“Call when you get there. Keep me up to speed. No heroics. Your primary mission remains. Keep Cassie Brennan breathing.”
“Will do.”
“Ghost out.”
The line goes dead.
I stand there for a moment, holding the receiver. The plastic is warm from my grip, slick with the sweat of my bandaged palm.
Recon only.
I think I can do that, but something tells me whatever’s in that facility, Phoenix will protect it at any cost.
I hang up the phone. Walk back to the van.
“What did they say?” Cassie’s already half-turned in the passenger seat, watching me approach. Her lawyer instincts are in overdrive, reading my body language, cataloging the tension in my shoulders.
I slide behind the wheel. Close the door.
“Phoenix coordinated multiple strikes after your position was flagged.” The words taste like ash. “Three assets in DC. All dead.”
Her face goes pale. “Because of me.”
“Because of Phoenix. Because they’re scared of what you found.” I start the engine. “That’s not on you.”
“But if I hadn’t logged in?—”
“Then we wouldn’t have the Terra Alta address. We wouldn’t know about the biological assets being moved. We’d be hiding in a hotel room waiting for them to find us.” I pull out of the gas station lot, checking the mirrors.
She’s quiet for a moment. Processing.
“What about your team? Can they join us?”
“Stretched thin. Ghost is going to send someone, or try to. Name’s Thorne. He’s new to us, but …”
“So we’re on our own?”
“For now.” I merge onto the highway, heading south toward the West Virginia border. “Ghost authorized reconnaissance. We look, we document, we leave. No engagement. No breach.”
“And if something goes wrong?”
“We handle it.”
She nods. Her jaw is set, her eyes fixed on the road ahead. Not the frightened attorney from five days ago. Something harder. Forged in fire.
“From this point forward, we’re completely dark,” I say. “No phones. No digital footprint. Phoenix can’t track what doesn’t ping.”
“Analog ghosts.”
“Exactly.”
The highway stretches ahead. West Virginia mountains rising in the distance, their peaks shrouded in a gray haze. We have half a day of driving. Hours of empty road and silence, and the weight of everything we haven’t said.
“Diego?”
“Yeah?”
“What you said last night. About 2019. About Sofia.”
