staffing seems ordinary, Cole’s planning something in Luke and Charlotte’s immediate field of play they didn’t agree to ahead of time.

Like deploying a strike team in their vicinity after Charley specifically asked him not to.

His brother is silent for a beat, then says, “Honestly, I’m a bigger fan of doctor jokes than lawyer jokes. But they’re all stupid. Know any good ones?”

“Doctors?”

“No, doctor jokes. Ones that are really funny, not just gross ones about ball doctors or butt doctors or headshrinkers.”

Headshrinkers. None of this is their code; Bailey’s improvising. By not giving their code responses, Bailey’s eliminating those possibilities. No strangers at the bunker, no unplanned field operations. Instead it’s a third option.

Involving doctors.

There’s a doctor at the bunker.

A doctor they’d all recognize—Noah Turlington.

Son of a bitch, Luke thinks, but he does his best not to say it, in case Cole is listening in.

“They’re just jokes, dude. Don’t freak out. Oh, by the way, it looks like she’s hooked Mattingly, so I’ll give you a warning when the movie starts to wind down.”

“Um, hi, that’s actually my job,” Shannon Tran cuts in.

“We’re a team, Shannon, remember?” Bailey responds. “That’s why we spent all last month doing trust falls and making pottery together.”

Luke’s pretty sure Bailey and Shannon have done nothing of the kind, and it’s no shock that his younger brother, one of the country’s most wanted fugitive hackers until Cole Graydon essentially made him disappear off law enforcement’s radar screens, is having trouble getting along with his new coworkers. Bailey would have trouble getting along with a Ragdoll cat.

“I’m Luke’s primary point of contact with Kansas Command, Bailey. I don’t care if you’re family.”

“Cole said we’re allowed to talk,” Bailey says.

“You’re allowed to chat during downtime, not direct his movements.”

“I have nothing to do with my brother’s bowels.”

Shannon says, “You’re being gross and inappropriate and you’re ignoring the chain of command.”

“Uh-huh. Does our chain of command allow you to keep eating my Nutella out of the break room?”

“Um, try the small army down the hall.”

“They know who ate it or they ate it?”

“Ask them,” Shannon says. “It should be fun for everyone.”

“Yeah, smooth move, pinning your compulsive eating on a room full of heavily armed trained mercenaries with nothing to do.”

“You bring up your Nutella every ten minutes and I’m the one who’s eating compulsively? And you have your own office with a door you can lock, so why are you so afraid of a bunch of Navy SEALs who could kill you with their bare hands?”

“Only a sadist would call what I have here an office.”

“When’s the first date, guys?” Luke asks.

“Never,” Shannon answers. “Bailey, I’m serious. Do not direct Luke’s movements.”

“I didn’t direct his movements. I told him how much of the movie was left. Also, just FYI, I’d rather drown in my urine than call this place Kansas Command. It sounds like a country-western bondage club.”

Before his brother can raise the topic of any other unpleasant bodily functions, Luke says, “So we’ve got a positive ID on Mattingly?”

“We do,” Shannon says. “Charley’s back in her seat, so now we sit and wait and see if he tails her out of the theater. In the meantime, how about we cool it with the dirty nun jokes?”

“It’s not dirty,” Bailey protests.

I gave you a chance, Shannon, Luke thinks, but there you go baiting him again.

In what sounds like her most derisive imitation of the world’s worst man, Shannon says, “How do you get a nun pregnant? Fuck her. Hu hu hu.”

“You didn’t have to use the f-word, Shannon. And the lawyer ones are better anyway.”

“I do not even want to know, so don’t bother. Just please . . . be quiet until the movie’s over and we have something to do.”

A silence falls. Luke watches two parents with several excited toddler-age children emerge from the skybridge that connects the top level of this parking structure to the mall. One of the kids runs ahead, a towheaded little boy no older than four, but the father springs on him the second before he races in back of a parked pickup truck that just started its engine.

“Oof,” Bailey says, “that was close.”

His words are another reminder that for the time being Luke’s eyes are not his own. Whatever he sees is being transmitted through his contact lenses to a satellite, which then bounces it down to the bunker in Kansas. Luke’s also reticent to call the place Kansas Command, but for a different reason—it conjures images of old movies about nuclear war that terrified him as a kid.

“For an hour?” Bailey finally says. “I’m supposed to just be quiet for an hour?”

“I don’t know, Bailey, go hack something!” Shannon barks, and behind her words Luke hears a burst of raucous music and excited talking from amplified voices. It’s got to be the movie playing inside the theater, the one being transmitted through Charley’s TruGlass and the audio from her earpiece.

“Oh my God,” Bailey whines, “are you actually watching this terrible movie?”

“It’s good.”

“It’s terrible. The oldest sister makes me want to jump out a window.”

“Go ahead,” Shannon says. “Get a running start.”

“We’re underground.”

“Hence the running start,” Luke says.

“The movie’s fine,” Shannon says. “You’re just a dude.”

“Yeah, that’s me. I’m a regular surfin’, drinkin’, bikini babe lovin’ dude.”

“Bailey,” Luke says, “it’s so good to hear you integrating with the team.”

Shannon laughs. Bailey doesn’t.

“My job is not to integrate. My job is to go where all of you can’t. And last time I checked, I go alone.”

Shannon has no response to this, and neither does Luke.

Luke’s words weren’t entirely sarcasm. He actually is relieved to have his brother on the team and not living as a fugitive abroad.

But it’s hardly a relief that Noah Turlington, the jackass who pretended to offer Charley therapy under the name Dylan Thorpe, is at the bunker. Is he monitoring their movements and communications along with Cole?

If Charley knew . . . well, she wouldn’t want to know right now. Not when she’s working, and not when she’s worked so hard to create the illusion she’s working alone.

As for his own feelings toward the mad scientist who set them all on this path, at some point, Luke fears, they’ll have no choice but to abandon their collective anger over how Noah deceived Charlotte into taking her first dose of Zypraxon and neglected to mention the drug had killed every other human who’d taken it.