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When Chuck the orderly brings Danny his phone, it’s five per cent charged.

That should be enough.

“Listen to me, Chuck.

I want you to get the night nurses—Karen and the other one, the blond, I can’t remember her name—and go down to the second floor.”

“What? Why?”

“Just trust me.

There isn’t much time.” Danny glances at the clock on his nightstand.

2:10 AM.

Chuck is still standing in the door, frowning at him.

“Go.

It’s life and death.

Not kidding.”

“You’re not having a pain med reaction, are you?”

Belief, Danny thinks.

It’s all about belief. Isn’t it?

“No.

Second floor.

All of you.

This will be over one way or the other in an hour.

Until then, get out.

Get safe.”

He goes to his contacts.

For a moment he’s terrified that Davis isn’t in them, that he only thought he added her number from the card she gave him.

But it’s there and he makes the call, praying her phone isn’t shut off.

It rings four times, then five.

Just as he’s despairing, she answers.

Sleepy, she sounds more human than ever.

“H’lo? Who—”

“Danny Coughlin,” he says.

“Wake up, Inspector Davis.

Listen to me.

I had another dream.

This time it was premonitory.

Do you understand?”

A moment’s silence.

When she replies, she sounds more awake.

“Do you mean—”

“He’s coming for me.

Unless something changes it, there’s going to be shooting down the hall, I think at the nurses’ station.

Screaming.

Then he’s here.

Dressed like he was when you first came to the school.

Black coat, blue jeans.

Only that time he wasn’t armed.

This time he is.”

“I’ll call the police,” she says, “but if this is some kind of weird joke—”

“Do I sound like I’m joking?” He almost screams it.

“The police won’t come, he’s sent them off on some kind of wild goose-chase, don’t ask me how I know that, it wasn’t in the dream, but I—”

“It’s what he’d do,” she says.

“If he really means to come after you… yes, it’s what he’d do.” She sounds fully awake now.

“I’ll call the cops in Dundee and Pawnee Rock and then I’ll come myself.

I’m at my sister’s, only six miles from Regional.”

This second dream is as clear in his memory as the dream of County Road F, the Texaco station, and the constant tinka-tinka-tinka of those price signs against the rusty pole.

As real as the dog and the unearthed arm.

There were—will be—shots at the nurses’ station followed by a single scream.

A man’s scream, so probably Chuck the orderly.

And then the man in the black coat and the dad jeans was—will be—standing in his doorway.

Looming in his doorway.

That strange peninsular widow’s peak surrounded by white skin, those deepset, tired eyes.

For poor Miss Yvonne, he’ll say as he raises the gun.

And just as he fires Danny turns his head on the pillow.

He looks at the clock on his night table.

“I told the orderly to send everyone down to the second floor, but they’re not going.

I can hear them down there.

They don’t believe me.

Just like him.

Just like you.”

He looked at the clock in his dream; he looks at it now.

“Forget about Dundee and Pawnee Rock, Inspector.

They’re too far away.

He’s going to start shooting at a minute to three.

You’ve got thirty-nine minutes to do something about it.”