Page 35 of Hunted in the Silence

“I might be able to help with that,” Brynn spoke up.

Both men looked at her.

She’d been standing slightly back from the board, listening, and now she moved forward and pointed to the Harlan property on the map. “Medical supply warehouse, active cover for four years. Buildings like this in this area follow a standard layout from when the district was developed in the sixties. I grew up twelve blocks from here. I’ve been in three or four of these buildings at various points.” She traced the likely interior with her finger. “Main floor, open storage space running the length of the building. Office partition at the north end, probably used as a control room or guard station. A secondary interior room at the south end, which in the original layout would have been a temperature-controlled storage unit.” She paused. “That’s where I think the girls will be. Devlin uses interior rooms. Enclosed, no exterior access, harder to hear from outside.”

If they screamed, Cole thought darkly. The room was quiet for a moment.

Dax looked at the map, then at Brynn. “You’re confident in that layout?”

“As confident as I can be in the general layout. The specifics, including any changes Devlin’s people may have made, I can’t know.” She held his gaze steadily. “But the south room is where I’d put them and that’s where your team should go first.”

Dax looked at Cole. Cole had been watching Brynn while she spoke, her precision, the way she didn’t pretend to know details she didn’t have but she didn’t understate what she did know either. He’d seen expert witnesses in federal cases with less command of their own knowledge.

“South room first,” Cole decided, and wrote it on the board.

Dax pulled out his own notepad and began sketching a rough floor plan based on what Brynn had described, asking her two follow-up questions about ceiling height and whether the interior partition was likely original construction or added later. She answered the best she could. He built the sketch and it was already more than they’d had an hour ago.

“Entry sequence,” Dax said. “You want simultaneous on front and side?”

“Within five seconds of each other. Side door is the softer entry. Finn’s photographs show it’s a standard commercial lock, not reinforced. Front is likely the same. The goal is to have both open before anyone inside has time to move.”

“Girls first,” Brynn said. “Whatever else is happening in that building, the south room is the first priority. Everything else is secondary.”

Neither man argued with that. It was the right call and they both knew it.

Dax spent another forty minutes working through the details of the plan with Cole and Olivia, how they would choreograph entering the building and moving fast without being reckless. He was methodical and creative in equal measure, the combination showing that he could think beyond his military training. He thought three steps ahead and then thought about what could go wrong with each of those steps, which was exactly the kind of thinking Cole needed at this stage.

At one point, working through the approach angles, Dax mentioned he’d run the building diagram past his wife tonight, that she’d done behavioral profiles on similar operations and had thoughts on how subjects in crisis might respond.

Cole glanced at Brynn. She was writing something on her legal pad and didn’t look up, but he saw the small pause in her pen before it kept moving. Quinn’s name sitting quietly between them, unspoken, the way it had been sitting since he’d spotted the paperback on Brynn’s desk two days ago.

He said nothing.

By two in the afternoon, they had a working operational plan that was solid enough to take to the full coordination meeting with Carson and Finn the following morning. Not perfect. No plan was perfect. Cole had stopped believing in perfect plans the third year into this work. But coherent, flexible, built around the most reliable intelligence they had, which was the woman sitting at the end of the table with the notepad who had spent the last two hours giving them things no briefing document could have.

Dax gathered his materials and stood. He looked at Cole with the frank, level expression he’d had since he walked in. “Good operation,” he said. “Tight window but solid. Carson and I will be in position by oh-five-thirty Thursday. You won’t see us until you need us.”

“That’s exactly what I want,” Cole said.

Dax shook hands with Olivia and Cole, and then paused at Brynn’s chair. She looked up.

“The south room,” he said. “Good call. I’ll make sure it’s first.”

Something in Brynn’s expression relaxed briefly. “Thank you.”

Dax nodded once and left, and the room felt slightly different after he’d gone.

“I like him,” Olivia said to no one in particular.

“He’s married,” Cole said.

“I know he is. I said I liked him. Those aren’t the same thing.” She turned back to her screen. “His wife is Quinn Barrett, isn’t it.”

Cole looked at her.

“I read,” Olivia said simply. “Justice Delayed was excellent.”

Cole looked at Brynn. Brynn had gone very still, as if she were deciding what to do with the information. Her pen had stopped moving. Her eyes were on the table.