Fenwick’s mask slipped for a quarter of a second and then reset perfectly, seamlessly, as though it had never moved.

And that, more than anything the man said, was what convinced Cordell of what he was dealing with.

This was not a frantic parent who had made a terrible mistake and was now panicking.

A frantic parent would have been all cracks, all the way through — grief and terror and self-recrimination pouring out sideways, impossible to keep contained.

This man was containing it effortlessly, because there was nothing to contain, because the emergency in his voice had been manufactured for an audience and he could turn it on and off.

He was not afraid for his daughter through that glass.