Chapter 27: The Hunt Begins
The ferry terminal air was a slap of salt, diesel, and frying food. The mundane roar of travelers—families with rolling suitcases, truckers drinking coffee, cyclists in neon spandex—was disorienting. After the silence of the forest and the oppressive hush of the estate, the noise felt like an assault. Tom’s hand found the small of Char’s back, a point of contact in the chaotic current of people.
Dale’s truck was already gone, swallowed by the line for the Victoria ferry. His warning hung between them, colder than the wind whipping off the strait. You light your match in a wind like that, you better be ready for the whole forest to go up.
“He knew,” Char muttered, scanning the crowds, her eyes flicking from face to face. “He knew we were running from more than a bad debt.”
“He’s lived in these woods a long time,” Tom said, guiding her toward the terminal building. “He’s seen things. Doesn’t mean he’ll talk.” He hoped to God he was right. A garrulous old woodsman could be a dead end they couldn’t afford.
Their priority was clear: contact Colonel Shaw. But a public payphone was a relic, and their cells were useless bricks, likely pinged the moment they found a signal. They needed a computer. An anonymous connection.
“There,” Char said, nodding toward a tourist information board. Among the ads for whale watching and rainforest tours was a simple placard: PORT ANGELES PUBLIC LIBRARY – 5 Blocks East – Free Internet Access.
It was a risk. A library had cameras, a public log-in, a building with limited exits. It was also their only viable option.
They walked quickly, heads down, trying to blend. Their clothes—Tom’s torn dress shirt under his jacket, Char’s dirt-smeared leggings—marked them as outliers among the rain-coated locals. Every uniformed person—a cop directing traffic, a security guard outside a bank—made Tom’s spine stiffen. Martinez’s reach was theoretically limitless. A call to the right federal liaison could have their pictures on every law enforcement terminal in the state.
The library was a modest brick building from the sixties. The air inside was warm, stale, smelling of old paper and floor polish. It was quiet, a handful of people scattered at tables or browsing shelves. A teenage clerk looked up from a computer behind the main desk, her gaze lingering on their dishevelment for a second too long before snapping back to her screen.
The public computers were in a row along a back wall. They took two adjacent terminals. Tom’s fingers hovered over the keyboard. His training screamed that this was a terrible idea. Every keystroke was a footprint. But the alternative was wandering blindly until Sebastián’s hunters or Martinez’s cleanup crew found them.
He opened a private browser window. His first search wasn’t for Shaw. It was for news.
Vargas.
Martinez.
Pentagon.
The results were generic, benign. No scandals. No bodies found in Virginia estates. No reports of a missing Air Force captain and his wife. The silence was more terrifying than headlines. It meant the containment was holding. They were still in the pre-explosion vacuum, where the powerful could still smother the spark.
“Nothing,” Char whispered, reading her own screen. “It’s like none of it happened.”
“It happened,” Tom said, his voice low. “They’re just cleaning up the stage before raising the curtain.” He pulled the thumb drive from his pocket, its plastic shell warm from his skin. He couldn’t plug it in here. The library’s OS might flag it, or the activity could be monitored. They needed a different machine.
He opened a web-based email client he hadn’t used in years, an old Gmail account from his academy days. He typed a draft, not sending it, his body blocking the screen from the room.
Colonel Shaw – it began, no greeting.
This is Tom Reynolds. The cliff wasn’t an accident. The promotion was a bribe. Atlas is compromised. We have the proof. They have us in a box. We need an exit that isn’t a grave or a cell. We are in Port Angeles, WA, mobile. We need a secure channel and a friend at the Post. Burn this account after reading. Will find a way to check for reply.
He saved the draft. The message sat in digital limbo, useless. They needed to get the credentials to Shaw so he could access it. A phone call was the only way, but calling his home or cell from a traceable line was suicide.
Char was typing furiously on her own terminal. She was on a real estate site, looking at the Foxhollow Road estate. It was listed as a luxury rental property. The photos showed their bedroom, the fireplace, the satin sheets. It felt like viewing a crime scene from a brochure.
“Look,” she said, minimizing the window. She’d opened a local news blog. A small, three-paragraph item from two days ago, buried in the community section: Fire Responds to False Alarm at Foxhollow Estate. The report stated a faulty sensor had triggered a sprinkler system in the west wing, causing minor water damage. No suspects. No mention of a breach, a chase, a missing couple.
