Chapter 6 - No Safe Gate
“Hold on,” Naomi said.
She swerved into a maintenance lane, clipping a traffic cone while the police vehicles turned to follow. The old truck rattled so hard Mara thought its engine would jump through the hood.
“Stop the vehicle!” crackled a loudspeaker.
Naomi kept driving. “They never ask politely.”
Mara grabbed the dashboard. “They'll call this a pursuit.”
“Then we'd better make sure it gets reviewed.”
Naomi activated her dash camera, which uploaded to a civilian server she'd configured after a previous investigation vanished into Army paperwork. At a cattle grate, she braked abruptly. The lead police truck overshot the turn while Naomi reversed between two equipment sheds and rolled downhill onto a county road.
Only when the base disappeared behind them did anyone speak.
“Prisoner where?” Mara demanded.
Liang pressed his hands together to steady the tremor. “An off-book facility. Meridian calls it an evaluation center. Daniel refused to sign false transport records, so they declared him killed and held him.”
“What were they moving?”
“Medical equipment on paper. Surveillance hardware in sealed crates. Some went to an overseas buyer. Some went somewhere I never saw.”
Mara imagined Daniel behind a locked door for eleven months while their mother left his favorite chair untouched. Rage flooded her, hot and useless.
“Tell me where he is.”
“Not here. If your phone is compromised—”
“Tell me!”
“Mara,” Naomi said softly. “Breathe.”
Liang gave her a road number and a building name: Northwatch Annex.
At a gas station outside the county line, Mara called her mother from the prepaid phone. Aunt Rose answered instead.
“Ellen isn't here,” Rose said.
“Where is she?”
“She went back home. Said she forgot Daniel's letters.”
Mara closed her eyes. “Please go get her.”
May you like
A scrape sounded through the phone. Then a man's voice spoke close to the microphone.
“Sergeant Bennett. Bring us the drive, and your mother gets to come home.”
