Chapter 17 #2
A man I've never seen before folds himself into the seat. Heavyset, dark t-shirt, and the gun he's pointing at me is held low, angled toward my ribs from across the center console so nobody passing on the street would see it.
My attention shifts from the gun to Harlan.
"Am I under arrest, Sheriff?"
Harlan smiles. The expression reaches his eyes just enough to make it worse. "Something like that."
He turns back toward his truck without another word, as if the matter is entirely settled, because in his experience, it always is. The man in my passenger seat nudges the barrel toward me, a small, economic movement that carries its own message.
"Hands on the wheel," he snarls. "You try anything, I shoot you right here."
"I understand." I grip the steering wheel. My heartbeat is elevated but controlled, running hot but not wild.
The engine turns over.
Harlan's truck pulls away from the front of mine, making room. The man in the passenger seat doesn't take his eyes off me, the gun pressed against my ribs.
"Follow him," the man says.
I pull out.
Within half a block, two more vehicles materialize from side streets. One rolls in ahead of Harlan's truck, one falls in behind the sedan. Five vehicles total, a compact caravan assembled in less than a minute. These aren't improvised street-level muscle. This is a crew that's run this play before.
Harlan leads us through two turns and onto Highway 16.
The moment the road widens and the town falls away behind us, I allow myself to process the direction. South toward Kerrville.
If the drone and transmitters are working, Cipher has my position and the federal teams are already repositioning.
The sun beats down hard enough to throw harsh white light across the road, and the man beside me hasn't blinked since we left Fredericksburg. The barrel stays pressed against my ribs, steady and patient, while the two vehicles behind me hold formation in my side mirror.
The necklace rests warm against my throat. Jesse's voice is in my head, low and certain, the way it sounded when he told me once that he'd thought about me every single day. I hold on to that the way I'm holding the steering wheel, with both hands and everything I've got.
The caravan holds its formation, every vehicle maintaining exact spacing through every turn.
I follow Harlan south, carrying four transmitters, a panic button clipped to my jeans, and the absolute certainty that Jesse Hollister is already coming. And when he gets there, God help anyone standing between us.
The convoy turns off the highway onto a county road that narrows fast, cedar and mesquite pressing in from both sides until the branches scrape the truck's mirrors.
After three miles the road curves hard to the left and a gate appears.
It rolls open before Harlan's truck reaches it, smooth and automatic, and the convoy files through without slowing.
The compound beyond it is larger than I expected.
A main house sits at the center, outbuildings flank the east side.
An equipment barn, a long low bunkhouse, and a concrete building with no windows that could be storage or could be something worse.
Vehicles are parked in a loose cluster near the barn.
Harlan parks in front of the main house and climbs out. He opens my door before I can reach for the handle, his hand closing around my upper arm with a grip that drops every pretense of the friendly small-town sheriff.
"Out."
The man from the passenger seat comes around to my other side, and between the two of them they march me up the front steps and through the door. The interior is cool and dim, tile floors and exposed beams.
Harlan shoves me into a straight-backed wooden chair in the center of what was probably once a dining room.
He pulls a zip tie from his belt and binds my wrists together in front of me, cinching the plastic tight enough that it bites into the skin.
Then he crouches and secures each ankle to a chair leg, two more zip ties pulled taut against the wood.
I test the restraints once, a small flex of my wrists that tells me everything I need to know.
The ties are industrial grade and the chair is solid oak, heavy enough that throwing my weight won't move it.
Harlan straightens and steps back, admiring his work with the satisfied expression of a man who has done this before and enjoys the routine of it.
A door opens at the far end of the room.
The footsteps are measured and unhurried. I hear them before I see him, leather soles on tile, and my body recognizes the cadence before my eyes confirm what my nervous system already knows.
Alvarez steps into the room.
He looks exactly the way I remember. The polished took and calm, composed expression of a man who believes he is the smartest person in any room he enters. His gaze finds me, and his mouth curves into a smile that carries the warmth of a man greeting a colleague he's been concerned about.
"Hello, Raven." He pulls a chair from the wall and sets it across from me, lowering himself into it with the ease of someone settling in for a conversation over coffee. "I've been worried about you. You just disappeared on us."