OK.
She’s already deleted all the text messages from earlier that week. Now it’s time to delete the ones from Luke. But her finger hesitates, and another one pops through just as the breaks hiss, and the shuttle slows to a gradual halt.
Charley?
Yeah.
Whatever happens, knock him dead ; )
Hey Luke, she types back.
Yeah.
Thanks for doing right by me.
A few seconds tick by, and then, XO.
The shuttle stops. The other passengers get to their feet. She hangs back, letting them wrestle their suitcases out from the racks on either side of the middle exit door. She deletes all of Luke’s messages from that night. First the mother and her two sons head out into the dark, then the couple with their now-energetic pug. She feels a twinge of guilt, as if she’s allowing these unsuspecting travelers to swim out into waters where a shark lies in wait. But this shark doesn’t have a taste for people like them.
Will he have a taste for me?
Amazing, that this is what’s occupying her mind in this moment, that her life has brought her to this point—desperate to snare the attention of a human monster. But if he passes her by like he did the other two, they’ll have to start over. Once he’s laid eyes on her, assessed her, and for some reason judged her wanting, her hopes of baiting him will be forever dashed.
Luke’s left the Jeep empty, and she’s got a key to it if she has to walk that far. But for now she walks slowly, with a bowed head. Eye contact seems enough to drive the guy away. Eye contact and engagement. But still, he approaches the women from the front.
He’s got a trigger, just like Zypraxon does, she thinks. He’s not rejecting these women because of what they are, but because of something they do. Or something they don’t do.
She hears footsteps approaching her through the dark.
She grabs the straps of her backpack, keeps staring at the ground, lifts her view just enough that she can see a man’s legs approaching. And the sight of his legs reminds her of the way he moved through the gym the other day. Of his perfectly muscled body—his perfectly muscled body contrasting with his imbalanced, slightly altered mess of a face.
With a surge of excitement that borders on giddiness, it comes to her.
He rejected them because they were nice.
They’re paces from each other now.
He rejected them because they didn’t reject him.
She looks at his face, looks right into his eyes. He’s watching her with an intensity that belies his quick, confident steps.
And that’s when she winces and quickly looks away as if repulsed by what she sees.
They pass each other, and then she hears his footsteps stop.
I got him, she thinks. I fucking got him.
Too late she realizes what she forgot to do.
She forgot to be afraid.
The impact is swift, instant, and skull rattling. Suddenly her torso, neck, and head seem to weigh nothing at all. The next thing she knows, she’s kissing asphalt with no memory of the face-plant itself.
Her mind grabs for terror. Nothing is there. She’s hollow, vacant. Never in her life has she been truly stunned in the most literal and physical definition of the word. Terror seems like a rational thought process her body can’t accommodate, and the more she tries to summon it, the more she pushes it away. As if she were trying to meditate on the calm in the middle of a thunderstorm.
It’s like she’s breathing through a straw. Her knees scrape the asphalt. He’s dragging her in between two parked cars. A sudden rush of fumes makes her eyes water. He stuffs something in her mouth; something soaked in a noxious chemical. She feels it the way you feel your bedsheets when you’re first coming to in the morning.
And then the prick of a needle.
My neck, fuck. My neck. He just . . .
And when the darkness closes in around her, she realizes he beat it. He beat the Zypraxon, and whatever he’s injected her with is flooding her system. He beat it because she was too busy playing detective and psychologist. She forgot her most important role: victim.
Luke knew this part would be hard.
They discussed it multiple times. What it would mean to watch her go limp and not react. What it would take to just sit there and watch her give herself to the guy so he’d feel safe stuffing her into his trunk.
But the hardest part is watching Pemberton’s speed and efficiency. It would be easier if he growled or snarled like a monster, but for him this is just routine, jamming a woman in his trunk like luggage. Even the way he brought the blackjack down across the back of her head was clean, precise. Now he’s placing her carry-on in the back seat as if it’s his.
The Camry’s headlights wink on.
To Marty, Brasher, Rucker, and the two guys on watch in Temecula, Luke texts: We’re a go. En route.
Luke waits for the Camry to head for the exit, then brings up the brightness on both tablets affixed to the dash. A few seconds later, there’s a knock at the window. It’s Marty and his boys. Luke unlocks the doors. The boys slide in back, Marty in the front.
“Motherfuck, man,” Marty growls. “Motherfuck. I mean, this better—”
“Easy,” Luke says. “I know, I know. I watched it, too.”
The Camry’s tracker is live on one tablet; he’s logged in on the second, as evidenced by the square of lighter darkness in the center of the screen. The contact lenses are live, he’s sure of it. The trunk is just dark.
“Her head man. He hit her in her fucking head, man.”
“Marty,” Luke says firmly. “Take a breath, OK? I get it. But take a breath. This is what was supposed to happen.”
Marty’s lips sputter, and he grips the handle next to his arm and nods.
“We’re good,” Luke says, starting the engine. “Everything’s good. We’re rolling, and we’ll have him soon.”
Luke pulls out of the parking spot. As the exit booth comes into view, he sees the Camry’s taillights swing out onto the service road.
“Something’s wrong.”
It’s Ed Baker who says it first, but they’re all feeling it. The entire crew sitting in front of the bank of computer screens. The warehouse is air-conditioned, thank God, otherwise their combined sweat would be stinking up the place. And if there’s anything Cole hates more than waiting, it’s body odor.
They were able to watch most of Charley’s walk through the terminals on hacked airport surveillance cams as well as through her TruGlass. But only once she made it to the parking lot did Cole stop pacing. It’s not just the suspense of watching. He’s never worked this closely with these team members before, and that makes Ed nervous. And Ed getting nervous makes him nervous. No compartmentalization means no plausible deniability if things go wrong, if certain hacks are discovered.
An airport, he kept thinking. Why did all of this have to focus on an airport? No way can he launch microdrones yards away from two major active runways.
Now they’re staring at the hazy black square offered up by Charlotte’s TruGlass.
“We sure it’s live?” Ed asks.
One of the computer techs says, “It shows as live, and I don’t see any interruption in the signal since she left the terminal.”
“The center of the screen’s lighter than everything around it,” Cole says. “She’s live—she’s just keeping her eyes closed for some reason.”
“Why?” Ed asks. “Why is she keeping her eyes closed? She’s in the fucking trunk. He can’t see her.”
“Maybe she’s opening them and there’s no light source?” another tech asks.
“Something’s wrong,” Ed growls.