CHAPTER 25 THE ONE I CAN’T GO AFTER
THE ONE I CAN’T GO AFTER
MILES
Iam standing on the floor of the CSA while Emerson projects the terms of Maxwell Shaw’s winning bid across the big screen at the front as the director, Ledger, Charlie, Nora, and I stare up at it. It’s late enough that anyone not tied to this case has already gone home for the day.
My niece is less than four hours old. Both Reese and I held her today. And now six other people’s lives depend on me successfully purchasing from a criminal the information that could get them killed. Sometimes, the range of my life feels a bit excessive.
“Payment will stay controlled until the package is authenticated,” Emerson says. “Once we have confirmation that the roster is complete, the funds will move through Maxwell’s established channel.”
“Once you’ve visually confirmed all seven records,” Nora says, “give us the confirmation phrase. We’ll be listening.”
“And if Rooke follows his usual pattern with first-time clients,” Ledger says, “we take him.”
If everything goes through, we should finally have what no agency has managed to build against Rooke before—a case. Not intelligence that everyone knows is true but can’t prove, but actual evidence.
My secure phone vibrates, and Nora checks her screen at the same time. She says, “Transfer instructions,” and every person in the room goes quiet.
I open the message, and my pulse accelerates.
Final transfer: 21:30. Location to follow. Buyer only. Standard security protocol. Confirmation required within ten minutes.
“That gives us two hours,” the director says.
Finally. After building Maxwell Shaw, earning Celeste’s referral, surviving the yacht and the hangar, and passing every round of vetting, Rooke is going to hand Maxwell the thing we’ve been trying to recover since Radomir was killed.
My personal phone starts vibrating on the table. I glance at it long enough to see that it’s Annette, and then send it to voicemail. She knows I’m working. If she’s calling about Grace, I can check after—
The phone starts vibrating again, and something cold moves through me. Reese’s mom would never call twice in a row unless something is wrong. I answer. “Annette?”
“Miles.” Her voice sounds different. Tight. “Is Reese with you?”
My entire body goes still. “No.”
“She left the hospital over an hour ago. Hospital security just came to Mackenzie’s room because someone found Reese’s purse in the parking garage. Her phone, ID, and everything is still inside.”
I take a few steps past desks, toward the front of the room, just to feel like I’m moving. “Where’s her car?”
“Still there.”
I don’t even realize that my pacing has taken me very quickly in the direction of the elevators until Nora rises from her station. “Miles?”
I stop walking and hold up one hand. “Annette, stay with Jace and Mackenzie. Don’t leave the hospital alone.”
“What’s happening?”
“I don’t know yet. I’ll call you.”
The second I end the call, one possibility hits hard enough to turn my stomach—the hangar. Reese was an unexplained civilian who appeared right in the middle of Maxwell Shaw’s evaluation. My stomach drops.
I turn toward the others in the room and say, “Reese is missing.”
The room changes instantly.
Charlie’s fingers are flying over her keyboard. “Where was she last seen?”
“Hospital parking garage. Her purse and phone were abandoned. Her car is still there.”
My mom reaches for her own phone as she says, “Charlie, get that hospital security footage and start facial recognition. Nora, notify local law enforcement that we have a suspected abduction, but restrict operational details, then scan for vehicles leaving the hospital parking garage. Emerson, help analyze. Ledger—”
“I’m going.”
He’s to the elevators before she even finishes. I move to follow, but the director catches my arm. “Miles.”
“I’m going with him.”
She doesn’t tell me no. She just looks at me. Behind us, my secure phone vibrates again. I know before Nora says anything that it’s Rooke.
“The transfer changed.”
I turn to Nora. “Moved up to twenty forty-five.”
I look at the clock. That’s seventy-three minutes from now. My stomach drops even farther. I don’t know if the accelerated transfer and Reese’s abduction are connected, but the timing is too close for me not to wonder.
My hands curl into fists. “I can do both.” No one responds. “I’ll get Reese, then make the meeting.”
“Miles,” Emerson says quietly.
“No. I have seventy-three minutes.”
“To reach a location we don’t even have yet,” Charlie says. “And you still need to go down to sub-level one to have Abraham give you Maxwell’s face.”
“I’ll make it work. This is Reese.” I hear myself, and I know how impossible it sounds. I don’t care.
Charlie’s monitor changes. “I’ve got footage from the parking garage.”
I’m at her station before it fully loads. It’s a grainy overhead view, but it’s easy to see Reese walking between rows of cars. And to see the man come up behind her and the woman approaching from the side.
