“Not in this file,” Cam says. “But see here?” He points to a header. “She addressed it to the same contact she used for all her other reports.”
“Angelina,” I say.
“Angelina,” he confirms. “If we find her, we find whatever Phase IV is.”
“We burned their lab. We pulled their kids. We took their favorite pair off their board. They’ll either scramble to rebuild or trigger a contingency plan. Either way, we need to move first.” Sterling says it like it’s simple. It isn’t, but the certainty in his voice keeps the floor from falling out from under me.
I drag my gaze away from the screen. “Where was the phone?” I ask.
Cam blinks. “What phone?”
“The one she used as the burner. We left one at the abandoned cabin, but there’s no way she could have used that one.” I say. “ She couldn’t send anything from the Nesting House or the cabin. The jammerwould’ve blocked it. She said she was sending updates when she got home. Which means…”
“It’s with her things,” Sterling finishes.
Cam frowns in confusion. “We grabbed her and Reyes in a hurry. I only scooped the obvious files and tablets. If she had a phone stashed somewhere in that lab, it’s lost now.”
The realization hits like cold water. “She wouldn’t keep her lifeline at work. She’d keep it where she thought she was safe. The Nesting House was where she spent most of her time, but there is no way she was always on-site.” Some pieces of the puzzle are finally sliding into place—the dates on the logs, the times she checked in. “She had to have a secondary safe space,” I say. “Somewhere close enough to make the drive weekly, far enough that the program didn’t officially own it. A motel, a cabin…something.”
Sterling narrows his eyes. “So you’re saying…”
“I’m saying if we find where she slept, we find the main phone,” I say. “And if we find the phone, we get everything she didn’t send.”
Cam’s fingers are already moving. “I can cross-reference the login times with traffic cam data, toll records, rental payments…”
“On no sleep and three cups of coffee,” I say.
“Four,” he corrects. “And you’re one to talk.”
He’s right. I feel better than I did last night, but that’s a low bar. The ache in my side is a constant hum, the pain in my head a steady throb. My body is a stitched-together mess of trauma responses and adrenaline. “One thing at a time,” I hear myself say. Sterling’s phrase. It tastesdifferent coming from my mouth. Less like resignation and more like a strategy.
“Step one,” Cam says without looking up. “Find the burner. Step two: find Angelina. Step three, smash Phase IV to pieces before they get a chance to drag you into it.”
“Step three-and-a-half,” Sterling adds. “Kill anyone who tries.”
“Violence as a bullet point,” I say. “How charming.”
He shrugs. “We are who they made us,” he says. “We just don’t work for them anymore.”
I look back at the screen, at the unsent line.
DATA INCOMPLETE.
Good.If they wanted an easy report, they should’ve picked easier subjects.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Two days later…
“St. Jude’s,” Sterling says randomly. “It’s an abandoned chapel out past the county line thirty-two. We need to go.” He apparently is choosing violence over coffee this morning.
I lower my mug and squint at him. “Did you just skip good morning and go straight to, ’ Let’s take a fucking field trip to a horror movie set ?”
“Morning.” His mouth twitches. “And yeah. St. Jude’s.”
“Explain,” I say, taking another sip of caffeine.I’m apparently going to need it today.“Slowly. I haven’t had enough caffeine for cryptic church talk.”
Sterling leans back against the counter like we’re discussing the weather and not whatever trauma he’s about to unload. “It’s an old chapel my family owns,” he says nonchalantly. “ A Wraith property way out in the sticks.”
