The quiet in the cabin had begun to feel almost unnatural.
Siena woke with a jolt. The dream had been vague—just blurred faces, running water, and the sound of someone calling her name—but the unease it left behind was clear. Her chest felt heavy like something terrible had happened just out of sight.
She glanced over. Alexander was still asleep, one arm tossed lazily across the bed, his breathing calm and even.
She got up quietly, wrapping herself in a sweater, and stepped out into the chilly dawn. Carter was already on the porch, cleaning one of his tools—an old shotgun that looked like it had been passed down through generations.
"You don't sleep much, do you?" she asked, stepping beside him.
He didn't look up. "Not when I'm protecting people."
She appreciated that. Even if she didn't say it.
"I had a bad feeling," she said softly, more to herself than to him.
"You'll keep having them until this is over."
She turned to him. "You said we had two days. Why?"
Carter wiped the barrel clean. "Because whoever's after you… they'll find me too, eventually. No matter how many tricks I've got. And I don't die for people I don't know. Not anymore."
She respected that. He wasn't trying to be noble. Just honest.
---
Inside, Alexander was awake by the time she returned. He was already by the computer, cross-referencing files they'd managed to pull before Hartline's systems were completely wiped out.
Jasper hovered nearby, sipping bad coffee and muttering under his breath.
"Didn't sleep?" Siena asked.
Alexander glanced up. "No. I can't stop thinking about the map Reeve was drawing up. The network he was tracing—who knew what, when, and who moved the money."
"W.H.?" she guessed.
"W.H.," he confirmed.
"Any luck?"
Alexander clicked open another spreadsheet. "Depends on what you call luck. We found an email draft in Trent's old inbox. Never sent. It just said: He's watching. Stop digging before it's too late."
She blinked. "That sounds like a threat."
"It is. And I think it was meant for Caldwell himself."
Jasper leaned forward. "Wait, Trent, was being threatened by W.H.?"
"Seems so," Alexander said. "Which means—Trent might've been deeper in than we thought. But maybe not willing. Maybe he got scared."
"Too late for regrets," Siena muttered.
Alexander nodded.
Then the message notification chimed.
Carter entered the room. "That's me."
He pulled up his private feed. One encrypted message. No subject. No sender.
He opened it.
And the entire room fell silent.
A still image filled the screen: Reeve. Tied to a chair. Bruised but alive. His eyes fixed on the camera.
A timestamp in the bottom corner—just two hours ago.
No sound. Just a still image.
Then a second image appeared. A message scrawled on a sheet of paper held in Reeve's lap:
"One of you is feeding him. You know who."
Jasper stepped back. "What the hell is this?"
Alexander leaned in. "Someone here…?"
"No," Siena said instantly. "No one here would—"
But Carter was already narrowing his eyes.
"Doesn't have to be here. Could've been someone you trusted. Someone you gave access to."
They all looked at each other.
Jasper swallowed hard. "I didn't tell anyone about this place."
Alexander stood. "Neither did I."
Siena was silent.
"Wait…" she said, voice slow. "Back in the apartment, before we left… I saw my laptop's status light flash, even though it was closed. I thought it was just updating."
Jasper turned toward her sharply. "That's not an update. That's remote access."
"You think someone got into her system?" Alexander asked.
"I know someone did," Jasper said. "And if they could see what she saw…"
"Then they knew where we were going," Carter finished.
Siena sat down, her knees suddenly weak.
"Someone's been watching us the whole time."
---
They spent the next hour digging through the digital logs Jasper could recover. Carter rigged an isolated network, safe from external pings, while Alexander traced file access logs.
And then—they found it.
An IP ping from three days ago.
Someone had accessed Siena's documents remotely using an internal Hartline device. Not from HQ. But from a personal device… belonging to someone she hadn't thought about in weeks.
"Rebecca," Siena whispered.
Her father's old assistant. The one who had been with the company long before Siena took over. She had disappeared right after Trent's arrest.
"She vanished the day we launched the audit investigation," Alexander said, checking the record. "No resignation. No farewell. Just gone."
"She must've taken something," Siena murmured. "Or knew something. Or worse—was planted from the start."
Carter crossed his arms. "Whoever she is, she's the leak. And she's working for W.H."
---
They needed to move again.
Every safehouse felt like a trap now. The net was tightening. If Rebecca had eyes on Siena's system, it meant Holden was no longer just chasing shadows.
He was following blood trails.
Still, they couldn't run forever.
"We need to take the fight to them," Siena said. "We keep playing defense, we'll lose. Reeve will die. Others too."
Alexander looked at her, then nodded.
"We go after Rebecca."
Carter handed Siena a drive. "This has what you need. Her old address. Last logged transactions. Credit card usage in upstate. But be smart—if she knows you're coming…"
"She won't," Siena said. "Not until I'm standing in front of her."
---
They split up that night.
Carter stayed back, promising to erase all traces of them within hours. Jasper took the files and began planning a data drop in case they didn't make it out.
And Alexander and Siena got into a rental car—burner plates, cash-only—and drove toward the last known location of the one woman who might still be holding the map to everything.
As the trees thinned and the city lights came back into view, Siena stared out the window.
She didn't speak for a while.
Then finally, she said, "What if I was the one who led them to us?"
Alexander glanced over. "You weren't."
"But it was my laptop. My accounts. My trail."
He reached for her hand across the gearshift. "Then we erase the trail. We shut them down. One step at a time."
Siena nodded slowly. "We have to get to her before they do."
"We will," he said. "We're done running."