Chương 2
Harper lifted her untouched whiskey and poured it into Maddox’s glass.
He glanced down.
“You looked like you needed it more,” she said.
It was the closest thing to humor she could manage.
Maddox did not drink. He stood and motioned to the younger Marines.
“You three stay here.”
One of them, a broad-shouldered lance corporal named Peña, frowned. “Staff Sergeant—”
“You were never at this table.”
“We heard—”
“You heard a family argument. Finish your drinks and call a ride. None of you drives.”
Peña looked at Mason, then at Harper. His eyes paused on her face with an unsettled kind of respect.
“Yes, Staff Sergeant.”
Maddox pulled on a dark rain jacket. Harper noticed that his right hand closed more slowly than his left.
“You still carry?” she asked.
“Not into bars.”
“Good.”
He gave her a tired look. “That answer disappoint you?”
“It reassures me.”
Outside, the rain had thinned to a cold mist. The Brass Rail’s red sign painted the wet pavement in broken color. Marines moved between pickup trucks, rideshares, and motorcycles with jackets over their heads. Someone argued near the curb about whether a late-night diner had stopped serving breakfast, though it had not.
Harper’s rental sedan sat beneath a dead streetlight.
She stopped ten feet from it.
Mason nearly walked into her.
“What?”
“The trunk is open.”
It had not risen far. Just enough to disturb the seam.
Maddox moved to the passenger side, staying clear of the rear. “You leave it like that?”
“No.”
“Bomb?”
“Probably not.”
Mason stared at her. “Probably?”
“If they wanted us dead, the phone wouldn’t need a countdown.”
“That is not comforting.”
“It wasn’t meant to be.”
Harper approached from the side and lifted the trunk with two fingers.
Inside lay her overnight bag, a rental-company emergency kit, and a paper coffee cup she had thrown away at a gas station outside Raleigh.
The cup was upright.
A wet thumbprint darkened the cardboard.
Maddox looked toward the bar, then across the parking lot. “We’re being watched.”
“We were,” Harper said.
She took out the cup and smelled it.
Mason made a disgusted sound. “You’re smelling trash now?”
“Cinnamon.”
“So?”
“I drank black coffee.”
She tore open the lid. A small brass key had been dropped into the bottom.
Stamped into its head was the number 12.
The prepaid phone vibrated.
ONE CAR. THREE PEOPLE. ACCEPTABLE.
Mason looked around the parking lot.
“Where are they?”
Harper did not answer. She was studying the message.
Maddox said, “They know I’m here.”
“They knew before we left the table.”
“Which means somebody was inside.”
“Or they have access to street cameras, the rental car, the prepaid phone microphone, Mason’s phone, or mine.”
Mason held up his phone as though it had betrayed him personally. “You think they hacked me?”
“I think you reuse passwords.”
“I don’t.”
“You used Mom’s birthday for six years.”
“I was sixteen.”
“You used it on the Wi-Fi at Dad’s house last Christmas.”
Maddox looked between them. “This conversation is weirdly normal.”
“It’s how she does things,” Mason said. “She talks about your passwords while someone photographs your father sleeping.”
Harper took Mason’s phone.
He reached for it. “Hey.”
She powered it down and removed the case. No visible tracker. That meant little. She handed it back.
“Leave it off.”
“What if Dad calls?”
“He’ll call me.”
“How would he know your number? You change it every six months.”
“Every ninety days.”
“That’s worse.”
Harper opened the driver’s door.
Maddox touched the roof without getting in. “I’ll follow.”
The prepaid phone vibrated again.
ONE CAR.
Maddox’s eyes narrowed.
Harper looked at his pickup twenty yards away, then at the road beyond the lot. “They can count vehicles. That doesn’t mean they can count people after we leave.”
Maddox understood.
Mason did not. “What does that mean?”
“It means get in,” Harper said.
They left Maddox’s truck at the bar.
Harper drove. Mason sat beside her, restless and rigid. Maddox folded himself into the back seat, where his knees pressed against the passenger seat and his eyes remained on the mirrors.
The Brass Rail disappeared behind them.
The countdown read 01:36:02.
Thomas Reed lived eleven miles away in a one-story brick house at the end of a quiet street where every mailbox leaned at a slightly different angle. Harper had grown up there. The neighborhood had once been full of young military families, plastic bicycles, and wives who borrowed sugar from one another while husbands went places nobody could discuss. Now the trees had thickened, the driveways held work vans and fishing boats, and the children playing in those yards belonged to people Harper did not know.
She took three turns that did not lead toward the house.
Mason noticed on the second.
“You missed Glenburn.”
“I know.”
“The clock is running.”
“So is whoever is behind us.”
Mason looked in his mirror.
A dark SUV remained two intersections back.
Maddox shifted until he could see past the headrest. “Black Tahoe?”
“Maybe.”
“There are six black Tahoes within a mile of any military installation.”
“That one took the turn without signaling,” Harper said.
Mason looked at her. “That’s your evidence?”
“It also slowed when we slowed, stayed back when traffic cleared, and didn’t pass when I gave it room.”
Harper turned into a brightly lit gas station. The SUV continued past.
Mason watched it go. “Wrong car.”
“Maybe.”
“You say that a lot.”
“Certainty is expensive.”
She circled the pumps and exited through the far driveway. A gray minivan pulled out behind them.
Maddox said, “That ours?”
“No. Mother in front, two children in back. Driver’s-side brake light out.”
“You got all that from a mirror?”
“I got it from looking.”
Mason stared ahead. “I look.”
“You decide first.”
The words were harsher than Harper intended.
Mason’s face closed.
For several blocks, only the windshield wipers spoke.
May you like
Harper could have apologized. She nearly did. Then the prepaid phone vibrated, and the moment passed.
The new message contained no words. Only an audio file.
