Chapter 11 - The Black Highway
By two in the morning, the rain had settled into a heavy, freezing fog that hung over the interstate like a shroud.
Adam had ditched his SUV in an industrial park two miles from Sarah's house, taking the tactical team’s unmarked black sedan. He had left Sarah at a local precinct with enough cash to disappear for a month, instructing her not to speak to anyone who didn't carry a federal badge.
Lucas sat in the front passenger seat, wrapped in an oversized green fleece jacket, his small hands resting in his lap. Beside him on the center console lay the contents of the Lazarus folder and Croft’s burner phone, which Adam had retrieved from the dead operative’s pocket.
""Where are we going?"" Lucas asked quietly, his eyes watching the broken white lines of the highway whip past under the headlights.
""North,"" Adam replied. ""To a cabin near the Canadian border. A place nobody knows about.""
""Did Mom know about it?""
Adam paused, his knuckles whitening on the leather-wrapped steering wheel. ""No. Not your mom. But... the man I was before her. He knew.""
As the miles ticked by, fragments of his real past were returning, like old photographs developing in a chemical bath. His name had not been Adam Vance. It had been Cole Mercer. He had been an intelligence operative who specialized in deep-cover asset extraction. Seven years ago, he had been betrayed by his own handlers during a mission in Istanbul, left for dead with a bullet fragment near his brain stem. Clara's wealth and medical influence had bought his broken body from an offshore military clinic, using an experimental neural-grafting protocol to overwrite his shattered memories with those of her dead husband.
She had wanted to save him. She had wanted to save herself.
And in doing so, she had created a father who loved her child more than his own life.
The burner phone on the console suddenly vibrated, buzzing against the plastic trim with an insistent, mechanical hum.
Adam picked it up and held it to his ear without speaking.
""You are making this unnecessarily bloody, Cole,"" Croft’s voice purred through the speaker.
Hearing his real name felt like an electric shock through Adam’s spine.
""How did you find this frequency?"" Adam said coldly.
May you like
""I built the satellites your team uses, Cole. You cannot hide in the dark from the man who designed the night,"" Croft said. ""You have three miles before the toll bridge at Grand Falls. Look up.""
Adam glanced through the windshield. Hovering low above the tree line in the distance was the silhouette of an unmarked utility helicopter, its infrared searchlight scanning the highway below.
