Chapter 18
THE SMELL OF SAUSAGE biscuits lingered in the SUV long after Elvis tossed the greasy bag in the back seat.
Gage had taken first watch, now riding shotgun, sipping terrible gas station coffee like it was vintage bourbon, thanks to Elvis.
Ever the multitasker, Elvis had gone for food, intel, and a spare roll of gauze before Callen and Meaghan had woken up.
Callen rode in the back beside Meaghan, his shoulder pressed against the cool window, the pain in his side flaring with every bump in the road.
It wasn’t as bad as yesterday, thanks to the antibiotics and the clean dressing Meaghan had insisted on rechecking before they left, but it wasn’t good either.
She hadn’t taken her eyes off him all morning since they woke up, looking at him as if he might break at any moment. It was unsettling, even if it was sweet.
“Still with us?” she asked, her hand resting on the seat between them.
He gave a soft chuckle as he reached out and took her hand in his. “For the moment. Just don’t let Gage take the wheel or it might be over quick.”
Ahead of them, Gage grunted without looking back. “I heard that. And for the record, I’m a much better driver than you or Elvis combined.”
“Really? Dude, your driving record speaks for itself,” Callen muttered. “Remember Tampa?”
“That curb game out of nowhere,” Gage growled.
Meaghan bit back a laugh, but she never took her eyes off Callen.
Leaving the SUV Elvis and Gage arrived in at the motel, they headed to a GSI-owned property near Biloxi, tucked deep in Mississippi pine country, a place with an address, a building that didn’t exist on any tax roll or satellite image, layered with surveillance tech and encased in reinforced steel.
Off-grid didn’t begin to cover it. This was a fallback site, hand-picked by Dane himself for the kind of mission where everything had already gone sideways, and the only thing left to do was survive.
It was there that they would regroup and make some sort of plan to get Meaghan out of the crosshairs of whoever was after her.
The SUV hummed along I-10 West, tires eating mile after mile of dark, cracked asphalt.
They’d left Live Oak behind before the sun had fully crested the trees, pushing through the heart of the Florida Panhandle, where fog hung low over swamps and cypress thickets.
The morning air still held the bite of night, cool and damp, seeping through the cracked window by Callen’s shoulder.
Every time he blinked, the trees changed, longleaf pines fading to palmetto clusters, billboards teasing roadside diners giving way to fast-food signs and ghost-town motels where time had stopped thirty years ago.
They passed through Tallahassee just after eight, the skyline a blur beyond the interstate. Callen barely registered it, his attention split between the burn in his side and the tightening feeling in his chest every time Meaghan so much as shifted beside him.
Just as he got settled in once more, his phone rang with a number that didn’t show up in his contacts. It didn’t matter. He knew who it was.
With a groan, he swiped his finger across his screen. “This is Callen.”
“I thought you were a professional.” The voice was low, clipped, and unmistakable. “And yet I’ve received no update, no confirmation from you. Just my daughter calling to yell at me and accuse me of things I didn’t do. You were supposed to bring her to D.C.”
Callen closed his eyes. “Yeah, well, she wasn’t exactly a fan of that idea.”
“That wasn’t your decision to make,” the senator snapped. “Or hers. I gave you an order.”
“Well, I didn’t make the decision,” he said, glancing over at her, a crooked grin twisting his lips. “She did. And I respected her choices. And for the record, since there seems to be some confusion on your part, you don’t give me orders. You asked for a favor, and I granted it.”
A pause hung on the line.
Then he heard a low growl. “I knew I made a mistake asking for your help in this. You’re just as useless as you were back then.”
Callen’s anger sharpened. “Yeah, I’m getting that sense as well. Especially now that I know about New Horizons.”
Silence answered him once more.
“I know about the permits, the land grab, even the shell companies and the money changing hands. Now these people are after your daughter to punish you. Isn’t that about right?”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Perhaps. But I know enough to tell me to keep digging,” Callen said. “And when I do, I’ll burn whoever’s responsible to the ground if it means keeping her safe.”
