Chapter 11
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CADE
Ipace my living room. I stare at the untouched mugs of coffee, the blinking modem that's been down for three days. The storm is over, but it left teeth marks all over the property. I see tangled tree limbs out the front window and the fence line, battered flat in at least two places. The air smells like ozone. Everything feels half-charged and holding its breath. All the power lines are back up for miles—except mine. I know this isn’t an accident.
I sit at the desk—a battered behemoth I haven’t used in months—and double-check the encrypted feeds I still have running.
These feeds are a paranoid relic from the old days.
The new team handling Delilah’s security is Phelps’s guys, straight from DC.
All the men are former SEALs and alphabet contractors.
I don’t know any of the team, but I know the type.
The security team moves with a staccato precision that reads efficient.
Their methods bleed together: maximum control with a side of contempt.
I’ve seen the team on screen, how they manhandle Delilah, how they treat her as a portable problem to relocate, as a brat with a trust fund and a death wish. They make me want to break things.
I click through the security logs. The access records for the temporary safe house are careless: garbled timestamps, shifts bleeding into each other, and someone not signing in or out.
The perimeter cameras stutter into static at exact intervals.
Coincidence—if you believe in that. 4:00 a.m., shift change—hallway view.
A tall man in tactical black. A shadow—Delilah.
Her hair was tangled; her face turned away.
The man's hand clamps on her upper arm, too long. She jerks to shake it off. He locks his grip. His lips move. She spits a reply, so biting I can almost hear it through the grainy image. The man doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t smile.
That’s the moment I know I can’t just sit here.
I spent the last week pretending that watching her from a distance is what’s best. I told myself that pulling out doesn’t matter as long as I have eyes on her.
But she’s surrounded by people who see her as an assignment, not a person—and that’s what led us here in the first place.
I punch out the screens, jam my duffel full of new clothes, fresh mags, and burner phones.
I gas up the truck. I’ll hit the road west at dusk, drive through the night.
If I time it right, I can be at the safehouse by sunup, before her father’s people make the next move.
But I’m stalling. I want to check my phone. I want to hear from her.
Delilah: Are they always like this?
Me: Who’s “they?”
Delilah: Phelps’ men. They keep moving me.
Me: Where exactly?
[no reply for ten minutes]
Delilah: West side. Basement room. No windows.
Ten minutes to type six words. Either she’s watched, or this is her version of a distress call—something caged up in lowercase. I stare at the line for a full minute before I answer.
Me: I’m coming, Delilah. Sit tight.
I want to say more, but if they sweep her phone, silence is safer. I drop it in the glove compartment, gun the engine from the gravel lot. The treeline dwindles in my rearview. I feel the leash snap. All I have to do now is not fuck up.
I take back roads, keep under the speed limit, and stay invisible.
At 3:20 a.m., I park a half mile from the safe house perimeter.
The place is a prefab ranch, dumped in the middle of nowhere.
Some abandoned the developer’s dream. I know these kinds of places; I’ve drawn up the specs myself.
The windows are bulletproof polycarbonate.
The basement slab is poured cheaply, and there’s a rear access hatch camouflaged as a crawl space vent. I take it.
Inside reeks of bleach, fresh paint, and gun oil.
The light is clinical, cold, sterile. An endless hum from ancient ventilation.
Boots scuff overhead—two, maybe three pairs at intervals—then silence.
I keep to the shadows and move fast. The walls crowd in.
Too close. The distance floor-to-ceiling can’t muffle my pulse drumming panic.
Delilah’s in the lowest room. Door propped, light on.
The sight of her guts me in a way I’m not prepared to see.
She’s hunched on a cot, knees up, clutching a spiral notebook tight to her chest. Her hair is a tangle of knots, her face all angles and hollows.
Her eyes lock on the doorway like she's waiting for someone to try her.
When she sees me, there's no relief, no smile—just the slight shift of her weight to the balls of her feet, coiled and waiting.
“What took you so long?” she says.
“I had to wait until you were alone.” I keep my voice low, calm, though every instinct is to run to her, pick her up, and check her for bruises. “Anyone else down here?”
“Just the ghosts,” she says. “Unless you count those surveillance mics disguised as carbon monoxide detectors.” She gestures with her chin, and I spot it, tiny red diode lit in the ‘test’ position. “They sweep every hour. I hid my phone in a tampon box.”
“Smart. You okay?”
She shrugs; her wrists are bruised, fingerprints visible under the overhead light. “They’ll be back in fifteen. Standard rotation. If you want to get us out, now’s the window.”
This is what I love about Delilah: no drama, no wasted adrenaline, just a clear read of the threat and an implicit trust that I’ll finish the job. I move to the vent shaft, haul up the grill, and gesture to her. She’s on her feet in a second.
“Watch your head,” I say, but she’s already in the crawlspace, nimble. She moves like she grew up in ductwork. We crawl fifty feet, maybe less, until her breathing turns shallow and her hands start to go numb from the cold.
“I thought you said you’d let them do their thing,” she says, voice muffled by insulation and panic. “Let them take me.”
“I changed my mind,” I say. “You’re my problem to solve.”
At the far end, we surface out into the open field. The night air is cotton-thick with dew. She shivers hard, but I strip my jacket and throw it over her. We keep low, jogging west until we’re out of camera range. The highway is three miles away. We take side trails until we hit my truck.
No sirens follow us, and no helicopter searchlights sweep the road—not yet, anyway.
We drive in silence for sixty miles, her shoulders rigid, fingers picking at a loose thread on her sleeve.
Then the city's glow disappears from the rearview, giving way to nothing but asphalt cutting through ranchland.
That's when I hear it: the soft thud of her head against the headrest, followed by a breath that seems to empty her completely.
"Can we stop somewhere?" she asks, her voice small but steady. "Anywhere."