“Yeah, but it makes catching the dumb ones easier,” I reply.

“True. Our overcrowded prisons are proof. But it’s the smart ones I worry about.”

I think about the telescope and the video camera. “What if he wasn’t just recording the airplane and the response, but counting heads?”

“I’ve thought about that. But how would it change what he does? Does he have a different plan if there are two hundred agents working on the case as opposed to one hundred?” He pauses. “Ah. Of course . . .”

The Warlock may not be a mathematical genius like Ailes, but he’s a very logical thinker. “He’s doing the opposite of you. You look for the one man out of a thousand who can make a difference.”

“Yes. And he looks for the one that might cause problems and tries to figure out how to eliminate them. Only he’s getting us to do that for him by putting you under protection and limiting your involvement. He thought he had the upper hand until he saw the FBI has a magician.”

“How do you test this? How do we know it’s a bluff?” I ask.

“I don’t know if it’s practical to do so. Better if we’re just mindful of the fact that he’s doing that.”

“There’s got to be more we can do. More I can do.”

“Jennifer is in Texas trying to talk to the people who run Faceplaced.com and we’re already spread thin here. Thanks to you.” He points his thumb to the conference room across the office where Gerald, the tall, lanky math geek in the skinnier than usual FBI tie, is making wild motions in front of a webcam.

The idea that we can’t even rely on video conferencing potential victims leads to a heated discussion between Ailes and the assistant director about how far we should go in questioning everything we see. On a practical level, trying to canvass this many people, even with local law enforcement, was going to be a challenge. Especially when the Warlock has gone to great lengths to place Swanson outside our reach.

Gerald told Ailes he could do a feasibility test in hours. He ripped apart one of his gaming consoles and hacked together a motion capture device while we sat around and ate lunch.

“We can’t let the Warlock control the case.” I’m dying to get back out into the field. I’d made several hints that I could be useful in Michigan. I don’t know if that’s really true or not, but I hate waiting for something to happen. To me, it seems like there’s more to be learned from Chloe McDonald’s murder, two years ago. I go back and forth on whether or not she was killed by the Warlock or if he just used her murder as an opportunity. There might be more leads back there.

I stare at Ailes’s wall calendar. The Avenger appeared three days ago. There were six full days between the hack and the cemetery. Another six between that and the Avenger. We’re all looking at our watches, counting the remaining days. I’ve got a gut feeling the Warlock may try to surprise us. He doesn’t want us to know his rhythm.