17. Michael
Chapter seventeen
Michael
T he SUV jostled over uneven terrain as Miles navigated the final stretch of road carrying us into the Cascade Mountains foothills. From the back seat, I watched his hands grip the wheel with uncharacteristic tension.
"Left at the fork," Marcus directed from the passenger seat, GPS glowing in his palm. His frame was almost too large for the confines of the vehicle, shoulders hunched forward as if ready to spring into action at any moment.
Alex sat beside me, our thighs nearly touching on the leather seat. His breathing had shifted during the last mile—shorter, shallower. I recognized it as the rhythm of someone preparing for whatever came next.
I caught his eye in the dim light. The same man who'd stood in the rain outside my door now sat beside me as we drove into unknown danger. I brushed my thumb across his knuckles, silently acknowledging all we weren't saying.
Miles called over his shoulder." This road doesn't exist on most maps. Kevin said that's half the appeal. No one comes here who doesn't already know about it."
"Kevin's ex has good taste in hideouts." Marcus turned his head, surveying the pine forest outside his window. "Though I still think we should've gone with my contact in Vancouver."
"And cross the border with our faces possibly flagged? No thanks." Miles slowed as the cabin came into view. "This is far enough from everything without needing passports."
The wheels crunched to a halt on pine needles and gravel. Beyond the windshield, the cabin stood—weathered, with cedar siding darkened by years of mountain rain and heavy snows.
I spotted a flicker of movement behind the front window. "Someone's here." The hairs on my neck stood on end, as they always did seconds before a situation turned critical.
Marcus leaned forward to peer through the windshield. "I see the edge of a car bumper on the other side of the cabin."
Miles frowned, checking his phone. "It could be the cleaner I hired, but they should have finished by now."
I reached beneath my jacket, fingers finding the reassuring weight of my weapon. My eyes met Marcus's in the rearview mirror, our thoughts aligning without words. He gave an almost imperceptible nod.
I gripped Alex's thigh. "Stay in the car."
"I'm coming with you. I'm already part of this."
"We move together." Marcus decided for all of us, his tone ending further debate. "Miles and I take point. Michael covers the rear with Alex. Standard formation."
We exited the vehicle into the crisp mountain air, so different from Seattle's persistent dampness. The scents of pine and earth filled my lungs with each breath.
Miles led us toward the cabin, steps slowing as we approached the porch. The wooden steps creaked beneath our weight—an unavoidable announcement of our arrival. Through the front window, I spotted another fleeting shadow.
The door swung open before we reached it.
A woman stood on the threshold, slender frame backlit by the cabin's interior. She wore oversized flannel with the sleeves rolled up. A knit cap covered most of her hair, and dark sunglasses concealed her eyes despite the fading daylight. I noted her slight limp as she shifted her weight.
Her voice was measured and neutral. "You're early. I was just finishing up."
Miles moved closer. "You aren't the cleaner I arranged."
The woman removed her sunglasses, revealing eyes shadowed by exhaustion. Her gaze swept over us, landing on me last.
"I've been trying to find Michael since Tahiti, whichever one of you that is." Her eyes landed on me. "And I got lucky. A friend of a friend knew a guy who knows your brother Miles."
Marcus set his jaw. "Who the hell are you?"
She straightened her posture, removing her cap to reveal dark hair cropped close to her scalp. "Evelyn Shaw."
The name landed hard. Alex inhaled sharply beside me, his research suddenly embodied in flesh and blood before us.
I studied the woman whose existence Alex and I'd only theorized about for weeks. She met my gaze unflinchingly, something like grim satisfaction flickering across her features.
She spoke quietly. "I think we have a lot to discuss."
Inside the cabin, the atmosphere was thick with unspoken questions. The main room stretched before us—open-plan with exposed beams and a stone fireplace that commanded the far wall. A worn dining table stood center stage, scarred with decades of use. Evelyn had already claimed a chair at its edge, perched like a bird ready for flight.
Alex moved deliberately toward the table. Marcus positioned himself between Evelyn and the door. Miles hovered near the kitchen, fingers drumming on the counter. I remained standing, too wired to settle.
I broke the silence first. "How'd you find us?"
Evelyn's gaze remained steady. Up close, I saw the fine lines around her eyes.
"When you're hiding, you develop a network. You need people who understand what it means to disappear. Finding others is a top skill, too. After Tahiti made international news, I started looking into you, Officer McCabe."
