Thread the needle, thread the needle.

Then she realizes her foot’s pressed the gas pedal all the way to the floor. She’s been doing 120 ever since hell broke out on the other end of the phone.

A flurry of texts from Bailey have lit up her phone’s display. GO TO HOUSE NOW. ATTACK. SOMEONE’S TAKING LUKE.

The Pearson Road exit’s within sight.

She accelerates.

38

She meant to open the car door like a normal person, but when it goes flying across the sidewalk and the man and the woman who were just running toward her Volvo start backing away in terror, she realizes she failed.

Both people on the sidewalk look vaguely familiar. She’s seen them around town, trying to blend in while they casually study everyone and everything. The woman wears a baby doll dress and a blue-jean jacket; the man, acid-washed jeans and a baggy polo. So when they both pull matching Glocks on her at the same time, the effect is jarring, like two everyday humans revealing their lizard-like alien faces.

When she starts walking toward them, their eyes get wide. Their gun hands shake.

“Where is he?” she says.

In a trembling voice, the woman says, “Ms. Rowe, please, if you just calm down we can—”

Charlotte keeps walking toward them. “We’re past that. Where’s Luke?”

The man in the polo shirt’s apparently looking for a promotion. He takes up a post in front of the half-open front gate, raises his gun so that it’s aimed directly at her chest. “The rest of the team’s on its way. We’re handling it. You need to—”

“Team? There’s no goddamn team. You’re it, and someone got to Luke, didn’t they?”

“Mr. Graydon will be here any minute and then—”

She closes her fist around the barrel of his gun. He doesn’t have the courage to fire. It wouldn’t matter if he did.

“Nobody’s coming who has what I have.” She crushes the gun barrel in one fist, then tugs the resulting misshapen mass from his hand and tosses it to the sidewalk.

“Move.”

He obeys.

The house is dark. The alarm system’s sounding out two different alerts: one that says it was recently triggered, another that says it’s operating off reserve battery. Someone cut power to the house, and just this house. The neighbor’s lights were on when she pulled up.

Unfamiliar male shouts come from the guest bedroom, the one where she sometimes sleeps when Luke’s snoring keeps her awake. The memory of Luke’s snores, of his sleeping, peaceful profile, are hot pokers prodding the flames of rage in her chest.

Brief flashes of light come from the same room—the erratic jerks of a flashlight.

It’s two voices, she realizes. One’s shouting questions; the other’s chanting the same thing over and over again. The chant sounds like a Bible verse, and the guy giving it sounds remarkably peaceful and content. But his words run together, as if he doesn’t really care if anyone hears aside from his crazy idea of a god.

Slowly, she reaches out and gently presses the door open. Like the guards out front, she vaguely recognizes both men from around town: the one down on his knees is from the Clements tunnel crew; the one holding a gun on him is a plainclothes spy like the two out front. Jordy’s guy is a stout fireplug of a man, but right now his nose is bleeding and the flashlight the security guard’s shining down on him from above gives his face a misshapen cast. He rocks back and forth on his knees.

“Where? Where were they going?” the man standing over him screams.

This desperate interrogation is the best these idiots can do. And they’ve dragged the guy back inside the house because their primary concern is what the neighbors might think.

When the terrified guard sees Charley standing in the doorway, he shines the flashlight in her direction.

“Ms. Rowe, you need to leave immediately.” There’s a breathless tremor in his voice. Like the folks outside, he’s terrified and overwhelmed and not cut out for this. “Ms. Rowe, please, go wait outside. The rest of the team is coming.”

“There is no rest of the team,” she says.

“Ms. Rowe, please, when Mr. Graydon gets here, we’ll regroup and figure out what—”

“Who is he?”

“He was the lookout. We caught him. The others . . . the others got away.”

“Luke?”

He doesn’t answer, doesn’t even shake his head.

“Did they get away with Luke?”

He doesn’t answer.

Charlotte punches her fist through the wall next to her. The sound’s loud enough to stop their captive’s prayer. His eyes open, and along with the security guard standing over him, he watches Charley gently remove her forearm and fist from the deep hole. She extends her hand in front of her, opens it, and releases chunks of drywall onto the floor. Then she twirls her fingers so they can see her hand’s in great shape.

“Give me the flashlight,” she says.

His hand shaking, the guard extends the flashlight, leaning forward onto one foot, as if he’s afraid of her gravitational pull. She takes it from him gently, then shines it in their captive’s face. His expression is a fixed mask.

“Get out of here,” she tells the security guard.

Practically falling over his feet, he complies.