Truly Theirs

Chapter 6

Noah’s POV

The trees were still. Not peaceful watchful. Like the forest itself was holding its breath.

Noah crouched behind a downed log, eyes scanning the perimeter through night-vision goggles. The once-abandoned ranger station loomed ahead, decayed and half-swallowed by ivy.

“Motion sensor grid is live,” he murmured into his comms. “Northeast and west perimeters covered. The South is open just like they’d expect.”

“Copy,” Liam’s voice came through. “No thermal signatures. Not yet.”

Nadyia, tucked into the underbrush fifty yards away, clicked her mic once ready.

They had prepped this for hours. Caleb, Mama B’s trusted contact, had scouted the site three days ago, planting surveillance gear and quiet trip alarms. The decoy vehicle sat where a desperate Michael might leave it haphazard, poorly concealed, like someone on the run had just arrived.

“If they show,” Liam had said during the final briefing, “they’ll approach cautiously. Evelyn trained him to avoid clean traps. So we make this look messy.”

And they had. Clothes left in the back seat. A half-burned fire ring nearby. Baby wipes. A bottle.

All too tempting.

But hours ticked by.

Still nothing.

Noah checked his wrist again. 4:32 AM.

“Anything from the drone?” he asked.

“Negative,” Liam answered. “Still circling. No movement on infrared.”

“He should’ve taken the bait,” Nadyia muttered. “If he saw that patrol schedule, they would’ve moved.”

“Unless…”

Noah trailed off.

“Unless Evelyn saw through it,” Liam said grimly.

“Or they moved earlier. Or somewhere else entirely.”

A long pause. Then Liam:

“Pack up. Carefully. Leave the site clean. If they’re watching, I want them to think we were never here.”

Noah stood slowly, sweeping the area one more time before disabling his trip sensors.

“We’ve got another problem,” he said. “If Evelyn’s rerouted them she’s feeding them something. That leak inside law enforcement? It’s still open.”

“Then we pivot,” Nadyia said, already hiking toward the trail. “We find the leak. We follow them.”

“Agreed,” Liam said. “Evelyn may not trust our intel, but she’ll trust someone’s. And that someone just became our next target.”

Nadyia’s POV

The whiteboard looked like a war map.

Strings of red yarn pinned photographs, timestamps, burner numbers, and names into a snarled web of suspicion. On one end: Michael and Evelyn. On the other, a circle of law enforcement contacts and tactical response units that had, so far, failed to catch them.

“There’s a pattern,” Liam said, dragging a fresh print out across the table. “Three missed intercepts. All within fifteen minutes of our field team mobilizing. That’s not luck.”

“And they’re not listening to Sandoval’s orders,” Noah added, tapping his laptop. “Every time she reroutes a team someone else reroutes them. Higher clearance. But there’s no log of who’s issuing it.”

Nadyia paced behind them, arms crossed, mind spinning.

“Someone’s ghosting the system. Feeding Evelyn everything she needs: routes, patrol gaps, digital sweeps.”

“We need to bait them,” Liam said. “Fake a location. Let the leak expose themselves.”

“Too risky if Evelyn smells it,” Nadyia said.

“Not if it never touches her. Just her insider.”

Noah looked up. “We use the internal network. Not ours theirs. Sandoval leaks it herself through official channels. We make it look like a standard task force bulletin.”

“And track which of those bulletins gets picked up and rerouted,” Nadyia nodded, catching on. “Cross-check with system logins.”

Liam moved to the whiteboard, drawing a triangle between three names: Detective Morrow, Dispatch Sergeant Rios, and Special Agent Latham.

“These three had access. And all were on shift during a known tip-off.”

“All three also reported Evelyn as ‘deceased’ in prior case files,” Noah noted grimly. “Which means someone buried her trail on purpose.”

“So we set the trap,” Liam said. “And we catch a snake.”

Nadyia’s phone buzzed. Sandoval.

“We’re green-lit,” she said after answering. “She’ll leak the coordinates within the hour. She’s pissed. She wants this leak dead as much as we do.”

“Good,” Noah said, pulling up a blank terminal. “Time to shine a light in the dark.”

Nadyia watched the names on the board as her hand found the edge of Ethan’s lion, still resting near the corner of the map.

“You picked the wrong baby to steal,” she whispered.

Liam’s POV

The inside of the unmarked van was stifling, filled with the soft hum of electronics and the occasional click of Noah’s keyboard. A grid of surveillance feeds bloomed across the screens' dispatch logs, building security cams, and three active login traces.

“Sandoval pushed the decoy briefing,” Noah said. “Rerouted patrols are live. Coordinates mark an old ranger station just outside Croft’s Ridge. Let’s see who bites.”

