“Just under four hours. We should be on the ground by five p.m. local time,” Bray answered. He had his laptop balanced on his knees and was clacking away at it.
“Are you talking to your guy in the chair?” I asked, leaning across the narrow aisle to see his screen where he sat opposite me. The plane had room for six passengers, with beige leather seats and wood paneling.
“My what?” he asked, and didn’t take his eyes off the screen.
“Ramesh. Your guy in the chair. You know, the agent who stays in the office and tells the agents in the field what to do.”
A smile turned up the corners of his mouth. “Yes, I am talking to my guy in the chair. He says Wallace’s phone’s geotag jumped from Houston to Del Rio after he died, so you’re right. They used it to find you.”
My heart sunk at the thought I’d made such a foolish mistake. “I wonder what else they found on there,” I muttered.
“Hopefully not much. It’s been remote deactivated by now.”
“Which means they know we know.”
“Not necessarily,” he said. “It’s DSA protocol to deactivate devices when an agent passes. They only had a slight head start because Wallace’s death wasn’t immediately reported.”
I shrunk back into my seat, feeling deflated.
“I’m sorry,” Bray said when he noticed. “I know he was … important to you.”
“Another interesting choice of words,” I said and gave him a sad smile.
I thought about what we’d learned in the past several hours. If we were right, if Wallace’s dying act was having me moved to protect me, that rewrote everything I thought I knew about our relationship. My real father had held a gun to my head last night, and this man, this stranger who’d draped his coat over my shivering, scared shoulders on the worst night of my life, had sacrificed himself for me. Yes, he’d spent a decade bossing me around and using me for his own gain, but ultimately, he’d saved me.
And I’d undone his work by leading Olena right to me. I couldn’t let his death be in vain.
I turned to Bray with resolve. “We have to end this.”
We headed straight to the bank when we touched down in Houston. A sporty black sedan was waiting for us at the airport. Bray got behind the wheel and handed me an earpiece to match the one he was wearing.
“Ramesh?” I asked as I buried it in my ear like an invisible bug.
“And me,” Bray said. “I’m not a hundred percent sure what we are walking into, so I want open comms.”
“You got it, buddy,” Ramesh’s voice said, crystal clear in my ear.
“Hey, my very own guy in the chair, what a privilege,” I said.
“Happy to be of service today, Ms. Daniels,” Ramesh said.
“Don’t call her that,” Bray instructed as he turned the car onto a highway.
“Roger,” Ramesh said. “What should I call her?”
“Not Roger,” I said. I expected Bray to chime in with some made-up name, but instead, he turned to me.
“You pick. What do you want to be called for this job?”
The question had never been posed to me. Not once in my decade of service. I’d always been handed a folder with an identity already designated. I thought about it for a second and knew right away.
“Katherine. It was my mom’s name.”
Bray nodded. “Katherine it is, then.”
Ramesh helped us navigate downtown, and soon we were parking a few blocks from the bank Wallace had visited. The late spring air was already ripening with signs of summer, but still pleasant enough we weren’t sweating in our coats as we walked up the street. The city’s skyscrapers towered over us, casting portions of the busy street in long shadows. I hadn’t set foot here since that night in the hotel room, yet it somehow felt the same. Like a familiar acquaintance I didn’t particularly want to see welcoming me home.
“Take a left,” Ramesh said into our ears. He was tracking us through our cell phone pings sending signals to him, and I assumed staring at a map.
