23. Miles
Twenty-Three
Miles
It took almost two weeks for my body to feel like it was me again. Some of the bruises on my face are still there, but I’m feeling like I can move again.
Last night with Sadie was something I needed, I think it was something she needed.
I can’t give her Miles, but I can give her the Ghost and at the moment that’s the best I can do. She felt amazing, she always does and I plan on having more fun with her.
I walk into Cain’s office at eleven in the morning. I think this is the first time he has called me to the office at this time of the day. He normally calls us at night.
He's already at the desk when I walk in. Lincoln’s here too. I thought maybe Hayden would be here too, but no it’s just the three of us here to talk.
I sit down and put the decrypted phone on the desk.
"Seventeen contacts," I say. "Five confirmed city coordinators: Phoenix, Denver, Nashville, Charlotte, and Minneapolis.
The remaining twelve are tiered above them.
Communication handlers, financial processors, and one that reads like a logistics coordinator for movement across state lines.
" I pull up the communication map on my laptop and turn it toward them.
"The network is structured in cells. Each city coordinator operates independently, they don't know each other's identities, they only communicate upward.
Which is why seven jurisdictions couldn't connect them. Each one was only seeing one cell."
Cain looks at the map. "The top of the structure."
"Still working on it. The encryption on the upper tier communications is custom, it’s different architecture from the lower levels, which means someone with real technical capability built it.
" I pause. "Whoever is running this, invested in their security infrastructure. That's not a small operation."
Lincoln speaks for the first time. His voice is even and controlled. "Renee? he asks.
"Nothing yet on her location specifically. But the movement data on the phone puts one of the coordinators in Nashville for six weeks before her disappearance." I meet his eyes. "I'll find her."
He nods once, then goes back to looking at the map.
Cain picks up the phone. "The message, Escalate timeline."
"They're moving faster because they know I'm close. It’s a standard response for an organization that has been careful long enough to get comfortable, when the comfort breaks they accelerate rather than pause.
" I close the laptop. "Which means if they have another target in preparation, the gap between environmental surveillance and taking someone is going to be shorter than three to five months. "
"How much shorter?"
"I don't know yet. That's what I need to find out." I sit back. "The phone gave me the structure. I need the location data from the upper tier contacts to find out where they're currently active."
"How long?"
"Days, maybe less." I look at him. "They came to my house, Cain. They put their hands on my brother. I'm not taking my time on this anymore, I'm moving as fast as the data allows."
“There’s something else.” I look at him, and he waits for me to reply.
“They were here, which makes me think their next target is close by.”
Something in Cain's expression shifts, he looks at Lincoln and without having to ask I know it’s him asking about Lileah.
Cain has put the best person looking over Lileah, so I’m not worried about them getting close to her.
If Lincoln can’t be with her then she’s told she can’t leave our parents’ house, yes, she fought with us all about it.
Cain told her he doesn’t want to speak about it again, and that soon shut her up.
"Be careful that speed doesn't cost you accuracy," he says.
"It won't."
He looks at me for a moment longer, then he nods.
Lincoln stands up and smiles. “Lileah has class, this should be fun.”
“Have fun,” I joke with him.
Cain and I sit in the quiet for a moment. "The warning to stay away," I say. "I'm not staying away."
"I know," Cain says. "I didn't expect you to."
***
I'm back at the rig by one in the afternoon; this is where I spend most of my time at the moment. I know I should be in class, but I have more important things to work on, plus I only go to college for appearances. I don’t need my degree for the family business, as I’m the hacker of the family.
The upper tier decryption is running, I set it going before I left for Cain's and it's made progress, the algorithm is working through the custom architecture layer by layer. I pull up the current status, sixty-three percent. It’s going to be another few hours at this rate.
I leave it running and pull up the location data instead. I might as well do as many things as I can at one time.
The stolen phone's movement history covers forty-seven days.
I've been working through the early days: the arrival in the city, and the surveillance of the house.
