Chapter 29
Gabe
The first thing I do when Evie says, “I think I know how to make them move,” is shake my head.
Not because I’ve heard the plan.
Because I know her.
She’s calm. Determined. And she’s tired of waiting.
We’re in the hotel conference room where Jake and Hudson are staying—lights dimmed, blinds half-drawn.
Hudson’s laptop hums at the center of the table and Quinn’s image appears on the screen.
Noah leans back in his chair like he’s relaxed, but I can see the coiled readiness in his shoulders.
Hudson stands near the window, arms crossed.
Evie doesn’t look at any of them. She wanted this meeting to discuss next steps. We’ve reviewed the evidence we don’t have, the leads that won’t survive in a courtroom.
She looks at me.
“I want to bait them.”
For a second, it’s just the two of us in the room. Beneath the table, my hands ball into fists.
“I’m not walking into a warehouse with a wire,” she says evenly. “I’m not meeting anyone in a parking garage. This isn’t that kind of play.”
Good.
Because if it were, the answer would already be no.
“What is it, then?” Hudson asks.
Evie slides a tablet across the table. A draft motion fills the screen—federal court formatting, clean and precise. I recognize her writing immediately. Surgical. Controlled.
“Motion to reopen the Morozova trafficking case,” she says. “Not the Safe Passage Project. Lina’s case. Specifically.”
The room stills.
“On what grounds?” Noah asks.
“New evidence.”
I glance at the document again. My pulse slows instead of spikes. I do not like this.
She scrolls down.
And there it is.
Recorded testimony obtained from Lina Morozova prior to her death.
I look up.
“You don’t have that,” I say quietly. She has a sworn affidavit, but without Lina’s presence at trial, she’s already told me it won’t be deemed sufficient.
“No,” Evie replies. “I don’t.”
Hudson’s brow furrows. “You’re proposing filing something you can’t substantiate?”
“I’m proposing claiming I can,” she corrects. “Routing the claim through DOJ channels. Saving it. Revising it. Sending it for internal comment through my work account.”
She leans forward slightly. “They killed Lina because she could talk. They suppressed the case because they thought her voice was buried. If they believe I have recorded testimony—actual audio—something that could be entered into public record—” she pauses, “they won’t sit on that.
There’s no telling what they’ll think I have.
At the very least, we’ll flush out who’s behind this within the DOJ. ”
Noah scratches at his jaw—looks at me, then at Evie. “They may suspect you’re bluffing, but they’ll need to confirm it.”
“Exactly.”
“And to do that,” Hudson adds slowly, “they’ll act.”
Phone calls. Money. Intermediaries. Orders. Movement.
Evie nods once. “They’ll aim to get ahead of the filing. Which means they’ll have to flush themselves out.”
No, they’ll try to flush her out.
I should say no. I feel it in my bones—the reflex to shut this down before it ever breathes.
Instead I ask, “Where will they think the recording is?”
She meets my eyes.
“With me.”
The room goes quiet again.
There it is. The line of fire.
My jaw tightens. “Absolutely not.”
Evie doesn’t flinch. “It’s implied, Gabe. Not stated. The motion references custody of the evidence pending formal submission. They’ll assume I control it—that I’ve had it since Switzerland.”
Hudson steps forward. “You understand what this exposes us to, Evie. If DOJ catches wind of us intercepting internal traffic—”
“I’ve thought through that,” she says, and her voice doesn’t waver.
“My account. My filing. My evidence chain. KOAN isn’t anywhere in the document.
What you’re doing is watching the response to a legal action I’m taking in my professional capacity.
I’m the one filing a motion. I’m the one with standing to do it.
That’s not interception—that’s surveillance of activity my own filing generates. ”
Hudson holds her gaze.
“It’s cleaner than anything else we have,” she adds. “And it’s the only play that doesn’t require us to already know who we’re looking for.”
A beat.
“She’s already exposed,” I say—hating every single word.
Hudson looks at me. Then back to Evie.
Then he nods once. “Do it.”
While Evie drafts the final version at the conference table, Jake and Noah slip out. Brie’s in transit to meet them.
They have two hours, maybe three, before we need to move Evie—assuming this catches the DOJ insider’s attention.
That’s enough time to position around her block.
I’d rather have the perimeter set before she arrives than after—if anyone is watching her townhome, I want to know before she walks through that door.
Yes, we have cameras. But cameras can be evaded. Blocked. We’re not dealing with amateurs. They haven’t been successful yet—to our knowledge. The goal before may have been intimidation. This might change the directive.
Hudson stays. He and I don’t talk about it, but we both understand: the hotel is the safe room. Quiet, off-routine, no reason for anyone to associate it with Evie. The moment she goes home, that calculus changes. She becomes visible again. Findable.
That’s the point.
This may not work. They may not act. But if they do, we have to be ready.
It’s feeling like a one-shot game.
I watch her work.