“They’re covering it up already,” Tom said. “A water leak. That’s our rebellion. A fucking water leak.”
A shadow fell across their desks. The teenage librarian stood there, holding a stack of books to be reshelved. She was pale, with acne on her chin and overly bright eyes. “You guys okay? You look… lost.”
“We’re fine,” Char said, flashing a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “Just catching up on email after a hiking trip. Got a little turned around in the woods last night.”
The girl didn’t move. Her eyes darted to Tom’s hands, still poised over the keyboard. “Yeah. The woods’ll do that. Um… there’s a guy.”
Tom’s blood went cold. “What guy?”
“Came in a few minutes after you. He’s not reading. He’s just… on his phone. Over by the periodicals. He’s looked over here four times.” She shifted the books, nervous. “He’s got a suit on under his coat. Nobody wears a suit in here.”
Tom didn’t turn. He kept his gaze on the girl. “What does he look like?”
“Kinda big. Short hair. Clean-shaven. He looks… like he lifts. A lot.”
Not a local. Not a fed, either—they usually worked in pairs. A contractor. Sebastián’s man, or one of Martinez’s “security specialists.” They’d been made. Somehow, they’d been followed or tracked to the library.
“Is there a back way out of here?” Tom asked, his voice calm, flat.
The girl hesitated, then gave a tiny nod. “Staff door by the restrooms. Leads to the alley. It’s usually locked but… the deadbolt’s busted. We keep meaning to fix it.”
“Thank you,” Char said, the words sincere, urgent.
The librarian scurried away, pretending to reshelf books in the cookbook section.
“We move on three,” Tom said under his breath. He closed the browser window, erased the history. “Not fast. Casual. To the restrooms.”
“He’ll follow,” Char said.
“I’m counting on it. Alley’s better than a room full of civilians.”
They stood in unison, pushing their chairs in. Tom let his jacket fall open, his hand drifting near his waist out of instinct, though he was unarmed. They walked past the rows of mysteries and romances toward the sign for restrooms. Tom’s peripheral vision caught the movement by the periodicals. A large man in a dark overcoat was now standing, folding his phone away, his posture shifting from observer to predator.
The staff door was a plain steel slab marked ‘PRIVATE.’ Tom tried the handle. It turned. He pushed, holding it for Char. They slipped through into a narrow, concrete-floored hallway lined with mops and buckets, then out a second door into a dank alleyway choked with the smell of dumpsters and wet brick.
The door had just swung shut behind them when the main door burst open. The man in the suit filled the frame. He had the bland, muscular face of professional enforcement. His right hand was under his coat.
“Captain Reynolds,” the man said, his voice a neutral baritone. “Mrs. Reynolds. Let’s make this easy. Come with me. You’re in over your head.”
“Whose head are we in?” Tom asked, stepping slightly in front of Char, putting a dumpster between them and the man’s line of fire.
“That’s not your concern anymore. The offer is standing. A quiet conclusion. No more running.”
“Sebastián sent you,” Char said, her voice cutting through the alley’s chill. “He wants his property back.”
A flicker in the man’s eyes confirmed it. “Mr. Vargas is a reasonable man. He wants to protect his investment. You are currently a volatile asset. He prefers to stabilize you.”
“Stabilize,” Tom repeated. “You mean bury.”
The man’s hand started to emerge from his coat, revealing a sleek, black pistol equipped with a sound suppressor. “Last chance. Walk to the end of the alley. A van is waiting. You get in, you live a while longer. You resist, and I hose this alley down and drag you to it. Your choice.”
Time compressed. Tom saw the angles. The dumpster, the fire escape six feet above Char’s head, a stack of wooden pallets against the opposite wall. The man was ten paces away, professional, calm. He’d shoot Tom first, the immediate threat, then corral Char.
Tom’s move was born of thousands of hours of combat training, a fusion of instinct and geometry. He didn’t go for the gun. He went for the environment.
His foot hooked the edge of a cracked plastic crate, kicking it skittering across the wet concrete toward the man’s feet. It was a distraction, minor, but it forced a micro-second shift in the man’s attention. In that sliver of time, Tom shoved Char hard toward the stack of pallets. “Up! Now!”
