Hoover intercepted the 911 call a second before it was routed to the local call center. Typically, the goings on of a small-town sheriff’s department would be considered a low priority for the artificial intelligence’s time and attention. But these weren’t typical times, and this wasn’t a typical 911 call.

  Ten seconds later, Foster relayed the scant details to everyone in the vehicle. Instantly, Justine was on the phone with Saunders, telling him all she knew about the shooting. He was more than a little surprised.

  “I’ll persuade my ride to take me there right now.”

  “Hurry,” she warned him. “You don’t want to be late.”

  As the two agents ended their call, Malcolm pushed the Tahoe to its structural limits to compensate for the half hour’s distance back to town. Past snow-covered hills, through icy back roads, the lengths he was willing to go were never more apparent, especially to Mosley, who was balled up in the last row of seats.

  “Don’t throw up, Doctor.” There was an urgency in the dwarf’s warning. “These are leather seats. They can’t be cleaned.”

  Tuning all this out, Foster sat hunched over his tablet, going over construction plans for the bank. If this were related to the event, he would need to be able to control things. Beside him, Justine pocketed her phone before turning her attention to the smartest men in the car. “How long ago did the shooting occur?”

  “About thirty minutes ago,” Hoover sounded excited by the promise of new data. “Tell her that the suspect is still in the bank.”

  “He says about half an hour ago...”

  He tried to finish Hoover’s words, but Justine was too excited to let him.

  “Half an hour? Do we have eyes on the assailant? Is he still in the bank?” She slid across the expansive seat. Desperate to see the tablet’s screen, she nudged in so close that Foster could smell a hint of her perfume. Eyes all spacey, she had to elbow him to get his attention. “Has Hoover run facial recognition yet?”

  Distracted, he shook his head. At first, this back and forth was kind of nice because it afforded him another reason to talk to her. But the act of having to relay everything each of them said to each other was quickly becoming very tiresome. So, by the time she elbowed him for a third time about an unanswered report about on-site police strength, the bedraggled scientist had been through enough.

  “I’ve got an idea.” Foster opened his satchel and plunged his hand deep inside. “Yes,” he exclaimed only slightly maniacally. “I think it’s about time Hoover made another friend.” He thrust an earpiece identical to his into her hand. “Here…”

  Slightly larger than a standard earpiece, she playfully rolled the device between her thumb and forefinger. “This isn’t standard issue.”

  She barely had a chance to examine it when a band of blue light appeared around its base. The speed at which it materialized caused her hand to flinch, which sent the earpiece falling onto the vehicle’s carpeted floor. When she finally managed retrieved it, the light had extinguished.

  “What was that?” She asked excitedly.

  “My favorite color,” Foster replied with a sly grin. “I’ve always loved blue.”

  “Not the color, idiot, the light around the base.”

  “Oh,” he plucked the device from her hand and held it between his thumb and index finger. As he did, the base began to glow again. “The earpiece is powered by a person’s bioelectric field. Once it contacts bare skin, the device becomes active. And since it’s synced up with the tablet, you won’t need me to be an interpreter anymore to talk to Hoover.”

  He handed the device back to Justine and tried his best to act serious. “Welcome to my nightmare.”

  Wasting no time, she popped the thing in her ear. The first thing she heard was Hoover saying something about the town of Elmira not having any local SWAT teams. Finally, she smiled to herself, something she was an expert in. “How far away is the nearest team?”

  “Who is that?”

  Even though Hoover generally heard the conversations going on around Foster, this was the first time anyone other than him could answer back. Not knowing how to proceed, she looked to Foster for help. He just motioned for her to speak up.

  “It’s Agent Rushing. I think Foster was getting tired of playing go-between for us. How far away is the nearest SWAT team stationed, exactly?”

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  Hoover stayed silent, assessing just how to proceed. After all, he had never had a conversation with anyone besides Foster, much less a real live girl. His first instinct was not to trust her. After all, the government had never been anything but untrustworthy. But to make his only friend happy, he decided to cooperate with this stone-cold killer.

  “More than 75 miles away and NSA facial recognition has come up empty. As of right now, the suspect has moved all the hostages to a portion of the bank not currently covered by security cameras. But, from the images I’m receiving from the bank, I can confirm that there are at least two dead.”

  “Has he made any demands yet?”

  “No, he hasn’t.”

  Curious, Foster turned his attention back to Justine. “Is that strange?”

