Chapter 3 Aaron
Aaron
Location: Lisbon, Portugal
She sits like she’s trying not to take up space.
Hands folded tight in her lap. Shoulders squared. Eyes forward, tracking reflections in the windshield like she’s already learned the first rule of surviving predators:
Don’t give them your fear for free.
I drive like we’re nothing.
Two locals leaving a late dinner. No urgency. No sharp turns. No sudden acceleration that would flag us to anyone watching for panic.
And someone is watching.
They always watch the exit.
Lisbon slides by in soft gold and shadow—tile facades, steep streets, the river somewhere to our left like a dark mouth. I let three cars pass. I stop fully at a light I could roll through. I merge early, signal on, obedient.
The worst thing you can do when you’re hunted is look hunted.
In my earpiece, Lena is a steady hum behind the noise of the city.
“You’re clear for now,” she says. “But you’re not invisible.”
“I know,” I murmur. My eyes cut to the rearview mirror. One, two, three vehicles behind us. All normal. All potential.
Ronan’s voice comes in next, low. “Route?”
“Taking the long loop.”
“You want to walk them?”
“I want to see if they’re there.”
Lark shifts slightly in the passenger seat at the sound of voices she can’t place.
I glance at her without turning my head fully. Her jaw is tight. She’s listening like she’s trying to decide whether we’re the worst thing that happened to her tonight—or the only reason she’s still alive.
Fair.
I keep my eyes on the road.
She breaks first. “You have people.”
“Yes.”
“That’s who you were talking to.”
“Yes.”
Her fingers touch her pendant again, then stop like she remembers my warning.
I clock the movement anyway. That charm is a problem. Maybe not the only problem, but it’s one I can touch.
“Don’t,” I say again.
She inhales. “I wasn’t—”
“You were.” I keep my voice flat. Not harsh. Just true. “It’s a habit. Habits get tracked.”
Silence stretches.
Then she says, carefully, “What do you think it is?”
“A beacon,” I answer.
Her breath catches in a way that isn’t theatrical. It’s the sound of a brain snapping two pieces of reality together.
“That’s… insane.”
“Most people think that right before they disappear.”
She stares at the dashboard like it might offer her a softer world.
I take the next turn, a gentle curve uphill, and my gaze lifts to the rearview mirror again.
A silver hatchback has been behind us since the last light.
Maybe coincidence.
Maybe not.
I don’t react. I don’t lean forward. I don’t speed up.
I let it be.
I’ve seen men die because they couldn’t tolerate uncertainty.
“Lena,” I say quietly. “Plate check on the hatchback. Three cars back.”
A pause.
“Working.”
Lark’s voice is low now. “You can do that?”
I don’t answer. Because the answer isn’t reassuring.
We can do a lot of things.
So can the people hunting her.
Lena returns. “Plates are clean.”
Of course they are.
Clean means nothing.
I take another turn—still normal, still calm—onto a road that parallels the river, then cut inland again, letting the city reshape around us.
If the hatchback follows through three more turns, it’s a tail.
If it drops off, we’re lucky.
Luck is a myth. But we take what we can get.
Lark stares out at the passing buildings, her voice barely above the engine. “What did that man want?”
“To take you.”
Her shoulders stiffen. “I know that. I mean—why? What do they want?”
I hear the tremor she’s fighting. Not fear exactly. Anger. Confusion. The urge to control something when control has been ripped away.
I respect it.
But I won’t feed her comfort I can’t guarantee.
“Information,” I say. “Or access.”
She frowns. “I don’t have anything.”
I exhale through my nose. “You do. You just don’t know which piece matters yet.”
Her gaze flicks to me. Sharp. Intelligent. A flicker of something like recognition.
Then she looks away fast.
“Why were you watching me?” she asks. “Don’t say ‘because you were flagged.’ That’s not an answer.”
I take another turn—smooth, legal—into a narrower street where the lamps are farther apart.
“We weren’t watching you,” I say. “We were watching the pattern you’re attached to.”
Her fingers tighten on her bag strap. “I’m attached to a pattern?”
I don’t answer right away.
Because there are truths that land like bullets.
And she’s already bleeding.
Ronan’s voice breaks in again. “Aaron.”
“Yeah.”
“You’re about to cross into the old quarter. Too many angles.”
“I know.”
“Then don’t linger. Get her to the safe point.”
Safe point.
It’s never safe.
It’s just the point we’ve controlled longer than the enemy has.
I glance at Lark again.
She’s holding it together.
Barely.
And the fact that she’s holding it at all tells me more than the file ever could.
Somewhere behind us, the hatchback makes the same turn.
My jaw tightens.
There you are.
I don’t let my body show it. I don’t let my driving change.
But inside, everything in me goes razor-sharp.
“Lena,” I say softly. “It’s still there.”