He lunged not at the man, but to the side, grabbing the handle of the greasy dumpster and heaving with all his strength. It was on wheels. It rolled a few feet, squealing, directly into the man’s path.
The gun came up, the suppressor aiming over the rolling dumpster. Phut. A bullet sparked off the brick where Tom’s head had been a half-second before.
Char was on the pallets, scrambling, her fingers reaching for the bottom rung of the fire escape. It was rusted, ladder retracted. She jumped, caught it, her body slamming against the brick. She hung, legs kicking, then pulled herself up with a grunt of pure effort.
Tom used the dumpster as a shield, moving laterally. Another phut, this one punching a hole in the green metal near his shoulder. He needed a weapon. Anything.
The man was coming around the dumpster, methodical, cutting off the alley. His face showed no anger, only focused calculation. He knew he had time.
Tom’s hand closed around a broken bottle neck in the gutter. It was pathetic. It was all he had.
A shadow fell from above. Char had climbed the fire escape to the first landing, found a small, corroded toolbox left by a maintenance worker. Inside was a single, heavy pipe wrench.
She didn’t scream. She didn’t warn. She just dropped it.
The wrench plummeted fifteen feet and struck the gunman on the meat of his right shoulder, just as he was rounding the dumpster. There was a sickening crunch of bone, not a loud crack but a dense, muffled snap. The man let out a sharp, surprised exhalation. His right arm went limp, the suppressed pistol clattering to the pavement.
He was tough. He didn’t go down. He spun, looking up, his left hand going to his shoulder, his face finally showing emotion: a flash of bewildered agony. Tom was already moving.
He covered the distance in three strides, abandoning the bottle for the real prize. He scooped up the pistol, his fingers finding the grip, the safety, the trigger. It was a 9mm Glock, custom-milled for the suppressor. He leveled it at the man’s chest from four feet away.
The man stared, cradling his ruined shoulder. His breath fogged in rapid bursts.
“Who else?” Tom demanded, his voice a harsh whisper. “How many?”
The man shook his head, his jaw tight. “You’re dead. You just don’t know it yet.”
Tom stepped closer, pressed the warm muzzle of the suppressor against the man’s forehead. The metal indented the skin. “I’ll know it when I pull this trigger. Now. How. Many?”
A beat of silence. The man’s eyes searched Tom’s, looking for the bluff. He saw only the flat, hollowed-out certainty of a man with nothing left to lose. “Two others. Grid search. Downtown. They have your photos.”
“Vehicle?”
“Gray Ford Explorer. Washington plates. Rental.”
Tom glanced up at Char. She was frozen on the fire escape landing, looking down, her face pale. He made a quick, slicing motion with his free hand: Go. Now. She nodded and started climbing toward the roof.
Tom stepped back, keeping the gun aimed. “Lie down. Face in the puddle.”
“You won’t shoot an unarmed, injured man,” the man spat, but there was a tremor underneath.
“You’re not a man,” Tom said. “You’re a malfunction. And I’m the technician. Down.”
The man slowly lowered himself to his knees, then lay prone, his face turning to the side in a scummy puddle of alley water. Tom moved fast. He patted him down with his free hand, finding a wallet, a second magazine, a set of keys, a slim satellite phone. He took it all. From the wallet, he extracted the driver’s license. Mitch Carson. Seattle address. He pocketed the license.
He considered the satellite phone. It was a direct line to Sebastián’s command. A danger and an opportunity.
He backed away to the fire escape. With a final glance at the prone figure—the spreading dampness on the shoulder of the expensive overcoat—he jumped, caught the bottom rung, and hauled himself up. He didn’t look back.
On the roof, Char was waiting by the door to the next building. The wind was stronger up here, whipping her hair. She was shaking, not from cold. “Did you kill him?”
“No,” Tom said, joining her. He ejected the Glock’s magazine, checked the round count, slapped it back in. “A dead contractor raises questions. A failed, injured one… that sends a different message.” He handed her the satellite phone. “See if there’s a recent calls list. Any numbers labeled.”
She took it, her fingers trembling as she navigated the menu. “One number. Incoming call forty minutes ago. Labeled ‘S.V.’ Sent a text fifteen minutes ago: ‘Library sighting. Moving in.’ No reply yet.”
Sebastián Vargas. They had his number. It was a piece of him, a digital strand of DNA.
