Page 111 of Travis
“I can see at least four. There may be more in adjacent rooms. They’re behind a locked door. I need Beckett up here.”
“On my way.” Beckett’s breathing was elevated. He was moving fast.
I pressed my hand flat against the workbench. This changed everything. This wasn’t what we’d been expecting.
Beckett reached the second floor. I heard him and Travis coordinating at the door. A lock being forced. Then Beckett’svoice, stripped of every joke and every deflection I’d ever heard from him.
“Jesus Christ. Travis. They’re tiny. The youngest one can’t be more than four.”
Travis didn’t respond on the channel. I closed my eyes and breathed through the pressure building behind my sternum because I could not afford to feel this right now. Not the full weight of it. Not yet.
I forced myself to refocus. Checked the tactical overlay. Checked the time. Reached for my phone out of habit, the way I’d been doing every hour for the past five days to see how many times Pratt had called since the last time I looked. The biggest part of my job had been keeping him off track.
But the screen was empty. No missed calls. No texts. No emails since yesterday’s data request, which I’d answered at eleven p.m.
I stared at the phone.
The last three days he’d been calling five, six times a day. Demanding updates on the Ghost analysis. Pressuring me for the profile I was supposedly building. Yesterday he’d called at seven in the morning and again at noon and again at four and once more at nine p.m., each call shorter and more agitated than the last.
Then today… nothing.
The calls didn’t stop because Pratt lost interest, I knew that for damned sure. That meant the calls stopped because someone told him to stop making them.
I knew how this worked. I’d been on the outside of it enough times. When a case went operational, the first thing leadership did was shut down every conversation that wasn’t essential. Outside consultants stopped getting updates. Supervisors who’d been pushing for information got told to stand down.
Pratt wasn’t silent because he’d forgotten about me. He was silent because someone above him had saidstop talking to your analyst; we don’t need her anymore.
They’d found this place themselves.
I sat very still for about ten seconds. Then I opened a browser on the laptop and logged into the FBI’s internal system with my contractor credentials. My access level covered case files, analytical databases, interdepartmental communications.
It did not cover active operational status. Active operations were restricted to personnel assigned to the case, and I had never been assigned to anything beyond my own analysis.
I knew exactly where the operational dashboard was. I knew what my credentials would show in the access logs. I went there anyway.
It took me forty-five seconds to find what I was looking for. An active operation flagged as priority, targeting a location in rural Montana. The coordinates matched the property the team was inside right now. The operational status read STAGING IMMINENT.
I stared at the words and felt the ground shift beneath me.
My model had done this. The pipeline analysis I’d built and handed over months ago. Someone above Pratt had taken it and kept building, and now the FBI had found the same hub that I had found, and they were about to raid it with a tactical team while Travis and his team were inside with weapons drawn and children at their feet.
“Maude, I need you to monitor law enforcement tactical frequencies within a twenty-mile radius of the target property.”
“I’m picking up encrypted tactical radio traffic on a law enforcement frequency,” Maude said. “Approximately eight miles southeast of the target property. Multiple units. The communication pattern is consistent with a staging operation.”
Eight miles. Multiple units.
“How long from staging to execution on a standard FBI tactical operation?”
“Typically thirty to sixty minutes, depending on final briefing and approach logistics. Given their current distance and the terrain, I’d estimate closer to thirty minutes.”
The federal agents coming wouldn’t know who was who. They’d breach that building and see armed men who weren’t law enforcement, and the rules of engagement in that situation were brutally simple.
Take them all down.
I closed the browser. The access logs would show my credentials, the timestamp, the exact pages I’d viewed. But none of that mattered.
Travis was in that building. His friends. And the FBI was maybe thirty minutes from turning all of them into targets.
