Mercury: That sounds like safety.
Binary: It sounds like home.
Lincoln parked on a gravel pull-off half a mile from Morgan’s place, his SUV screened from theroad by a stand of pines. The converted barn she called home sat at the end of a long driveway, isolated enough that they’d have warning if anyone approached—but also isolated enough that escape routes were limited.
He was focused, ready for what needed to be done.
But part of him wanted their road trip to continue as it had been for the past few hours. Listening to her talk about her past. Talking about his own.
So different from normal for him. Usually, people exhausted him after just a few minutes of conversation and he was looking for excuses to get back to his screens.
With Morgan, he’d wanted the road to keep going. The conversation to keep going.
But that wasn’t an option. It was time to work.
He shifted into operational mode. Everything became variables and threat assessment. His eyes moved across the road leading to her place, cataloging details.
No other vehicles visible in any direction. No obvious surveillance positions—though that didn’t mean they weren’t there. Someone skilled could be watching from the tree line, from a car parked on one of the side roads, from a dozen places he couldn’t see from this angle.
He pulled out his equipment. Signal scanner first, then the RF detector. The devices hummed to life in his hands. He swept them across the visible area, watching the readouts with the focus he usually reserved for debugging critical code.
Low-level signals. Could be normal Wi-Fi bleeding over from a neighboring property. Could be something else entirely.
Morgan sat quiet beside him, watching him work. Not asking questions. Not rushing him. Just trusting him to do what needed to be done.
The weight of that trust settled on his shoulders likesomething physical. He’d spent years building systems designed to eliminate single points of failure, to ensure that no one person’s judgment, or lack thereof, could bring everything crashing down.
Now he was the single point of failure for her safety, and the responsibility pressed against his ribs in ways he couldn’t quantify.
“Ready?” he asked.
“Yes.”
They approached on foot, Lincoln leading, Morgan close behind. He could hear her breathing—controlled, deliberate, the way someone breathed when they were managing fear instead of surrendering to it. More data about who she was. More evidence that she was stronger than she knew.
The wood siding was weathered, probably beautiful once before years of harsh winters had stripped away the finish. A small porch held a rocking chair that looked handmade. Window boxes hung beneath the front windows, empty now but shaped for flowers in another season, another life. Charming under other circumstances. Right now, it was just geometry—entry points, sight lines, places where threats might hide.
Lincoln scanned her front door from a distance first, then moved closer. His eyes tracked every detail: the gap between door and frame, the weathered brass of the doorknob, the small dark shape tucked into the upper corner of the frame where wood met wood.
There it was.
A small device, nearly invisible unless you knew to look. Motion sensor. Trip it, and someone would get an alert. Probably a notification on a phone somewhere, maybe an automated system that logged time stamp and location.
This wasn’t law enforcement. Randall’s people had beenhere. They’d touched her door. Waited for her to come home.
Not a surprise. He’d assumed as much when they planned this. But seeing it—proof that this was real, that the hunters were already in position—made it land differently.
The back of his neck prickled—not fear, but the alertness of something being hunted. Or hunting.
“Motion sensor,” Lincoln said quietly. “We expected this.”
Morgan nodded. Her jaw was set, but she didn’t falter. Didn’t panic. Didn’t suggest they abort.
Good.
He circled the building, Morgan close behind, staying low, keeping to the shadows thrown by the afternoon sun. A window on the east side caught his attention—old wooden frame, single pane, the kind of window that had been installed before anyone worried about energy efficiency or security protocols. He scanned it carefully.
Another sensor. Battery-powered, tucked into the frame. Simpler than the one on the door. They’d been thorough covering the obvious entry points, but not thorough enough to account for someone who understood their methodology.
