“Really?” Charlotte asks. “I asked you to send him a text while I was recovering, and you acted like you couldn’t even be bothered to say his name. Now you’re saying you monitor Luke when I’m out of town?”

Before Cole can answer, Luke says, “You didn’t, did you? You had no idea why I’d arrested Jordy, and you still told me to let him go.”

“There were no reports of shoot-outs or bar fights or any kind of violence in Altamira that night. There hasn’t been a homicide investigation here in seven years. My assumption was reasonable.”

“The report was sitting in the station, and she wasn’t going to talk until I had Jordy in a cell,” Luke says.

“I had nothing to do with Lacey Shannon walking out of that station,” Cole says, but Charley can already see where Luke’s headed with this.

“No, you were the reason Jordy walked out a little while after she did. And, guess what? No one’s heard from Lacey since.”

For a while, the only sounds are the water lapping against the end of the dock, the distant drone of a jet plane flying overhead, probably LA-bound, then the insistent buzz of a circling fly that none of them can bring themselves to swat away. Cole’s sunglasses still hide his eyes, but his mouth is a tense, set line.

“Before you hold me responsible for a murder,” Cole finally says, “we should probably be sure there was one.”

“Well, you’re about to get right on that,” Luke says, “right?”

She’s not sure if Cole’s stillness is that of a predator waiting to strike or a man trying to hide that taking a single step might send him off-balance.

“Cole?” Charley finally asks.

He turns his head slightly, which makes it clear he’s been glaring daggers at Luke from behind his sunglasses.

“I want three,” Charley says.

“Three what?” he asks.

“You know what.”

“You must be joking.”

“I’m not,” she says. “We need to protect ourselves. I need to protect us.”

“You have plenty of protection. Trust me.”

“See, that’s just it . . .”

“You don’t trust me. Yes, I know. And it’s very distressing, I promise. But the answer’s no. I’m not giving you Zypraxon so you can weaponize a vigilante mission I don’t approve of.”

“I’m talking about self-defense, Cole.”

Cole removes his sunglasses. The look in his eyes frightens her. “I’m afraid,” he says with deliberate enunciation, “that it’s not always possible to control everything that happens once you’ve been triggered.” She doesn’t need skywriting to get his point. He’s talking about Richard Davies. “Zypraxon is not a precision-guided missile. It’s a cannon. And we must be cautious and responsible with how we use it.”

So he’s not mentioning the incident—the murder!—specifically. Fine. She’ll thank him later. Once she stops sweating. He must be satisfied she got his point, because he slides his sunglasses back on.

Next to her, Marty grumbles, “The only reason you don’t approve of this vigilante mission is ’cause you can’t profit from it.”

“Oh, shut up, Bernie Sanders.”

“Quite the opposite, in fact,” Marty adds. “This little mission might expose who you’re really in bed with.”

“Since it’s clear all of you believe I’m incapable of caring for another human being or following anything one might call a principle, might I suggest the following,” Cole says. “Put your faith in the idea that I won’t allow anything bad to happen to any of you for the very simple reason that it would entail a colossal waste of my money and my time. When Charlotte isn’t working, I want her happy and relaxed. However, it remains to be seen whether the two of you will ever allow her to be either, no matter what I do.”

Cole turns and heads off down the dock.

30

Once the Suburban pulls away from the boat launch, Cole asks, “You got everything?”

Next to him in the back seat, Scott nods. He’d already removed his earpiece by the time Cole got back to the vehicle, so Cole wants to be sure he really did listen to the entire conversation via the matching earpiece worn by Cole, the same one Charlotte refused to wear when she took out Davies.

“Tell me about the operation here on the ground,” Cole says.

Their driver, Fred Packard, is older than Scott. He’s the security director here in Altamira, and he’s said very little since their arrival. Paunchy and balding with a wide, easily sunburned nose, he was also one of Ed’s old cop friends, hired by Ed, so the fact that he might be pissed about Ed’s unexpected retirement has Cole on guard. “We’ve barely got an operation here on the ground,” Fred says.

Cole’s too shocked to say anything.

Scott clears his throat. “In a pure manpower sense, it’s . . . it’s light, sir. Apparently Ed wanted it that way.”

“Well, I didn’t. Jesus Christ. Why is it light? She’s my most valuable test subject.” The words Complete Elimination strobe across his brain so brightly he almost says them aloud. “Who called in the arrest of Clements?”

Scott says, “We’ve got eyes on the ground, for sure, but those eyes are not attached to people who are strike capable in the event of a real threat. That would require a different type of personnel, and Ed gave the impression it was outside our budget.”