Better safe than sorry. Better safe than fucking dead. That was the philosophy behind their piling into a big, unmarked van, making a quick stop to pick up their tools and toys, and then heading over to the parade route. The best-case scenario, the safest case, would be for the parade to be shut down. Sam had argued for that, having Jackson even call up the captain, and then mayor, with his clout and concerns. But nothing could be done. In the minds of city officials, suspending the parade because of a simple rumor would do more harm than good. It might create panic, they said.

Sam would give them something else to fucking panic about. He’d seen the result firsthand last week, and this time people would die right in front of him.

The mayor’s people said it might get people trampled.

No one had gotten trampled at the courthouse. He’d seen many people collapse, though, on the ground with their faces loose with death, their lungs filling with liquid. This time, there wasn’t anything paramedics would be able to do.

“Dave,” Sam said on his phone, “Can you do me a favor?”

“Another one?” His voice was lazy and sleep-filled.

“Can you head down to the parade, find Clara? We’re stuck in traffic and I just found out that Kurt is on the loose.” He wasn’t about to tell Dave the truth. Not unless he wanted to blow the man’s psyche entirely.

Jackson was calling his name.

“Okay, Dave?”

Jackson said, “Sam, we’ve gotta talk.”

“Dave? You’re not wasted, are you?”

“Maybe I am,” he said.

“Sam, let’s go,” Jackson said. “They’re not shutting it down.”

“Who else can we call?” Sam asked, after hanging up on Drunk Dave.

“Forget it. The parade’s going on.”

“Get me there, as fast as you can. We’ll have to find them on our own.”

“Tansy,” Jackson yelled to the front of the van, to the driver. “Start blowing some red lights.”

“I’ve already blown three.”

“Blow three more. We’ve got to get there in five minutes.”

On any normal day, the route would take five minutes. But today, the holiday weekend, the parade weekend, it was a different story. There was a huge crowd gathered, cars parked in every open spot. On top of all this, they had a whole route of roads closed to cut off their approach.

“So much for your vacation,” Jackson said to Sam.

From the front of the van they heard Tansy swearing.

“What is it?”

“Fucking traffic. We’re jammed up!”

The van had come to a halt a moment ago, and there had been no progress. The men in the van struggled and craned their necks to look out the windows, and Sam struggled to come to grips with the reality that they might not make it in time to the parade.

“Fuck!”

“Open the back door!” Tansy yelled.

“What?” said Jackson. “Why?”

“Just do it.”

As soon as Jackson slid the door open, the distant sound of protest chants came wafting in.

“It’s those damn protesters again.” Sam said. “They’ve been at it all week.”

The van still wasn’t moving. Tansy jumped up from the driver’s seat and poured his large body into the back of the van, digging around in their equipment boxes. “Matt, take the wheel.”

“What the hell are you doing back here?” Jackson asked.

A few more weapons dropped to the floor before Tansy appeared with a small helicopter. It looked like a children’s toy.

“Boys,” Tansy spoke. “Meet my drone. I’ll fly him ahead and give us the bird’s-eye view of exactly what the hell is going on down there.”

After letting his new toy out the van’s door, Tansy jumped back into the front passenger’s seat, expertly manipulating the controls in his lap, while Matthias pushed the van up onto the curb, nearly side-swiping a few illegally parked cars. Fuck it. Today, they deserved it. Sam sat back, his eyes glued to a screen again, but this time so were everyone else’s. The drone flew over the crowd. God, they were really packed in. The perfect target. Now he just had to find the men from the other video. They were there somewhere. They had to be. And this time, Sam knew what to look for from the beginning.

He pulled out his phone, and without looking away from the tiny computer screen Tansy had balanced on the dash, speed-dialed Clara. Her phone had been busy all morning, since her message earlier. When she answered this time, he did nothing to disguise the worry in his voice.

“Clara, what’s going on there?”

“What? What do you mean?”

“Is everything normal?” His mind was racing too fast to talk properly, to say anything sensible. Clara, in turn, answered his questions, but her voice was strange sounding. Distant. Foreign. Scared.

“Sam? What’s going on? Why are you asking me all this?”

He wasn’t sure what to say. It wasn’t worth scaring the shit out of her. It could have just been a false alarm.

“Is this about Kurt?” she asked.

“What do you mean?”

“I got a call from Vivian. She said he just got released an hour ago. He’s downtown somewhere, walking around.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“I know. Great way to rain on her parade, huh?”

Sam said, “I told Dave to come check on you guys. I told him where you’d be. We’re still a few minutes out.”

“What’s wrong, though? And who’s we?”

“The DARC Ops team arrived this morning.”

“Oh.” She sounded concerned now. Maybe more so than the news about Kurt.

“Yeah,” he said, sweeping his eyes over Tansy’s screen. Still nothing. Shit. “We just wanted to be at the parade to monitor it. It’s no big deal.”

“Well, will you be watching with me or working?”

“Clara, would there be any way to pull Molly out of it and take her home?”

“I thought you just said it was no big deal.”

“It’s not.”

“Pulling Molly would be a pretty huge deal. Sam, what’s going on?”

He didn’t want to tell her. He couldn’t scare her like that. Not until she was in his arms. How many fucking minutes away were they now? “Nothing, nothing. I’m just being overly cautious. Really, you shouldn’t have to worry.”

“I don’t like this, Sam.”

“Me neither. But we’re working on it.”

“And this thing with Kurt, too. Do you think he could know where I am?”

Sam ran through all the possibilities. He thought he caught a glimpse of Clara on the tiny screen. She was alone, vulnerable in a crowd. “What kind of privacy settings do you have on your social media?”

“What?”

“Facebook, Instagram, whatever. Are they private? Are they restricted?”

“Why?”

“Because he can see where you are. I know what you’re like with those selfies.”

There was a long pause. Jackson had begun to look at Sam with a hardening glare as their van bounced along the pavement.

“Clara?”

On the other end, he heard some scuffling, mumbling, wind noise.

“Clara, are you there?”

Her voice came back on the line, but it was panicky and scared. “Oh, God.”

“Clara? What is it?!”

“He’s here.”