Sometimes.

And Cole, shadowy as he is, can be a pretty good voice of reason.

Sometimes.

In this moment, she doubts he’s worried she might flip her lid and kill the guy. His concerns, as always, are driven by a multitude of agendas, often of unknown origin.

“We need a kill site and it’s not this truck,” she whispers. “This is just . . . prologue. Nothing here’s designed to actually kill, and I don’t see anything that connects to other possible victims.”

In the silence that follows, she wonders if Cole’s fighting a desire to agree with her. “We identified the snakes as nonvenomous, but if one of them went down the tube—”

“No snake’s going to crawl into a person’s open mouth. I doubt they’d even leave the container unless you coaxed them with food. The purpose of the device is fear. But that can’t be his only game.”

“So, what are you suggesting? An interrogation?”

“Something like that, yeah.”

“OK. Let’s see how it goes. But his blindfold stays on. And keep it verbal.”

Don’t hurt him, she thinks, got it. I’m sure the new ethically fluid billionaires we’re working with really hate strategic bone breaking.

But the blindfold part makes sense on several levels.

If Mattingly is going to seem sufficiently bonkers when the authorities find him, they shouldn’t give him a prolonged look at how she functions when she’s triggered. They’ll have no trouble altering her physical appearance and breaking apart all evidence of Hailey Brinkmann’s life. For all she knows, Cole’s teams are already clearing out the rental house in Richardson and altering the security footage of their mutual exit from the NorthPark Mall. Various apprehended serial killers giving consistent accounts of her impossible actions might spell trouble for Project Bluebird 2.0.

The fewer details Mattingly can share, the better.

There’s a knock against the back of the truck.

“Boyfriend alert,” Cole says.

Even though it requires her to lose sight of her captive, Charlotte heads for the cargo door, takes a deep breath, and uses two fingers only to pop the latch. Luke jumps back, raising his gun at two rats that shoot out of the cargo door the minute it’s open. He didn’t know to expect them, a reminder that he hasn’t had access to any of the camera feeds from inside the truck.

She’s known this moment was coming for a year; the man she loves standing before her and ready to help amid the kind of horrors she used to face alone. But she’s not prepared for how much she wants to throw her arms around him, even at the risk of snapping every bone in his body. Just some comfort from his heat, his familiar smell. Although, after the hours he’s spent in that Cadillac, his familiar smell has probably turned a little sour. But still, she craves it badly. It must be the terrible duration of this operation, the prolonged isolation, that’s made her this unexpectedly needy.

Then she sees his expression: bright-eyed, breathless. Excited. He’s a part of this now, something he’s wanted for a year. Can she be excited about this, too, or will his nearness now trick her into believing they’re at home together and not inside a serial killer’s truck?

“You OK?” Luke hoists himself inside by his free hand, Glock raised in the other.

“We’ve been ordered to keep chatter to a minimum.”

“Question stands,” he whispers.

“I wish I could say I’ve been through worse, but this one’s . . . special.”

“What are the rats about?”

“Like I said, he’s special. Also . . . snakes.”

Luke pales. She’s always thought snakes were languid, elegant things that just wanted to be left alone, the perpetual sunbathers of the natural world. But as a boy Luke used to run sprints along the wooded trails above their town and lived in so much fear of stepping on a rattler that he’s come to view them as animate bear traps with an appetite for ankle flesh.

“Where are they?” he asks.

“Hiding, and they’re not venomous.”

She starts for the gurney compartment, gesturing for him to follow.

He doesn’t even pause when he sees Mattingly strapped down. He’s witnessed Charlotte do much worse while triggered. Instead, he zeroes in on Mattingly’s Lucite contraption, sinks down next to it, studying the tube’s length with what looks like barely concealed disgust. All told, the thing survived its fall pretty well. There are some cracks on one side of the container, and the leg that hit the floor first is badly warped. Funny how innocuous it looks now without its former inhabitants, like a cat tree missing its padding.

Luke looks up at her for an explanation.

Charlotte opens her mouth and points inside of it, indicating where the other end of the tube went. For a long moment, Luke stares at her, jaw tensing, nostrils flaring. She raises one hand, genuinely afraid he’s about to pump six bullets into Mattingly’s torso. The old Luke might have, and if the urge is still there, she’s wondering where Luke’s going to send it to keep from giving in to it. His new muscles are designed to act, not repress.

Is there any training that can prepare you for this moment, being face-to-face with a human monster, a man who seems to glide placidly through the everyday world in a baseball cap, smelling of Old Spice while concealing a gallery of horrors beneath his garage, in the back of his truck, inside his mind?

God knows, the only training she’s had has been of the on-the-job variety.

“Search the cab, see if you can find any marked-up maps or anything,” Charley says.

Luke stands, moves closer to her, whispers in her ear, “Didn’t surveillance already search?”

“They did,” Cole says in her ear, and when Luke flinches, too, she realizes their boss just addressed both of them.

Ignoring Cole, Charley tells Luke, “See if they missed anything. It’s been a busy night. Then come back here and search the rest of the truck.”

“What are you going to do?” Luke whispers.

“Chat,” she whispers back.

Luke nods, gives one last look at Mattingly, as if afraid to leave them alone together. Then he departs.

Charlotte takes a moment to breathe, a moment to recognize that it’s her feet resting on the container’s floor now and not Cyrus Mattingly’s. A moment to see where the few remaining snakes have coiled up into the corners of the compartment.

“Let’s talk, Cyrus.”

He says nothing.

She’s tempted to draw the blindfold back, see if he’s screwed his eyes shut. His lips look slightly pursed, almost ready for a pout.

“I see, so now you’re the silent one. Well, that’s fitting, isn’t it?”

Nothing.

Keep it verbal, she reminds herself.

“How?” he finally asks, sounding winded.

“How what?”

“How did you get free?”

“What does it matter? You think you’re going to refine your process? You’re never doing this again, Cyrus. Ever.”

He absorbs this announcement without flinching.

“How many?” she asks.

Silence.

“All women, or do you snatch a dude every now and then?”

Silence.

“What was supposed to happen? You know, when I tried to pull the tube out of my mouth before those things could get down it? Is that when you were gonna switch from rats to snakes?”