“I better take this,” he says.

“Sure.”

She fights the urge to close her eyes, just so she can think. But then she might end up having to think about what to do now that she’s driven off the road.

Either Cole flat-out lied about their security situation, or he was too lazy or distracted to know the facts. Both prospects are terrifying.

And in another few minutes, Bailey, the closest they have on the inside of a system that’s failing to protect them, might get kicked out of the network.

To say nothing of the terrorists in their backyard.

Not bad for a Sunday night in a small town.

She dials Luke’s cell.

Charley likes to leave all the lights on when they go out, so Luke’s not surprised when he comes home to find they’re all burning, even though her station wagon’s gone. But when the burglar alarm only lets out a weak two-tone chime as he opens the front door, he stops in his tracks.

The lights are one thing; the burglar alarm’s another. She likes that extra layer of security. So does he. And if she’d set it before she left, the thing would be squealing holy hell right now until he punched in the code.

He checks the panel, scans the log. Every time he spends more than a few seconds futzing with the system, he remembers how Bailey used it to first make contact with them months before. And Bailey’s the last thing he wants to be thinking about right now.

Apparently Charley left a little over an hour ago, long after he went to the station.

So she just walked out the front door and didn’t set the alarm?

He’s getting ready to call her when his cell phone rings; it’s her.

“Hey, where are you?” he asks.

“So lots of news to discuss. Are you at the station? I should come there.”

In the kitchen, he undoes his gun belt, sets it on the counter. “No, I just got home. Hey, why didn’t you set the alarm? I mean, not like it matters with Cole’s people all over. Still, it’s probably not a bad idea to have an extra layer of—”

“Luke, stop. They’re not all over. That’s just it. We need to talk. In person.”

There’s a cold breeze on the back of his neck. He turns. The window above the sink is halfway open. More than halfway open. He’s moving to it when the darkness just beyond it lurches toward him. There’s a sharp, high-pitched buzz, then a fiery bloom of pain erupts in the center of his chest. The shock of it sends him skittering backward, reaching for the edge of the counter nearby. His hand misses, and he hits the floor ass-first.

He’s screaming Charley’s name, but his voice sounds far away, and he sees his phone spinning away from him across the linoleum. Maybe it’s shock. But it’s not a bullet that struck him. It’s something small, and it’s somehow coating his throat and his arms with a sensation that combines hot and cold.

The words coming from him are hopelessly mangled. Charldontcum DontcomeCharley . . . Chaurrrlleee. Then it feels as if all his bones have been swiftly and effortlessly removed from his body. Having lost control of his limbs, his upper body hits the floor, vaguely aware the final impact should have hurt more than it did.

Poisoned, he realizes.

Everything around him goes dark.

At first, he thinks he’s losing consciousness. But there’s a shrill, insistent beeping in the darkness, the sound the burglar alarm makes when a power failure forces it to use its reserve battery.

Someone’s cut power to the house.

Then there are other sounds: the front door opening, footsteps—heavy, but moving swiftly and determinedly. Inside, he’s screaming, but whatever the dart was tipped with has paralyzed him. He tries to shout, hears only a snotty gurgle in one nostril.

There are shadows over him. Two, he thinks. One’s so tall and broad, he wonders if he’s imagining it. They lift him by his shoulders and limp ankles as if he weighs nothing. As if all of this is normal, routine. He can’t feel the material that’s suddenly being pulled up around him. Only when he sees it closing over him does he realize it’s some sort of bag. The sound he hears next is so ordinary, in another circumstance, he might laugh. A zipper. He’s being zipped inside of a bag the size of a human body. The size of his body.

Blinded, his limbs useless, he’s hoisted up into the air. It should hurt, but it doesn’t. His body’s numb; his eyes feel hot and wet. There are tears coming from his eyes he can’t blink away.

Then a siren starts to scream, and the men carrying him jump with surprise.

It’s the burglar alarm.

Whoever these men are—Jordy’s? Cole’s?—they cut the power to the house, but someone managed to set off the alarm regardless. There’s only one person he knows who might be able to do that.

Bailey, Luke thinks, and then darkness takes him.

When the top of the steering wheel cracks in her grip, Charlotte realizes she’s been triggered.

She’s been screaming Luke’s name ever since he started crying out to her in that horrible garbled voice, and now, the sensation she hasn’t felt since she jammed one foot into Richard Davies’s bear trap is back, up and down her body. Bone music.

She hasn’t broken the steering wheel entirely. She can still drive, thank God.

She widens her grip, sucks in the kind of deep breaths required to focus Zypraxon’s power so she can perform ordinary actions.