But I haven't fully mapped the middle period yet, the two weeks before the ambush when whoever owned this phone was moving around freely.
I start building the map.
The first week is mostly residential, the areas around our house, the university campus perimeter, and two locations I identify as Crawford family properties they've been watching. It’s expected that's the surveillance pattern I'd already assumed.
The second week is different.
The phone moves onto campus: the athletics center, the library, and the main quad. There were repeated visits. They were the same locations, multiple times, it’s a pattern of someone who’s learning a space rather than just passing through it.
I sit forward and look at the location clusters against the campus map. They were at the athletics center six times over four days. They were at the library three times. Then the path between the residential buildings and the main academic block, twice daily, their timing is consistent.
My attention pulls away from the screen when my burner phone vibrates on the desk.
Sadie.
Thank you for the flowers.
Will you be here tonight?
Ghost
You deserve all the flowers in the world.
Do you want me there tonight?
Sadie
Yes.
She’s starting to fall for Ghost, but should I be worried she’s not going to think about Miles.
I pull up the campus population data I built access to six weeks ago. I cross-reference the athletics center visits against the schedule.
Gymnastics. The athletics center visits all fall within the gymnastics team's scheduled practice windows. My hand stops moving. This can’t be right.
I run it again, using different filters, and get the same result. There were six visits to the athletics center, all during gymnastics practice hours, all in the two weeks before the ambush.
They weren't just watching me, they were watching the same person who I watched, or is it just coincidence that they’re watching the gymnastics team?
The thought arrives with a coldness that is distinct from any other feeling I've had so far in this investigation. Fear. Is Sadie next on the list for abduction?
I pull up the profile parameters from the eight cases. The selection criteria I identified weeks ago, the young women, the academic environments, and full of independence.
First year student. Athletics scholarship. Gymnastics.
Sadie fits every single parameter. She fits it better than anyone else on the team. She has no parents, her brother is away, no one will notice her quickly apart from the girls on the team, but… she’s definitely the next girl.
I stand up. The rig runs around me, the decryption ticking toward completion, the location map sitting on the screen with six data points clustered around the athletics center, and I stand in the middle of my room and run the calculation I've been avoiding.
They know about me and Sadie. They've been watching me, watching her and somewhere in that observation they found a target that fits their profile.
The decision I made to stay away from her, to keep her safe was the right call. It was also too late. They were already watching her before I stepped back.
I pick up my phone. Not the burner, but my own phone, the one connected to the passive alert on her university portal, the one with the feed from her laptop.
I open it. Thank God, she's in her dorm. The feed shows her at her desk, reading something, with her coffee beside her.
She doesn't know. She has no idea that six times in the last two weeks someone sat in the stands of the athletics center and watched her practice and ran her against a list of criteria to make sure she has the same as the other girls.
I close the feed. Then I open it again.
The rig beeps behind me, it’s the decryption, another layer has been cleared. I should go back to the screen, I should keep working, keep building the network map, and find the upper tier contacts and identify who gave the order to put her in the window.
I look at the feed. She turns a page, picks up her coffee, then she puts it down. She’s completely unaware.
I've kept my distance to protect her, but they were already there before I stepped back, which means the distance isn't the protection I thought it was. That means something else needs to change.
I pull up the campus security layout, the residence building exterior cameras, and the athletics center access logs.
If they're watching her, I need to know exactly when, exactly where, and exactly how close they've gotten.
And then I need to make sure they can't get any closer.
I sit back down, and get to work.
***
I’m sitting on the edge of her bed before she even knows I’m here.
The room is dark except for the soft glow of the laptop screen.
Sadie’s still asleep, she has one arm tucked under the pillow, and the thin tank top is twisted around her waist. My eyes track the slow rise and fall of her breathing.
Every instinct screams at me to leave, to stay away, and to put distance between us so the people hunting me can’t use her.
But it’s already too late, I’m already in too deep with her.