I corrected her. "I'm not an officer anymore."
"No, you're something far more dangerous to them now—a witness they can't control."
Marcus's patience grew thin. "Cut the cryptic bullshit. Why are you here?"
"Because he has the message," Evelyn nodded toward me. "Lars's final words."
I lowered myself into a chair, wood creaking beneath my weight. "You know everything that happened in Tahiti?"
It was half statement and half question.
"I know pieces. The explosion. The fight. Lars's death. But I need to hear what he said—what his last words were. He wouldn't go without saying something."
For weeks, those final moments had played on repeat in my mind—the heat of flames against my skin and the weight of his body as we struggled. I'd relived it in nightmares and waking hours alike, searching for meaning in the chaos.
"He wore a mask." I rubbed my face with my bare hand. "Armed. Dangerous. He came off that burning yacht dragging a security guard. We fought. There was fire everywhere."
Evelyn nodded slightly, encouraging me to continue.
"The guard eventually crawled away, but Lars and I—the yacht was going up in flames while we fought. He lost his footing near the edge of the dock. I tried to grab him, but..."
The memory of his feet teetering on the edge and the look in his eyes filled my memory, horrifying and raw.
"Before he fell, he said five words to me: Tell her the deal's off. Then he was gone. Into the flames."
Evelyn's eyes closed, a tremor passing through her composed facade.
"He didn't know me, I didn't even know who he was—until later, but he made sure someone heard those words."
A moment of silence passed between us, perhaps a tribute to a man we didn't know.
Evelyn's voice was raw and emotional when she finally spoke again. "'The deal meant silence—a devil's bargain. Stay quiet. Stay safe. We made it ten years ago when Asphodel was still a theory."
Alex leaned forward. "You were both involved in the project?"
"From the beginning. Lars was the architect. I designed the ethical constraints—the failsafes meant to prevent Asphodel from becoming what it is now."
"Which is what, exactly?" Marcus asked.
Evelyn's gaze swept over each of us. "An autonomous system that decides who lives and dies based on predictive algorithms. An executioner without conscience or oversight."
Miles, who had remained silent until now, dropped into a chair. "What the fuck?"
Evelyn continued her explanation. "If he said the deal was off, it meant he changed his mind. He'd stopped covering for the project. He was going to blow it wide open."
The weight of her words settled over us. Lars Reeves hadn't been a random assailant. He'd been a man on a mission—one that had cost him his life.
"He wasn't in Tahiti by coincidence." Evelyn smoothed her slacks with one hand. "He was following a trail—an off-the-books meeting between Reeves-Halvorsen representatives and foreign military buyers."
Alex connected the dots. "A weapons sale."
Evelyn nodded. "I believe Lars went rogue. He took sensitive intel to either stop the deal or leak it in real time. I hadn't heard from him in months—until a week before the explosion."
She pulled out her phone, scrolling to show us an encrypted message: Lars: The end game begins.
"I never expected him to die." Her voice caught, and she reached for a thin chain around her neck—a habit rather than a conscious gesture. From it hung a small, worn key. "We had a protocol, you know, since the beginning. If either of us went dark, there was a storage locker in Vancouver. Backup plans, new identities."
A weak smile appeared on her face. "Lars called it our apocalypse kit. I thought he'd use it—vanish into a black site or go full whistleblower, but he chose something else."
She tucked the key back beneath her collar, composing herself with visible effort. "He never knew who you were, Officer McCabe, but somehow, he trusted that you were the right man to hear his message."
I whispered, "He gave me the message and didn't even know my name."
"Lars fell trying to stop what he helped build." Evelyn's gaze drifted to the window. The rigid control she'd maintained cracked just enough to reveal the woman beneath the fugitive—someone who had once loved not wisely but deeply. "We met as grad students, you know. He talked about changing the world through predictive algorithms. He believed we were saving lives."
Her laugh was soft and hollow. "Not a martyr. Not a villain. We were both something in between."
Alex's hand found mine beneath the table.
Marcus acted as the practical adult in the room. "So where does that leave us?"
Evelyn straightened in her chair. "It leaves you with a choice—walk away now and hope they believe you know nothing of value, or help me finish what Lars started."
None of us spoke. It wasn't really a choice at all. We were already too deep to turn back.
Evelyn reached for her backpack. She withdrew a laptop and placed it carefully on the scarred tabletop.
