“Too late.”
Part 3
On the fourth morning, I woke before dawn and knew the storm was done before I ever opened my eyes.
Silence changes when the wind dies.
The sky was still gray, but I could see the full tree line. No snow moving sideways. No white void pressing against the windows. Just morning.
Reed was already at the table with the burner phone in front of him when the signal came through. I saw it happen in his face before I saw it on the screen. He dialed from memory.
The call lasted less than two minutes.
When he hung up, he said, “Finn’s alive. Great Falls safe house. He’s sending people. Six hours.”
Six hours was too long.
I didn’t have facts for that. I had instinct, and instinct had kept me alive longer than systems ever had.
“I’ll drive,” I said.
He opened his mouth like he was about to refuse.
“Brie comes too.”
His mouth closed. He nodded.
By first light Brie was bundled in her coat in the backseat of my truck with her notebook and East of Eden. Reed sat beside me holding the leather bag like it was another wound. The heater coughed lukewarm air. The truck needed a kick to the front panel and exactly two turns of the key before it agreed to start.
We stopped at Gus’s on the way out.
I left the engine running and went inside.
“If anybody asks,” I said, “I’m taking Brie to the doctor.”
Gus looked out past me at the shape of Reed in the passenger seat, then at the smaller shape of Brie in back, and understood more than I’d said.
He gave one slow nod.
“Colonel’s gonna miss the little one,” he said.
There are men who say I’m worried about you and men who were raised not to. Gus belonged to the second kind.
I nodded once, hard, and went back out before his kindness could split me open.
The road south of Whitehall had been cleared to one lane. Snow banks rose on either side. The truck rattled over frozen ruts. Reed watched the side mirror more than the road ahead. Brie stayed quiet, which was how I knew she understood the day wasn’t normal.
We had gone maybe an hour and forty minutes when I saw the SUVs.
Three black ones.
Parked across the road in an upside-down V.
No way through.
I braked hard. The truck shuddered to a stop.
Reed went still beside me, the kind of stillness that belongs to a predator, not prey. His hand moved instinctively toward his hip before remembering there was nothing there.
The middle SUV door opened.
Paxton Shaw stepped out.
He looked enough like Reed to make my skin crawl. Same bones, same height, same inherited structure. But where Reed looked carved out of discipline, Paxton looked polished by appetite. Beautiful in the shallow way men are when too many people have told them yes.
Two others got out with him. One was the lean man from my porch.
Of course it was.
I killed the engine.
Brie made a small sound behind me, not quite fear, not quite a question. I looked in the mirror and saw her clutching her notebook to her chest.
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