When Zack had stumbled into heroism by outwitting a professional killer, did he also stumble into a permanent hero complex? Is he twisting things around, seeing things in a certain light, to let himself be a hero again? Somewhere deep in him, does he miss the heroism? Is he looking to rekindle it? To the detriment and willful ignorance of all else?

Is Emily lost to him? The best thing that has ever happened to him, that came so forcefully, so paradoxically, out of the worst thing that ever happened to him, and he has abandoned it, cast if off, tossed it to the side of the road.

It couldn’t get any worse, could it?

64.

64.

Okay, a detonation of some sort.

“It’s in the courthouse,” Joey had said.“Inside the courtroom,” Karloff had told Joey.

That’s all they know. Or kind of know.

Presumably, Zack is guessing, inside the courtroom where Joey will be on trial.

He’s trying to focus. Trying not to think about Emily. Using the riddle of the cell phone detonator and the bomb to push aside, to tamp down, all his unleashed emotions about losing her. Her pulling away in that cab. The image scorching his mind.

Concentrate. How on earth could they ever get a bomb in there with all that security?

“But they got this guy Will inside my jail cell,” Joey had told Zack, describing Karloff and his techie sidekick Will, once they discovered the phone had been tampered with.

So Karloff could pull off more than anyone might think.

So many questions. So much speculation…

Steve had talked about the detonator’s range as a big unknown. But if the bomb detonates via a radio signal from the phone, wouldn’t it have enough range to trigger the explosion from outside that courtroom? So why put Joey inside the courtroom? Because you want or need him to die too? Or do you need Joey to first confirm that some target is indeed in there? Or do certain courtroom or courthouse walls block a radio signal, so Joey has to be inside?

And who is the target in that courtroom?

If it’s a single target—a certain witness, a certain prosecutor—you wouldn’t have to use a bomb in a courtroom. Karloff could just have them assassinated at their home, right? Or coming from or going to work? A shocking but totally conventional hit. Which would bring the full focus of law enforcement, but which Karloff, with his network, could probably survive. Hell, he could have hired Joey for the job.

But he’s choosing the courtroom. To take out the prosecutors, the judge, the jury, the defendant, all at once? To take out the system, in a way?

Yes, the system will be disrupted. It will be bedlam. A tragedy covered relentlessly for weeks in the national news. But eventually the system goes on. Certainly Karloff knows that.