I should hang up. Should report this contact to—who? My section chief is dead. My agency is compromised. The Committee knows my name and wants me eliminated.
"I'm listening," I say finally.
"Good. I have a list of burned operators. Men who were betrayed by the same system that's hunting you now. Men who have the skills to find your brother and the motivation to hurt the Committee." Papers rustle on her end. "I can provide names, last known locations, operational specialties. What you do with that information is your concern."
"Why help me?"
"Because the Committee killed seventeen of my clients last year. Because they're bad for business. Because occasionally I do things that aren't strictly profit-motivated." Her voice hardens. "And because your brother is on my list too, which means we both want him found alive."
The encrypted file arrives thirty seconds after she disconnects. I open it with shaking hands.
Twenty-three names. Locations. Specialties. Assessment of operational status and likelihood of cooperation.
Marcus Thompson - Delta Force, Utah, off-grid, armed response likely.
Lucas Hayes - SEAL Team Six, Wyoming, presumed hostile to contact.
Alex Mercer - Delta sniper, Montana wilderness, extreme isolation, master of evasion and wilderness survival.
My analyst brain catalogs the information automatically. Mercer. Montana. The intercepts I've been tracking for months showed unusual satellite phone activity in that region. Brief, encrypted bursts that could be supply runs or dead drop checks. Movement patterns consistent with someone who knows how to stay invisible but still needs to maintain minimal contact with civilization.
I can find him.
The question is whether I'll survive the trip long enough to ask for his help.
I spend two days planning. Route analysis. Supply procurement. Cover story for the cross-country drive. My ribs still ache with every breath, but I'm functional enough to drive. The split lip has scabbed over. The bruises are fading to yellow-green.
I look like someone who's been in a car accident. Not someone who was tortured by Committee operatives and barely escaped with her life.
Close enough.
The drive to Montana takes four days. I take a circuitous route, watching for surveillance, switching vehicles twice, using cash for everything. Old tradecraft from my NSA training, procedures I never thought I'd need to use.
By the time I cross into Montana, I'm running on caffeine and desperation. The Whitefish area is vast, heavily forested, perfect for someone who wants to disappear. I start with satellite imagery, cross-referencing with the communication patterns I tracked. Narrow it down to a twenty-square-mile area in the wilderness north of town.
Then I start looking for signs.
Supply runs leave traces if you know what to look for. A pattern in the timing of purchases at outdoor stores. Propane tank refills that happen with suspicious regularity. The locations where satellite phone signals briefly appeared before going dark.
It takes another two days of careful searching, driving logging roads that barely qualify as roads, before I find what I'm looking for.
A secondary shelter. Well-hidden, well-defended, exactly the kind of place a burned Delta operator would establish as a fallback position. The cabin is small, positioned with clear sightlines, surrounded by wilderness that would make approach nearly impossible without being detected.
Perfect for someone who wants to disappear.
Perfect for someone who doesn't want to be found.
I park half a mile out and approach on foot, moving carefully despite the screaming protest from my ribs. Every instinct I have says this is stupid. Says I should turn around, find another way, not walk into the territory of a man trained to kill and paranoid enough to live in total isolation.
But Gabe is missing. Harper is dead. Micah is silent.
And I'm out of options.
The cabin is empty when I reach it. No signs of recent occupation, no smoke from the chimney, nothing to suggest Mercer's been here recently. This is his fallback position, his emergency shelter, not his primary location.
Which means I found the wrong cabin.
I lean against the rough wooden wall, trying to catch my breath. My ribs scream. The shoulder wound I thought was mostly healed pulls with every movement. I've been running on adrenaline and desperation for days, and both are running out.
