The rest of the surveillance screens offer various views inside Charley’s—Hailey Brinkmann’s, he corrects himself—rental house, along with repeatedly alternating exterior views of the backyard, side alley, and surrounding streets. It’s a flat, tree-filled suburban neighborhood, but Julia Crispin’s upgraded their camera technology to night vision without any of the customary flare. He can see insects flittering around the streetlamps. Over the past hour, he’s been able to track the lights winking out in the front rooms of the neighboring houses.

It’s a nice setup, but Cole still misses his microdrones, tiny little eyes in the skies he could sweep almost silently over any area. They weren’t much good after dark if you weren’t chasing a specific light source, but still—they gave him a sense of almost godlike power. Despite their individual resolution, the angles on the surveillance screens feel fragmented, too interior. His brain’s already tired from constantly assembling them into a complete picture of the scene in his head—another consequence of Charley’s new rule that they fall back.

“Seriously, what’s he waiting for?” Tim Zadan asks. Cole realizes another twenty minutes have gone by since Luke asked the same question through his earpiece.

Zadan is baby-faced, blond, and blue-eyed; not Cole’s type, but cute enough that Cole has to constantly catch himself to make sure he doesn’t treat him with unearned deference. The camera tech is seated at one of the monitoring stations in front of where Cole’s been slowly pacing since Charley walked inside the house. Zadan’s usually tight-lipped, but without flocks of microdrone camera feeds to monitor, he, like Shannon, has a lot less to do.

The only one who seems as intent as always is Paul Hynman, the med tech in charge of monitoring Charley’s vitals. Her blood tracker stats are displayed on a constantly refreshing screen to the extreme right of the monitor bank above their heads. The neuro panel is brand new. After some work, they’ve made it so it can detect the actual presence of paradrenaline in her brain. In the past, Charley’s blood trackers identified trigger events solely on the basis of the impossible blood pressure and blood oxygen levels they produced. No more.

All told, Paul is the only tech who now has more responsibility, not less. Right now, it shows. Bald and wiry, with a constantly skeptical expression, he’s relying on the computer monitor in front of him instead of the display screen filled with the same information overhead. It looks like he expects Charlotte’s heart to stop at any second.

“I don’t know,” Cole answers. Then he touches his earpiece and asks Luke, “How you holding up out there?”

“What can I say,” Luke answers, “the Caddy’s comfy.”

On one of the displays overhead, Luke looks right into the camera implanted in the Escalade’s dashboard and gives them a broad smile and a thumbs-up.

It’s also damn near invisible, Cole thinks, and thank God, because Mattingly’s sure had a lot of time to study the street from behind the wheel of his van.

“She’s still got a light on, right?” Luke asks. “I think I can see a light.”

“He can’t see her feed?” Noah asks from behind Cole.

Cole spins in place. When Noah sees his expression, he bows his head and mutters a soft apology. It’s doubtful Luke heard him through Cole’s earpiece, but still, orders are orders. Maybe he should give Noah a little credit, though. For the past hour he’s been sitting in a chair against the back wall, quiet and erect as a statue, studying the uneventful progression of events on the monitors with the fierce intensity of a student trying to impress the teacher.

Making sure the connection to Luke isn’t open, Cole says, “We don’t think it would be possible for Luke to maintain an effective tail while also being treated to the sight of some sicko trying to dismember his girlfriend.”

“We?” Shannon Tran says. “Nobody asked my opinion.”

“Did you have one?” Cole asks.

“No.”

“But you wanted me to ask you anyway?”

“No, you just said we so I thought I should point out . . . Look, it’s been slow, OK. I’m just bored. I didn’t mean anything by it.”

Over the internal channel, Bailey Prescott says, “Ask her about my Nutella.”

“Shut up, Bailey,” Cole and Shannon say at the same time.

Then, to Shannon, Cole says, “See. We’re more of a we than you thought.”

For some reason, the longer they all sit down here together in tense silence, the sillier Cole’s gag order on Noah seems. Cole moves to him, then takes out his earpiece and clamps it in one hand.

“I don’t think he’s up to it yet,” Cole says quietly.

“Who?” Noah asks.

“Luke.”

“What’s he doing out there, then?”

“He’s not up to watching her feed during an op. That’s what I meant. He’s got a history of emotionality, and it’ll be a while before I’m comfortable.”

“Makes sense,” Noah says in almost a whisper. “Have the control room act as a filter, telling him only what he needs to know. It’s how I would have done it.”

It’s chilly down here under the ground, but Cole feels suddenly warm. He’s worried it’s pure attraction, triggered by Noah’s nearness. But it’s not. He feels less alone. For the first time in years, it actually feels like he and Noah are working toward the same objective and not just on the same secret project.

Or Bailey’s intrusive advice got into his head.

Cole moves back to the monitoring stations, wondering if he’s made a mistake.

A little while later, Noah breaks the silence. “Two a.m.,” he says.

“Excuse me?” Cole asks.

“If he’s done his homework, he’s going to wait until two a.m.”

“Why?” Shannon asks.

“The Night Stalker was about home invasions, and that’s how he did it. He figured out the majority of people obeying a normal sleep schedule entered REM sleep by two in the morning, so it was easier to break into their house without waking them up first. That way he could surprise them in bed.”

The room takes in this information like a family trying to process a relative’s explicit account of surgery during Thanksgiving dinner.

“He also stopped smoking crack so he could be a better serial killer,” Shannon says. “That’s one fact I wish I could get out of my head.”

Tim says, “I think he’s going to try to lure her outside. Maybe take her in the yard. Who wants to bet?”

“We are not betting on the actions of a serial killer,” Cole says. “You want to play games, go back to Trivial Pursuit, Night Stalker Edition.”

“Sorry,” Tim mumbles.

“Which one was the Night Stalker?” Shannon asks.

“Richard Ramirez,” Paul Hynman says without looking up from his computer. Everyone’s startled by his sudden contribution.

“Was that the Golden State guy?” Tim asks.

“No,” Noah answers. “The Golden State Killer was the original Night Stalker. But he went so long without being caught they gave the title to somebody else who also liked breaking into people’s houses in the middle of the night and raping and sometimes killing them.”