"This is what Lars died trying to protect." She tapped in a rapid sequence of passwords. "The complete architecture of Project Asphodel, including what they've been hiding from the Pentagon oversight committee."
The screen illuminated her face from below, casting sharp shadows that exaggerated her hollow cheeks. The rest of us gathered around as she turned the laptop toward us.
The interface was surprisingly ordinary—a standard file directory with neatly labeled folders. Nothing in its appearance suggested the horror it contained.
Marcus moved closer, arms folded across his chest. "What exactly are we looking at here?"
"The criteria for who lives and who dies," Evelyn replied, opening a document with a dense flowchart.
I studied the diagram, my stomach tightening at its clinical precision. "This is a kill algorithm."
"Precisely." She highlighted sections as she explained. "It collects data points—social media activity, financial transactions, private emails—"
"Wait," Miles interrupted. "Are you saying this thing is already monitoring people's private communications? That's illegal without a warrant."
"Legality stopped mattering years ago," Evelyn said. "The program accesses everything: browsing history, location data, even genetic markers when available."
Alex whispered to all of us. " Minority Report without the psychics."
"And with real consequences." Evelyn opened another file.
A grid of photographs appeared—faces staring out from driver's licenses and passport photos. Beside each, a clinical report with timestamps and coordinates.
I pushed back from the table, needing physical distance from what I saw. "These are—"
"The pilot program's targets." Evelyn's voice remained steady, but her knuckles whitened around the edge of the laptop. "People flagged by the system and subsequently eliminated."
Alex leaned in, scanning the grid of faces. Then, he froze.
His breathing stopped.
"Wait," he said, his voice cracking. "Go back. Right there."
Evelyn's fingers hovered over the trackpad, uncertain. "Where?"
He jabbed the screen. HALE, MARISSA. Age: 35. Deceased. Flagged: September 14. Neutralized: September 22.
For half a second, I didn't understand what I was seeing.
Then Alex made a sound I'd never heard from him—a sound pulled from somewhere primal—and lurched backward, knocking into the corner of the table with enough force to rattle the laptop. His hand went to his mouth like he had to hold the scream in. If he didn't, something inside him might come apart.
"No," he gasped. "No, no, no—she died in a crash. That's what they said. It was an accident. It was supposed to be an accident—"
He turned toward Evelyn, eyes wild. "Why is she on that list?"
She looked stunned. "I don't know. I wasn't part of targeting. Maybe she was close to someone flagged. Maybe a data correlation. I—I don't know."
Alex shook his head violently. "She knew . She didn't trust any of it—no smart tech, voice assistants, or apps with location tracking. She used to pull the battery from her phone if she thought someone was watching. I told her she was being paranoid—"
He stopped. His whole body trembled. I reached for him, but he backed away like my touch might shatter him completely.
"She was right," he whispered. "All that time, and she was right ."
Then, he dropped.
Not all the way. Just enough for his knees to hit the floor as he crumpled forward, hands braced on the cabin's hardwood floor like he was trying to anchor himself to the earth. I was beside him in a second, crouched low, one arm tight around his shoulders.
His face pressed into his arm, and shudders raked through him—deep, wrenching ones. No sound came. Just those awful, quiet shakes of someone who'd run out of tears months ago but was still breaking anyway.
I whispered to him. "I'm sorry. I'm so goddamn sorry."
"She wasn't supposed to be there. She wasn't supposed to bepartof this."
He lifted his head just enough to look at Evelyn.
"She was everything good. And you let your fucking machineerase her."
Evelyn didn't flinch, but the guilt hit her like a slow, grinding punch to the ribs.
"She's not the only one, but I'm sorry. I truly am."
Alex's gaze turned to the screen again, to the tiny line of text that had rewritten his entire world.
Then he stood—unsteady but upright. His voice when he spoke was raw.
"She doesn't get to vanish."
He looked around the table, eyes landing last on me.
"We finish this. We bring it down."
I nodded once. "Then we start now."
Miles stood abruptly, walking to the sink, gripping the counter edge. He'd seen death before—his work as a therapist brought him close to trauma daily—but this was different.
I looked at the faces on the screen—ordinary people who had no idea lines of code had judged them. Fathers, mothers, students, workers. Targets.
Miles broke his silence. "They killed these people?"
Evelyn explained. "Neutralized is the term they use. Clean. Clinical. Distanced from the reality that these were flesh and blood humans with constitutional rights."
