Chapter 11 Exit Wounds
Eli’s POV
For a second all I could see on that screen was my own failure.
A little red dot in the exact patch of woods I had mentioned offhand over coffee, coordinates I had never put into a phone, never written down. Under it, the message like a sneer. Can not wait to see the two of you there.
My mouth went dry. I made myself keep my face blank. Sloane was watching me too closely for anything else.
“I thought your safe house was secure,” she said. Her voice was steady, but her fingers were white around the edge of the counter.
“It was,” I said. That was the problem. “Which means either we have ghosts in our walls or someone who used to know where the walls are is talking.”
Her eyes sharpened. “So I am not just fleeing my own home. I am fleeing yours too.”
“Not that one,” I answered. “That one is off the table.”
I took the phone from her, memorized the coordinates, then killed the screen and set it facedown. The urge to crush it under my heel was strong. Instead I picked up the satphone from my bag and stepped out onto the balcony.
Cold air slapped my face. The city stretched out, bright and far away.
Lucas picked up on the second ring. “You do realize it is midnight,” he said.
“We have a serious opsec issue,” I said, keeping my tone flat. “Someone just anticipated one of our relocation options.”
“Our facilities are clean,” he said automatically. “We did full audits last quarter. If this is about Mercer spooking, you need to manage her expectations, not throw our sites under the bus.”
I did not mention a map or a red pin. I did not mention coordinates that existed only in my head. Testing trust sometimes meant not giving people enough rope to hang you with.
“Run those audits again,” I said instead. “And pull a list of everyone who ever had clearance on our high end properties. Send it to me direct. No distro.”
He swore under his breath. “Something you want to tell me, little brother?”
“Not yet,” I said. “I will when I have more than a bad feeling.”
Back inside, Sloane stood in the middle of her living room like someone had hit pause on her life. Glass walls. Clean lines. Everything she built contained in this box that now felt like a trap.
“That safe house is compromised,” I said. “We go to a different one. Smaller circle, less traffic.”
She crossed her arms. “Is there anywhere you actually trust?”
For years the answer would have been simple. Ward sites. Ward systems. My own protocols. Now, looking at her phone on the table, I felt something tilt.
“I trust people,” I said finally. “A few of them. The rest, we lock down as much as we can and assume they are leaky.”
Her mouth curved in something that was not quite a smile. “That must be very comforting.”
“Comforting is overrated.”
Packing took ten minutes and a lifetime.
“Take only what you cannot replace,” I told her. “No personal laptops. No drives. No toys from your lab. Until we know where the hole is, your machines are beacons.”
“They are also my work,” she snapped.
“You want to keep them, we ghost image them and reconstruct later. You are not taking boxes of potential malware to my site.”
She stared at me like she wanted to argue, then shoved a pile of carefully ordered tech back into a drawer and grabbed clothes instead. Watching her fold her life into a single carry on made something in my chest hurt.
On her ankle, the copper tracker winked. I crouched with cutter in hand.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Breaking a pattern,” I said. The blade slid under the band and snapped it with a clean click. “This feeds into Ward systems. Those are not as clean as I thought. I am not giving whoever is listening one more predictable line to follow you by.”
I dropped the broken band on the table, reached into my pocket and pulled out a simple ring on a slim black cord. Gold with no logo, something I had worn on missions when I needed a tracker no one else could see.
“This feeds only to my receiver,” I said. “No Ward servers. No building logs. Just me.”
Her eyes met mine, searching for the catch. “So I am tagged as your personal property instead of corporate.”
“It means if something happens, the only person who sees that dot move is me,” I said. “You want the anonymity you thought you had in Berlin, this is as close as we are getting.”
After a beat, she held out her hand. I slipped the ring into her palm.
“Neck,” I said. “Less likely to get snagged.”
She turned, swept her hair aside. For a second my fingers brushed the nape of her neck as I fastened the cord. Her skin was warm. She shivered, just once.
Ward sent two SUVs. Mila and Diaz took the second with the rest of the team. Sloane and I slid into the back of the lead, her carry on at her feet, her jaw set in that familiar battle line.
She looked back at the building through the tinted glass as we rolled out. Exile was not usually something you inflicted on yourself.
On the highway, city lights fell away behind us in a smear of orange and white. I watched the mirrors out of habit. It did not take long to see the pattern. A dark sedan a few cars back that kept surfacing in different lanes, never quite passing, never quite dropping.
“We have a tail,” I said quietly.
She was already pulling the hardened laptop onto her knees. “Plate?”
I rattled it off. She tapped, fingers sure as ever, jacking into public traffic cameras along our route.
“Same car at four different intersections,” she confirmed after a minute, eyes narrowing. “Following the convoy, not the road.”
“Time for a split,” I said into the radio.
At the next exit, I took it without signaling. The second SUV continued straight, keeping speed. In the side mirror I watched the sedan hesitate, then commit to the main highway, slotting in behind our decoy.
“Either very persistent paparazzi or our friends,” Diaz’s voice crackled. “We will keep them entertained.”
“Do not be a hero,” I answered. “Just be boring enough they get lazy.”
We cut through a small town that smelled like wet asphalt and fried food, lights dim at this hour. I pulled into a gas station, scanned pumps, entrances, exits.
“Stay in the car,” I said.
She lifted a brow. “I am perfectly capable of buying my own snacks.”
“Exactly why you are going in,” I said, handing her my card. “If someone is here, they expect me to do the sweep. I will cover the outside. You act normal. In and out.”
She did not like it. She went anyway.
I walked the perimeter, watching reflections in dark windows, the glint of headlights on chrome. No one lingered too long. No one stared at her more than anyone else. For once, maybe, it was just a gas station.
When I got back to the SUV, she was already inside, seatbelt clicked.
“What did you get?” I asked, sliding in.
“Water. Protein bars. A very bad sandwich.” She gestured at the passenger seat. Then frowned. “This was not here when I got out.”
A folded napkin sat on her leather seat. At first glance it looked blank. Up close, it was covered in rows of tiny ones and zeros in blue ink. To anyone else it was meaningless.
My stomach knotted as I read it.
YOU CANT HIDE HER.
All in binary, neat and obsessive. I slipped it into a bag without letting my face change.
“Just trash,” I said. “We will go through everything back at base.”
Her eyes were on me. She knew I was lying about it being nothing. She also knew better than to press while we were still in the open.
We pulled out of the lot and back onto the road. The town fell away behind us, swallowed by trees. For a few miles there was only darkness ahead and our own headlights on the asphalt.
For a while I let myself believe we had finally shaken whoever was breathing down our necks.
Then, high above us, something small and dark crossed the smear of stars, a faint red light blinking as it matched our speed.