She doesn’t ask for my input on the legal language, and I don’t offer it.
This is her terrain—not mine to navigate, not mine to second-guess.
But I watch her posture, the way her shoulders don’t climb toward her ears, the way she blinks exactly as often as she should.
She’s not imitating calm. She is calm. She’s been running this play in her head for days.
Doing the prep work. Considering the angles.
That should probably unsettle me. It doesn’t.
She hits send at 2:47 p.m.
Quinn’s voice comes through the comm line immediately. “Traffic on the account. Someone accessed within ninety seconds.”
Ninety seconds.
“Forwarding to an external IP,” Quinn continues. “Encrypted relay. East Coast server farm.”
“Trace it,” Hudson says.
“Already running. Give me a few minutes.”
Evie closes the laptop gently and folds her hands on the table.
“You okay?” I ask.
“Yes.”
I take the chair next to hers, shifting closer, subtle but intentional.
The next forty minutes build the way a storm builds—no single moment, just pressure accumulating.
Quinn tracks a second forward to a server in Vienna.
Vienna means someone with sophisticated routing infrastructure.
Cartel operations use domestic cutouts; Vienna means a different category of player; someone with reason to care about deniability at that level.
Then a cell ping. A number adjacent to Menendez’s network, active in the city.
Then a financial authorization—flagged by Quinn against their existing data—initiated from a device registered to a shell company we’ve already mapped.
None of it says why. None of it has to. Three isolated signals wouldn’t mean much on their own.
Together, in this order, in this window—Vienna, a number tied to Menendez’s people, money moving through an entity we already know is dirty—they mean someone is reacting.
Fast. Coordinated. And the only thing that’s changed in the last six hours is Evie’s complaint hitting an inbox.
It isn’t a confession. It isn’t a name. But it’s the machinery of response, and it’s running.
Evie doesn’t move when Quinn reads the updates aloud. She processes each one with a slight tilt of her head, the way she does when she’s adding something to a mental case file. She’ll hold onto all of it. She’ll know where it fits before any of us do.
At 4:15, I make the call.
“It’s enough,” I say to Hudson. “They’re moving.”
“Agreed.”
I look at Evie. “Time to go home.”
She doesn’t argue. I almost wish she had—not because I wanted her to fight me on it, but because the lack of argument means she understands the weight of it just as clearly as I do. She’s been waiting for this. She’s ready.
I’m not.
I know what it means to send someone into the line of fire—I’ve done it. I’ve never done it with someone I love. But I don’t say that.
We move her in her own car—her repaired Jetta, parked two blocks over, unremarkable and exactly what someone would expect to see at her address. Before she gets in, I hand her an earpiece—KOAN-issued, encrypted radio, not cellular. All hell can break loose, but this stays live.
I help her into a vest first—civilian cut, low profile, worn under her coat where no one would ever guess. She doesn’t argue, which tells me she understands exactly what we’re walking into. I check my own vest under my jacket. We’re all wearing them.
Hudson drives. I follow in a separate vehicle, far enough back to watch the mirrors, close enough to respond.
Her lights go on at 5:15 p.m., signifying she’s home. Her car is in its usual spot. Mine is nowhere to be seen. From the sidewalk, from a slow drive-by, from a surveillance photo: Evie Thompson is home, on leave, keeping her head down.
Noah is already on the north end of the block. Quinn has a camera feed running from a service panel three buildings down. Hudson parks two streets over and takes the south approach on foot.
I position at the east end, where I have sightlines to the front entrance, the side alley access, and enough of the street in both directions to read traffic patterns.
I run the perimeter cycle on foot. North block. South block. Her front door. The alley gate. North block again.
Everything is clean.
I run it again at 5:25.
And again at 5:35.
The third time through, I stop.
The delivery van.
It was parked on the north side of the block when Evie first arrived—gray, no markings, backed against the curb with its rear toward the intersection. I’d registered it on my first sweep. Unremarkable. Filed and moved on.
Now it’s on the south side.
Vehicles don’t move themselves.
The van’s rear is angled toward the gap in the fence line two properties down—not the vehicle alley entrance Evie uses every day, the one anyone watching her for even a week would already have mapped, but the narrow gap I found walking the block after dark, checking what most people would never think to check.
It’s not on any pattern-of-life assessment.
It’s not in her routine. It exists because I flagged it as a last-resort extraction route weeks ago, and in all the time I’ve watched this block, I’ve never observed it used before.
Not by neighbors. Not by delivery drivers. Not by anyone.
Now there’s a van backed up to it.
My hand moves to my earpiece.
“Quinn.” My voice is level. “Gray van, south block. Run the plates.”
A beat.
I watch.
Quinn’s feed stutters—half a second of static—then recovers. I make note of it.
“Registered to a catering company in Annapolis. No activity logged in the past six months.”
Six months dormant.
Repositioned tonight.
Facing our secondary exit.
I key the channel again.
“Change of plan.”