you caused most of them.”
“And you paid for them.”
“If I wanted you dead, I could have just crashed your plane.”
“You almost did.”
“Come now, that’s a bit of an exaggeration, isn’t it?”
“Is it?” Noah says to the security team surrounding him, all of whom turn to stone in response. “I mean, I’m not going to say I didn’t enjoy myself, but plenty of enjoyable things in the world make you feel like you’re about to die.”
“Speak for yourself, special ops.”
“I am, if the faces of these gentlemen are any indication.”
“Get in the car, Dylan,” Cole says, then does everything he can to conceal his frustration at having accidentally used Noah’s old name. The name he used to call him in bed, before he knew his real one. Maybe, Cole thinks, he’ll take my use of his chosen name, the name he still wants to be called, as a sign I’m not about to have him executed.
“Kansas,” Noah mutters, surveying his vast, empty surroundings. “Huh. Will there be more of it when the sun rises?”
He’s right—it’s too dark to see the farmhouse on the horizon, and they haven’t planted any of the fields. But the airstrip underfoot is new, installed only months before. Surely Noah won’t be willing to believe they bought a farm in the middle of nowhere and installed an airstrip just for the purpose of flying him here and killing him.
But there’s something else going on with his most important scientist, and it takes Cole a moment to puzzle through it.
Noah actually has a life he loves now, and he doesn’t want to be pulled away from it for even a second. His residence on the island is plush, luxurious even. Of course, he lives as a prisoner, his movements constantly monitored, no contact with the outside world—other than Cole—allowed. But remarkably, after a year, he hasn’t asked for any. There’s nobody from his former life—lives plural, if you want to be technical about it—he wants to speak with. For Noah, the past year has been all work and no play, and he couldn’t be happier about it. And so the prospect of spending even a short amount of time in a temporary holding cell has him exhibiting signs of an emotion he almost never displays—fear. The charm with which Noah stepped off the plane was his cover for an emotion so out of character Cole had trouble recognizing it at first.
“Did you have a bad experience in Kansas at some point?” Cole asks.
“No,” he says, “but you, good sir, have no experience here, and that’s what concerns me.”
“How so?”
“For God’s sake, Cole, you own your own helicopter, and you’ve never stayed in a hotel room that doesn’t look like either Versailles or an Apple Store. Your idea of roughing it is a house where you can hear the laundry room. And now you’re on a farm. In Kansas! And so am I, apparently. The whole thing’s very out of the ordinary, even for extraordinary men like us.”
“Well, it’s what she wants,” Cole answers.
“Charley?”
Cole nods.
“Does she want me here, too?” Noah asks.
“No. But I do.”
“And why’s that?”
“I’ll explain once we’re inside.”
This time when Cole starts for the Suburban, he’s determined not to stop, even if the men behind him all begin shooting at each other.
Cole thought seeing the inside of the farmhouse might calm Noah down a bit. But given his ramrod-straight posture as they pass through its rooms, decorated in what can only be described as bland western chic, that’s not going to be the case. Maybe the absence of personal effects unnerves him. Aboveground, the place looks ready to list on Airbnb.
Still, does Noah really think Cole would have someone blow his head off where his brains might land on a brand-new leather sofa or a vintage hand-drawn map of the Great Plains in a thick gold frame?
The trip down the cellar steps doesn’t help, either. That’s no surprise. The year before, Cole had Noah thrown in an underground cell for several weeks as punishment for making unauthorized contact with Charlotte.
When they move through the false basement, Noah sucks in a deep breath that sounds more weary than frightened. Just then, the security team lifts a stand-alone shelving unit away from the walls, revealing the vague outline of a hidden door. The cover over the fingerprint reader is camouflaged with the surrounding stone. When the door unlocks with a hiss under Cole’s touch, they’re all suddenly bathed in a glow Cole finds comforting. Maybe Noah will, too.
As