“Damn it, boy. She’s not your responsibility. She’s mine. I made that clear years ago, I thought.”
“And look how that’s working out for you.” He shook his head. “Don’t worry. I got her.”
“Now you look, I’m leaving D.C. and heading to our estate in Savannah. Bring her there before this gets even worse.”
Callen scoffed. “I doubt that’ll happen.”
And then he simply hung up.
He glanced over at Meaghan, her lips downturned as she stared back at him. “Well, that went as I expected.”
She simply nodded as she laid her head back on the seat and closed her eyes. She said little after that, and neither did he.
The silence between them wasn’t cold, just… weighted. Heavy with decisions still unspoken, with everything they hadn’t figured out yet. But she stayed close, brushing her thigh against his every time they hit a dip in the road. Her fingers had found his and didn’t let go.
By the time they crossed into Alabama, the landscape had flattened, giving way to sprawling farmland and backwater bays, dotted with skeletal fishing boats and old barns sagging under decades of weather.
Mobile came and went in a blur of industrial ports and billboard sprawl, and then they were back in open country, interstate signs for Pascagoula and Biloxi finally appearing on the horizon like distant promises.
Still no tail. Still no margin for error.
They stopped for gas in a town so small even the map didn’t name it.
While Elvis went inside to grab bottled water and aspirin, Callen stepped out of the SUV to stretch his legs and catch a breath.
He leaned against the vehicle, breathing through the dull throb in his side.
The bandages were holding, but barely. Blood had seeped through the stitches slightly.
“You’re pushing too hard,” Meaghan said, stepping in front of him. “Pulling at your stitches won’t help your healing.”
“We’re almost there. I can rest then. If we slow down, we get caught.”
“We will anyway if you bleed out.”
Her hands touched his chest gently, her eyes fierce.
“You’re angry,” he said.
“I’m terrified.”
He nodded once. “Me too, to be honest. Just means we’re alert. People who don’t fear even a little wind up dead.”
She looked like she wanted to scream, or cry, or shake him until he understood what it meant to matter to someone again. Instead, she reached into her coat pocket and pulled out a protein bar.
“You’re no good to me weak,” she said, handing it over. “Or worse dead.”
Callen grinned faintly. “That sounded almost romantic.”
She rolled her eyes. “Just eat the bar, McHollister.”
Fueled up and loaded down with snacks, they all climbed back into the SUV, Gage taking over the driving.
They went without GPS. Instead, Elvis held a laminated map, one edge frayed from too many folds, reading out road names in a slow, steady rhythm like a preacher on Sunday morning.
“Next left’s a county road. Should be unmarked.
You’ll see a rusted sign that says J.D. Hollow. ”
Callen let his head fall back against the seat, forcing himself to breathe through the throb in his side.
Not much farther now.
Elvis caught his gaze in the rearview. “You sure you don’t want to stretch out more?”
Callen shook his head. “If I do, I might not get back up when we get there. I’d rather stay alert and upright.”
“He’s stubborn,” Meaghan said softly, like it was both an observation and a quiet plea. “He was the same way when we were younger.”
“Been that way since I’ve known him as well,” Elvis replied, glancing over his shoulder.
Callen’s phone vibrated in his lap. One glance at the screen had his jaw clenching.
Blaze.
He swiped his phone to answer, putting it on speaker. This was about Meaghan after all, so she deserved to hear it all as it came in. “Talk to me. What have you found out?”
“I’ve been tracking the men from the school shooting,” Blaze said, his voice tight with static. “Picked up three of them on highway cams heading west from the cabin. Same black SUV that hit your trail before dawn.”
Callen straightened in his seat. “You still got eyes on them.”
“Had,” Blaze corrected. “They found the hotel shortly after you left. How, I’m not sure. I caught them just outside Tallahassee getting back on the interstate. And Callen, I got a tag.”
“I’m assuming you traced it.”
“You know I did, but I enjoy drawing things out, making you wait.”
“Spit it out, pup!” Elvis yelled over his shoulder. “Who’s chasing us?”
