“That’s right.”

“And we’ll already be watching out for SWAT, who might shoot us by accident if they run into us.… Lewis, are we crazy to be doing this?”

“It’s starting to look that way.” She makes an uncontrolled huff of laughter, although nothing about this is funny.

Bell’s face is shadowed in the twilight. “Emma, are you okay going back into the asylum? I mean, it kinda makes sense for me to go in, but you don’t—”

“Have you ever dodged a serial killer, Travis?” Emma feels a tide rising inside her, a wave of tension and fear that washes higher as each minute passes. “Because I have. And you need me in there if you want to get out of St. Elizabeths tonight.”

He nods, glances down. “Are you scared?”

“Yes.” Her voice trembles. “Are you?”

He holds up his hands. They’re shaking. “Real tough guy, huh?”

She makes a tiny smile as she puts her hands over his, as he curls his fingers into fists. “Travis,” she says. “You’re doing it right.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

Hoyt has studied the literature on surveillance psychology, researched perception, attention deficits, and team effectiveness under stress. He’s determined that there are a few key moments in the timeline of a stakeout. He employed this information to useful effect in Annandale, and now he is in the quick of it once again.

The moments immediately after a stakeout is established are good, because everyone is still settling into their positions and nobody expects an immediate threat. People are alert, though, not fuzzy with boredom and the wear of held tension, so he has to be careful.

There is no longer direct entry into Gutmunsson’s room via the old sacristy; that doorway was bricked up in 1962. Visitors must now cross through the foyer, then the great hall and its steel barricade to the oak door to see Simon. During Hoyt’s time working here, it’s been a great inconvenience that Gutmunsson’s room has only one entry, and that the man employed to guard it is never lax.

The very helpful Agent Martino informed him that there are six SWAT officers stationed in the courtyard to the east of the center building. An additional four SWAT officers are stationed inside, in the former kitchen on the east side of the great hall. Their job is to watch the camera footage beamed from the asylum’s control booth monitors.

SWAT personnel will hold their positions until they catch sight of the target. At that point, they will instruct the control booth technician to close the barred gate, then they’ll call in their courtyard reinforcements and execute a dynamic entry through the kitchen and into the great hall.

Including the command agent in the surveillance van out front, the female agent in the foyer, and Martino, the number of active personnel is blown out to thirteen. If Hoyt thinks in terms of numbers of combatants, their positioning, the kinds of weaponry they’re wielding, and the strategies they’re inclined to use, he would be put off. It looks like a complicated problem. But the beauty of his own plan is in its simplicity.