you that shower you asked for. You smell . . . not up to your usual standards.”
Like cedar and baking bread and a hint of pine . . . and oh my God, shut up, you teenager.
With a cocky grin, Noah steps forward into the inch or two of space Cole had just created with one hand. “It’s not that bad, is it?”
“She’s getting up!” one of the techs barks.
Noah turns back to the screens. Cole brushes past him and takes up a post right behind Shannon Tran. In the past, Shannon’s job was coordinating with the extensive ground teams and microdrone surveillance crews that followed Charley during an op. But those have been taken out of the mix now, leaving Shannon focused on Charley’s every move.
The command center was quiet to begin with; now you can hear a pin drop.
“Bring up her audio,” Cole says.
The raucous sounds of a barroom scene from Sister Trip thunder through the control room. They’ve all watched most of the movie right along with Charlotte three times now, each time in a different theater located in a different part of Dallas. If memory serves, the sisters are hatching a plot to fend off the unwanted advances of a drunk cowboy. When they’re done, the entire bar will be caught up in a massive line dance that allows all three of the film’s plucky heroines to escape out the bar’s back door.
“Could you cut that out?” Charlotte says.
Her voice is loud enough to be heard over the movie. She’s standing in the aisle closest to a man in a baseball cap and a leather jacket who’s just looked up at her from his iPhone’s glowing screen. The other moviegoers looking in her direction must assume she’s staring the guy down out of anger. The truth is, she’s trying to give everyone in the control room a good long look at him.
Silently and swiftly, Shannon takes a screen cap of the guy’s face and drags it onto an adjacent screen where she’s already called up Cyrus Mattingly’s driver’s license photo. Their face ID software goes to work on the fuzzy, shadowed image from the movie theater.
“You’re bothering everyone in the movie, all right?”
The women sitting on all sides of Mattingly mutter their agreement. Two of them clap weakly.
Finally, Mattingly puts his phone to sleep and slides it into his jacket pocket. Then he puts his hands up in a gesture of surrender, all without taking his eyes off Charlotte. If Charlotte and Cole’s theory holds true, he’s actually studying every detail he can discern in the darkness of the theater; that way he’ll be able to catch up with her as soon as she leaves.
“Thank you!” Charlotte says to him with nothing that sounds like gratitude. She heads back to her seat, her TruGlass capturing glimpses of grateful-looking women who smile and silently applaud her as she goes.
“Well,” Noah finally says, “I’m honored to be part of a multistate operation devoted to improving the moviegoing experience in the Dallas metroplex. Truly.”
Ignoring him, Cole asks Shannon how much of the film they have left. “About an hour,” she says.
He jabs Noah in the side and gestures for him to follow. “Upstairs,” Cole says. “Time for that shower.”
3
Dallas, Texas
Hailey Brinkmann is from California, which is why she doesn’t have a Texas accent.
Hailey Brinkmann never attended college, and that’s good because it means Charlotte didn’t have to familiarize herself with some random campus and unfamiliar town before she turned herself into Hailey.
Hailey Brinkmann recently dyed her hair corn-silk blonde because she felt like that’s how girls in Texas wear their hair. (Charlotte’s black bob, with its single streak of platinum, was about as Texas as a surf shop for vegans, Luke told her.)
Hailey Brinkmann is assertive. She moved cross-country with no clear prospects and no friends in the Dallas area. So, it makes sense that she’s also outspoken and determined and really freakin’ hates it when people text all through the movie.
She is, in essence, exactly the type of woman who will capture the attention of a man like Cyrus Mattingly—provided he continues with the routine he’s followed for three nights now.
As Charlotte takes her seat in the fourth row of the theater, she reminds herself of how thoroughly convincing her alter ego’s fake ID is. She also reminds herself that the likelihood of her having to share the details of her cover story with anyone else just turned remote. Especially now that she’s managed to capture Mattingly’s attention.
In