The network icon on the screen immediately flashes green. The satellite connection goes live.
I don’t waste a second. Opening a command prompt, I type in a string of syntax I picked up from an IT tech at the hospital. A ping set to loop without end, hammering a list of foreign addresses, so a relentless wall of replies and timeouts scrolls down the black screen and doesn’t stop. It creates the illusion I’m holding a live link to a secure, partitioned server. I pull up a desktop clock and set a timer.
02:00:00
I hit enter.
Then I sit back and stare at the screen. The bluff is set. When Mercer walks in, his “secure” laptop will already look like the dead man’s switch actively counting down.
The bluff holds for now. I bought time, but time operates as a finite resource.
I look at the clock.
01:59:50
Boyd is dead.
The thought comes unbidden, a cold whisper in the back of my mind.
He fell. He froze. He’s gone.
Tears prick. Hot. Angry.
No.
I refuse the diagnosis.
He isn’t dead. He’s Boyd Vance. The man executing one-armed pushups on a bad shoulder. The man who held off a tactical squad with twelve bullets.
He’s coming for me. I know it in my gut. All I have to do is stay alive until he gets to me.
Walking to the window, I look out at the snow swirling in the floodlights.
“Come on.” I press my hand against the cold glass. “Find me.”
I scan the tree line, but nothing appears except black trees and white snow.
But then, movement.
Way out on the perimeter. Past the fence line.
A shadow.
It moves differently from the wind-blown branches. It travels with purpose, low to the ground.
It disappears into the dark.
Something catches in my chest, a hitch in my throat that won’t release.
Maybe it was a deer. Maybe it was a trick of the light.
Or maybe it was a promise kept.
I turn back to the laptop, and look at the timer.
01:54:00
I have less than two hours.