Tom peered over the roof’s edge. The alley was empty. Mitch Carson was gone, having crawled or walked to his extraction point. The gray Explorer would be circling, the other two men alerted.
“We need to split up,” Tom said, the words tasting like ash.
“No.” Char’s response was immediate, absolute. “Absolutely not.”
“Char, listen. Two targets are harder to track than one. They have our picture as a couple. We separate, we change our look, we meet at a rendezvous. It’s basic tactics.”
“It’s basic bullshit,” she fired back, grabbing his arm. Her grip was fierce. “We are not splitting up. Not after all this. I don’t care about tactics. I care about us. Together. We fight together, we run together, we fucking die together if it comes to that. But we do not separate. That’s the one line, Tom. Don’t ask me to cross it.”
He saw the terror in her eyes, not of their hunters, but of being alone. The past days had fused them at a molecular level; separation now would be an amputation. He nodded slowly, conceding. “Okay. Together. But we need to disappear from this grid. Now.”
The roof access door was locked. Tom used the pipe wrench Char had dropped, which she’d retrieved, to shear the cheap padlock. They descended into a stairwell that smelled of laundry detergent and microwave meals. An apartment building. They exited onto a side street, two blocks from the library.
The first order of business was money. Their cash was low. Tom used Mitch Carson’s credit card at an ATM two blocks away, taking out the maximum. It would be traced, but it would point to Carson’s location, not theirs. They bought pre-paid debit cards with cash at a convenience store, along with cheap sunglasses, two disposable phones, and a baseball cap for Tom. Char bought a garish red windbreaker and a bandana to tie her distinctive hair back.
In a grimy public restroom near the port, they changed. Tom looked like a down-on-his-luck fisherman. Char looked like a hiker who’d given up. They ditched their old clothes in a bin.
“The draft email,” Char said, leaning against the cracked sink. “How do we get it to Shaw?”
Tom had been turning the problem over. The satellite phone was the key. It was a clean, untraceable line to Sebastián. It could also be a weapon. He powered it on. It had a single bar of satellite signal.
He didn’t call Shaw. He called the only number in the contacts.
It rang twice. A smooth, familiar voice answered, devoid of the false warmth from the estate. “Mitch. Report.”
Tom took a breath, putting the flat, operational tone into his voice. “Mitch is having shoulder surgery. He asked me to call.”
A profound silence stretched for five full seconds. When Sebastián spoke again, the veneer was gone, replaced by a chilled, razor-edged calm. “Captain Reynolds. I underestimated your resourcefulness. And your brutality.”
“You started this. We’re just finishing the equation.”
“What do you want? You have my property. You have my employee’s weapon. You are costing me time and money.”
“I want you to deliver a message,” Tom said, watching the bathroom door. “To Colonel James Shaw. Retired. You have the resources to find his private number. You will call him. You will tell him to check the draft folder of the Gmail account ‘thunderbird879’. You will give him the password: ‘Foxhollow26’. You will not threaten him. You will simply deliver the message. Then you will forget his number exists.”
Another silence. Then a low, mirthless chuckle. “You are using me as your messenger boy. You think this is clever.”
“I think you want what’s on that thumb drive more than you want us dead right now. And I think you know if Martinez gets to us first, that drive disappears into a Pentagon incinerator. You need us alive, and you need that data. This gets the data to a third party who can blow Martinez’s world apart. That serves your purpose, doesn’t it? Removing your competition? After he’s gone, then you can deal with us. That’s your play, Sebastián. This is just speeding up the timeline.”
The logic was cold, clear, and true. Sebastián was a strategist. He would see the utility.
“And why would I do this?” he asked, but the resistance was theatrical now.
“Because if you don’t, the next call I make is to Martinez’s direct line from this phone. I’ll tell him you’ve gone rogue, that you’re trying to secure the Atlas data for a rival bid. I’ll give him your private number and the location of your men in Port Angeles. He’ll have drones over this town before you can recall your team. Let your pride swallow that.”
The threat was a bluff built on a knife’s edge. But it was plausible. The distrust between the two men was the most potent weapon Tom had.
The line was quiet for so long Tom thought the connection had dropped. Then: “The draft folder. ‘thunderbird879’. Password ‘Foxhollow26’. Colonel Shaw.” A pause. “This does not make us allies, Captain.”