“Copy.”
Ronan’s tone shifts into cold focus. “Confirm tail. Don’t spook. We want their patience to slip.”
Lark turns her head. “What does that mean?”
It means we’re going to make someone make a mistake.
It means we’re going to make the hunter show teeth.
But I don’t tell her that.
“Buckle up,” I say instead.
She blinks. “I’m—”
“Now.”
She pulls the seatbelt across her chest, clicks it in, hands shaking once before she stills them. Then she looks at me, chin lifted like she’s daring me to lie.
“Are we being followed?”
“Yes,” I answer.
Her throat works. “By who?”
“I don’t know yet.”
I watch her take that in.
She doesn’t cry. She doesn’t collapse. She doesn’t demand to be taken home.
She just… goes quiet.
And in that quiet, she becomes more dangerous than she realizes.
Because it means her brain is working.
People like her don’t panic. They calculate.
And the enemy chose her for a reason.
I take the next right, then an immediate left, then a long straight stretch through residential buildings that look too normal to be useful.
The hatchback follows.
No hesitation.
Good.
Now we know.
I speak into the mic with my eyes still on the road.
“Ronan. Tail is confirmed.”
“Copy. Execute burn.”
Lark’s head snaps toward me. “Burn?”
“It means we stop being polite.”
I take the next corner harder—not fast enough to scream trouble, but sharp enough to force a decision behind us. The hatchback hesitates for half a second, then swings the turn.
Too eager.
That isn’t a tourist. That isn’t a lost driver.
That’s a man with instructions.
Lark inhales, slow and controlled. “This isn’t about me being mugged.”
“No.”
The street opens up ahead into a wider roadway. I see the lights of a small roundabout. I also see, beyond it, the narrow lane that will take us to the garage access point Lena secured earlier.
I keep my hands steady on the wheel.
And then, right as we approach the roundabout—
A pedestrian steps off the curb.
Wrong.
His timing is wrong. His posture is wrong. His head is down, but his shoulders are too squared, like he’s bracing for impact.
A stopper.
Not the tail.
The net.
My whole body goes cold with certainty.
“Hold on,” I say.
Lark grips the door handle. “Aaron—”
I don’t slow.
I don’t hit him.
I angle.
I take the inside lane of the roundabout, tight and clean, forcing the pedestrian to abort his step or die under a car that will not stop.
He jerks back at the last second.
He looks up.
Our eyes meet.
And I see it.
Recognition.
Not of me.
Of her.
He flicks his gaze to the passenger seat, and I watch his mouth shape a word I can’t hear through glass.
There.
My chest tightens.
Lark sees his face and goes still—like something in her memory tries to rise but can’t find air.
Then I’m through the roundabout, exiting hard, and the hatchback behind us accelerates—too much, too sudden.
It clips the curb.
The driver is angry.
Or desperate.
Good.
Desperation makes people sloppy.
“Lena,” I say. “They’ve got a stopper on the roundabout.”
“I saw,” she replies. “Secondary vehicle just entered from the east.”
Of course.
A triangle. A pinch.
They’re not trying to shadow us anymore.
They’re trying to force us to stop.
Lark’s voice comes out thin. “How many—”
“Enough,” I cut in, not because I don’t care, but because she can’t carry the number right now.
I take the next turn into the lane. It’s narrow, unremarkable, the kind of place you’d never notice unless you needed to vanish.
Halfway down, a van is parked wrong—too close to the curb, angled slightly, as if ready to pull out.
My hands tighten.
“Ronan,” I say, “we’ve got a block.”
Ronan doesn’t hesitate. “Abort safe point. Go to fallback.”
Lena’s voice is already there. “Fallback coordinates sent.”
My phone vibrates once in my pocket—silent—route update.
I don’t look at it. I don’t need to. My mind is already rerouting.
But the van moves.
Headlights flare.
It pulls out fast, swinging into our lane.
Not to hit us.
To trap us.
Lark sucks in a breath that sharpens into panic and she fights it down like she’s ashamed of it.
She shouldn’t be.
This is designed to break people.
I grip the wheel and do the only thing that keeps her alive:
I become the worst version of myself.
I slam the accelerator.
Lark’s head snaps back against the seat. “Aaron!”
The van is coming.
I’m not going to stop.
At the last second, I cut right—up onto the curb—tires jolting over stone, the car bouncing once as we blast past the van’s front bumper with inches to spare.
Metal squeals.
Lark cries out.
I don’t look at her. I can’t afford it.
In the mirror, the hatchback swerves to follow. The van corrects and accelerates behind it.
Now we’re in it.
Now the city knows.
“Lena,” I say, “give me eyes.”
“Traffic cams are hot. Working a blind.”
Ronan’s voice is pure steel. “Keep her alive. That’s the mission.”
As if I could forget.