Page 7 of Silent Target

Not yet.

But Fathom is already searching.

“CIA intelligence analyst,” he says. “Twelve years with the agency. Deep-level access. Field collection experience before she transferred to analysis. Clean record. No family in the area. No obvious connection to Graves.”

“Does she have proof?” Cobra asks.

“She says she recorded them.”

“And Graves knows?” I ask.

Rook looks at me. “He knows someone heard.”

I stand.

The chair scrapes against the wooden floor.

No one asks what I’m doing.

If Graves is hunting an intelligence agent in Washington, she has nowhere safe to run. Every camera, badge reader, traffic signal, and federal database can become a weapon against her.

“She sent one message,” Rook says. “Then her phone went dark.”

I reach for my rifle case. “I’ll find her.”

“Washington is a big place,” Cobra says.

“Not if she wants to stay alive.”

People in her position follow patterns.

They run toward somewhere familiar. Somewhere they once felt safe. An old apartment. A friend’s house. A location disconnected from their current routine.

Or they go underground.

If Evelyn Hart is as intelligent as her file suggests, she’ll choose the last one.

Rook crosses the room. “Fathom caught one signal before her phone disappeared.”

“Where?”

“Alexandria. The device was moving north.”

“Could be a decoy.”

“It probably is,” Fathom says. “But a traffic camera caught Hart leaving the cab two minutes before the phone continued toward Baltimore. She changed vehicles behind an abandoned shopping center.”

I look at the image on his center screen.

The camera caught only part of her face. Dark hair tucked beneath a hat. Pale skin. Eyes turned toward the street behind her.

Even in a blurred image, I see the calculation in her expression.

She knows she’s being hunted.

“She’ll need another vehicle,” I say.

Fathom pulls up a map. “There was a sedan reported stolen six minutes later.”