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Stella spent the entire drive to Whelan counting down the minutes. According to the Administrator’s latest post, the killings were supposed to begin at noon, just as the world was due to end.

She didn’t believe the world was going to end. But she had no doubt the Administrator’s followers would kill for him. She’d seen enough of that already.

Stella looked out the window. Somewhere out there were the hills of western Pennsylvania, where these murders had begun.

Or at least, where she and Hagen had first become aware of them.

The country had seemed so peaceful when Stella and Hagen had first arrived at the cabin.

They’d felt so secure. But they weren’t.

Killers were being groomed, and no one was safe.

A mass murderer was also counting down to noon, preparing to slaughter by the dozens, even hundreds.

Stella had to stop them. She and Journey would try their best with Whelan, while Hagen and Lucas would deal with Napp in Pittsburgh.

They were down to just two suspects now, two old men. As long as one of them was the Administrator, sanity could prevail. They would bring him in, access his phone. The right message delivered in time could be exactly what they needed.

If one of them was the Administrator.

If they could get the message out in time.

Too much was riding on far too little.

And if they were wrong, if neither of these men was behind the murders, there’d be no time to find the culprit before the sacrifices began.

Stella willed Journey to drive faster.

Finally, they pulled into the parking lot at the university.

Stella and Journey took the stairs to Professor Whelan’s office two at a time, slowing only to catch their breaths. Stella knocked twice on the door and walked in without waiting for an answer.

The professor was sitting at his desk, exactly as Stella had left him.

A notebook lay open in front of him, beneath two open reference books.

His thick glasses rested low on his nose, and his back was bent way over as he wrote, as if his eyes were failing him.

His fountain pen drew large, looping letters on the page.

Professor Whelan didn’t look up as Stella came in but flapped a hand toward the corner of the desk.

“Just leave it there, will you? There’s a good girl.”

“Leave what?” Stella closed the door after Journey circled in behind her. “And I’m not really a good girl.”

Professor Whelan jerked his head up. He pushed his glasses onto his nose and blinked, studying first Stella, then Journey. “Oh, you. You’re that…that…the FBI woman. And you look like another one of them.”

“Special Agent Stella Knox. That’s right. And this is Special Agent Journey Russo. I just need to?—”

“I thought you were my assistant with my coffee. Where’s your other colleague? The one with the face and the clothes. Is he not with you?”

Stella peeled off her coat. She laid it over the back of the seat in front of the desk and sat down. They needed to get on with their job, and fast. She didn’t even have time to enjoy the on-point comment the man had just made about Hagen.

Journey followed suit and sat. Except she didn’t bother removing her jacket.

“Agent Yates is busy. We just need to ask you a few questions.”

Whelan was wearing an old tweed jacket that had probably fit when he was still teaching but now hung loosely. He pushed back the cuff to check the time.

“Well, you’ll have to be quick. I have a call with some…podcast soon. About those murders, of course. Not sure what a podcast is, but there you have it. In this field, you can’t be too choosy about who interviews you. It’s the audience that’s the thing, you see.”

Stella studied Whelan. He didn’t display any obvious signs of nervousness. The strength with which he jammed the cap of his fountain pen into place was more suggestive of impatience and irritation than fear. He wanted them gone so he could get on with the rest of his day.

She removed her notebook from her pocket, opened it slowly, and laid it flat on the table. He could wait. “Now, let me see.” She turned to a clean page. “The archive in the library. Do you use it often?”

“You mean the tablets in the archive? I wouldn’t say I examine them often. Occasionally.”

“When was the last time you accessed the archive?” Journey leaned on her elbows.

He turned to her. “I really couldn’t say.”

“This month? Last month? ”

The professor swiveled back to face Stella squarely. “Not…no, I don’t think so.”

“So when?” Journey asked. “You don’t access them every day?”

“Goodness, no. Who has the time?”

“So when?” Stella echoed Journey’s words. According to the archive logs, the man was a regular viewer of the tablets.

Professor Whelan removed his glasses and folded the arms closed. “I really have no idea. It would be in my calendar, I suppose. My assistant writes down all my appointments for me.”

“Jodie? Is she here?”

“Yes, Jodie. No, she’s not in today. I can work in peace.” He laughed quietly. “Sometimes, the best assistance an assistant can provide is not assisting at all.”

Stella was confused. “Then why were you expecting her to bring you coffee?”

