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Chapter Thirty-Two

Luke

The evening air was sharp and cold. The kind of cold that cut straight to the bone without mercy. Luke barely felt it. He barely felt anything aside from the soul-deep exhaustion and perpetual fear that was his new companion. He hadn't slept. None of them had. He expelled a weighted sigh that turned into visible vapor trails in the icy air of the safe house kitchen. They never stayed anywhere for too long. None of them did. It was an elaborate game of bouncing from location to location, swapping cars, cell phones, safe houses. A sick game of ping pong to stay alive as they got closer and closer to information no one wanted them to discover.

Taz sat hunched at a folding table in the worn kitchen, his sunken eyes fixed on the screen of a laptop that would end up decommissioned by the end of the week. He’d watched the artful destruction of more than a few devices over the last few weeks. Cell phones, tablets, laptops—all of them stripped, reworked, retooled, rebooted to erase any possibility of being traced. The paranoia was like a living entity that perpetually huffed toxic breaths against his neck. Sure, Taz was moving, talking, functioning. Barely. Even now, buried up to his eyeballs in obsessive working, an occasional tear would escape to race silently down his gaunt cheek until he swiped it away in anger.

Luke noticed every single soundless tear. Every flinch. Every gasp. He constantly checked for signs that Taz was slipping under, slipping away to that place where he disappeared inside himself, a place Luke couldn't reach him. The nightmares had been relentless, and neither of them could tell where exhaustion ended and terror began.

Taz replayed that night whenever his eyes grew too heavy to keep open. The vicious broken reel of film haunted him and Luke had a front row seat to the replay. Taz on the ground, struggling. Taz clawing at invisible hands around his throat. The fitful grappling with a sleep-born demon. Violence and desperation. Luke’s mind took the nightmare Taz had survived and twisted it even further when he dared to sleep. In Luke’s dreams, Taz was the one bleeding out on the ground. Taz was the one dying, dead, and Luke was always, always too late to save him.

“Luke!”

Taz’ voice snapped Luke out of his fog. His fingers had clenched so tightly against the edge of the table that his knuckles were white. He forced himself to loosen his grip and exhale the breath he'd been holding. Taz didn't say anything else. He just kept typing, faster and faster. Too fast. His hands flew over the keyboard like magic, like a machine on autopilot even as the light in his eyes grew dimmer by the day. He was working. Same as Luke. Same as all of them. Working because what was the other option? Not one any of them would consider, that was for sure.

They had one job: find the last piece of evidence that would take down the CIA rot and bring it all out into the light. It had to be airtight. It had to be irrefutable.

“Tommy’s waiting outside. Do you have anything yet, baby?”

“Almost.” His lips flattened into a thin line. His voice came out rough and frayed around the edges. “We know the shell companies they used for laundering. I know which accounts the money passed through. I just need one more fucking access point.”

Luke strode around the table and peered at the screen. A string of bank accounts scrolled in columns. Each number was a thread in the web of corruption they were trying to unravel.

“We need a physical source,” Taz muttered with a feeble sigh. “Paper records. Backup drives. Something they can't dismiss as a digital forgery.”

“Fuck.” Luke’s gut twisted. He knew where this was headed and he didn't like it one bit.

“Yeah. Fuck is right.” Taz dragged the cursor over the screen to highlight an address. “This is an office space in Arlington, registered to a dummy logistics company I've tied to one of the CIA director's known associates. They’ve been using it as a cutout location. Think of it as a digital dead drop. They’d have servers, yes, but also hard copies of sensitive files. If we can get them—”

“We’d find our smoking gun.”

Taz’ hands froze over the keyboard, his fingers trembling. Whether from exhaustion, fear, hunger, or all three, Luke couldn't be sure. “It's also a setup waiting to happen.”

Tension tightened Luke’s jaw. They both knew how this worked, but Luke wasn't about to say it aloud. Taz didn't need anything else to feed the paranoia growing inside him. But facts were facts. The second someone infiltrated a place like this cutout location, alarms would go off. Compromised assets would come running from every direction to eliminate the loose ends.

“Hi, guys.” Tommy’s cheerful voice cut through the cloying tension. Fucking Tommy. The kid was like a goddamn puppy. The worst part was that it worked for him. It worked for all of them. Taz peeked over the edge of the laptop, but instead of barking a scathing, creative insult, he perked up more than Luke had seen in days.

“Oh. McDonald's?”

“A-yup! I gotcha nuggets. And a couple toys. They had Minecraft keychains. Pretty cool, right?” Tommy entered the room with a shit eating grin. “Dibs on the green one.”

“Yeah, whatever.” Taz tried to roll his eyes. The expression fell short as he snatched the paper bag and began rooting around inside it. A strange sort of suspension of time settled over them as they huddled on folding chairs around the moldering card table. If Taz ate an entire chicken nugget, Luke would call it a win. He settled for the tiny nibbles off three different nuggets and called two whole fries a jackpot. The fact that Taz kept an iron grip on the stupid plastic keychain still in its wrapper was an unexpected windfall he tucked away in the back of his mind. Tucked away for safekeeping to pull out again when life returned to normal. If it ever returned to normal.