  “Strange?” Justine frowned at the implications behind that question. She leveled a weary pair of eyes on him. “Yes, I would say two hours without any demands is bizarre.”

  Foster grinned and whispered under his breath. “Perfect.”

  Much sooner than it should have, the Tahoe careened around a blind corner and into view of a visibly shaken Sheriff Meadows and Agent Saunders. Together, they stood patiently outside a local hair salon. The local geriatric community referred to it merely as “Bertha’s.”

  But now, it was serving as a makeshift command center.

  Unnerved by the report of two murdered townspeople, Meadows reacted from a place of suspicion. He reached for his sidearm just as the Tahoe’s brakes began to squeal to a halt.

  Saunders grabbed him by the wrist. “I’m sorry, sheriff. They’re with me.”

  ABS be damned, Malcolm slid the vehicle sideways into an empty parking space just down the street. Then, like clowns from a clown car, the team started spilling out from every door. Meadows sighed heavily then returned to staring vigilantly at the front entrance to the bank. “We’ve had enough people die today, Agent Saunders. I don’t need your people adding to that number.”

  “Understood,” Saunders curtly nodded before excusing himself to head toward the Tahoe.

  Practically sprinting, Justine was the first to reach him. The first words out of her mouth were pretty much what he expected them to be.

  “Let me have your back up piece, Jeff.” She looked toward the bank like a wolf surveying a wounded animal. “I’ll take care of this.”

  “No,” Saunders raised a hand to signal for her to slow her roll. “You won’t be taking care of anything, Justine. I have strict orders from the director. You’re not allowed to have a weapon that doesn’t run on batteries. And from what scattered info we have about the suspect, a stun gun wouldn’t be much use to you.”

  “But,” she started to form reasons in her mind, but the senior agent seemed more than prepared to stand his ground. She decided to change the subject. “Has he made any overtures yet?”

  “No…” The two of them shared a look that agents often use when information was scarce, and the threat level was high. They were apprehensively turning back toward the salon when Foster and Samuel caught up with them.

  “Is everything alright?” Mosley seemed to be calmer now that he was out of the Tahoe and away from Malcolm’s strategically aggressive driving style. “Why are we here? I thought our tasking was limited to Foster’s problem.”

  “We are here because that is a federally insured bank, which is under the FBI’s purview. And because I knew Agent Rushing would have rushed over here anyway.”

  “I thought you were tasked to the NSA.” Foster grinned again.

  “Now’s not the time, Foster.” Without mercy, Justine again nudged the mop-headed engineer in the ribs. “Someone has killed two people. Stopping any more people from dying is our responsibility.” Without another word, she began marching in the direction of the salon. Following her lead, the other two scrambled back up the frozen sidewalk to follow.

  In the commotion, Foster lingered back and allowed them to get further away. Once they did, he cryptically ordered Hoover to “go dark” on Justine. Without question, his program made the necessary adjustments. Soon, only he and Foster were in the loop. “Are we good?”

  “She’s cut off for now.” Hoover did the best imitation of a whistle he could. “I’ll tell you one thing. Give that girl a reason to pull the trigger, and she’s off like a shot. Isn’t she?”

  “She definitely has spunk. I’ll give her that.” Foster watched carefully as his handlers disappeared past an armed deputy and into the salon. “Have you found any connection between the young woman in the morgue and the guy shooting up the bank?”

  “Honestly,” Hoover seemed ashamed even to say the words. “No. I’ve run facial recognition on the guy and facial and fingerprints on the girl. So far, I’ve come up with zero hits on either of them. I mean, maybe one of them could be absent from the system, but not both. That’s a statistical impossibility.”

  “You don’t believe in statistical impossibilities.”

  “No, I do not.”

  “So, what you’re telling me is we need to talk to the guy in the bank.”

  “If we want answers as to what is going on, then yes, we need him alive and kicking.”

  Foster watched another police car join in a hasty perimeter around the bank’s entrance. That brought the total of cruisers to six, which probably constituted the entirety of the Elmira police department. “I think we better make sure Agent Rushing gets her shot at handling this herself, just to be sure.”

  “Um, excuse me. I thought we had just discussed needing this guy alive. You send her in there with a loaded weapon, and your next mystery will be figuring out how to communicate with the dead.”

  Foster reached into his satchel. It took a minute of searching, but his hand finally brushed up against a very dangerous item. He smiled that sly grin then started toward Bertha’s. “Trust me.”

  Hoover couldn’t physically shake his head, so he did the next best thing.

  “You have got to be shitting me.”