“I don’t know,” I say finally. “I just do.”
“Then keep doing it. Whatever it takes. Keep surviving.”
“I will.”
“Promise me.”
“I promise.”
It’s the easiest promise I’ve ever made. And the most impossible to keep.
But it’s time to move. Reluctantly, we get out of bed, shower, and head out to the minivan. A few miles down the road, I find a small gas station outside of nowhere. There’s a payphone bolted to the brick wall like a relic from a dead century.
Which is perfect.
The gas station is a squat cinder block box with a faded Mobil sign and windows clouded with decades of road grime. Two pumps out front, the old-fashioned kind with analog dials. A rusted pickup parked by the air pump. No other cars. No surveillance cameras visible.
Perfect.
Cassie waits in the van while I make contact with my team. She’s dressed now—jeans, one of my hoodies swallowing her frame, her hair pulled back in a ponytail. She looks younger likethis. Less like an attorney. More like a grad student on a road trip.
The fiction almost works if you ignore the fear in her eyes.
I walk to the payphone. Lift the receiver and feed quarters into the slot—actual quarters we found in the van, because the universe apparently decided that payphones and I would be friends today—and dial the relay number from memory.
Ring. Ring. Ring.
Third ring. Click.
“Designation.”
“Halo-Seven-Seven-Delta.”
“Hold for verification.”
Static. Forty-five seconds of nothing. Long enough for me to scan the parking lot twice, check the tree line, and clock the old man shuffling out of the station with a coffee cup.
Then Ghost’s voice comes through, scrambled but clear, “Brother. You’re alive.”
“Barely. The hotel was compromised. Package intact.”
“We heard about the hotel. Lit up the whole damn city.” His voice is tight. Controlled. The voice of a man who’s been awake for too many hours, running too many operations. “Phoenix coordinated multiple strikes after your position was flagged. Hit three other assets in DC.”
“What?”
“I’m there, mopping up the aftermath in D.C.. All are somehow connected to Meridian Pharmaceuticals or Echo Logistics.”
“Echo Logistics?” Shit. I know exactly what happened. “I’ve got intel.”
“You do?”
I relay the intel about Stratton Financial. The biological assets. The Terra Alta address. The contract Cassie found with the CEO’s signature.
Ghost goes quiet for a moment. I hear the click of keys—he’s running the address through our database.
“How solid is your intel?”
“Couldn’t be more solid.”
