Chapter 12 - White Lines in the Snow
The message contained a location pin for the old proving ground twenty miles outside the city. Nora recognized the coordinates from Ethan’s notebook: North Track, Test 17. She showed Simone, who ordered agents to meet them there, but the federal team was at least forty minutes away.
“We don’t have forty minutes,” Nora said.
Adrian grabbed his coat. “Then we leave now.”
Celeste reached for Nora’s arm. “Don’t go alone.”
“I’m not.” Nora looked at Adrian. “But if you lie to me one more time, I’ll leave you on the side of the road.”
“I’d expect nothing less.”
They took the Range Rover. At the first intersection, Nora noticed a black sedan waiting with its lights off. It pulled out behind them.
“Same car,” Adrian said.
Nora pressed the accelerator. The Range Rover’s tires bit into the slush as she turned onto a narrow service road. The sedan followed, closing the distance. Ahead, the proving ground’s chain-link fence stretched across the white landscape, broken by a gate hanging crooked on one hinge.
A second vehicle appeared from a side road—a dark utility truck that cut them off. Adrian braced a hand against the dash.
“Don’t stop.”
Nora swerved onto the shoulder, clipped a snowbank, and fought the wheel as the SUV fishtailed. The utility truck slammed into the sedan behind them. Metal shrieked. Glass burst across the road like ice.
For a second, Nora saw a man climb out of the truck with a phone raised to his ear. Then the road bent, and he vanished behind a wall of blowing snow.
They reached the test track and found the main gate chained shut. Nora drove through a gap in the fence, scraping the passenger side so hard sparks flew beneath the doors.
Inside the perimeter, an old test building stood beside a track buried under snow. A single light blinked above the service entrance.
Adrian looked at her. “If Richard is here, he won’t let us leave with the original.”
Nora shut off the engine. “Then we don’t leave without it.”
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The building’s door opened before they reached it.
Richard stood inside, holding a small black case.