Blaze chuckled. “New Horizons Acquisition Group.” Blaze let that hang for a moment. “The same outfit tied to the senator’s land deals. Whoever’s behind this, they’re not just cleaning up loose ends, they’re coming for you both. Seems the chatter I heard was accurate.”
Callen’s stomach knotted. “You sure it’s them?”
“Positive. And once I had their plate, I could ping their vehicle’s location device.
It’s been bouncing tower pings every fifty miles along I-10, always just a few hours behind you.
I lost them around Pensacola, but odds are they’re gunning it to close the gap.
You need to assume they’ll find you before Biloxi. ”
Callen’s hand tightened around the phone. “We’ll be ready.”
“I don’t think that’ll be good enough,” Blaze shot back.
“These aren’t hired muscle from D.C. I dug into the people New Horizons uses for security.
They’re field-grade mercs with ex-mil backgrounds and contracts through offshore accounts.
They don’t take prisoners, and they sure as hell don’t negotiate. ”
Callen glanced at Meaghan in the seat beside him, her eyes searching his face for answers. “Then they’ll find out what happens when they corner the wrong people. Any idea how they’re tracking us?”
“My guess would be they have someone doing what I’m doing, tracking cams, monitoring facial rec.”
“Great. I hate when bad guys know what the hell they’re doing.”
“Just stay moving,” Blaze said. “I’ll reroute satellite tracking to your sector and keep digging into who signed the contract. But one thing’s for sure—New Horizons isn’t done playing.”
“Keep me posted.” And then the line went dead.
Callen swore under his breath, then glanced at Meaghan, dropping the phone into the cupholder. Her brow furrowed, sensing the shift in him, and he could feel his jaw tighten, his pulse a steady hammer in his ears.
“Stick to the back roads,” he said, glancing toward Gage in the driver’s seat. “We’re being tailed and need to do better at hiding our trail.”
Gage gave a curt nod, not questioning the decision, as he veered off the interstate at the next exit, merging onto a narrower tree-flanked highway.
“So, does it feel like there’s something we’re missing?” Callen asked as he stared straight ahead. “Real estate shell games. EPA waivers, fast-tracked land deals. And now someone working for them wants you either dragged back to use you to force your father’s hand or dead. It makes little sense.”
She said nothing for a long time, just stared out the window, the sun drifting even higher in the sky, blurring pine trees into ghostly shapes.
Callen looked at Gage, brow furrowed. “If they’re chasing us that hard, they won’t stop until someone puts them down.”
Elvis nodded as he turned in his seat to face Callen and Meaghan in the backseat. “Then we need to take the fight to them.”
“Agreed,” Gage said without hesitation. “But we’ll need more than guesses. We need the full story, and we both know the senator isn’t giving it to us.”
‘That’s the problem,” Callen said. “Her father’s not talking, and we need him to.” He turned to Meaghan. “He asked me to bring you in, made it sound like you’d be safe in D.C., but he didn’t say safe from whom. Now we know. And we’re not walking into another setup.”
“So what’s the move?” Gage asked, staring at Callen in the rearview mirror.
Callen leaned back against the headrest, exhaling slowly through his nose. “We get to the Biloxi safe house, set up shop, and force Harrington to give us what we need. No more half-truths. He either comes clean about what he’s involved in, or we expose it piece by piece.
“And if he doesn’t scare easily?” Gage asked.
“He’ll scare when he realizes I’m done playing middleman.”
He turned back toward Meaghan. “This only ends when we know exactly who signed that contract on you. If it came from New Horizons, there’s a name behind it, and that name leads us to the top.”
Meaghan didn’t flinch. “Then let’s find it.”
Callen nodded once. “You said you didn’t want to run to your father. I’m not letting you. But I am going to make damn sure he answers for what he’s done.”
Gage whistled low under his breath. “Should’ve brought popcorn.”
Callen smirked faintly. “Too early. But once we get to Biloxi, all bets are off.”
They rode in silence for a stretch, the old two-lane highway snaking through thick trees and sleepy, half-left towns. Dawn was still creeping in slowly behind them. Ahead, it was all shadows and unfinished business.