Marc stands beside me, shoulders nearly touching. On the other side of the glass, the younger contractor sits handcuffed to a table, staring at his hands.
Calder works him for hours. Shows him the recording, the federal charges he's facing, the consequences of staying loyal to a man who's already abandoned him.
"Haywood ordered the hit," he says finally, voice flat. His shoulders are slumped, the fight gone. "Said the nurse had evidence that could destroy him. Said she had to be eliminated before DOJ moved."
"Lyle Haywood specifically ordered you to kill Sela Mitchell?" Calder presses.
"Yes. Said to make it look like an accident, get the body somewhere it wouldn't be found." He swallows hard. "Said he was under pressure to clean this up fast."
"Pressure from who?"
"Don't know. He never told us. Just said the whole operation was at risk if witnesses started talking."
The interrogation continues for another hour, but the contractor has nothing else useful. Calder finally steps out of the room, joins us in the observation area.
Beside me, Marc's expression is dark. "So Haywood's got a handler. But no proof it's The Marshal."
"Not yet," Calder says. "We need Haywood to give us that connection. And now?—"
Her phone rings. She answers, listens, her face going rigid. "When? How long ago?"
She hangs up, looks at us. "Haywood's gone. Fled his office, abandoned his vehicle at a trailhead outside Anchorage. DOJ has a warrant for his arrest, but he's disappeared into the wilderness."
"With a head start and a destination," I say.
"He's no woodsman," Marc says. "The Alaskan wilderness will kill him in days without supplies. He's got somewhere specific to go—a safe house, an extraction point. Someone waiting for him."
I look at the map on the wall, at the vast emptiness of Alaska stretching beyond Anchorage. Millions of acres, hundreds of potential locations. A dozen places The Marshal could have set up for extraction or a safe house.
Too much ground to cover before Haywood reaches wherever he's running to.
"Then we go after him," I say.
Marc's hand finds mine, squeezes once. "Not we. This part's not your fight."
"Everything about this is my fight." I squeeze back. "Emma died for that evidence. Haywood tried to have me killed. I'm not sitting this out."
His expression says he wants to argue. Also says he knows better.
Calder's already pulling up terrain maps, coordinating with search teams. "Haywood's running scared, but he's not stupid. He'll go to ground, wait for us to spread out searching, then slip through when we're thin."
"Unless we predict where he'll go," Finn says.
"Or who he'll go to," Cara adds. "He mentioned a superior. Maybe Haywood's running to whoever's been protecting him."
"The Marshal." Marc's voice goes cold. "We find Haywood, we find the man who's been running trafficking operations across Alaska for years."
Haywood's out there somewhere, running, desperate, making the kind of decisions that get men caught.
Marc's hand tightens on mine. When I look at him, he's already studying the map, tracking terrain the way he tracked criminals when he was CID.
He'll find Haywood.
And I'm going with him.
14
MARC