Liam leaned in as the screen pulsed.

One login. Then two.

“We’ve got movement,” Noah said, fingers flying. “Agent Latham just pulled the document off a restricted server… and forwarded it.”

“To who?”

“Encrypted. But routed through a third-party relay tied to a dead contractor login from three years ago. No official record of reactivation.”

Nadyia’s voice cut in from her comms line. “That’s a ghost account. He’s dirty.”

“Not just dirty,” Liam muttered. “He’s trained dirty.”

A second screen lit up, Croft’s Ridge popped a new signal.

“They took the bait,” Noah confirmed. “Outbound ping just hit a known militia relay. Evelyn’s listening.”

“And now we’ve got proof,” Nadyia said. “Start the lockdown.”

Liam moved fast. “Cut his building access. Freeze his credentials. Alert Detective Sandoval’s clean team, Latham doesn’t walk out unless he’s in cuffs.”

“Already done,” Noah said grimly. “They're moving in.”

The radio crackled.

“Unit B, we have Latham attempting to exit via, fire stairwell. Repeat, suspect is mobile. Backup en route.”

Liam’s pulse ticked upward. “Tell them to keep him talking. We need intel on his contact methods.”

The tension in the van was razor-wire tight.

A few minutes later, the radio snapped back on.

“Suspect in custody. Phone, burner, and two USB drives recovered. Confirmed contact list includes Evelyn Carrington aliases. One drive encrypted.”

Liam let out a breath. “Got him.”

“No,” Nadyia said in his earpiece. “We just got started.”

On screen, Latham sat in an interrogation room, staring blankly ahead. Noah zoomed in on the flash drive now being cloned to a secured laptop.

“Whatever’s on that drive?”

He looked up.

“It’s going to tell us exactly where Evelyn’s taking Ethan next.”

Interrogation Room 3B Viewed through surveillance feed – Team monitoring from ops van

Latham sat still in the metal chair, hands cuffed, jaw tight. He wasn’t sweating. Not yet. But his stillness was unnatural like a bomb that hadn’t decided which wire would set it off.

On the other side of the one-way glass, Nadyia stood with her arms crossed, watching every twitch of his fingers.

“He’s not going to break on threats alone,” she murmured.

“He’s from the field,” Liam said. “Knows every interrogation angle. But we don’t need a confession, we need what’s on that drive.”

Noah tapped the feed from the adjacent cyber forensics lab. “Still decrypting. It’s partitioned layered access codes. Might take hours.”

Back in the room, Sandoval stepped into the frame.

“Special Agent Latham,” she said evenly. “Or would you prefer we use your militia alias?”

Latham blinked. Just once.

“You think you’re protecting someone who cares whether you burn,” Detective Sandoval continued. “But Evelyn Carrington? She’s already pulling the escape hatch. You’re the decoy.”

Silence.

Sandoval paced. “We know you rerouted teams. We know you leaked the Croft’s Ridge decoy and that you’ve been intercepting internal chatter through ghost accounts since at least February.”

Latham smiled faintly. “Ghosts don’t leave footprints.”

Sandoval leaned in, voice low. “You did. And we have your boots.”

Liam turned from the screen. “He’s stalling. He wants to know what we know.”

Noah’s screen pinged. “Wait, hold up.” He pulled the latest decrypted file onto the main screen. “Partial access on, one folder. Labeled ‘Protocol Ember.’”

Nadyia stepped forward. “What’s in it?”

“Coordinates. Burner assignments. Military codes. Wait, this is a fallback route.”

She scanned the document. Her blood ran cold.

“It’s a three-stage extraction path,” she said. “From Devil’s Hollow through a converted airstrip in Red Rock Canyon. Final stop: off-grid facility in Baja, Mexico.”

Liam’s eyes narrowed. “She’s building a sovereign ghost state. No extradition. No signal.”

“And taking Ethan with her,” Nadyia whispered.

In the room, Detective Sandoval tossed down a photo of Evelyn holding Ethan in a gas station lot, pulled from a feed they hadn’t even known was tapped.

“You’re not a ghost,” she told Latham. “You’re a name. And we’ll trade you for her if we have to.”

Latham stared at the photo. His jaw flexed.

“She’s already halfway there,” he finally muttered. “You’ll never get there in time.”

Detective Sandoval folded her arms. “Then you better start telling me where there is, or she’ll leave you behind like a shadow with your throat cut.”

Latham looked up. Not defiant something else.

Fear.

“There’s a checkpoint in Devil’s Hollow,” he said. “But she only trusts one signal to open the gate.”

“What signal?”

“Mine.”

Liam’s heart kicked up. “He’s the key.”

Nadyia was already moving. “Then we use him to open the door and walk through guns drawn.”