“No,” I corrected. “She left a signature.”
I zoomed in, isolating the timestamp.
Single displacement. Controlled. No follow-up activity. No panic response from guards. No escalation.
Scout Fallon hadn’t tested the perimeter.
She’d testedwho was listening.
My mouth curved into something that wasn’t quite a smile.
“She’s alive,” I said.
“And thinking,” Russ added.
“And she knows I’m coming,” I finished.
The room seemed to exhale.
Boone straightened. “How can you be sure it’s her?”
“Because no one else would do it that way,” I said. “Anyone scared would’ve hit everything at once. She touched the system just enough to register.”
I tapped the screen where the anomaly pulsed faintly.
“That’s not fear. That’s confidence.”
Sentinel wanted us chasing shadows. Wanted us loud. Reactive.
Scout had just shifted the board.
“She wants me to find the place without burning it down,” I said quietly. “Which means she’s close to something fragile.”
Russ swore. “Or someone.”
“Or a trigger,” I said. “Sentinel doesn’t house assets unless he’s ready to use them.”
I straightened, already pulling on my jacket.
“She bought herself time,” I said. “And she just handed us a direction.”
Boone was already moving, issuing orders. Russ was coordinating air and ground without being told.
I paused for half a second longer, eyes still on the screen.
Good work, Scout, I thought.
Most people scream when they’re taken.
You whispered.
And I heard you.
“Lock the perimeter,” I said. “We move quiet. No fireworks. No warnings.”
Because Sentinel thought he’d placed a pawn.
What he’d actually done—
