“Storage for what?”
“Biological assets. Class 4 pathogens. Something called ML-273.”
I glance at her. “Biological?”
“It was in the service agreement. And it wasn’t signed by a proxy. It was signed by Julianna Stratton. CEO of Stratton Financial.”
“Connected to what?”
“A physical address. 1402 Blackwood Road, Terra Alta, West Virginia.”
I look back at the road. The anger is still there, simmering, but the tactical brain is taking over.
Stratton Financials. West Virginia.
It’s isolated. Hard to access.
“Are you saying that’s why the money moved?” The pieces click into place. “Stratton is liquidating assets to fund the site?”
“I don’t know, but it’s something,” Cassie says. “We aren’t running blind. This is a lead, right?”
I don’t know if it is or isn’t, just that I’m pissed with myself. Pissed that I let emotion cloud my judgment. That I let need override my programming.
I have one job. Keep the principal intact. Instead, I lowered my defenses, fucked her, and now I find myself driving away from a manhunt.
She reaches across the console, her hand covering mine on the gear shift. She looks at my red palms.
“Your hands …”
I pull away. I can’t let her touch me. Not now. “Terra Alta is five hours as the crow flies. If we go there, we’re going into a hardened facility with one handgun and no backup.”
“Do we have a choice?”
In the rearview mirror, Philadelphia is fading into the haze.
“No,” I say. “We don’t, but we need help. We’re not doing this alone. Check the map in my bag. Find me a back road. We stay off the highway.”
She opens my ruck and digs through until she finds a paper map.
I study her profile. The set of her jaw.
I hate that she had to do it. I hate that I let it happen.
But mostly, I hate how much I respect it.
We aren’t running anymore.
We’re hunting.
THIRTEEN
“The Reckoning”
CASSIE
The silence is suffocating.
We’ve been driving for hours. The Philadelphia skyline disappeared into the rearview mirror somewhere around mile marker forty, replaced by the rolling brown hills of rural Pennsylvania. The sun bleeds out on the horizon, staining the clouds the color of bruises.