“Never occurred to me,” Tom said, and ended the call. He pulled the battery from the satellite phone, crushed the SIM card under his heel, and dropped the components into three separate trash bins outside.
“Do you think he’ll do it?” Char asked as they walked, aimless for the moment, along a street lined with maritime supply stores.
“He’ll do it,” Tom said. “It’s the smart move. It uses Shaw as a scalpel to cut out Martinez. It keeps us in play as the source. He’s buying time, regrouping. So are we.”
They needed a place to wait. Somewhere anonymous, with a view of the street. A motel was too obvious, too easily staked out.
They found it a few blocks inland: a diner called “The Harbor Light.” It was a long, narrow room with cracked vinyl booths, windows fogged with grease, and a clientele of tired longshoremen and truckers. The coffee was burnt and bottomless. They took a booth at the back, facing the door, their backs to the wall.
Tom ordered two full breakfasts. They ate without tasting, fueling their bodies mechanically. The adrenaline crash was looming, a vast, hollow fatigue waiting to swallow them.
An hour passed. Then two. They took turns using the restroom, washing their faces, staring at their haunted reflections. They didn’t speak much. The weight of what they’d set in motion was too heavy for words.
Tom’s new disposable phone buzzed on the Formica table, a harsh, tinny sound. The screen showed a blocked number.
He looked at Char. She gave a tight nod.He answered. “Yeah.”
The voice on the other end was old, graveled by decades of whiskey and command, but sharp as a scalpel. “Thunderbird 879. That’s a call sign I haven’t heard in a dog’s age.”
Colonel James Shaw.
“Sir,” Tom said, the word releasing a tension he hadn’t fully acknowledged.
“I just had the most peculiar phone call from a gentleman with a Mexican accent who sounded like he eats broken glass for breakfast. He gave me credentials to an email draft that reads like a le Carré novel written during a panic attack. You care to confirm the broad strokes, Captain?”
“Every stroke is true, Colonel. The cliff, the bribe, Atlas, Vargas. All of it.”
A low whistle came through the line. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. You stepped in a whole nest of vipers, son.” The tone shifted, becoming brisk, operational. “The draft is suggestive, but it’s not proof. You say you have proof.”
“On a thumb drive. Video. Audio. Documents. Financial transfers. The works.”
“Where are you?”
“Port Angeles, Washington. In a diner. Being hunted by both sides.”
“Okay. Listen carefully. You are not safe there. You are not safe anywhere conventional. Martinez has tentacles in Homeland Security, the FBI, local PD. Vargas has the money to hire every ex-Spetsnaz mercenary on the West Coast. You need to go to ground in a way they won’t predict.”
“We’re open to suggestions.”
“There’s a place. A cabin. Belongs to an old friend of mine, a Marine who passed last year. Family hasn’t sold it yet. It’s off-grid. I mean off-grid. No power, no road, just a charted coordinate on the coast north of here. It’s a hole to crawl into while I get this information to people who can actually do something with it. I need that thumb drive.”
Tom felt a sliver of hope, thin and sharp as a razor blade. “How do we get it to you?”
“You don’t. I’m sending someone to you. Someone I trust with my life, which means you can trust him with yours. He’ll find you. He’ll bring you to the cabin, and he’ll bring the drive to me. His name is Gideon. You’ll know him by the question he asks.”
“What question?”
“‘Do you still get airsick, Captain?’ Your answer is ‘Only when the landing’s perfect.’ Got it?”
“Got it.”
“Sit tight. He’s nearby. He’ll be there before dark. And Tom?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Stay alive. The truth is no good if its carriers are dead.”
The line went dead.
Tom relayed the conversation to Char in a hushed monotone. A cabin. A man named Gideon. A passphrase from his flight school days—Shaw had been on the review board for his Thunderbird selection. It was a tiny, personal authentication that no one could fake.
The afternoon bled away, the grey light through the diner windows deepening toward twilight. They ordered more coffee, pushed food around their plates. Every time the bell over the door jingled, their heads came up. Truckers. A family. A pair of fishermen.
Then, just as the streetlights sputtered on outside, the door opened again.
The man who entered was of indeterminate age, somewhere between forty and sixty. He was of average height, wiry, dressed in faded cargo pants, a worn flannel shirt, and a waterproof shell. His face was weathered, his hair grey