They could only suspend the inevitable for so long. Tommy and Luke devoured their Big Macs in slow motion before begrudgingly finishing Taz’ abandoned meal. The last slurp of soda through a straw shattered the peace of the abandoned bungalow, and then reality crept back as insipidly as the cold crept through the bowing walls.

“We doing this?” Tommy glanced between them with his big blue eyes and a somber expression.

Luke glanced toward Taz, with his stiff posture, tight jaw, and desperate eyes. He reached out and rested a hand on Taz’ thin shoulder. “We’ll be in and out before they even know we were there.”

“You mean before they kill you.” Taz pulled away with a shrug.

“No one is getting killed today.”

Taz didn't look convinced. Frankly, Luke wasn't either.

The building in Arlington was utterly unremarkable. Flickering security lights and an empty parking lot made the dull office complex seem even duller. Luke and Tommy had dumped their rental car three blocks away before moving like ghosts through the shadows, their boots silent against the pavement as they edged around broken glass and loose gravel. The weight of the gun under Luke’s arm felt even heavier than usual. His earpiece crackled to life, piping Taz’ voice straight into his eardrums over the sound of his hammering pulse.

“Security is light. Two guards inside on a standard patrol. The cameras are on a loop.”

“You're positive?” Luke whispered into the receiver at his wrist.

“I'm sure. In and out, Luke.”

“Wilco, T.”

They both pulled their weapons before Tommy eased the side access door open and they slid inside, clearing the hallway with a quick sweep before shifting the guns to low ready. The air stank of cheap printer ink and even cheaper coffee. A single fluorescent light buzzed persistently overhead. Luke took the advance position and heel-toe crept to the office they were looking for. Quick work with a set of bump keys had the door creaking open on beleaguered metal hinges. T-minus two minutes. That was the time they’d agreed on in the car en route to this clandestine mission. Two minutes before they could expect fallout. They raced through the office space in search of something, anything. File cabinets, locked drawers, server racks. They searched them all in a desperate attempt to get a hold of what they needed. A sharp clang had Luke flinching, but Tommy’s voice eased the tension.

“Bingo!”

Luke raced to his side to see what he’d found. Stacks and stacks of folders and classified reports filled the bottom drawer of a file cabinet that looked like a throwback to the eighties. He grabbed a handful and started flipping through them. Names. Transactions. Correspondence. It was all here. Everything they needed. The goddamn smoking gun. He could have cried with relief, but a sound sent him into fight mode. A soft click. Too familiar. Too close. Instinct took over. He grabbed Tommy by the back of the neck and shoved him behind a desk with all his might. The crack of suppressed gunfire tore through the air and the bullet whizzed past Luke’s shoulder to embed itself in the drywall.

“Shit!” Tommy cried out as he hit the floor. Luke didn't wait. He didn't hesitate. His firing arm tracked the source of the gunshot and he fired back, a clean shot that sent their assailant crumpling to the ground.

“Luke! Luke, get out!” The voice in his earpiece was thick with panic. “Three coming from the south entrance.”

He didn't have time to reply. He’d catch hell for it later, but right now, he had to finish what they started. Luke grabbed as many files as he could carry. Tommy did the same before covering him as they sprinted toward the nearest exit. The second they hit the alley, tires screeched and headlights blinded them. Another screech of rubber against asphalt brought the SUV to a stop. Luke yanked the passenger side door open and tumbled into the cab. Ty, the silent strong arm who’d crashed into their life with a story of corruption spreading across the globe, was now their getaway driver in a goddamn stolen sport utility vehicle.

“Move, move, move!” Luke hauled the door shut just in time. The ping of a bullet hitting the side panel had him fighting against flashbacks as Ty floored it and sent them careening into the night. Luke’s pulse jackhammered, his hands clenched around the stolen files as the roar of blood in his ears grew louder. Finally, something else broke through the chaos. A voice. A familiar, panic-stricken voice that helped him shake the impending panic attack.

“Luke?! Luke, fucking answer me!”

“I'm here. I got it. We got it. I'm okay.”

The sobs that came over the line made it nearly impossible to decipher what was being said. Nearly. “Good. Great. Now I can kill your dumb ass myself!”

“He will, man. Your boy’s a stone cold killer.” Tommy clapped a hand to his mouth before lowering it to hiss quietly over Luke’s shoulder. “Fuck. Too soon?”

“Yes! Way too fucking soon. You're dead, too!” Taz’ shriek was shrill through the comms. “Get back here so I can kill you both!”

Luke’s laughter started choppy and broken before turning into a full-body guffaw born of adrenaline and relief. The dour muttering over the comms cut out with a crash. The mental image of Taz pitching the mic across the room was enough to turn the laughter into hysterics, tears and all. He sagged in the seat, his body jerking with laughter as the reality settled over him. They had what they needed. Sure, they weren't safe. Not yet. But they finally, finally had a fighting chance, and Luke had something worth fighting for. If that wasn't something to laugh with joy about, nothing was.