"No. But I think they'll hesitate to make me a martyr. Webb thinks I know the coordinates to your location. He thinks I know where Echo Base is. If I die now, that information goes public. Automated dead man's switch. Everything I know gets released to every news outlet simultaneously."
Dylan studies me. "You're bluffing."
"Maybe I was, but they don't know that." I save the files, start downloading the network documentation to an encrypted drive. "I've been preparing for this possibility since I started investigating black ops corruption. Everything I've found, every source I've verified, it's all sitting in encrypted storage waiting for a trigger I don't send."
"And if they find you before you can send the trigger?"
"Then you publish it for me. That's the deal. I help you build a case against Webb and the Committee that's solid enough for federal prosecution. You make sure my investigation sees daylight if something happens to me."
"Deal."
The encrypted drive finishes downloading. Three hundred gigabytes of classified documents. Financial records. Operational authorizations. Medical files documenting Morrison's chemical weapons program and the network he built. Everything needed to destroy Webb and everyone still connected to Protocol Seven.
"We have what we need. Now we need to make sure it reaches the right people."
"First we need to keep you alive long enough to testify." Dylan checks his phone. "Kane just confirmed Committee teams are in Colorado. Three confirmed deployments. They're systematically eliminating your known contacts."
My stomach drops. "Who?"
"Your editor at the Denver Post. The graduate student who helped with research. The coffee shop barista you used as a message drop. All dead. Made to look like accidents or robberies. Clean work."
Ellen. The grad student. Twenty-three years old. Brilliant researcher who could trace financial networks through systems I couldn't access. And Charlie. The editor who kept myinvestigation funded even when his publishers demanded he shut it down.
Dead because they knew me.
"How long ago?"
"Ellen died two days ago. Hit and run. Charlie yesterday. House fire."
Two days. Ellen was alive two days ago and now she's gone because she helped me trace Morrison's shell corporations during my investigation. Charlie burned to death in his own home because he believed in exposing the Committee's crimes.
"They're working backwards through your contacts. Anyone who might know where you are or what you found."
"Then we're running out of time."
"We were always running out of time. But now we have evidence. Now we can prove what Morrison did and connect it to Webb. And if we're very lucky, we'll live long enough to make them both answer for it."
The window behind me explodes inward. Glass sprays across the room. Dylan moves fast, tackling me to the floor as gunfire erupts outside.
4
DYLAN
The window shatters inward and I'm moving before conscious thought kicks in.
Tackle Reagan to the floor. Cover her body with mine. Glass sprays across the room in a thousand glittering fragments. My hand finds my sidearm as gunfire erupts outside.
"Stay down." I keep my voice low, calm. Years of training override the adrenaline spike.
Reagan's breathing fast beneath me. Scared but not panicking. Good. Panic gets people killed.
The gunfire stops as suddenly as it started. Three controlled bursts. Professional spacing. Then silence.
My encrypted phone buzzes against my ribs. I pull it out, keep my body between Reagan and the window.
Kane's message is brief:
Perimeter secure. Stray shots from hunter nearby. Threat neutralized. Stand down.
