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Ella’s sister Regina is alone in the master bedroom.

Her husband is away on one of his many business trips.

Davis has her suspicions about those trips, and she supposes Regina does, too, but that is a matter for another time.

The digital clock beside Regina’s bed reads 2:24.

“Reg! Reggie! Wake up!”

Regina stirs and opens her eyes.

Davis is wearing jeans, sneakers without socks, and a KU tee-shirt, clearly without a bra.

But it’s the sight of the gun on her hip and the ID laminate her sister is slipping over her head that wakes her all the way up.

“What—”

“I have to go.

Right now.

I’ll be back before Laurie wakes up.” She hopes so, at least.

“There’s a problem.”

“What problem?”

“I can’t explain, Reg.

I hope it’s nothing.” She doesn’t believe that, not anymore.

She believes Coughlin.

About everything.

She can only hope it’s not too late.

“I’ll call when it’s taken care of.”

Reggie is still asking questions when her sister leaves.

Ella runs down the stairs two at a time and snatches her keys from the basket by the door.

Her personal car is parked in the driveway and goddam, Regina parked hers directly behind it.

Davis pulls forward until the collision monitor hollers and her bumper thumps the porch.

She cranks the wheel and backs around Reggie’s Subaru, hitting the Subaru’s bumper hard enough to rock it on its springs.

She misses the mailbox by inches when she reverses into the street.

She looks at the dashboard clock.

It’s 2:28.

The streets are deserted, and she ignores the stop signs, only slowing to look for headlights coming in either direction.

She takes 7th, which proves to be a mistake.

There’s construction, a line of smudge pots in front of a hole in the road probably meant for a culvert.

The pots glow smoky orange in the night.

She wheels into someone’s driveway, turns back, and takes 8th, hating the delay.

She works her phone out of her pocket, and when she comes to a blinker flashing red at the McKinley Street intersection, she tells Siri to call the Great Bend PD.

Davis identifies herself and tells Dispatch there’s a possible shooter approaching Regional Hospital, send any and all available officers.

Dispatch tells her she has no one to send.

Someone has phoned in a bomb threat at the high school—three bombs, in fact—and the few officers working the night shift have gone there to close off the streets leading to the building.

The Bomb Squad is on its way from Wichita.

“There’s no bomb,” Davis says.

“This guy wants to draw your cops off until he finishes what he’s coming to do.”

“Ma’am… Inspector… you know this how?”

The clock on her dashboard reads 2:39.

It occurs to Ella that lack of belief is the curse of intelligence.

She throws her phone on the passenger seat without ending the call and turns onto McKinley.

She floors it, then stamps both feet on the brake as a late-night shambler pushes a shopping cart into the street.

She lays both hands on the horn.

The shambler gives her a lazy middle finger, tick-tocking it from side to side as he continues on his way.

Davis veers around him and tromps the gas, laying fifty feet of rubber.

Here, at last, is Cleveland Street and the bulk of the hospital.

The red EMERGENCY sign over the portico is her beacon.

It’s 2:46.

Beat him, Davis thinks.

If Danny was right about the time, I beat h—

A red SUV looms up in her rearview.

It swings beside her, almost sideswipes her, then bolts ahead.

Davis gets just a glimpse of the driver, but a glimpse is enough.

That thick widow’s peak is all the ID she needs.

Taillights flash as the SUV pulls up in front of the main entrance.

Jalbert gets out: black coat, baggy dad jeans.

In spite of her terror and the sense that she’s having her own dream—it’s hardly been an hour since she was called from a sound sleep by her phone, after all—there’s a feeling of almost miraculous wonder.

Because Danny was right about everything, and now she knows how he must have felt at that Texaco station, seeing his dream made real.

She doesn’t slow, simply rear-ends Jalbert’s vehicle.

He wheels around, eyes wide, going for his gun.

Ella lays on the horn with her right hand—wake up, you people, wake up—and opens the door with her left.

She draws her own gun as she gets out, hoping two things—that she won’t have to shoot her ex-partner, and that her ex-partner won’t shoot her.

She has a little girl to go back to.

“Frank! Stop! Do not go in!”

“Ella? What are you doing here?”

He looks so haggard, she thinks.

So lost.

And so dangerous.

“Put your gun away, Frank.”

People are coming out now.

Nurses in pink and blue rayon, a couple of orderlies in white, a doctor in green scrubs, a couple of patients from 24 Hour Care, one with his arm in a sling.

“He’s lying, Ella.

Of course he is, are you blind?”

They are pointing Glocks at each other like a pair of gunfighters at the end of a Western movie.

The .40 S&W ammo those guns fire will be lethal at this short range.

If the shooting starts, one or both of them will almost certainly be killed.

“No, Frank.

They caught the doer in Wyoming.

His name is Andrew—”

“Iverson, yes.” Jalbert is nodding.

“I believe that, but they were in it together.

Can’t you see that? Follow the logic, Ella, they were a kill-team! Use your brain.

How can you believe his story? You’re too smart! Sixteen times too smart! Eighteen times too smart!”

More people have come out.

They cluster on the steps.

Davis wants to tell them to go back in, but she doesn’t dare take her eyes off Jalbert.

Now she can hear a siren.

It’s approaching, but it’s too far, too far.

“Frank, why do you think I’m here? How do you think I got here?”

For the first time he looks unsure.

“I don’t… know.”

“Danny called me.

He knew you were coming.

He dreamed it.”

“That’s ridiculous! A lie! A fable for children!”

“But here I am.

How else can you explain it?”

A nurse—a large woman in a blue smock—has come out of Urgent Care and is now sneaking up on Jalbert from behind.

Ella wants to tell her that’s a bad idea, the worst idea, but doesn’t dare.

Jalbert will think she’s trying to distract him, and he’ll shoot.

“I can’t,” Jalbert says.

“You shouldn’t be here.

I don’t think you are here.

You’re a hallucin—”

The big woman throws her arms around Jalbert, pinning his arms.

She must outweigh him by sixty pounds, but his reaction is immediate.

He stamps down on one of her feet.

She screams.

Her grip loosens.

He frees one arm and drives an elbow backward into her throat.

The nurse stumbles away, gagging.

He turns toward her and away from Davis.

“Frank, put it down! DROP IT DROP IT DROP IT!”

He doesn’t seem to hear her.

The nurse is bent over, hands to her throat.

Jalbert raises the gun.

He does it very slowly.

Ella has time to think about all the miles they’ve driven on Kansas roads and all the meals they’ve eaten in Kansas diners.

Prepping each other before testifying.

Sitting through endless briefings.

There’s time to shoot him, but she doesn’t.

Can’t.

She can only watch as Jalbert continues to raise the gun, but he’s not pointing it at the nurse.

He puts it to his own head.

“Frank, don’t.

Please don’t.”

“I did it all for poor Miss Yvonne.” Then he says “Three, two, one.” And pulls the trigger.