Page 30 of Buried Past (First in Line #3)

Chapter twenty

Dorian

T he safehouse coffee tasted like burnt pennies, but I kept drinking it anyway—anything to occupy my hands. The concrete walls pressed close around us.

Matthew sat across from me at a fold-out table, cleaning his sidearm with methodical precision. Each click of metal against metal cut through the silence. Michael paced near the reinforced door, radio chatter crackling from his earpiece in sporadic bursts of coded updates.

Marcus claimed the corner by the supply cabinet, laptop balanced on his knees while he monitored police scanners and federal databases. The screen's blue glow highlighted his chiseled facial structure.

Matthew looked up. "Anything?"

Marcus answered. "Clean so far, but that won't last. Hoyle's people will regroup quickly."

I took another sip of the metallic coffee and tried not to think about warehouse chairs and zip ties. The burn on my wrists had stopped bleeding, but the skin still felt wrong—tender and twitchy, like it remembered being restrained better than I did.

I shifted in my seat, careful to keep my hands in sight, even though no one here would hurt me. My body hadn't gotten the memo. It still braced for orders, curled tight around old reflexes I thought I'd buried years ago. It was still hours until dawn.

Glancing over at the corner of the room, I spotted a plastic laundry basket half-full of mismatched socks and an unopened package of Hanes briefs. Someone had stocked the safehouse like a bachelor pad for one very paranoid man.

I nudged the basket with my foot. "This place has bulletproof doors and six kinds of surveillance, but whoever packed it still thought we'd need fresh underwear."

Matthew looked up from his sidearm, lips twitching. "Maybe he believed in clean starts."

"Or maybe he just really hated doing laundry," I muttered.

Marcus didn't even blink. "There's also a rice cooker in the cabinet. Name's probably Todd."

Matthew's phone buzzed against the table. He glanced at the display and frowned.

"Unknown number."

The phone buzzed again. Then again.

I set my cup down. "Let me see it."

Matthew slid the device across the table to me. The message appeared innocent enough—a string of numbers and letters that looked like random keystrokes. GPS coordinates followed by what most people would dismiss as autocorrect failures.

But buried in the digital gibberish, four words in Pashto made my blood turn to ice water: "Zuma wror pak di"— My brother is clean .

The phone slipped from my fingers, clattering against the table.

"Dorian?" Matthew's voice sounded far away.

I stared at the screen. It was Farid's signature phrase. The one he'd whispered to me while executing our first extraction as Hoyle's assets, when we'd pulled a kidnapped aid worker from a compound outside Kandahar. The phrase was his way of confirming an asset was clean, untainted by compromise.

Nobody else knew that phrase. Nobody else would think to use it.

My hands started shaking.

"It's him." I barely pushed out the following words. "It's Farid."

Matthew froze, the cleaning rod halfway through his gun's barrel. "That's impossible."

"The coordinates." I forced myself to focus on the numbers instead of the rushing sound in my ears. "Pier 47. Industrial district." I looked up at Matthew's steady brown eyes. "He's alive, and he wants to meet us."

Michael stopped pacing.

Matthew spoke gently but firmly. "Dorian, we know what Hoyle's organization is capable of. This could be—"

"A trap." I stood too quickly, sending the metal chair screeching across the concrete. "I know that. I know it could be them using his signature to draw us out. But what if it's not?"

I grabbed the phone again. "The timestamp says twenty minutes ago. Pier 47 isn't isolated. It's a relatively busy segment of the port. If someone wanted to kill us, they'd choose somewhere with a better tactical advantage."

Matthew reassembled his weapon with efficient clicks. "How certain are you about the phrase?"

"Completely. Nobody else would know it. Nobody else would think to use it."

Michael rubbed his chin. "Even if it's legitimate, it's still dangerous. Hoyle's people could be using him like they used you to draw out Matthew."

"Then we go prepared." I reached for my jacket and winced. "But we go."

Marcus closed his laptop with a soft snap. "This is exactly the kind of emotional manipulation they'd use against you. Disguise themselves as someone you care about, arrange a reunion, and eliminate you when your guard is down."

"Maybe." I slowly pulled the jacket on. "But I can't live with not knowing. Not when there's even a chance he's alive. Losing him would mean losing my brother."

Matthew stood slowly, checking his shoulder holster. I watched him bite his lip. "I'm driving."

