CHAPTER 21 #2
I grab the computer and head back down to the sub-basement where I find everyone standing over Josie’s shoulders as her fingers fly across the keyboard, watching the footage of Tessa’s exit on repeat.
John Sullivan, also known as “Sully” to all of us, is now here dressed in tactical gear, which tells me Malik made calls while I was upstairs.
Sully has been with Jameson for over ten years, coming up from the Vegas office.
He’s quiet, methodical, former marine recon with two combat deployments and the specific economy of movement that comes from spending years operating in tight spaces where efficiency isn’t optional. He nods at me as I enter. I nod back.
“She ordered a rideshare,” Josie says, glancing over her shoulder at me. “I pulled the app activity from her account. She was picked up in the alley behind the building at one fifty-seven. Driver named Omar Khalil and he took her to Capitol Hill. I’ve sent location tags to your phones.”
“She went to meet someone,” Reid says.
“She went to meet Adrian Schwartz,” I grit out angrily, pissed I didn’t see this coming.
Six days of confinement and an article almost ready to print. Someone offered her something she couldn’t refuse. Tessa made a calculation, she walked out that door, and she was wrong. I set the laptop down beside Josie. “She left this open for me to find.”
“The COO of RainVest,” Malik murmurs with incredulity.
“Schwartz clearly lured her out. Posed as a whistleblower, offered information she couldn’t get any other way.” I look at Josie, then back to Malik. “Her tracker bracelet signal is stationary on 522 toward Monroe.”
“They dumped it,” Sully says knowingly. “I’m betting that’s where her phone signal ends as well.”
“They’re headed into the mountains,” Reid surmises and I know he’s right about that. They will want somewhere private and out of the way.
Josie’s already working, her fingers moving across the keyboard with focused intensity.
“I’m pulling SAPG property records now. Shell company land holdings in Snohomish, Chelan and King counties.
” She glances at BOB’s interface on the secondary screen.
“BOB is cross-referencing against known SAPG operational history in the Pacific Northwest, rural properties registered to entities with SAPG financial connections, and utility accounts that show intermittent usage consistent with a safe house rather than a primary residence.”
“How long?” I ask.
“Thirty minutes,” she says. “Maybe twenty if BOB gets clean matches.”
“What else?” Malik asks, looking at me.
“The rideshare driver,” I say. “We need to know if he saw anything—a vehicle, a plate, anyone waiting outside.”
Reid is already on his phone. “I’ll find him.”
“Maybe check the restaurant cameras,” Josie says without looking up. “I’m pulling the Capitol Hill traffic network now. I’ll be able to track them that way for a while, but if they’re out of the city, that won’t do much good.”
“And we call Hara,” Malik says. “You were just sitting across from him an hour ago. He gets a call, he starts his process, he pulls whatever federal surveillance assets he has access to.” Malik holds my gaze. “We give him everything and we let him run his track.”
“That’s fine, but we don’t wait for him,” I say. “He won’t be able to mobilize as fast as we can.”
“Agreed,” Malik confirms. “But we give him the information because when this is finished, we’re going to need him to be the one with jurisdiction over whatever we find at the end of this road.” A pause. “Understood?”
“Understood.”
Josie pulls up the Capitol Hill traffic feed. I don’t know how she’s hacked access, nor do I care. I’m just glad she’s good enough to do it.
“Here it is,” she says, zeroing in on a black car outside of the restaurant where Tessa met Schwartz.
She advances the footage until the front door of the restaurant opens and Adrian Schwartz walks out with Tessa.
My heart hammers against my rib cage, fear clogging my throat.
She’s going with him willingly, but there’s no way she’d do that.
Tessa might dive head first into dangerous situations, but that’s a level of stupidity she doesn’t possess.
My only guess is that he has leverage on her.
Josie freezes the frame and zooms in on the vehicle’s license plate. Partial. B-something-7-something-4. “Running it now.”
She feeds the number into the system and BOB starts working combinations while she simultaneously pulls the highway camera network.
