Page 14 of Buried Past (First in Line #3)

Chapter ten

Dorian

T he air in the apartment was wrong without Matthew in it. Confident that I wasn't going to run, he decided to return to work.

I'd counted his footsteps down the hallway forty-seven minutes ago—steady, unhurried, the sound of someone heading toward everyday work instead of running from ghosts. When the door clicked shut, it left me alone with the hum of the refrigerator for company.

I couldn't stop myself from pacing. I'd healed enough that I didn't fight pain with every step, and I'd started to feel like a caged animal.

Stop moving. You're making noise.

I forced myself to pause beside the front window. The street below stretched in both directions—narrow, tree-lined, populated by people who owned cats and worried about recycling schedules. It was civilian territory. Safe territory.

Fred Linkerton, an acquaintance of Matthew's, emerged from the building next door, dragging a wheeled garbage bin behind him. I'd been told to watch for him. He was an older gentleman, right on schedule—7:43 AM every Friday.

Two buildings down, construction workers had been replacing storm gutters since Wednesday. From a distance, I heard the faint sounds of classic rock booming from their radio: same crew and same van parked at the same angle.

A red Honda Civic parked along the street hadn't moved all week. The same thin layer of Seattle grime coated its windshield. Dead battery, maybe. Or an owner who worked graveyard shifts and slept during daylight hours.

All normal and easily explainable. Added up to what a functioning neighborhood should look like at eight in the morning. That was precisely what made it wrong.

Every instinct I'd learned to trust screamed danger.

I moved the blinds another fraction, widening my field of view. Across the street, a man sat on the bus bench with a newspaper spread across his lap: mid-forties and a gray jacket.

Watching him for thirty seconds, I examined his movements. When he turned the page, his left hand stayed positioned at the paper's edge, maintaining the same sight line while creating the illusion of activity.

There. A lens glinted from the newspaper's edge, no bigger than a pinhead but bright enough to catch the morning sun filtering through the overcast sky. It was professional equipment disguised as casual surveillance.

Adrenaline began to flood my system. Every sense sharpened to diamond clarity. I stepped back from the window, calculating. The surveillance post commanded clear views of both Matthew's front entrance and the alley exit that led to the building's rear fire escape.

How long have they been watching?

If they'd been in position since before Matthew left for work, they'd have photographs of him. Documentation. A face to match employment records, family connections, and residential history.

They know.

Hoyle's network had found me again, and this time they'd identified my weakness. They'd found the one thing I couldn't replace or abandon. They'd found Matthew.

Six years. That's how long I'd been in this mess. Hoyle recruited me right out of humanitarian orientation.

When I met Farid after his extraction, following his work with Matthew, I was a hardcore Hoyle veteran. What I didn't know then was Farid filed away what he knew about Matthew as crucial information. Kept tabs on him. Believed something about him mattered.

I needed to move. I grabbed a Seahawks hoodie from the back of Matthew's bedroom chair, tugging the hood up to shadow my face without looking like I was trying to hide.

Sunglasses came next, cheap drugstore wraparounds. I checked myself in the bathroom mirror, adjusting my posture until my sharp angles softened into something resembling a college student nursing a hangover.

The grocery store sat three blocks north. I locked Matthew's door and headed downstairs, slowing my stride. It was the college town shuffle—hands shoved deep in hoodie pockets and shoulders slightly hunched in a walk that said bored instead of hunted.

The newspaper man had vanished from his bench. In his place, a woman waited with a canvas shopping bag, checking her phone with the distracted patience of someone whose bus was genuinely late.

The transition was seamless and professional. They were cycling surveillance posts to avoid detection.

I recognized the methodology because I'd written the handbook. Five years inside Hoyle's network, perfecting the art of making people disappear. Now they were using my protocols against me.

The grocery store smelled like industrial disinfectant and overripe bananas. Fluorescent lights hummed overhead, while I grabbed a red basket from the stack by the entrance.

Four aisles ran parallel to the front windows. I started in produce, picking through apples.

Aisle three. A man in a navy windbreaker lingered near the cereal endcap, but his stance was wrong. He balanced his weight on the balls of his feet, head angled to keep me in his peripheral vision while appearing focused on his shopping.

