No one had died, though. They’d done their job, and kept the public safe. No one had died.

But Owen had come damn close.

She brought her eyes down to the monitor, flipped it over to the feed from the cordon around the spot where Owen had nearly lost it. Homeland Security was here now, and she couldn’t read their internal traffic, but she could read the messages from her peers on the force.

And they made her smile.

The noose was closing in. The drones circling in tighter and tighter loops. More and more buildings and other hiding spots being searched and crossed off. Blimp-based surveillance on-site now, watching the whole area in infrared and a dozen other spectra. Shankari was probably hiding in a drainage ditch, somewhere in the few square miles that remained. Or buried under a bed of mud and hay. Or maybe he was already dead.

No. Better if he was still alive. Hurt, maybe. Broken bones, like Owen. Burns over half his body, like Owen. A concussion, like Owen. But without Owen’s friends. Without medical care. Without any hope. Just a drug dealer and terrorist, out there on his own. Just an attempted cop-killer, in pain and scared, knowing justice was coming for him.

Barb smiled at that.

I should be out there, she thought to herself. I wanna find that SOB. I wanna see him hurting.

Instead she was here, following up on this unlikely lead.

She flipped the screen back to the image. A satellite visual capture from two months ago of what might be a van that might match the make and model of the one Shankari had been driving, seen on the streets of Madison. Except that it was night time. Seen from space. Illuminated only from one side in the headlights of another vehicle.

She shook her head. The patrol car reached its destination and came to a stop. She was at an intersection, on the west side of town, six blocks off the main strip of Seminole.

Barb looked around. This was a residential neighborhood. She knew the occupants of at least a third of the homes within sight. She couldn’t imagine any of those people harboring a terrorist. Even so, she had a job to do.

She spoke aloud. “Display recent arrests, warrants, disturbances, changes in occupancy.”

The car’s glass came alive, painting the houses in faint halos. Green. Green. Green. More green. One yellow, from a domestic dispute. Evan Coolidge. Drank too much. Hit his wife once. Got a very stern talking to. And then, off the record, an even sterner talking to from several of his neighbors. Never a second call. Barb doubted Coolidge was capable of assisting in a petty robbery, let alone terrorism.

There was a warning indicator flashing at the bottom of the car’s glass. CONNECTION FAILED – WORKING OFFLINE. “Expand warning,” she told the car.