actions of a serial killer,” Cole says. “You want to play games, go back to Trivial Pursuit, Night Stalker Edition.”
“Sorry,” Tim mumbles.
“Which one was the Night Stalker?” Shannon asks.
“Richard Ramirez,” Paul Hynman says without looking up from his computer. Everyone’s startled by his sudden contribution.
“Was that the Golden State guy?” Tim asks.
“No,” Noah answers. “The Golden State Killer was the original Night Stalker. But he went so long without being caught they gave the title to somebody else who also liked breaking into people’s houses in the middle of the night and raping and sometimes killing them.”
“California’s a competitive place,” Shannon says. “He started out as the East Area Rapist.”
“Who’s the East Area Rapist now?” Paul asks.
“That’s enough. I understand the need to let off a little steam while we kill time,” Cole says, “but I don’t want us to get tunnel vision here. We can’t be one hundred percent sure he’s going to go for a break-in, so let’s keep our eyes open so we can advise Luke accordingly.”
They answer with silence, which he figures is about as much obedience as he’s going to get. And he understands. The worst part is the waiting, and Mattingly is making them wait a long time. But is it really Mattingly making them wait?
He looks to the monitor showing Charley’s TruGlass feed. The pages of a novel are gently drifting past the frame. She’s actually reading the damn thing, as she might do on any normal night before bed.
“What is she doing?” Shannon asks.
“Getting in character, trying to forget we’re there,” Noah says.
Cole doesn’t disagree, so he doesn’t say a word.
“Maybe we could tell her it’s time to turn out the light,” Paul mumbles.
“That would be about our comfort,” Cole answers, “not hers. We only speak to her if it’s critical. That’s the deal.”
“That’s not why,” Noah says.
“Not why what?” Cole asks him.
Noah’s next to him so abruptly, Cole actually jumps. Then Noah points to one of the views of the neighborhood on-screen overhead. The light in one of the back rooms of the house next door to Charley’s is still on, just a few yards away from where her bedroom drapes haven’t been drawn all the way closed.
“She’s waiting for them to go to bed,” Noah says. “She doesn’t want the neighbors to scare him off.”
Nobody says anything for a while. Then the neighbor’s back room light clicks off.
A few minutes go by, then a few more, and then, as if sleep has overtaken her, Charley closes the book she’s been reading, reaches over, and turns off the lamp next to her bed.
7
Dallas, Texas
Charlotte pretends to sleep.
First on her back, then on one side, facing the bedroom window so she can see any shadows that might dart past the crack in the curtains. At what feels like regular intervals, she opens her eyes slightly to check the time on the nightstand’s digital clock. After a short while, she’s able to predict the passage of fifteen minutes with a fairly impressive success rate.
Then, sometime around 1:00 a.m., she hears a sound that probably wouldn’t have awakened her if she’d actually been asleep—the sound of the lock on the back door being picked. It helps that she’d left all the doors between her and the kitchen partly open. But still, if it’s really Mattingly and he’s doing what she thinks he’s doing, he’s incredibly skilled.
Then silence returns.
A cool breath of air moves across her throat, then her face. She knows it has to be coming from outside because it smells faintly of the confederate jasmine growing on a trellis in the neighbor’s yard. Mattingly opened the door so quietly she didn’t hear the lock click.
She can hear her pulse in her ears.
Not good. It’s too much, too soon. She doesn’t want to trigger yet, so she tries to imagine the room her earpiece connects her to, even though the connection’s been silent for hours. She’s never seen a command center, but no doubt the space is dominated by Cole Graydon in his usual dark slacks and one of his perfectly pressed dress shirts pacing in front of a bank of computer monitors that reveal multiple views inside the house she’s in now. Visualizing this remote space is helpful, but the surrounding shadows and her pose, prone in bed in pajamas, are triggering fear receptors no sense of connection to something larger and more powerful can keep dormant.
And Luke is outside, ready to kiss your neck in all the right places when all of