The access road ends a mile from the farmhouse.
We leave the vehicle in the tree line. Reth at the wheel, engine off, monitoring the radio. We move on foot: Marcus at the rear, Faye between us, me in front. Three people moving through dense forest at 3:45 in the morning, silent, practiced, adaptive.
Faye adapts quickly. She moves carefully, matching her own rhythm rather than mine, stepping with deliberate precision. She does not try to keep pace; she finds her own and holds it. We move as a unit for forty minutes without speaking.
The tree line breaks at the northern edge of Marre’s property.
We stop.
The farmhouse complex is exactly as the satellite showed: a main house, two stories, ground-floor lights on. A secondary building sixty meters east, lower, reinforced, functional. Two e
