Chapter 8 - The Desperate Play
I threw the useless distress beacon into the mud.
I had to change the rules of engagement if we were going to survive this night.
I yelled out to Vance, telling him that Captain Landry had the decryption key.
Vance stopped walking, raising his hand to halt his men.
He shouted back, asking why he should believe a desperate, cornered liar.
I told him to call Landry right now and check his left breast pocket.
I knew Vance's greed would override his desire to kill me immediately.
The rain poured down as Vance hesitated, weighing his options.
He pulled a satellite phone from his tactical vest and dialed a number.
I used this precious distraction to drag Arthur deeper into the woods.
We found a large drainage culvert and crawled inside to hide from the thermal optics.
The concrete walls blocked the heat signatures, making us practically invisible.
I heard Vance cursing loudly on the phone a few hundred yards away.
Landry had found the microchip in his pocket and realized its immense value.
Instead of bringing it to Vance, Landry was going rogue to sell it himself.
Vance ordered his men to fall back and get into the SUV.
They abandoned the search for us and sped off toward the precinct.
I breathed a sigh of relief and turned my flashlight on to check Arthur.
He was shivering violently, slipping into hypothermia.
I left him in the culvert and ran back to the ditch to find my mother.
She was exactly where I had left her, covered in mud but perfectly unharmed.
I helped her up and led her to the culvert where Arthur was resting.
We needed a vehicle and a secure location to treat Arthur's gunshot wound.
I remembered there was a federal safehouse just five miles away from our current location.
I pulled out my burner phone, the one device Vance couldn't track.
I called the only person left in the agency I could blindly trust.
My partner, Agent Miller, picked up on the first ring.
He sounded relieved to hear my voice, promising to extract us immediately.
I gave him our coordinates and hung up the phone.
Thirty minutes later, a dark van pulled up to the edge of the woods.
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The side door slid open, but it wasn't Agent Miller sitting in the driver's seat.
It was Brooke, holding a sawed-off shotgun aimed right at my face.