The car appears again fourteen minutes later on the I-5 on-ramp heading north, and then again on the SR 522 interchange heading east. She tracks it through three cameras before the network ends.
“Last confirmed position,” she says, dropping a pin on the map. “Time stamp three seventeen p.m.”
“Logically, they’re heading into the Mt. Baker–Snoqualmie National Forest,” Malik says, rubbing his jaw.
It’s the best bet, if I were willing to bet on Tessa’s life.
The Cascade Mountain Range runs north-south from British Columbia down to California.
The Mt. Baker–Snoqualmie National Forest is on the western slope of the Cascades closest to Seattle, and 522 is a direct shot.
If they were going to go into the North Cascades National Park, they would have followed I-5 north, which is good in some respects.
That area of the Cascades is incredibly rugged and remote.
Not that the Mt. Baker area is much better.
The terrain is all steep mountains, logging roads and thick old-growth forest.
“BOB says there’s an 82 percent chance you’re right,” Josie says, its property analysis results on the same map.
Three properties are flagged within a hundred-mile radius of that exit: two registered to shell companies with SAPG financial fingerprints and one showing utility usage consistent with intermittent occupation.
She zooms in on the third one and the farthest away.
“This is a parcel of twelve acres registered to a holding company called PacNo Holdings, which BOB has already linked through four layers of corporate structure to Strategic Asset Protection Group. There’s a cabin on the property, single-access road, and the last utility activity was six weeks ago. ”
“That’s it,” I say.
“Confidence level is high,” Josie says. “Not certain.”
“High enough,” I say, looking at Malik.
He looks at the map for exactly three seconds. “Go,” he says. “I’ll call Hara. Josie stays here running real-time support. Reid, Sully with you.”
We’re halfway to the door when Josie says my name.
I turn and she’s looking at me from her station.
The expression on her face has none of its usual professional composure.
Just the raw honest face of someone who is afraid for her new friend and isn’t going to pretend otherwise. “Bring her back,” she says.
“On it,” I say, refusing to find failure on this mission.
And I go.
The truck eats the highway at too slow a pace for my liking, but roads are narrow, unmarked and winding, making max speed hardly above thirty miles per hour.
Nighttime encroaches and the truck’s headlights cut through the dark.
It’s a good thing Sully is driving as I’d be taking the curves too fast and would probably launch us over the edge.
He’s maneuvering the truck with contained confidence and knows how to save his energy for when it matters.
Reid’s in the back seat reviewing a tactical map pulled up on his phone and I’m trying not to let my imagination run wild as to what might be happening in that cabin.
I think about the route. The access road.
The approach vector Josie is already mapping for us from Jameson.
The structure of the property, the sight lines, the most likely interior layout of a rural cabin being used as an operational safe house.
We have more support than most military organizations and yet there is still so much unknown about what we’re walking into.
We’re a three-person extraction team against an unknown number of SAPG operatives in a contained space.
My phone buzzes and I connect Josie through the speaker.
“Satellite imagery of the property just came through,” she says, and I can hear keyboards in the background.
“It’s a single structure approximately nine hundred square feet, one story.
Front door faces the access road. Back door opens onto a covered porch.
Two windows on the north wall, one on the south, two on the east facing the tree line.
” A pause. “Only one vehicle currently on the property, looks to be a tactical SUV.”
“How many inside?” Reid asks.
“Can’t tell from imagery,” she says. “But the vehicle could easily hold eight.”
“Copy,” I say. We’re going to have to wait to get close and use heat imagery to narrow down the number of hostiles we’re dealing with.
“Cole,” she says. “Hara called back. FBI tactical is mobilizing, but they’re looking at ninety minutes minimum.”
“We’ll be there in thirty-five,” I say.
A beat of silence. “I know,” she says. “I’ve got eyes on your GPS. I’ll be with you the whole way in.”
I disconnect the call and watch the highway unspool ahead of us into the darkening Cascades.
Thirty-five minutes.
She just has to hold on for thirty-five minutes.