He scratched the tip of his nose. “Just confused for a moment. She usually brings coffee each morning, just like any good little assistant.”

Stella flashed a fake smile. She decided she didn’t like him very much. “Do you have your calendar with you?”

Whelan reached into his pocket and produced his phone.

“She puts it all on here. I don’t know how she does it. Let me see. The archive, you say?”

He tapped his phone, tutted, and tapped again.

Stella stretched her hand across the desk. “Can I help?”

Whelan hesitated. He gripped his phone for several long seconds before passing the device to Stella. “Probably faster this way. You’re young. You know your way around these things. They’re supposed to be calling from that pubcast thing in a few minutes.”

Stella took the device, an old smartphone, with a single camera lens on the back and a wide bezel around the screen. The kind of phone used by someone who neither cared about cell phones nor knew much about them.

“Sure, I can do that.”

Journey leaned close to get a good look at the screen as Stella opened the call history.

Whelan had received a call from his bank that week, three calls from Jodie, and regular morning calls from someone named Milly, who Stella assumed was either Professor Whelan’s daughter or his wife. She could think of no other reason a last name wasn’t listed and didn’t feel the need to ask.

The home page contained just one screen with no more than half a dozen apps.

Whelan jabbed a thick, bent finger toward the device. “Have you found the calendar thingamajig?”

“These things are quite a pain to use, aren’t they?” Stella tried to sound sympathetic.

“They are! Much too complicated. Don’t know what’s wrong with old-fashioned pencil and paper. And one of those old rotary desk phones. Always knew where you were with one of those.”

Stella checked whether the phone had the Dispatch app. Nothing came up.

“You don’t have Dispatch on this phone, I take it.”

“Dispatch? On a phone? Why would I send a dispatch if I have a phone? No, no, if I want to send a message, I call someone. Don’t need to bother with dispatches. Ladies, I’m not that old.” He chuckled to himself.

Journey side-eyed Stella.

There was no Dispatch on the phone in her hands, and the Administrator had to be much more comfortable with technology than Whelan was.

And Professor Whelan was far too relaxed to be guilty of…

anything. This man should’ve been much more nervous at the sight of an FBI agent fi ddling with his phone while another one watched on. Both armed.

Stella brought up the calendar and flicked through to last week.

An entry from last Wednesday read Library archive from four to eight.

That matched what Mac had found. Still, there were plenty more visits scheduled just before, so any of them could’ve been the moment when the Administrator found “something that’s better than anything you can find at the Louvre. ” Or none.

It fit the timeline for the DMs between the Administrator and Tyra Scharf. But why was Whelan saying he hadn’t gone there?

“Here.” Stella showed the man the schedule on his phone. “You visited the archive last week, and in the second week of October. And before that in June. What were you doing there?”

Professor Whelan took the phone and studied the dates.

“Oh, yes. I guess I must’ve. Now I remember.

Nothing particularly unusual. Just looking for something to write about in the catalog, and I prefer to go in person as opposed to looking it up online.

Every now and then, I wonder if there’s something important buried in those shelves that I missed.

Perhaps some inscription I hadn’t noticed before, or an item that’s become more significant in the light of something recently published. Do you know what I mean?”

Stella didn’t entirely, but it didn’t matter.

“And did you find anything?” Journey sat back and crossed her legs.

“No, no. Nothing at all. That collection’s far too well researched. Waste of time.”

Stella rose and picked up her coat. “I hear they say the same about the collection at the Louvre.”

“The Louvre? Not at all.” Professor Whelan dropped his phone back into his jacket pocket.

He hadn’t looked at the screen, hadn’t checked what Stella had searched for.

“I don’t know who told you that, but they’re talking out the back of their head.

The French have a marvelous collection. I’d give my right arm to spend a week foraging around in their basement.

But it’s very hard to get approval. They keep it for their own researchers. Who told you it was a waste of time?”

Stella pulled on her coat. “No one important.”

“Thanks for your cooperation, Professor Whelan.” Journey stood and gave the man a quick nod.

Stella turned for the door. She was not about to wish him good luck with his podcast. She hoped this little interruption threw him off just enough that he’d forget about it. He didn’t need to be talking to the press about any of this, and he should’ve known that.

Whelan had given them exactly nothing. He hadn’t even agreed with the message the Administrator had written to Tyra Scharf. They had no reason to connect him with the murders or make an arrest. All they could do now was to check in with D.C. and hope Hagen and Lucas were making headway.