"I'm not running to your team while you go on some suicide mission." Her jaw set with surprising stubbornness. "This is my investigation. My evidence. My fight too."
"This isn't your?—"
"The moment I got sent into the middle of nowhere to get murdered, it became my fight." She shifted, wincing as her injured ankle moved. "Besides, if your team is being watched, wouldn't me showing up alone paint a target on them anyway?"
She had a point. Griff started the truck again, pulling back onto the road. They needed shelter, and soon. Sarah was running on fumes and attitude.
"We need somewhere to regroup," he said. "Somewhere off anyone's radar."
Sarah stared out the window, her reflection ghostly in the glass. "Off the radar... no paper trail..." She straightened suddenly. "Wait. Pull over."
"What?"
"Pull over. I need to think."
He found another turnout, this one hidden by trees, and waited.
"Two years ago," she said slowly, "I investigated a tech CEO named Pietro Garofalo. Tax fraud case. He claimed business deductions for what he called a 'remote office facility' here in Montana."
"And?"
Her eyes snapped open. "It wasn't an office. It was a luxury survival bunker. Complete doomsday prepper setup, but with a wine cellar and art collection. He tried to write off the entire thing as a business expense."
"Where is it?"
"That's the thing—I studied every inch of it for the trial. Floor plans, security systems, utility reports. I know that place better than my own apartment." She frowned, concentrating. "Northeast of here, maybe forty miles? There was a hidden access road off a Forest Service route..."
"You've never actually been there?"
"Never needed to. The paper trail was enough to convict him." A hint of professional pride crept into her voice. "He's serving five to seven in federal prison. The property's tied up in asset forfeiture—the government technically owns it but hasn't figured out what to do with it yet."
Griff weighed the options. Following directions from someone who'd only seen satellite photos, to a place that might not even be accessible. But it was better than driving aimlessly until they ran out of gas or got spotted.
"Can you find it?"
"I memorized those maps for eight months of trial prep." She managed a weak smile. "I can find it."
8
The hidden accessroad was exactly where her memory placed it—behind a rusted Forest Service gate. A small surge of vindication lightened her mood for half a second. All those hours studying property records, mapping software, utility company filings. Her colleagues had called her obsessive. Turned out obsessive might save their lives.
"There," she pointed through the windshield. "That utility pole. Garofalo had to upgrade the power lines to handle his systems. Cost him eighty thousand dollars that he tried to categorize as 'routine maintenance.'"
Griff gave her a look she couldn't quite read in the darkness. "You remember the cost of utility poles from a two-year-old case?"
"I remember everything about financial crimes. It's..." She paused, unsure why she was explaining herself to this stranger who'd saved her life. "It's how my brain works. Numbers, patterns, discrepancies. They stick."
Like how she'd noticed his sat phone had a Knight Tactical inventory tag. Serial number starting with KT-7.
The access road wound through thick forest. Sarahgripped the door handle as her ankle throbbed with each bump.
The building materialized from the darkness. What looked like a rustic ranger station from the outside was actually architectural deception at its finest.
"Garoffalo’s seriously paranoid," she explained as Griff studied the structure. "Ex-Silicon Valley. Thought the government was spying on him. Ironic, considering he ended up in federal prison anyway."
"Security?"
"State of the art, or it was two years ago. Biometric locks, motion sensors, cameras." She closed her eyes, pulling up the mental blueprints she'd studied so long. "But he made a mistake. The security system has a maintenance override. Building code requirement—emergency services need access."
