7. Caleb
CALEB
Every instinct tells me to turn around.
I grip the wheel hard enough to hurt.
Smoke rises above the trees behind us.
Evie is already reaching for her door.
“We have to help him.”
I catch her wrist. “Wait.”
“For what?”
I listen.
One explosion.
No sustained gunfire.
No second detonation.
Then my encrypted phone vibrates.
Two words appear on the screen.
TRUCK EMPTY.
I release a breath.
“Hank?”
“He’s alive.”
Evie leans back against her seat and closes her eyes. “He frightened them into blowing up an empty truck?”
“He has that effect on people.”
“Is everyone you know insane?”
“Probably.”
I start the SUV and continue west.
Hank bought us time.
Not much.
But enough.
I follow a series of back roads through the mountains of western Virginia.
No interstate.
No toll roads.
No cameras.
No predictable route.
It’s the only way to stay alive when the men hunting you have access to nearly every surveillance system in the country.
Evie unfolds the paper map resting on her lap.
Or tries to.
“People still make these?”
“They don’t need batteries.”
“They’re also impossible to fold.”
“They’re not.”
At a stop sign, I take the crumpled map, fold it twice, and hand it back.
She studies the neat rectangle.
“You’ve practiced that.”
“I was a Boy Scout.”
She laughs. “You were not.”
“No.”
“I knew it.”
“I was worse.”
Her laughter follows us down the road.
I didn’t realize how much I needed the sound until it fades.
My phone vibrates again.
One secure tone.
Fathom.
CALL. NOW.
I place the encrypted earpiece into my ear. “Go.”
“We have a problem.”
“I assumed that.”
“It just got bigger.”
Evie studies the map, pretending not to listen.
She’s listening.
“They hit Langley,” Fathom says.
My grip tightens. “Explain.”
“They’ve started cleaning house. Three analysts are dead.”
Evie turns toward me.
I put the call on speaker.
Fathom continues. “Officially, one died in a gas leak, one crashed her car, and the third jumped from the parking garage.”
Evie’s face loses all color. “Who?”
Fathom hesitates.
“Tell me,” she says.
“Daniel Morris. Amanda Keyes. Lauren Shaw.”
Evie presses a hand to her mouth.
She knows them.
I can tell from the pain in her eyes.
“Lauren had two children,” she whispers.
“I’m sorry,” Fathom says.
Graves didn’t merely kill possible witnesses.
He chose people whose deaths could be explained individually. An accident. A mechanical failure. A suicide.
Separate tragedies designed to hide a single purge.
“They’re killing anyone who might know something,” Evie says.
“Or anyone Hart might have trusted,” I add.
Her gaze meets mine.
Graves wants her to understand that every person she contacts will die.
He’s isolating her.
Or trying to.
Fathom clears his throat. “There’s more.”
There always is.
“Go.”
“Someone accessed your personnel file.”
“My file?”
“Not just yours. Mine, Cobra’s, Rook’s—every member of Shadow Division.”
Cold settles in my chest.
“They’re building target packages.”
“Already built,” Fathom says. “I found recent downloads of addresses, former contacts, family members, medical records, deployment history—everything.”
I think of Hank.
Frank.
Hersh.
Every person whose connection to me could put them in Graves’s sights.
Beside me, Evie looks out the window. “They’re preparing to eliminate all of you.”
No one answers.
Because she’s right.
Fathom breaks the silence. “I wiped every safehouse and contact I could reach.”
“Good.”
“But there’s one location I can’t erase.”
“The listening station.”
“Yeah.”
Mac Stenson.
Former intelligence liaison.
Friend.
Possible traitor.
If Graves moves him before we arrive, we may never learn which one he is.
“We’re six hours away,” I say.
“You don’t have six hours.”
My eyes narrow. “Explain.”
“I intercepted a transmission.”
Static fills the speakers.
Then a distorted voice says, “Package moves at fourteen hundred.”
Another answers, “Terminate after extraction.”
The recording ends.
Mac is being moved today.
Not tomorrow.
Today.
I accelerate.
The engine growls.
Evie grips the dashboard. “How fast are we going?”
“Not fast enough.”
“That’s your solution?”
“It’s usually a good one.”
“I’ve noticed.”
Three hours later, I pull into an abandoned gas station.
Not for fuel.
For information.
A weathered man steps from behind the building. He’s in his late sixties, with a gray beard and a Vietnam Veteran cap pulled low over his eyes.
He watches me for a moment.
Then smiles.
“Sniper.”
“Frank.”
We shake hands.
No explanations.
No questions.
Only trust.
Frank looks toward Evie. “So this is the young lady making Washington nervous.”
“I seem to have that effect.”
“I like her.”
Most people do.
Frank disappears into the building and returns with an old metal coffee pot and three chipped mugs.
The coffee is terrible.
I drink it anyway.
Evie takes one sip and stares into her cup in horror.
“What is this?”
Frank looks offended. “Coffee.”
“No. I think this qualifies as a chemical weapon.”
Frank bursts out laughing.
I take another drink. “It’s fine.”
She stares at me. “Your taste buds died years ago, didn’t they?”
“Probably.”
Frank slaps one hand against the counter. “I’ve known him twenty years and never heard him joke.”
“I wasn’t joking.”
That makes them both laugh.
Their amusement ends when Frank spreads a topographic map across the counter.
He points to a heavily wooded section of West Virginia.
“They’re here.”
“You’re sure?”
“Three unmarked helicopters flew over yesterday. Roadblocks went up this morning, and no hunters are being allowed near this valley.”
“Local law enforcement?”
“No. Federal vehicles without plates.”
Evie leans over the map. “They’re sealing every road into the area.”
“Trying to,” I say.
Frank taps a narrow line running across the eastern ridge. “Old logging trail. Washed out in two places, but it’ll get you within five miles.”
I study the elevation lines.
Steep terrain.
Limited visibility.
Perfect ambush country.
“We go in on foot.”
Evie looks at me. “Against how many?”
“I don’t know.”
“That’s not encouraging.”
“No.”
She exhales. “You answer every terrifying question with one word.”
“It saves time.”
“And somehow, it makes me feel better.”
I look at her.
She trusts me.
I don’t know exactly when it happened.
Somewhere between the parking garage, the exploding safehouse, and Frank’s terrible coffee, she decided I would keep her alive.
The weight of that trust settles across my shoulders.
I won’t fail her.
As we return to the SUV, my phone vibrates again.
This time, it’s Rook.
WE’VE BEEN BETRAYED. AGAIN.
I stare at the screen.
Evie sees the change in my face. “What happened?”
“Someone gave Graves one of our emergency communication codes.”
“Who had access?”
“Mac.”
Her expression tightens. “Then maybe he really is the traitor.”
“Maybe.”
“You don’t believe it.”
“I believe Graves wants us to.”
I look toward the mountains.
If Rook is right, the enemy already knows exactly where we’re going.
Somewhere inside those hills, a trap is waiting.
And Graves has used a man we once trusted as bait.