Michael advanced on us. "Matthew—"

"He goes, I go. If it were one of my brothers, I'd already be out the door." Matthew's tone left no room for negotiation.

Michael and Marcus exchanged the kind of look that passed between brothers who'd learned to read each other's tactical thinking. Marcus sighed and reached for his gear bag.

"Backup," he said simply. "We maintain overwatch from a distance. Radio check every ten minutes."

"Agreed." Matthew moved toward the door, keys already in his hand. "Let's leave now, before they have time to change positions and tail us."

I paused at the threshold, looking back at the cramped concrete box that had sheltered us for about three hours and witnessed our intimacy. It smelled like disinfectant and instant coffee, but it had kept us alive long enough to reach another critical moment.

Matthew's hand settled against the small of my back, warm and steady. "Whatever happens out there—"

"I know. Whatever happens, we face it together."

Matthew had us take the Metro bus for one circuit, switching to his truck when we returned. Two different transportation methods made it harder to track end-to-end.

His truck rumbled through Seattle's maze of streets, headlights carving tunnels through the fog that had rolled in from Elliott Bay. I pressed my forehead against the passenger window.

My hands wouldn't stay still. They drummed against my thighs and picked at the bandage edges beneath my shirt. Matthew noticed but didn't comment. He kept his eyes on the road while I unraveled in the seat beside him.

What if it's a trap?

The thought circled through my skull like a vulture eyeing prey. Hoyle's people were sophisticated enough to extract Farid's signature phrase through interrogation. They could have broken him months ago and constructed this perfect lure.

What if he's alive but compromised?

Worse possibility. Farid standing on that pier with a handler's gun pressed against his spine, forced to smile while they trained their crosshairs on my chest. I'd seen it before—loved ones weaponized against their will.

What if he's alive and free?

That was the most dangerous thought of all. Hope was a luxury I couldn't afford, but it leaked through my defenses anyway. It was the possibility that Farid had survived after sending me to Matthew, and that we could stand together again instead of wondering whether he was a ghost.

A light turned yellow, and Matthew slowed to a stop.

My memories ambushed me.

I was back in Iraq two years ago, our convoy stopped by an IED that had claimed the lead vehicle. Farid and I crouched behind the engine block of our disabled Humvee while small arms fire snapped overhead like angry insects.

"This is fucking tedious," Farid muttered in accented English, checking his rifle's magazine with practiced efficiency. "These people have no imagination. Same ambush pattern every time."

I scanned the ridgeline for flashes. "Feel free to critique their tactical methodology after they stop shooting at us."

"Where's the artistry? The innovation?" He fired three controlled bursts toward a suspected sniper position. "In Sarajevo, they'd have coordinated mortar support by now."

Even bleeding from shrapnel cuts and pinned down by superior numbers, Farid maintained a sardonic edge that had kept both of us sane through impossible situations.

The light turned green. Matthew accelerated through the intersection and pulled me back to the present.

He glanced at me. "Lost in thoughts?"

"Remembering."

"Tell me what Farid was to you."

I paused and tried to find words that wouldn't sound like a eulogy. How do you explain a bond forged where survival depended on absolute trust?

"Partner, first." I did my best to explain. "You've seen how I operate alone—always calculating angles, always ready to run. With Farid, I could focus forward instead of constantly checking over my shoulder."

We rolled under a freeway overpass. The industrial district sprawled ahead, cranes and shipping containers stacked like geometric mountains against the night sky.

"He was my moral compass when the work got dark.

We executed missions where I started losing track of which side we were supposed to be on.

Farid never did. He'd look at me across a briefing table and I'd know—this one's clean, or this one stinks, or this one's going to cost us something we can't afford to lose. "

Matthew nodded. "Sounds like brotherhood."

The harbor district opened up around us—a maze of loading docks and industrial warehouses separated by streets wide enough for container trucks. A combination of diesel fuel and salt water perfumed the air.

"And Matthew, he brought me to you."

Matthew tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. "We need to save him."

"If he's really there." I checked my phone again—no new messages, coordinates unchanged. "If this isn't elaborately staged to put us both in the ground."

Matthew pulled into a parking area beside a chain-link fence topped with concertina wire. Beyond the barrier, Pier 47 stretched into the bay like a concrete finger pointing toward invisible islands.