“Five people are saying negative and wishing you luck.”
The phone rang, and the change on the screen lit up the inside of the car in the night.
Blaze didn’t look away from the speeding traffic around them. “Who is calling?”
“It says the caller’s unknown.”
It had better not be Logan, Twist, or Micah. Blaze would reach through the cell phone signal and rip their throats out. “Answer it.”
A man’s hoarse voice eliminated the possibility that one of his three former friends had called. “Lieutenant Commander Robinson? Are you all right?”
“Who is this?”
“Staff Sergeant William Spitz, sir. What’s going on?”
Blaze had counseled Will Spitz through the Vets in Crisis hotline, and he’d bunked in Blaze’s guest room and worn Blaze’s emergency clothes for a few weeks to get back on his feet a few years before. “Will, it’s good to hear your voice.”
“I am at the ready. What’s your situation?”
“I am in the middle of a—” Blaze glanced at Sarah, sitting so primly beside him and holding out the phone for him to speak even though the car’s microphone was near the rearview mirror. “—Charlie Foxtrot.”
The words Charlie and Foxtrot denoted the letters C and F in the military phonetic alphabet. Charlie Foxtrot was thus a euphemism for a clusterfuck, but Sarah didn’t need to be scandalized by his language so soon after a narrow escape.
“Are you safe?” Will asked, his voice quiet and calm.
Will’s ascending pitch sounded too much like the questioning intonation Blaze used to invite hotline callers to expand on their problems. “No. Criminals are hunting me.”
A keyboard clacked through the car’s speakers.
Blaze cranked the wheel, and the tires squealed as the car fishtailed off another freeway exit. “Do you have any assets near New York City?” he asked.
Will’s immediate response was jarring. “Looks like you’re near upper Manhattan, correct?”
Will knew too much, like Tristan fucking King tracking Blaze from his computer array that now seemed sinister instead of impressive. Had Mary Varvara Bell gotten to Will Spitz, and either was holding a gun to his head or a stack of money out to him? “Howthe helldid you know where I am?”
Will’s gruff snort chuffed over the car’s speakers. “I worked in signals intelligence for twenty years, first with the Army and then with the NSA. It isn’t hard to locate a damn phone.”
That checked out, though Blaze was still wary. He grimaced as he slipped the car through yet another minuscule break in traffic. Will was too whip-smart for his own good, as piercingly inquisitive in his forties as a nosy teenager.
Will continued, “My brother-in-law has a hunting cabin in Rockland County. He’s hella into bowhunting. When the apocalypse comes, I want him on my team. It’srustic,but it’s out of the way. It’s got a fireplace if it gets too chilly.”
“I have a civilian with me.”
“There’s room.”
“I’m on the Harlem River Drive, heading north. I just passed Yankee Stadium,” Blaze told him, even though Will evidently had a bead on him.
“At the interchange, go west on I-95 toward the GW Bridge. Take the GW to the Palisades Parkway North. I’ll text you the address and where the key is hidden.”
Blaze saw the interchange for I-95 coming up and took the cloverleaf that led to the west lanes. Centrifugal force tilted the world as the Aston Martin raced around the loop.
Will said, “Address coming through now. I’m also texting you my actual phone number. This is a burner number.”
Figures.Hackers are always the most paranoid about being hacked.
The connection closed with a click as Will hung up, and a text arrived seconds later with the information.
While Sarah transcribed the location into Pathz, Blaze kept his head up and drove west to the massive George Washington Bridge.
