“You rang?” Cole says.

Holding up one hand, Bailey says, “This is how this needs to work. Nobody talks except to answer my direct questions. I am incredibly busy here.”

Nobody says anything. Maybe because there wasn’t a direct question.

“How many people know about the remote dosing system?” Bailey asks.

“Everyone in this room and the members of The Consortium,” Cole answers.

“Does anyone else have the log-in credentials?”

“No, just you and me.”

“OK. Well, someone’s trying to get them.”

“What?”

“Don’t ask me questions; that’s not how this works.”

Noah grips Cole’s shoulder. “Explain what this means, please. Computers aren’t my thing.”

“No talking!” Bailey shouts.

Noah repeats the exact same question in a whisper.

“Whispering counts!”

Cole steps out into the hallway. Noah and Scott follow.

“The remote dosing system’s password protected,” Cole says. “Only Bailey and I know the password, and only I’m supposed to actually use it.”

“Yes, thank you, I got that part,” Noah says.

“Someone else is trying to hack the system to get it,” Scott says. “Do they want to lock us out?”

“Or they want to dose her before we do,” Cole says.

“That cannot happen.” Noah’s eyes blaze with anger, as if the idea of injecting another dose of Zypraxon into Charlotte’s blood was Cole’s idea. “In every animal test when we added a dose to a triggered subject’s bloodstream, their brains literally came out of their eyes. As in the actual definition of literally.”

“That’s never happened in a human,” Cole says.

“We’ve never tested it on one, and we sure as hell shouldn’t now.”

“I’m not planning on it. Maybe a little quieter, please.”

“I’ll quiet down as soon as you tell Bailey not to dose her preemptively to fend off this hack.”

Cole throws the door open. “Bailey!”

“No talk—”

“Shut up! You work for me. Listen, do not dose her preemptively just to fend these people off.”

Bailey’s eyes leave the screen. “Then we might not be able to dose her at all.”

Shit, Cole thinks, he was about to do it. Good thinking, Noah.

“That’s preferable to blowing up her brain.”

“Her brain, what?” Bailey cries. “Oh my God!”

“How much time do we have?”

“Less than ten minutes.”

“Hold them off until her trigger window closes, then wait thirty seconds and no longer and dose her.”

“Her brain? What are you talking—”

“Focus!”

Noah and Scott are standing so close to the door Cole bumps into both of them when he emerges from the room. So, Bailey’s never seen the photos of animal test subjects, their eyeballs missing and their eye sockets run through with tentacles of mangled, glistening brain matter. If they get through this, he’ll have to give Bailey a better education in the potential perils of a double dose. Cole closes the door behind him.

“How big is the suspect pool here?” Noah asks.

“I can count on one hand the number of people who know about the system,” Cole answers. “But only one of them’s already in the network.”

“Who?” Scott asks.

“Julia. It was her condition for letting us use Bailey after what he did to her last year.”

“You think she’s behind this?” Scott asks.

“Not after the way she acted earlier, no.”

They all fall silent as they mull the implications.

“How long do we have?” Noah finally asks.

“Less than ten minutes,” Scott answers.

“And we’re counting on Bailey to hold them off,” Noah says. It sounds less like a question and more like a warning.

“Yes,” Cole says.

“But we don’t know exactly what we’re holding off. I mean, whoever this is, they could either be trying to make sure Charley can’t retrigger or they’re trying . . .”

“To kill her. I’m calling Julia.”

“You think it’s her?”

“No, I think this whole thing’s in Bailey’s hands, and calling Julia’s the only thing I can think of to do right now and I should have done it before. Like months before.”

A second later, the three of them are in the conference room.

When Julia Crispin’s face fills in the screen, he sees familiar signs of worry around her nose and mouth.

“I was expecting to hear from you sooner,” she says.

“This hasn’t been my favorite night.”

“That makes two of us.” Her tone is strained but not accusatory. A positive sign.

“Good. I could use a friend. We have a problem, Julia.”

“We have many.”

“This one’s urgent.”

“And you’re only notifying me?” She sounds curious.

“You’re in our network, as per our agreement.”

“That’s correct.”

“Seen anybody else in there with you?”

“My team hasn’t notified me of anything. Why?”

“So it’s not you that’s trying to access the remote dosing system?”

Julia’s brow furrows, and she actually leans toward her computer as if she didn’t hear most of what he just said. She’s got a great poker face, but she’s not an ace at manufacturing emotional displays. Cole’s pretty sure this one’s genuine.

“I’ve given no such orders, no,” she answers.

“Can you instruct your monitoring team to help Bailey fend this off, whatever it is?”

“You think it’s Stephen and Philip, don’t you?”

“I don’t mean to be rude, but I need an answer. Time’s running out.”

“Her trigger window . . .” Julia seems to put it all together in a flash. And she pales.

“Julia?”

Julia nods, reaches for her mobile, and begins texting frantically.

“Done,” she says.

“Thank you.”

“I was wondering when you were going to reach out,” she says.

“The hack’s only minutes old.”

“I’m not talking about the hack,” she says. “I know what your father really did to those boys, Cole, and there wasn’t a lot of forgiveness to it. I’m assuming Charley does, too.”

She doesn’t seem to care one whit she’s just spilled a dark family secret in front of Noah and Scott. In the end, Cole shouldn’t be all that surprised his father confessed a decade-old murder to his mistress. Their affair lasted for years. In the end, it was his father’s secret to share. The part that included murder, at least.

“I should probably hop on the phone with my cyberteam,” Julia says. “My voice seems to scare them into action.”

“Julia?”

“Yes.”

“This problem we have. It’s very big.”