The clock had started. Every day that passed was a day closer to someone connecting his face to his name, his name to his address, his address to the woman he was hiding.
The road stretched empty ahead of them. They had to move faster now. Had to find the pattern in Morgan’s data before Randall found them.
The letters sat in her lap, proof of love preserved on paper. But paper couldn’t protect them from what was coming.
Chapter 22
Three months ago:
Binary: I’ve been calculating risk assessments. Theoretical scenarios for new software I’m developing.
Mercury: That sounds ominous.
Binary: If you had to give up everything familiar to protect something that mattered—would the math be simple or complicated?
Mercury: Depends on what mattered.
Binary: Something irreplaceable. Something that made you who you are.
Mercury: Then it wouldn’t be math at all. It would just be the answer.
Binary: That’s not logical.
Mercury: No. But some things aren’t.
Two days since Morgan’s apartment in Whitefish. Two days since the sedan had followed them throughtown, close enough and long enough to capture a photo through the windshield.
Lincoln watched his monitors, waiting for the hit that would end everything.
He forced his attention back to the primary screen. Coordinates. Another batch Morgan had recited that morning, numbers pulled from the chaos Randall had poured into her head. Chicago. Phoenix. Houston. The same pattern as yesterday. Major cities, no connections, no thread he could pull.
Two days back from Montana, and Morgan was still drowning in data that refused to mean anything. All Lincoln could do was watch her struggle and try to find patterns that weren’t there.
“Forty-one point eight seven eight one, negative eighty-seven point six two nine eight.”
Her voice carried across the command center, once again flat with exhaustion. She’d been reciting for three hours. Her tea sat untouched beside her keyboard, cold by now.
Lincoln typed the coordinates into his cross-reference system. Watched the results populate. Another urban center. Another dead end.
On his tertiary monitor, messages continued piling up. Treasury. FBI. Homeland. His NSA back channel. The subject lines had shifted over the past week—Request for AssistancebecomingPriority InquirybecomingUrgent: Response Required. He’d been deflecting them with vague assurances, buying time with professional courtesy that was wearing thin on both sides.
The latest message from his FBI contact sat unread at the top of the queue. He didn’t need to open it to know what it said. They were losing patience. They wanted Morgan Reece, and Lincoln Bollinger—the consultantwho’d never failed to deliver—had suddenly gone useless.
“Still nothing?” Morgan asked.
“No. No connections.”
She leaned back in her chair, pressing the heels of her hands against her eyes. “I’m so tired of reciting things that don’t matter.”
Lincoln turned to look at her. The shadows beneath her eyes had deepened since Montana. She’d been sleeping beside him every night, but the rest wasn’t reaching her—he could see it in the way she held herself, coiled tight, waiting for the next blow.
“We’ll find the pattern,” he said.
“You keep saying that.”
“Because it’s true. The information connects somewhere. We just need?—”
“More time.” She cut him off, not unkindly. “Which we don’t have.”
