55. Caleb
CALEB
I’ve been awake for three days.
Not because I can’t sleep.
Because every time I close my eyes, I see six flag-draped caskets—and right now, Shadow Division can’t afford for me to look away.
The cabin is dark except for the glow of Fathom’s computer screens and the dim light hanging above the kitchen table.
Outside, wind moves through the trees.
Inside, every man in the room is armed.
Rook stands near the window, watching the darkness beyond the glass. Sarah is asleep in the back bedroom, although I doubt she’s truly sleeping. She has the same habit the rest of us do now—resting with one ear open and a weapon close enough to reach.
Cobra leans against the kitchen counter, cleaning a pistol that was already spotless twenty minutes ago.
Fathom sits before three screens, his fingers moving rapidly over the keys.
I sit at the far end of the table.
Quiet.
Still.
Watching.
I learned a long time ago that silence makes most people uncomfortable. Give them enough of it, and they’ll fill it with information.
Rook’s encrypted phone vibrates.
Every man in the cabin goes still.
He glances at the message.
His expression changes.
Only slightly.
But I see it.
I always see it.
“What is it?” Cobra asks.
Rook reads the message twice before answering.
“An agent inside Langley overheard Graves talking.”
Fathom looks up from his screens. “About what?”
“Us.”
The cabin seems to get colder.
I lean forward. “Who’s the agent?”
“Evelyn Hart.”
The name means nothing to me.
Not yet.
But Fathom is already searching.
“CIA intelligence analyst,” he says. “Twelve years with the agency. Deep-level access. Field collection experience before she transferred to analysis. Clean record. No family in the area. No obvious connection to Graves.”
“Does she have proof?” Cobra asks.
“She says she recorded them.”
“And Graves knows?” I ask.
Rook looks at me. “He knows someone heard.”
I stand.
The chair scrapes against the wooden floor.
No one asks what I’m doing.
If Graves is hunting an intelligence agent in Washington, she has nowhere safe to run. Every camera, badge reader, traffic signal, and federal database can become a weapon against her.
“She sent one message,” Rook says. “Then her phone went dark.”
I reach for my rifle case. “I’ll find her.”
“Washington is a big place,” Cobra says.
“Not if she wants to stay alive.”
People in her position follow patterns.
They run toward somewhere familiar. Somewhere they once felt safe. An old apartment. A friend’s house. A location disconnected from their current routine.
Or they go underground.
If Evelyn Hart is as intelligent as her file suggests, she’ll choose the last one.
Rook crosses the room. “Fathom caught one signal before her phone disappeared.”
“Where?”
“Alexandria. The device was moving north.”
“Could be a decoy.”
“It probably is,” Fathom says. “But a traffic camera caught Hart leaving the cab two minutes before the phone continued toward Baltimore. She changed vehicles behind an abandoned shopping center.”
I look at the image on his center screen.
The camera caught only part of her face. Dark hair tucked beneath a hat. Pale skin. Eyes turned toward the street behind her.
Even in a blurred image, I see the calculation in her expression.
She knows she’s being hunted.
“She’ll need another vehicle,” I say.
Fathom pulls up a map. “There was a sedan reported stolen six minutes later.”
“Not stolen,” I say. “Borrowed.”
Cobra snorts. “You two can debate the legal definition after we keep her from getting murdered.”
Fathom highlights several locations. “Hart lived in Alexandria eight years ago while she worked field collection. Graves will know that.”
“So will she.” I study the map. “She’ll use it because it’s predictable.”
Rook’s eyes narrow. “Why would she do that?”
“To make Graves commit his people.”
Understanding settles across his face.
“She wants to see who’s following her,” he says.
I nod.
Evelyn Hart isn’t simply running.
She’s collecting information.
That makes her useful.
It also makes her more likely to get killed.
I lock my rifle case and reach for my jacket.
Rook steps closer. “Sniper.”
I look up.
“If this is a trap?—”
“It is.”
Cobra straightens away from the counter.
I continue. “Everything Graves does is a trap. The question is whether he expects us to recognize it.”
“That’s why you’re going,” Cobra says.
There’s no humor in his voice now.
Only trust.
We paid for that trust in blood.
I check my sidearm, extra magazines, two flash-bangs, and the knife secured beneath my jacket. Then I take the keys to one of the vehicles Fathom has kept outside every official database.
Rook stops me before I reach the door.
“Bring her back alive.”
My hand closes around the doorknob.
“I will.”
The answer comes easily.
The truth doesn’t.
There have been people I couldn’t save.
Names I don’t say aloud.
Faces that return whenever I close my eyes.
Men who trusted me to see the danger before it reached them.
A team surrounded on a mountain while I watched through a scope, calculating distance, wind, and bullet drop as one brother after another went down.
Sometimes even the best sniper is too far away.
I step into the freezing night.
The truck’s engine growls to life, and the tires cut through the gravel as I leave the cabin behind.
Evelyn Hart is being hunted by some of the most powerful men in the country.
She heard too much.
Recorded too much.
And trusted Shadow Division enough to send one desperate message.
Walter Graves put a target on her back.
Now I’m coming for her.
This time, I won’t be too far away.