“Wait them out?”
A sharp, jagged laugh escapes her.
“Boyd, look at us. We’re in a truck in the middle of a blizzard. We aren’t ghosts. We’re targets.”
“I can make us ghosts. But first we have to survive the night.”
“We stayed too long,” she whispers, looking out at the snow. “We gave them three days to find us.”
“I know.”
She stares at me, processing the cold logic of it. The idea that no one betrayed us, that we were simply outmatched by a superior surveillance apparatus, is almost worse. It means there’s no safe place.
The radio crackles.
Not the secure channel. The open emergency frequency, the one reserved for distress calls and weather warnings.
Static first. Then a voice, distorted but clear enough to turn the blood in my veins to ice.
“Asset One. Location confirmed. Sector Four. Moving South.”
They aren’t just tracking us. They’re broadcasting it. They want me to know. They want me to panic.
Iris freezes.
“Who is that?”
I check the rearview mirror.
This time, they materialize.
Pinpricks of light. Xenon blue. Cutting through the snowstorm a mile back.
“Hold on.”
“Boyd.”
“They found us.”
“How?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
I drop the truck into a lower gear to spike the RPMs. The engine screams.
“Get down.”
“What?”
“Floorboard. Now.”
She unbuckles, scrambling out of the seat and curling into a ball in the passenger footwell. She buries her head in her arms.
“Stay down. Don’t move unless I tell you.”
I check the mirrors. Two sets of lights. Closing fast. Too fast for the road conditions.
Two black SUVs holding a low tactical profile with no plates. Government issue, stripped of markings.
