“I know.”

“Can we fix it together? When it’s time?”

He wasn’t expecting anything like an unqualified yes. She’s too savvy an operator to grant anyone unconditional compliance. Still, she’s staring at the camera for what feels like an eternity. She moistens her lips with the tip of her tongue, looks to the ceiling, and clears her throat. It was her efforts that helped put The Consortium back together, but she did it at Cole’s insistence. Now he’s asking her to turn against business partners who may or may not have turned against them. But she’s also had a front row seat to how Stephen and Philip have acted since Project Bluebird 2.0 commenced, so it’s not like the request’s coming out of nowhere. Still, maybe it’s the kind of ask you make over a quiet, private dinner and not at the end of a frantic phone call. But right now, he’s not very hungry and they’re in different parts of the country.

“When this is over, we can certainly discuss the road ahead. Just the two of us. In confidence.”

With that she ends the call, and Cole takes what feels like his first deep breath in days.

“I’m open to thoughts,” Cole finally says.

Noah and Scott exchange a befuddled look. It’s like Cole just spoke four words of a foreign language.

Christ almighty, Cole thinks, am I that bad at taking advice?

“Thoughts?” Scott asks.

“What’s your opinion of Julia’s behavior? Do we think she’s behind the hack?”

“No,” Noah answers. “But you know her better than I do.”

“I’m with Dr. Turlington,” Scott says.

“Well, my father knew her better than I did, that’s for sure.”

“Indeed,” Noah says. “It sounds like he told her a great deal about your past.”

Cole’s silent.

“It sounds like your father didn’t actually forgive those boys, did he?” Noah asks.

“He did not.”

“And Charley knows the real story?” Noah asks.

“She does.”

Noah nods, getting it. Scott, however, is still staring at his feet as if he’s trying to decipher fading text written on the floor.

“So since the last thing you said to Charley was a lie, and she knew it was a lie,” Scott says, “you were basically ordering her to defy you.”

“Correct.”

“It was more than that,” Noah says. “You ordered her to kill whoever Cyrus Mattingly’s working with.”

“I’m not sure it was an order. More like a . . . vague allusion.”

He can’t tell if Scott’s judging him. He can never tell if Scott’s judging him.

Noah, on the other hand, is smiling and nodding. “Works for me,” he finally says.

“How much time do we have?” Cole asks Scott.

Scott checks his phone. “Five minutes.”

Another silence.

“They’re not going to overdose her,” Noah says. “They just want to stop her. They don’t want to kill her.”

“Killing her would stop her,” Cole says. “It would also stop Luke, who’s heavily armed with some of our technology.” Just the thought of being confined in a moving vehicle right next to someone undergoing the cascade of grotesqueries that visits animal subjects when overdosed makes Cole nauseated.

“You want me to get an update from Bailey?” Scott asks.

“No. Let him work.”

“Is this really all we can do?” Noah asks. “Wait for Bailey?”

“Well, if you believe in God, you could always pray,” Cole says.

“I am,” Scott answers, “silently.”

Noah seems to consider this for a moment.

“I’m on the fence,” Noah answers. “I think I’ll just try positive thinking.”

30

Highway 287

“Three minutes,” Luke says.

Charlotte nods, stares out the passenger-side window, acting like she’s searching for a CLEAN RESTROOMS sign and not trying to silence a storm of thoughts in her head.

Thoughts is a generous word for what’s plaguing her.

It’s more like a quick, angry inventory of what she’ll be and what she won’t be if she doesn’t get dosed again.

Basic firearms training, check.

Hand-to-hand combat training, nope. Cole’s been understandably reticent about letting her take martial arts classes when a single strike from her right hand during a trigger window is capable of almost taking someone’s head off.

Ability to fight her way free of a reasonably strong captor. Half check. Maybe.

Experience fighting for her life in real-world situations without paradrenaline flowing through her veins. Giant red X mark indicating a value lower than zero.

If they don’t dose her, she’ll be in a position she’s never been in before.

Relying on Luke for her personal safety.

Luke’s special, but relying on a man isn’t her favorite thing.

Her father forever warped the concept of what protection means. He exposed her to constant risk from dangerous stalkers rather than endanger the cash flow generated by their public appearances, all while claiming he was shielding her from a world that would never truly understand what happened to her. Her grandmother’s boyfriend, Uncle Marty, is probably the closest she’s ever had to a male protector, before and after her grandmother’s sudden death. When she was a teenager, he and some of his friends escorted a particularly frightening stalker to the edge of town when the guy showed up on her grandmother’s doorstep. But that was a group effort, and there’d been some women in the crew.

It’s not about relying on a man, she realizes. It’s about relying on the man I love.

She saved Luke’s life, and under the right circumstances, she could do it again with ease. It’s a unique foundation their relationship’s rested on comfortably for a year. But it’s the reverse of most of the relationships she’s seen, the straight ones anyway. When she and Luke both hear a strange noise in the middle of the night, their feet hit the floor at the same time. Then Charley remembers she doesn’t take Zypraxon every day, and although there’s an emergency reserve of pills close to her hometown, it’s not exactly in her bedside drawer, and the conditions under which she’s allowed to access it are strict. But still, she’s not the girl who grabs her man’s arm when she’s startled or afraid. Maybe because her experience of bringing down hideous predators with her bare hands has rewired her brain to the point that she’s less skittish and afraid even when she’s not triggered.

For a while now, she’s felt like an asset instead of a need. After being treated like a burden and a head case by her father, a possible infant serial killer by vast swaths of the internet, and a freak show oddity by large auditoriums full of horror movie fans pretending to care about her case, Charlotte stopped being a burden shrouded in darkness several years ago.

But now, in just a few short minutes, she might become that burden again; a woman who doesn’t know when to quit, being patiently indulged by her gun-toting boyfriend.

In the eyes of who, though? Who would judge her like this?

Someone who doesn’t care enough about the women who might die tonight, she thinks, and who gives a damn what they think?