"I know."
"Do you?" She shifted to face him more fully. "Because a couple days ago, you were lecturing me about chain of custody and proper procedures. Now you're pocketing evidence and walking away from attempted murder scenes."
His knuckles whitened on the steering wheel. "A couple days ago, no one had tried to blow you up or force your mother and daughter into hiding."
The words hit harder than expected. "So you're doing this for us?"
"I'm doing this because the system's failing." His voice carried an edge she hadn't heard before. "The FBI's more interested in building a case against you than finding who's really behind this. Local law enforcement would just muddy the waters. We don't have time for bureaucracy."
"Listen to you. Cory Fraser, rebel without a badge."
"Don't." But she caught the slight loosening around his eyes. "I'm still law enforcement. This is... tactical flexibility."
"Is that what we're calling it?"
They drove another few miles before he spoke again. "That pencil bothers me."
"Mechanical pencils aren't exactly rare."
"No, but..." He drummed his fingers on the wheel.
"Could have fallen out of someone's pocket," Izzy mused. "When you're shooting from inside a vehicle, you're twisting, bracing against the window. Things fall out."
"Someone who carries mechanical pencils. Someone who was nervous enough to drop it, careless enough not to notice." Cory checked the mirror, confirming Reed was still with them. "Not a professional."
"That whole scene screamed amateur," Izzy agreed. "Ten shots with no real pattern. Any decent marksman would have..." She stopped, the reality of it hitting fresh. They'd been targets. Someone had pointed a rifle at them and pulled the trigger ten times.
"You okay?"
"Yeah." She wasn't, not really, but that was irrelevant. "Just thinking. Whoever did this knew where we'd be. Or at least knew where Reed would be."
"Gotta have been following Reed. No one except your team knew we were on him."
Exactly what she was thinking, but it felt good to have confirmation. Reed was the likely target. She pulled out her phone, texted Zara for the dozenth time. Still no response—probably out of cell range in Alaska.
The landscape changed gradually, desert giving way to scrub pine, then proper forest. The sun angled low, painting everything golden. In the mirror, Reed's sedan continued its steady pace, a loyal shadow.
"He's hanging in there," Cory observed.
"Adrenaline and stubbornness." Izzy knew the combination well. "He'll crash hard once he gets home."
"His wife's going to have questions about that bandage."
"His wife's going to have questions about a lot of things." She thought about Reed's shattered expression, the way he'd talked about his daughter's death. Twenty million in blood money that couldn't buy him peace. "You think he's involved?"
"I think he's a broken man who made mistakes." Cory's profile was sharp against the fading light. "Whether those mistakes included taking bribes..."
"He seemed genuinely shocked by the shooting."
"Fear's hard to fake." Cory was quiet for a moment. "But desperate people do desperate things. Maybe he knew more than he told us. Maybe that's why someone wanted him silenced."
They climbed into the mountains proper now, the temperature dropping with elevation. Hope Landing was still an hour away, but Izzy already felt the pull of it. Somewhere in thattown, someone had tried to kill them. Someone who knew their movements, their plans.
Her phone buzzed. Finally, a text from Zara:
Got your messages. Digging into anyone who could have known your location. You safe?
She typed back quickly:
