He goes still. Then he walks back to our car. Opens the trunk. Runs his hands along the wheel wells, the undercarriage, the bumper. His fingers find something above the rear axle, and he pulls it free and holds it up.
A GPS tracker. Small, black, magnetic. The kind you can buy online for fifty dollars and stick to any metal surface.
"It was on the car when we left the compound," he says. His voice is quiet. The dangerous quiet. "Someone put it there before we left. Someone who knew which car we were taking."
"Emilio knew."
"Emilio gave me the duffel in the garage. He didn't touch the car. My brother would never betray me."
"Leone knew."
"Leone told me to take his car. He didn't go to the garage."
"Then who?"
Claudio looks at the tracker. Crushes it in his fist. The plastic breaks and the circuit board bends, and he drops the pieces on the asphalt and grinds them under his boot.
"Someone who had access to the east garage before we left," he says. "Someone who knew the extraction was happening before it happened."
The wind blows. The road is empty. The shapes on the ground are cooling.
I get in the sedan. Claudio gets behind the wheel. We drive.
Neither of us speaks for a long time.
The gun is still in my lap. My hands are still shaking. And somewhere behind us, on a county road in the middle of nowhere, four men are lying on asphalt because I saw something through a crack in a door a month ago.
Expanding my lungs, I inhale deeply. Letting it out as slow as I can, letting the burn fill my senses.
The list of people who might be trying to kill me just got longer, and the list of people I can trust just got shorter.
I look at Claudio. His hands on the wheel. His jaw tight. Blood on his sleeve that isn't his.
He's on just one list.
The short one.
Chapter Thirteen: Claudio
Thetimelinedoesn'tmakesense.
I'm sitting on a motel bed sixty miles west of where I left four bodies on a county road, and I've been running the same sequence for an hour, and it just doesn't fucking work.
Leone authorized the extraction at approximately 2:45 AM. I went to the east garage at 3:10. Loaded the car. Emilio arrived at 3:25, gave me the duffel, left at 3:35. I collected Charlotte at 3:40. We were off compound by 3:50.
That's a sixty-five-minute window between authorization and departure.
The tracker was on the car when we left. Matte black, magnetic, stuck above the rear axle in a spot you'd only find if you were looking. Professional placement. Not rushed, not sloppy.Someone walked into the east garage during that sixty-five-minute window and put a GPS device on a specific vehicle.
Four people knew which car we were taking. Leone, who authorized it. Me. Emilio, who met me in the garage. And Carmelo, who was asleep in his quarters at the time and who I haven't spoken to directly since we left.
There's a fifth option. The garage has no cameras. I recommended removing them six months ago because I didn't want our movements logged in a system outside parties could access. My own security measure, turned against me. Anyone could have walked into that garage during the window. Anyone who was awake and paying attention. Anyone who heard the alarm and saw me moving Charlotte and figured out what was happening.
But that's a lot of anyones. And the tracker wasn't improvised. It was the kind of hardware you order in advance and keep in a pocket for exactly this kind of moment. Which means whoever placed it knew an extraction was likely before it happened. Before the hit team breached. Before the alarm went off.
Which means they knew the hit team was coming.
I run it again. Same variables. Same dead end.