They grab her fast, and she fights. Of course she fights. She drives an elbow backward, drops her weight, and kicks hard enough that the man stumbles. I’ve never been so proud and terrified at the same time.
“Zoom in on the woman,” I say.
Charlie does. The image isn’t very sharp, but I have no problem recognizing the woman who had been wearing the camel-colored coat at the hangar.
The one who had been evaluating Maxwell and had planted the tracker in my jacket.
She’s got different hair, but I can tell it’s the same face.
Every last bit of hope that this is unrelated dies.
The hangar. They took her because of the hangar. Because of Maxwell. “They have her because of me.”
No one responds because there is nothing to say.
This is the exact thing I’ve been afraid of for years.
Of someone I love being dragged into a vehicle because my work put her in the path of dangerous people.
I spent five years telling myself I was protecting Reese by keeping one part of myself outside our friendship.
Then I let her in, and less than two weeks later, someone takes her.
My chest is too tight. I can’t breathe. “I’m going after her.”
“No,” Charlie says, “we are. Rooke doesn’t know Reese is connected to Maxwell.”
That actually stops me.
“If he did,” the director says, “the transfer would be dead. You—Maxwell— would be dead.”
I know. Of course, I know.
“She’s the unexplained civilian from the hangar,” Emerson adds. “If you abandon the transaction when she disappears...”
“Then we are handing them the connection,” I say, my voice sounding like it’s not even coming from me.
Nora nods. “And if Maxwell disappears, Rooke will just choose the next bidder, and the roster will go to someone we haven’t controlled.”
Six living assets would remain exposed. Rooke would disappear again.
And Reese would still be in his hands. Every instinct in me is screaming for me to go find her.
To get her back. That’s what I do—I find people.
I read situations. I get through doors that other people can’t.
I make things happen instead of standing still while they happen to me.
Except going after Reese myself might be the worst thing I could possibly do. I hate this more than I’ve ever hated anything.
Ledger steps off the elevator with an equipment bag, and his eyes meet mine.
“Get her,” I say, my voice rough.
He nods once. “We will.”
He didn’t say he’d try or that he’d do everything he could. He said he will.
Charlie is at my side and touches my arm. I look at her, and she says, “When you’re in the field, and I’m on comms with you, you trust me when I tell you which hallway is clear, which door to take, and when to move.”
“Yes.”
“Then trust me now. Trust Ledger.”
I close my eyes, and all I can see is Reese in the garage. Her purse hitting the ground. Her fighting. Her getting forced into that van while I was standing here talking about payment channels. I open my eyes and say, “Please find her.”
“We will.”
My secure phone vibrates, and Nora looks down. “Location.”
It’s a private residence outside Frederick that’s owned by a holding company Emerson recognizes from one of Rooke’s legitimate client-service networks.
I look at the clock. We’ve got an hour.
The director meets my eyes. She still doesn’t order me to go to Rooke. She doesn’t have to.
Nora is already pulling up the property layout and working out where the external audio team will need to set up. If everything goes right, I’ll walk in completely clean while they listen undetected from the outside.
“I need Abraham,” I say. Then I turn and head to the elevators.
Twenty-eight minutes later, Miles Lancaster is gone. Maxwell Shaw looks back at me from the mirror. My hair has been darkened; I’ve got a beard, tortoiseshell glasses, and the altered nose that Reese recognized anyway.
My hands are steady, and it makes me mad.
Charlie found the van leaving the garage on a traffic camera. It had stolen plates. Charlie and Emerson are working together to follow it camera by camera. It doesn’t feel like it’s nearly enough, but it’s something.
Before I walk out, I surrender every device that Rooke prohibited. Maxwell’s phone is the only one I carry.
The drive takes seventeen minutes, and every one of them feels like a betrayal. When I get to the address, a security gate opens before I reach it, and I follow the drive to a dark stone house set far back from the road.
A man in a suit meets me at the entrance and says, “Mr. Shaw.”
I give him the smile that belongs to Maxwell. He searches me, takes the phone, and then opens the door.
I step inside and see a man standing at the far end of the room beside a table. He’s got silver hair, an immaculate suit, and calm, assessing eyes. Julian Rooke. And on the table beside him sits a small black case. “Mr. Shaw,” he says.
Reese is somewhere in his network. Six lives are inside that case. I become Maxwell Shaw completely. “Mr. Rooke.”