No victory. No relief.
Just leverage.
And sometimes, leverage was enough.
22
WRECKER
I didn’t sleep.
Didn’t eat.
Didn’t sit long enough for my body to register hunger or exhaustion.
I paced.
Back and forth across the war room, boots striking concrete in a steady, relentless rhythm that was the only thing keeping me anchored. Every step echoed too loud in the cavernous space, the sound bouncing off the walls and coming back wrong. The room was lit low, screens casting a cold blue glow across the concrete, maps and satellite feeds layered over one another until the world looked like nothing but grids and coordinates and red circles that meant possible locations. Every red circle felt like a lie until proven otherwise.
Brutus and Ghost worked shoulder to shoulder at the long table, fingers flying, voices clipped and quiet. Brutus leaned in close to the screens, massive arms braced on either side like he might physically hold the data still long enough to force it to tell the truth. Ghost barely blinked, eyes flicking from one feed to another, mask hiding everything but the tension in his posture. Ranger stood near the window with his radio pressed to his ear,listening for things none of us could hear, jaw tight every time static crackled back instead of information.
Cap moved constantly. Phone in one hand, tablet in the other, jaw locked tight every time a call ended without answers. He looked like a man holding the line together through sheer force of will, like if he stopped moving even for a second the whole place would collapse in on itself.
The compound felt wrong. Too quiet. Too tense. Like everything was coiled and waiting for the snap.
My eyes kept drifting to the empty chair at the table.
Scout’s chair.
The absence of him sat heavy in my chest, an ache I hadn’t been able to shake since the night he vanished. I kept thinking about the way he laughed too loud, the way he never shut up when he was nervous, the way he’d looked at Amanda like she was something fragile but stubborn enough to survive anything. If he was still alive, he’d be fighting. I knew that. And if he wasn’t?—
I cut that thought off hard.
I kept seeing Amanda the night I left. Barefoot on the concrete floor of my room, wrapped in my arms like she already knew she’d need that memory later. I kept hearing her voice, soft and shaky when she whispered,Come back.
Every second that passed felt like I was breaking that promise.
“She’s not in the city,” Ghost said finally, breaking the silence. His eyes didn’t leave the screen. “No trace on urban cams. No abandoned vehicles. Nothing dumped in the grid.”
“So they went rural,” Brutus replied. “Far enough to stall signal. Close enough to watch us scramble.”
Cap stopped pacing and turned back toward the table. “Roanoke and Richmond traffic logs are cross-checked. Ghost,pull the last thirty-six hours of satellite heat signatures. Anything warm in an unoccupied zone, we hit.”
I crossed the room and planted my hands on the table hard enough to make the screens rattle. “Where would you hide if you wanted to go dark fast?”
Ghost didn’t look up. “Abandoned farmland. Storage depots. Construction shells. Warehouses waiting on permits. Places meant to be temporary.”
Temporary.
That word sank like a knife, twisting deep in my gut. Temporary meant transit. It meant holding people just long enough to move them again.
“We’ve got five possibles,” Brutus added. “All off-grid. All within ten miles of the last confirmed sighting.”
Cap looked at me then. Really looked at me. “We don’t rush blind.”
My jaw tightened. Everything in me wanted to argue, to demand we movenow, logic be damned. I could feel the rage climbing, hot and ugly, begging for an outlet. Instead, I forced myself to nod, forced the words out through clenched teeth.
“Then we move smart,” I said. “But we move.”