They're using the Prague manual.

I'd written half the surveillance protocols back when I believed we were protecting humanitarian workers from hostile governments. That was before I'd realized we were the hostile government, just outsourced and privatized.

Whoever they'd assigned to ground surveillance hadn't trained for civilian environments. His movements were too precise and reactive. He didn't know how to blend into the natural chaos of people buying groceries.

It was the kind of mistake that happened when you pulled assets from overseas operations and dropped them into suburban America without proper cultural briefing.

I'd helped build Hoyle's network from the inside. That meant I also knew how to burn it down. I pulled out Matthew's phone—the backup device he'd insisted I carry—and placed a fake call while standing in the international foods aisle.

"Hey, it's me." I spoke just loud enough for eavesdropping. "Yeah, I'm at the store. Do we need more of that sauce you like? The one with the weird name?"

I paused, listening to empty air while scanning the security mirror above the frozen section. Navy windbreaker had positioned himself at the end of aisle two, close enough to eavesdrop without appearing obvious.

"No, the other one. With the peppers." Another pause. "Fine, I'll get both. See you tonight."

Time to exit.

Instead of heading toward the front registers, I walked directly to the rear of the store, toward the swinging doors marked EMPLOYEES ONLY . A teenage stock clerk glanced up from his clipboard, started to object, and then apparently decided that stopping me wasn't worth the confrontation.

The loading dock was empty except for scattered cardboard boxes and the lingering smell of yesterday's garbage pickup. I checked over my shoulder before stepping outside—the navy windbreaker hadn't followed.

I paused before ducking down an alleyway to return to Matthew's apartment. They'd found me again. I'd been a fool to think I could simply walk away from Hoyle's organization.

People like me didn't get retirement parties and gold watches. We got staged accidents and closed-casket funerals, our deaths serving as object lessons for anyone else who might develop a conscience.

The apartment building came into view, and I spotted the newspaper man's replacement—a jogger stretching against a lamppost, earbuds in, sweat band around his forehead.

He looked perfectly legitimate until you noticed that his stretching routine kept him facing Matthew's front entrance while his head moved just enough to track pedestrian traffic.

I slipped into the building through the rear service entrance, using the key Matthew had given me after our third night together.

The silence in the apartment was oppressive. I needed background noise to think clearly. Grabbing the remote from the coffee table, I powered on the ancient television. The screen flickered to life with a burst of static before settling on a regional news broadcast.

The anchor was a blonde woman with aggressive shoulder pads. She shuffled papers around while discussing traffic delays on I-405, a water main break in Ballard, and the weather forecast that promised more of Seattle's signature drizzle.

I settled onto the couch, letting her ramble in the background while I ran through contingency plans. How much time did we have to disappear before they decided that Matthew was a liability worth eliminating?

"—breaking news from Portland this morning. Firefighters are still working to contain a warehouse fire that claimed at least one life overnight. KOMO's Janet Rodriguez has more on this developing story."

I turned to look at the screen. Portland was three hours south—close enough to matter, yet far enough to claim separation from Seattle operations.

The image cut to a reporter standing in front of a blackened building, with smoke still rising from the collapsed roof.

Behind her, fire trucks sprayed water into the skeletal remains of what had once been a three-story brick structure.

I knew the building. The sight triggered every alarm in my nervous system.

I'd spent six weeks there ten months ago, during the transition between an assignment in Serbia and the operation that had eventually led me to Seattle. Safehouse designation Charlie-Seven in Hoyle's filing system.

"—authorities suspect arson, based on the accelerated burn pattern and multiple ignition points found throughout the structure—"

The camera panned across the damage, and I recognized too many details. Even the graffiti was familiar. A red and blue tag shaped like a bird, spray-painted on the brick wall beside the rear entrance.

All of it was gone, reduced to ash and twisted metal.

"—one confirmed fatality, with authorities continuing to search for several individuals reported missing—"

The camera cut back to the studio anchor. At the bottom of the screen, a news ticker scrolled past with updates on city council meetings and sports scores.