Alex touched the screen gently, as if he could somehow reach through it to Marissa. "This is government-sanctioned murder."
"The government insists there are safeguards." Evelyn opened another folder labeled OVERSIGHT MANIPULATION . "This information proves they've been deliberately misled. Reeves-Halvorsen has been feeding doctored data to oversight committees for years."
"So the US government is fully complicit." Marcus's voice was grim.
"The scariest part isn't the domestic program." Evelyn pulled up sales projections and meeting minutes. "It's that Reeves-Halvorsen has been quietly selling variations of the system to multiple buyers. Foreign governments. Private military contractors. Even corporate security divisions."
The implications hung heavy in the air. This wasn't only about one rogue operation or a few compromised officials. It was about a global shift, fundamentally reshaping power and surveillance beyond national borders or democratic oversight.
I stared back at Evelyn. "How close are they to full implementation?"
"The second-generation system goes live next month. It eliminates the human approval stage entirely. Pure machine judgment and execution."
Miles stood abruptly, walking to the window. His silhouette was tense against the gathering darkness outside. "This is—I can't even—" He shook his head, unable to complete the thought.
Alex's reaction was more visceral—skin flushed, breathing shallow. I recognized the transformation happening behind his eyes. The academic in him was receding, replaced by something more primitive.
His voice was hoarse. "Lars wasn't a villain. He was trying to stop this. He was a flawed man who finally tried to do the right thing."
"And he acted too late," Evelyn confirmed. "But yes. He couldn't live with what he'd created anymore."
Marcus, ever the pragmatist, leaned forward, palms flat against the table. "So what now? This is global. What the hell are we supposed to do from a cabin in the woods?"
The question lay on the table before us—impossibly large and unanswerable. What could five people possibly do against a system embedded in governments, corporations, and military structures worldwide?
It sounded impossible, but something shifted in the room. I felt it in the way Marcus's shoulders squared. Miles turned back toward us, away from the window.
Exposure. Evidence. Truth. They were our only weapons, but they weren't nothing.
Evelyn answered Marcus's question indirectly. "I spent years believing all I could do was survive. Hiding. Moving. Watching from the shadows as the monster I helped create grew beyond control." She looked directly at me. "But Lars's death changed everything. He chose action over hiding, even knowing the cost."
The shadows lengthened across the cabin floor as evening settled around us. Alex rose from his chair, movements stiff from sitting too long in one position.
"We're not surviving anymore." He turned back to face us. "Now, we're resisting. Neither Lars nor Marissa, or any of those over 200 people died in vain."
He'd drawn the line and dared the rest of us to cross it.
Miles remained silent, shoulders hunched as he processed everything we'd learned. Marcus watched him with the protective vigilance of an older brother while his own face revealed the calculations already running behind his eyes. My tactical mind absorbed Evelyn's revelations.
"Resistance sounds noble." Evelyn closed her laptop. "But it comes with a price."
"We've already lost enough." I thought about my badge, career, and the life I'd built. "What's left to lose?"
"Everything. Your lives. Your families. The ability to ever feel safe again."
Marcus said what we all were thinking. "We lost safety the moment they put us in their crosshairs. The primary question is, what's our next play?"
Evelyn reached into her jacket pocket and withdrew a small device—a flash drive no larger than her thumb, encased in matte black metal.
She placed it on the table. "I can't stay. Even coming here was a risk I wouldn't have taken if I'd had another option."
"Where will you go?" Miles asked.
"Better you don't know." A ghost of a smile crossed her face. "Plausible deniability still matters in some courts."
She slid the drive across the table's scarred surface toward me. My fingers closed around it automatically, feeling the slight warmth from her hand still lingering on the metal.
"This contains everything Lars managed to gather before Tahiti, including server access codes that are still valid. At least for now."
I stared at the drive. "He left this for you?"
Evelyn nodded. "He told me once that if anything happens, I should give this to someone who can finish what he started. I thought it was paranoia talking."
I stared at the small device in my palm, suddenly aware of its immense weight—not physical, but symbolic, like my father's badge, which now lay at the bottom of Tahitian waters. Both objects represented duty and sacrifice, a responsibility that extended beyond personal safety.
"Why me?" I met her gaze. "You don't know me. Don't know if you can trust me."
"Lars trusted you with his final words. Besides—" her eyes flicked to Alex, then back to me "—you have something I never did."
