His phone buzzed again.
Fallon: Stop moving closer. Stop following. If you don’t, Trent’s mom dies.
Buddy didn’t let the flinch show, but his ironclad resilience cracked like old bones. This was Simon’s playbook all over again—the pressure points, the split focus, the rules designed to force him into choosing the order of who lived and who died.
Not again. Not this time.
“I’m climbing down.” Dove’s voice cut in, tight and breathless. “I’ve got limited visual on the exit road, but I’ll be mobile in sixty seconds. Keaton and Hayes are repositioning from the water’s edge.”
Good. Good. Not enough. Never enough.
“Buddy—Bingo just arrived,” Dawson said. “He came in a few minutes ago. He’s heading your direction.”
Relief hit Buddy’s bloodstream fast and sharp, like a shot of oxygen. Bingo was a variable the bastard couldn’t have predicted. Fallon didn’t even know he was home.
“We can use him,” Dawson continued. “He can create a diversion at the parking lot entrance. Natural. Casual. No tells.”
Buddy angled left, slipping behind a food stall so Fallon wouldn’t accidentally catch sight of him. “Someone needs to brief him like now. Get him comms. He needs to identify the vehicle, the man, and any secondary weapons. And if they ditch her phone?—”
“The jacket tracker has redundancy,” Dove said. “We’ll keep the signal even if the phone is tossed.”
Buddy swallowed hard. “Good. Position Keaton, Hayes, and Dove on the only exit route. They shadow from a distance. No lights. No heroics. If she’s moved, we follow.”
Fallon and her captor crossed into the outer ring of the crowd, the noise thinning, the light shifting, the boards beneath their feet giving way to gravel as they reached the fringe of the parking lot.
Buddy’s pulse slammed against his ribs. She was walking toward a car she might never walk away from.
He forced himself forward—slowly—threading through families unloading strollers and coolers, blending in as best he could while his insides twisted into something raw and electric. Sterling matched his pace, giving low updates—no alarms, no overt watchers, no weapons flashed—but that meant nothing.
Buddy saw Fallon’s hand brush her thigh, the barest tremor in her fingers. She wasn’t signaling him. She wasn’t signaling anyone. That was fear bleeding through a crack she couldn’t seal fast enough.
His throat tightened.
He loved her. God help him, he loved her. And he was being forced to follow slowly while the woman he loved was marched toward a killer’s car.
Dawson’s voice broke through the radio static. “Bingo’s thirty feet out. Approaching from the west. He’ll intersect naturally at the lane.”
Buddy closed the distance just enough to see Bingo—relaxed stride, ball cap low, a beer in hand like he’d stepped out of a summer postcard instead of a tactical diversion.
Fallon didn’t see him yet.
The man beside her did.
Buddy watched the shift—subtle, predatory, the way the guy’s hand tightened fractionally at Fallon’s back, angling her toward a darker corridor between parked cars. A place where visibility dropped. A place where extraction got harder.
Buddy’s heart tanked to his stomach like a brick.
“Dawson,” he said quietly, “he made Bingo. He knows someone unexpected just entered the field.”
“Keep eyes on,” Dawson replied. “We’re with you.”
Buddy stepped behind a truck to get closer without being spotted. From here, he could see everything—the way Fallon’s chin lifted as if trying not to tremble, the way Bingo’s friendly smile faltered the moment he realized she wasn’t just surprised, she was terrified, and the way the man beside her shifted his body to block any approach.
They were three steps from the shadow line.
Three steps from a car door.
Three steps from disappearing.
