“I understand.”
“I don’t care if thirty armed guards show up outside that door. If it opens, I’m assuming you called someone, and the last thing I do before I’m taken down is cut your throat.”
“Okay.”
“I don’t want that to happen, Ted.”
“Me either.”
“That’s up to you. Now let’s go to work. Wipe the screens of the current video feeds.”
Ted turned slowly in his chair and faced the console.
He tapped at a panel and the twenty-five screens went dark.
“First things first,” Ethan said. “I assume there’s a live camera feed of the Level Two corridor right outside that door?”
“There can be.”
“Bring it up and put it on that monitor in the top right corner.”
A long shot of the Level 2 corridor appeared—empty.
“Now I want to see where Pilcher is.”
“He isn’t chipped.”
“Of course he isn’t. Are there cameras in his residence or his office?”
“No.”
“Does that seem right to you?”
“I don’t know.”
“How about his number two? Where’s Pam, or is she off the radar too?”
“Nope, we should be able to locate her.”
A screen in the upper left-hand corner flashed to life.
Ted said, “There she is.”
It was a shot of the gym from a camera in the corner.
A room filled with exercise bikes, treadmills, free weights.
The place was empty except for one woman in the center of the frame, doing effortless-looking pull-ups on a bar.
“You just keyed off her microchip?”
“That’s right. What’s this all about, Ethan?”
Ethan glanced over at the feed of the Level 2 corridor.
Still empty.
Said, “You got a camera down at the entrance to the tunnel?”
Ted’s fingers went to work.
The tunnel appeared.
Marcus was sitting up on the concrete, his head hung between his legs.
“Who’s that?” Ted asked.
“That was my escort.”
“What happened to him?”
“He pulled a gun on me.”
Marcus was trying to stand. He made it onto his feet, but his legs suddenly buckled, and he sat back down on the road.
“Let me ask you something, Ted.”
“What’s that?”
“What’d you do before Pilcher brought you on board?”
“When I met him, my wife had been dead a year. I was homeless, drinking myself to death. He used to volunteer at the shelter where I sometimes stayed.”
“So you met him while he was serving you soup?”
“That’s right. He helped me clean up. I’d be dead if he hadn’t come into my life. No doubt in my mind.”
“So you believe he’s above suspicion? Can do no wrong?”
“Did you hear me say that, Sheriff?”
Up on the screens, Marcus was standing now, attempting to take a wobbling step up the tunnel.
“Ted, last time I was here, you showed me how you could track a microchip. See where someone had been.”
“Yep.”
“I assume that’s not possible with Pilcher?”
“Correct.”
“How about Pam?”
Ted turned in his chair.
“Why?”
Marcus was stumbling up the tunnel now.
“Just do it.”
“What date range?”
“I want to see where she went three nights ago.”
All the screens turned dark.
They merged into a single aerial overview of Wayward Pines, and a red blip appeared overtop of the mountain south of town.
“What’s that location?” Ethan asked.
“The superstructure.”
“Can you push in?”
“Yeah, but it’s just going to zoom in on trees on the mountainside. We have a highly developed aerial grid over town, but not over this complex.”
There were numbers—what looked like military time—in the bottom right-hand corner of the screens.
“This is her location at twenty-one hundred hours?” Ethan asked.
“Yeah, 9:00 p.m.”
“All right, take us forward slowly.”
Time sprinted by—seconds, minutes, hours—but the blip didn’t move out of the mountain.
Ted paused everything, said, “We’re now at one in the morning.”
“And Pam still hasn’t left the mountain. Run it forward.”
Just before 1:30 a.m., the blip moved out of the mountain, through the forest, and onto the road into Wayward Pines.
Ted pushed in.
The Pam-blip grew larger, now moving quickly down the road toward town.
Ethan said, “Do that thing where it shows all the areas that are covered under visual surveillance.” The DayGlo overlay appeared. “Since Pam is chipped, her movement will trigger camera footage, correct?” Ethan asked.
“Yes.”
Pam took a backstreet that ran parallel to Main.
“Now what’s our time?”
“1:49 a.m.”
“Can we actually see her on camera?”
“Weird.”
“What?”
“I’m not getting a ‘view cam feed’ option.” Ted pushed in closer. An entire city block filled the twenty-five screens. “Oh, that’s why. See? She’s standing in a blind spot.” Up close, there was a scattershot of dark spaces in the DayGlo, and as the seconds whirled by, Pam seemed to always stay in the black.
“She’s good,” Ted said. “Knows all the camera placements and where to go to stay out of the footage.”
Ethan said, “Run it out to 1:55 a.m.”
Ted zipped ahead several minutes.
At 1:55 exactly, Pam’s blip hovered on the south side of the opera house at the corner of Main and Eighth.
You were there. The night of Alyssa’s death, you were watching when she and Kate split up.
Ted said, “Maybe if you told me what you’re looking for, I could help you.”
At 1:59, Pam started moving south.
And then you followed Alyssa.
Pam passed into an area of DayGlo.
Ted said, “I have a ‘view cam feed’ option.”
“Let’s see it.”