"What's that?"
"People willing to stand with you." She glanced at Marcus and Miles. "I've been fighting alone for so long that I forgot what it looks like when someone has backup."
The word struck me—backup. The foundation of everything I'd believed in as an officer. Never go in alone. Always have someone watching your six. I'd abandoned that principle when I returned home from Tahiti.
Marcus nodded almost imperceptibly from across the room, and Miles straightened his back.
Alex asked a pertinent question. "What happens when we access these files?"
"You'll have choices to make about who to trust and what to reveal. You'll have to decide how far you're willing to go." She stood, gathering her few belongings with the efficient movements of someone accustomed to quick departures. "The evidence is there, but evidence alone won't stop Asphodel. It will take courage to use it."
I closed my fingers around the drive, feeling its edges press into my palm. "We'll find a way."
"I believe you will." Suddenly, a genuine smile transformed her face. "That's why I'm here. I put together a file that tells you specifically what to do if you decide to release the information."
Evelyn's departure unfolded with quiet efficiency. No prolonged goodbyes or promises to stay in touch. She zipped her jacket, shouldered her small pack, and headed for the door while we were still debating whether she should leave at all.
"I've survived this long by never staying anywhere longer than necessary." She placed her hand on the doorknob. "The moment I became visible to you, my clock started ticking."
Marcus moved to block her path. "At least let us drive you somewhere. These mountains aren't safe after dark."
"I have transport waiting half a mile down the road. I'll drive to them, and, contrary to what you might think, I'm quite capable in the dark."
With that, she slipped past Marcus's imposing frame with surprising agility, disappearing into the night before we could formulate more objections. The door closed behind her with a soft click, leaving a vacuum of silence in her wake.
We stood frozen momentarily, still processing her phantom-like presence and equally abrupt vanishing. A car started, and it disappeared into the distance.
"Should we go after her?" Miles asked.
Marcus moved to secure the door. "She made her choice."
The drive in my hand felt almost alive with possibilities and dangers. I transferred it to my pocket, the small weight pressing against my thigh like a reminder of all that had changed in an hour.
Alex stood by the fireplace, fingers tracing the rough-hewn mantel. "She's been running for years. Marissa lived her life a little similarly. She looked over her shoulders and trusted few."
"It could be us." Miles dropped heavily onto the worn sofa. "If this goes ass upwards."
I moved to the window, peering into the darkness. The woods revealed nothing—no movement, no sign of Evelyn or whoever might be following her—only the silent sentinels of pine trees and the distant glimmer of stars emerging above them.
The glass was cold against my forehead as I leaned into the glass, exhaustion suddenly pressing down on my shoulders. Alex appeared behind me, and his hands came to rest on either side of my waist. Neither of us spoke as he pressed his chest against my back, his chin finding the curve where my neck met my shoulder.
He asked a direct question. "You're thinking about what we've lost?"
I covered one of his hands with mine. "I'm thinking about what we can't afford to lose."
He turned me gently until we faced each other, the window at my back. His fingers traced the line of my jaw with unexpected tenderness.
"I've spent eighteen months looking backward," he said quietly. "Even when I was with you in Tahiti, I was still looking back, searching for something. But now..."
"Now?" I prompted, though I already knew.
"Now, I've got nothing left to find, and I'm terrified of the future, but I'm looking toward it anyway. With you."
We shared a brief but essential kiss—an affirmation rather than a distraction from the danger around us. When we separated, the world hadn't changed, but something in me had shifted—a realignment of purpose that went beyond duty or justice into something more personal.
Behind us, a rustle of papers and the soft click of laptop keys indicated Alex was already processing what we'd learned. Marcus methodically checked every lock and blind in the cabin while Miles unpacked supplies with mechanical precision. Each of us retreated to what we knew best in the face of overwhelming uncertainty.
We gathered slowly around the dining table, drawn by some unspoken gravity. Four men connected by circumstance and choice, now sitting in judgment of our own futures.
Alex broke the silence. "This isn't only about us anymore. Innocent people have died already." He choked up briefly. If Asphodel goes live next month—many more will."
"People we'll never meet." Marcus wasn't dismissive, but he acknowledged the abstract nature of our situation. "For a cause we stumbled into by accident."
Miles looked up from his hands. "Does that make their lives worth less?"
"We're not off the grid anymore," I said, looking at each of their faces in turn. "We're in the crosshairs."