Chapter 43
It closed over her at once, wet and total. Off in the green somewhere a bird she couldn't name made a sound like a rusty hinge, then quit.
She crossed the road running the sequence Skye had drilled into her.
The recognition phrase, the cadence, the tells that marked her as Ray's.
Memorizing them had been easy. Getting Suzette Bennion to believe them was the job.
By the time she reached the steps she'd thrown out half the speeches she'd rehearsed.
The woman didn't need a pitch. She needed a reason to believe. Cara hoped the truth would be enough.
Bennion's place stood up off the ground on cinderblock piers, the way everything down here did, a narrow shotgun house, tin roof, a porch screened against the mosquitoes.
The swamp came right up to the back of the lot and stopped there, waiting.
The house had tells; everyone's did, and Cara read them the way she'd once read a mark's coat for the shape of a wallet.
Blinds down, bent in one place at eye height.
A sedan in the carport, back seat packed to the headliner.
A woman about to run.
Before she raised her hand, Cara prayed. Lord, help me find the words to make her believe.
She knocked.
For a moment, nothing — the loud kind of nothing that meant someone was standing very still on the other side of the wood, deciding. Then a voice came through it, flat and unsurprised. "I don't know you. And I don't open this door for people I don't know. Get off my porch."
Cara recited the words Skye had made her say over and over on the plane, until they'd stopped sounding like words at all — the code Ray had built into every person he'd ever hidden.
The quiet on the other side changed temperature. Then the distinct click-clack of a shotgun being racked. Cara spun sideways, off the line of the door.
It cracked open to the length of a chain. A few inches of the woman's face, and the dark mouth of a shotgun held low and steady. Fifties. Sharp eyes, no sleep behind them.
"A code's just words." The shotgun didn't waver. "I only deal with Ray direct."
"Ray's dead." Cara didn't dress it up. "A couple of days ago. They pulled him out of the ocean on the Oregon coast."
She let that land, then gave her the part that mattered.
"Your relocation stalled eight months ago.
That wasn't Ray, that was the system coming apart faster than one man could hold it together.
He gave everything he had trying to fix it for you.
Now he's gone. My friends and I are what's left.
It's me or it's no one, the Neptune Brotherhood is parked down the road. They’ve had eyes on you for days, I’d guess. "
Whatever moved across Bennion's face, she shut it down before it finished. "Then who are you?"
There it was, the door Cara was best in the world at talking her way through, except this time the only key that fit was true.
"Another of Ray's witnesses found me. I lived under a name that wasn't mine for twenty years.
" She kept her hands open, her voice even. "I know exactly how heavy that door is. What it costs to open it for the wrong face. I'm asking you to open it for the right one, but we have to hurry. The guy down the road is nothing compared to the storm that’s coming. My crew’s around the bend. We’re ready to help you disappear. "
Bennion's eye moved over her, hunting the seam where a lie would show. “Okay.” The chain came off.
After that it went fast. The woman came out with a go-bag on her shoulder and the shotgun broken over her arm.
“This way.” Cara touched her arm, leading her toward the truck’s hiding place.
Down the road the gray sedan's door opened. Bennion froze, but Cara urged her on. “It’s okay. Our guy will handle him. Besides, we need him to see you leave. It’s part of the plan.”
The woman’s lips pressed into a straight line, but she kept walking.
The Neptune plant got one boot on the road before Wade reached him. The engagement was brief, and mostly quiet. The man went down and stayed down.
Bennion stopped, watching. "He's good."
"He's more than good. Come on." Cara steered her toward the bend. Behind them the house stayed lit, the lamp burning, a shadow crossing the blinds on its loop, the whole place breathing for a crew that might never come.
"That man’ll call this in the instant he wakes up," Bennion said. "You know what you just brought down on yourselves?"
"We're counting on it." Cara kept her moving. "I'll lay it out on the way."
Wade was two steps back. He held the door for them, then swung into the passenger seat. "Hit it."
Gabe pushed the truck hard out of town, easing off only once the cypress closed dark around the road. Cara let herself feel it for one mile, the way you let yourself look at the sun for a second before it costs you. Every name in Ray's book, fifty-three, moved or sitting in this truck.
"Fifty-three for fifty-three," she said. Out loud. Once.
Barrett had given them time enough to get Bennion to the camp, warn the others, and be gone before Cartwright's wheels ever turned.
In the back, Reagan counted Bennion's pulse off her wrist. Bennion let her, eyes on the back of Cara's head. "So lay it out."
Cara gave her the short version, explaining how Skye realized Ray’s network was close to falling into Neptune’s hands, and what the team had done to get Ray’s people to safety, ending with her.
"We've got a place to put you while we finish this.
Quiet, off any map Neptune owns. When it's done, we make you gone for good.
New name, new paper. You'll never have to stand behind a door like that again. "
The woman was quiet for a moment. "No."
Cara turned in her seat.
"I've disappeared twice. Both times Ray's people did it for me while I sat in a safe house and let braver folks fight what was hunting me.
" She slid the go-bag off her lap and onto the floor.
"I know how these people think. What they're afraid of.
" Her chin came up. "I'm not waiting out one more war behind a locked door. I'm in."
And there in the back seat was the shape of Cara's own life, a woman alone, running, done being saved. No argument would change that. "Okay."
"Okay?"
"You don't strike me as somebody who changes her mind. And we're short on people who aren't scared of Neptune."
In the driver’s seat, Gabe activated his comlink. "Home base, road team, on schedule."
Cara winced at the static that fed back.
He said it again, slower. Nothing came back but the hiss of dead air.
Her pulse quickened.
Wade grunted. "Backup channel."
Cara was already reaching for the burner phone Tom had pressed into her hand on the way out the door. Nothing. No texts or calls.
Reagan had her phone out. "I’ll call Tom." She put it to her ear, and Cara watched her face wait, watched it not change, which was worse than changing.
"Voicemail," Reagan said.
The burner buzzed in Cara’s hand. The ID Barrett had given them glowed on the screen. "It's Barrett," she announced. “Voicemail.” The knowledge did nothing to tamp down her growing panic.
She put the message on speaker. "She found the camp. She's there now, and she's got your people. All of them, the professor included." His voice came over the line, low and quiet yet full of urgency. "Whatever you're about to do, slow down and think it through first."
The recording died on the last word. There was no telling whether he ended the call, or someone else did it for him.
Wade bolted upright in the seat behind Gabe. “Lord, You know what’s ahead, and You know what’s at stake. Keep our heads clear, our hands steady, and our people safe. This is about to get real.”
“Amen,” Cara answered, as did everyone else in the vehicle, Suzette Bennion loudest of all.
The cold started at the back of Cara's neck and went all the way down. “Hit it,” she ordered.
Gabe had the truck at eighty before she finished the sentence, the black marsh tearing past on both sides, frogs screaming in the dark. Two miles. Maybe three minutes.
Cara closed her eyes. Lord, please. Don't let us be too late.