If they ever do this again.

His tablet’s split between two feeds. On the right, he’s got a view from the chopper’s nose cam as it fires through night darkness in pursuit of Charley and Luke. On the left, the feed from inside Mattingly’s truck. He’s amazed by Charley’s apparent calm, unsurprised by Luke’s loyalty, and, though he hates to admit it, envious of the simple bond between them.

If he minimizes both screens, he can watch the digital map tracking the Black Hawk’s flight path and the ground path of Mattingly’s commandeered truck. But the map’s misleading. On-screen, the distance between the two flashing points seems deceptively small.

In the bottom right corner of the map, a constantly fluctuating number provides Cole with more uncertainty than enlightenment. Using speed readings from the Black Hawk and Mattingly’s truck, the figure gives him an estimate of how long it will take the chopper to catch up with Charley and Luke. But it doesn’t factor in the drop-off of two men at the sight of the abandoned SUV and the paradrenaline vials within. Cole assured the pilot before he left that even though they had new orders and more distance to travel, retrieving the vials was paramount and he should take as much time as he and his crew needed to safely land and take off in the unfamiliar field in which they’d been left. In short, he’d tried to buy Charley and Luke as much additional time as possible without making his business partners even more suspicious.

On the opposite side of the screen and at the top is the time remaining in Charley’s trigger window, a bright-red number counting down like a stopwatch.

0:58:32.

Remote dosing her shouldn’t be an issue. He can justify it later—if there is a later—by saying she was too valuable as a test subject to face down whoever these monsters were with just a gun in hand. And the only one who might realize he’s dosed her in the moment is Julia, since her team’s been given access to the network so they can monitor Bailey.

So there’s nothing he can do for the time being. He’s dealt with every factor he can.

With one minor exception.

He’s alone in the main house’s ground-floor kitchen, feeling as out of place as all the shiny, untouched implements and utensils. There’s a coffee maker that still looks brand new because it’s never been used. The drawers, he knows, are full of untouched flatware. There’s even a framed photograph hanging beside the window above the sink—a sepia-toned black-and-white shot of open prairie that by day roughly mirrors the view. The window’s even got curtains. Hunter green with a gold stripe along the bottom. Plain, tasteful. The kind a semicloseted gay guy would buy for his dorm room and say his mom picked out. There’s a veritable commissary attached to the bunker below that’s actually designed to feed everyone on staff. This kitchen is just for show.

Now that he thinks about it, he’s not sure why they went to such trouble to create a false ground floor for the house. It’s not like he has meetings with civilians here, and the chance of someone wandering in by mistake is almost nil. Electrified fencing blanketed by motion-activated security cameras rings the entire property, and armed guards walk the perimeter twenty-four hours a day.

As long as I can afford them, they do.

If Stephen and Philip pull out, he might be forced to secure this place by locking the front door and pulling some furniture over the basement entrance to the bunker.

He could kill time just as easily belowground, but there’s a task waiting up here. And even though he’s near to it, he’s avoided it now for just a little too long.

The guards flanking the door to Noah’s room straighten as he approaches. He waves his hand and they part.

Inside, Noah’s seated on the bed, back resting vertically against a mountain he’s made of the pillows, his elbows resting on his bent knees, staring into space with an expression somewhere between defiant and exhausted. He’s changed into a pair of heather-gray pajama pants and a V-neck white T-shirt. The outfit’s designed to send a message, Cole’s sure. I don’t expect to be let out of this room anytime soon, so enjoy trying not to look at the outline of my ball sack while you discipline me.

Noah’s eyes track Cole’s every movement as he takes a seat in the chair across from the bed, but Noah doesn’t move a muscle otherwise. For a long time, neither man says anything, and after a while the sounds of their intermittent breathing starts to annoy Cole.

“I’m not a coward,” he finally says.

“Have they caught her yet?”

“No.”

“What happens when they do?”

“I’m not a coward, Noah. A coward never would have gone to first base with you.”

“First base. You mean, like, kissing?”

“That’s not the part of our relationship I meant.”

“Which part did you mean?”

“The mad scientist part.”

“Don’t confuse angry with insane. Not right now.”

“Sane people throw chairs. Got it.”

“I apologize for letting my outburst get physical,” Noah says.

“Thank you.”

“Now tell me what happens when they catch her.”

“Both teams are mine; they answer to me. They have orders to assist her and then bring her back. That way I can give her what she wants and make The Consortium think I actually reacted to her going rogue.”

“I’m talking about after.”

“There’re some things I haven’t told you.”

“Of course there are.”

“Oh, what does that mean? Like you’re so transparent?”

“Six months. Six months, Cole. I’ve worked in your lab for half a year now under constant surveillance, cut off from the world. This is the first time I’ve left, and I didn’t request the trip. I have been the best little boy at Graydon Pharmaceuticals, and the whole time you still haven’t given me access to a single vial of stable paradrenaline.”

“Kelley Chen and her lab are doing good work on the paradrenaline studies.”

“Obviously not or there’d be progress.”

“We’ve manufactured a poison. A very effective one.”

Noah is startled silent by this update. Truth be told, it’s not really an update. The news is a little over half a year old; he just hasn’t told Noah about it until now, partly because Noah was on probation for a big chunk of that time, but largely because, in Cole’s opinion, it’s never been very good news. Noah wasn’t expecting it, that’s clear.

“A poison?” he asks.

“We used a paradrenaline sample to wipe out cancer cells. The catch was, the cancer returned a short while later. A supercharged version of it that could kill tissue samples within minutes. Paradrenaline plus cancer equals instant death, apparently. Congratulations. It’s our first success, other than, you know, Charlotte. Stephen’s thrilled.”

Although, given his current behavior, you’d have trouble telling.

Noah’s stunned expression contorts into a grimace.

“A poison,” he whispers, as if it’s a dirty word.

“It’s not what we were shooting for initially, but it’s something.”

“Well, give me back my breakthrough and I’ll give you a lot more than something.”