“So this time, you’re going to pursue another path concurrently with your chosen one. You’re going to make a study of the minds, the behavior, the brain matter, pretty much any part of them you want, of the type of men who cause the paralyzing fear Zypraxon is supposed to protect us against. You’re going to see if you can isolate the neurological, the biological, the physiological origins of what we, for the purposes of our study, are calling pure evil. And you’re going to do it without messy restrictions and the sort of scientific ethics you never really paid much attention to anyway.”

“I see,” he says quietly. “You do realize that for any study to be effective you need more than one subject. More than two, even.”

“You’ll get more. Many more, if all goes as planned.”

“I see.”

Just as Cole hoped, Noah’s so sidelined by the offering of two live subjects, he’s temporarily forgotten about paradrenaline altogether.

“Good. I’m glad you see. See this, too.”

When Cole comes within inches of Dylan, the security team seems to straighten all at once.

“There’s no recording of the phone call you had with Charley the night of Luke’s abduction. So I have no idea what other secrets you might have shared or if you took her into your confidence about anything besides your secret stash. And honestly, I don’t care. I’m not going to make her miserable over it. Not right now. Not after everything she’s been through. And you? You have way too much work to do.

“And besides, you and I now have a secret that’s far more important than anything you could have shared with her. And so, if you ever go around my back again, if you ever try to earn her confidence, try to make her into the sister in darkness and grief that you probably fantasize she is during your private moments when there’s no one around for you to crack wise with or fuck into doing your bidding, I’ll let her know. I’ll let her know that you’re hard at work on the very serial killer I let her believe she murdered by mistake. And then I’ll take him away from you, close your labs again, and destroy everything you’ve done.”

“Then you won’t have my hard work, either,” Noah says.

“I have paradrenaline and you don’t. It’s a remarkable chemical, the medical implications of which might be so vast they probably won’t all be revealed within our lifetimes. And for the time being, you’re not going anywhere near it. You can’t make it without her, and you have no access to her without me. Make no mistake, Noah Turlington. You’re my employee again. I’ve rehired you, despite everything, and that means this time, I’ve figured out the best way to be rid of you if things go off the rails again.”

“I see.” His smile seems genuine and affectionate. Maybe he just likes the attention. “How long? How long before I can study paradrenaline?”

“Gosh, I’m not sure,” Cole says. “You were pretty close, to be honest. Then you went behind my back, and I had to start the clock all over again. Maybe while you’re doing all this work, you can make an effort to earn my trust.”

Cole taps Richard Davies’s transport pod. To his security team, he says, “Load them in, please.”

Noah steps back as the team advances, but it looks like it’s a bit of a struggle for him, as if the presence of Richard Davies exerts a magnetic pull. He seems so thoroughly pleased with his gift, it looks like Cole’s threats and ultimatums have gone right through him. That was the plan. Part of it, anyway. To leave Noah so excited by the prospect of unfettered experiments on a subject like Richard Davies, there will be almost no chance he’ll ever break any of Cole’s rules again.

The threats were fun, though.

Either way, the rules have been established. The jet is gassed. The transport pods are being loaded into the plane, and in just another moment, Noah Turlington will follow them onboard, albeit from a different entrance. They’ve already wheeled the staircase to the forward loading door.

Noah turns his back to Cole and starts walking toward the shiny new plane, staring up at it with a look of wide-eyed wonderment.

“You’re pleased?” Cole asks.

“Very.”

“Good.”

Those security team members who aren’t helping load the transport pods are standing in a circle around the two of them now. A circle they’ve shifted and at times widened as they’ve moved closer to the plane. Cole can tell that every minute the two of them spend together, the surrounding men will spend on edge, trigger fingers at the ready. Maybe it’s because they know their history; maybe it’s the energy they give off.

He’s so distracted by these thoughts he doesn’t notice Noah’s been looking at him with a broad smile for a long moment. “You seem different,” Noah says.

“Different?”

“Yeah. The way you’re carrying yourself. I don’t know. It’s more confident.”

“Well, I haven’t changed my hair, and I haven’t been to the gym in weeks.”

“No, it’s something else. Don’t worry. It’s a good thing.”

“Oh, OK then.”

“Oh, yeah, absolutely. Murder looks good on you.”

Many impossible things have become possible in Cole’s life of late, but there simply isn’t any way for Noah to know what he did to Donald Clements. There just isn’t. He’d spent the last three weeks buried in a concrete cell under the earth with no electronic devices of any kind. The cell guards and the team that brought him here played no part in Cole’s visit to Donald Clements’s home in North Carolina.