“All right. Let me know their response. I won’t be able to sleep until I know,” she said. “I hate loose ends.”

“Hopefully CONTROL will let us tie this one up,” he said. “Love you.”

“Love you, too.”

He ended the call and took his laptop to the dining room table, away from the sliding glass door and its virtually transparent curtain. After negotiating the security protocols to access the dark web website designed exclusively for communicating with CONTROL, he typed CHATBOX followed by his username in the single text field on the home page. His cell phone buzzed a moment later, a text appearing with a twenty-digit alphanumeric code, which he typed in the now-empty text field. A rudimentary chat box opened, and he typed a quick update.

Despite his eagerness to speed up what he thought to be the inevitable with Devin Gray, he never made any assumptions or recommendations when communicating directly with CONTROL. He reported the facts and answered with facts. The group running the show on the other end of this gave the orders based on Rudd’s reporting and information available from dozens of other sources that he’d likely never be made aware of.

HR (Harvey Rudd): Subject hasn’t returned.

Several seconds elapsed before a response appeared.

CL (CONTROL): Sending mission addendum by 7 AM your time. Synopsis follows. Discontinuing mobile surveillance of DG. Focusing on likely personal contacts in area. Priority remains discovering possible secondary HG location.

HR: Copy. Will adjust and execute.

The chat box disappeared, leaving him with the generic home page and text box. He shut the computer down and called his wife with the update. She answered before he heard the first ring.

“That was fast,” she said.

“I think they had already decided,” said Rudd. “Sounds like we’ll be following the father and a few other people they picked out as possible personal contacts. And we’re still looking for this supposed hideout.”

“Sounds exciting,” she said.

“A real barn burner,” said Rudd. “Go to bed. We’ll get the details in the morning and figure out what that means for us in terms of splitting everyone up.”

“Did they say how many folks we’d be watching?”

“No. But they did say no more mobile surveillance of this guy, so it sounds like we’ll still keep someone here to watch over the apartment,” he said. “Let’s hope it’s no more than four, or you and I will have to go our separate ways for a while.”

“This is turning into a real turkey of a job,” she said.

“If by turkey you mean low key and low risk, I’m not complaining,” said Rudd. “I don’t need to go all Mission: Impossible on my last job to feel fulfilled. Sitting in a car and staring through a pair of binoculars sounds like a perfect send-off.”

“I guess,” she said, clearly disappointed.