Page 46 of Tag (The Golden Team #9)

Tag

B y the time the first streaks of dawn touched the horizon, the truck was coated in a film of dust thick enough to write in. Kaylie was asleep again, curled under the jacket in the back. Aponi hadn’t said a word since we’d kissed. Not that I blamed her. That wasn’t the kind of thing you walked off.

The contact’s place came into view as the light sharpened—a squat adobe structure, sun-faded and half-swallowed by desert. Old wind turbines stood like crooked sentinels behind it, their blades creaking in the morning breeze.

It should’ve been quiet.

It wasn’t.

A slow, rhythmic tapping echoed faintly from inside. Not hammering. Not wind. Too deliberate.

I cut the engine fifty yards out. “Stay here,” I told Aponi.

She didn’t even blink. “Not happening.”

I shot her a look but didn’t waste time arguing. Faron pulled in behind us, covering the rear while I moved up the path, rifle raised. Aponi stayed close, gun at the ready.

The front door hung ajar. No signs of forced entry. No signs of life, either.

Inside, the smell hit first.

Blood.

Coppery and heavy.

The tapping came from the far corner of the main room—an old ceiling fan struggling to turn. Beneath it sat the contact. Or what was left of him.

Miguel “Ghost” Herrera. Ex–special operations, intel broker, and one of the only people I trusted in this desert. His body was slumped forward in a chair, wrists bound. A neat hole through his forehead. No signs of a struggle.

Pinned to his shirt was a single Polaroid.

Aponi’s face.

Not a surveillance shot from the past few days—this was older. At least a year or more. She was laughing at something outside the frame, her hair longer, a few streaks of sunlight catching it.

Underneath, in red marker, was one word:

RETURN

Aponi’s breath caught, barely audible.

I took the photo from the body, turning it so she could see. “You want to tell me why she has this?”

Her eyes stayed on the picture, but her voice was flat. “Because that’s the last day I saw the thing Graves is looking for.”

“What thing?” I pressed.

Her gaze lifted to mine, steady but unreadable. “The flash drive. The one with names. And before you ask—it’s not here. And I’m not telling you where it is.”

Faron stepped in from the doorway, his expression grim. “We’ve got tire tracks leading west. Looks like she was here less than an hour ago.”

I looked back at Miguel’s body, then at the photo in my hand.

Sable wasn’t just hunting us.

She was leaving breadcrumbs.

And if she wanted Aponi to return something… we were running out of time to figure out what else she’d take instead.