The iron gates were locked, but the records clerk had left a side gate open.

Mercer killed the headlights.

We walked through wet grass, carrying two shovels and a flashlight.

Noah insisted on carrying the second shovel.

I didn’t argue.

A part of me needed him to see this.

Thomas Reed’s grave was in the Veterans section, row seven.

I remembered the funeral. The flag. The silence.

The stone still read his name.

Mercer looked at me.

“You ready?”

“I don’t know what’s in there.”

“That’s why we’re here.”

He turned on the flashlight and set it on the ground.

We began to dig.

The soil was heavy with rain, compacted by years of neglect.

Noah worked beside me without complaint.

His face was wet with rain, but his jaw was set.

I dug faster than I had in years.

The guilt had to go somewhere.

—

Forty minutes later, the shovel struck wood.

A hollow sound. Not the deep thud of a buried coffin.

Mercer frowned.

“That’s not a casket.”

We brushed away the soil.

The wood was rotted in places, but unmistakably a box.

A military-issue footlocker.

Not a coffin.

I stared at it, my heart hammering.

“It’s a storage container.”

Mercer pried the lid open.

It made a sound like a great exhale.

Inside was not a body.

There was paper. Dozens of files.

A canvas bag.

And a photograph.

The photograph was of a woman in uniform.

I didn’t recognize her.

But the file on top bore a red stamp:

DECLASSIFIED.

Mercer pulled the paper out with trembling hands.

We held the flashlight over it.

I read the first line:

*OPERATION NIGHTGLASS — ACTIVE INTELLIGENCE REPORT*

The date was not eleven years ago.

It was last month.

I turned to the next page.

And saw a list of names.

Five names.

The last one was mine.

Below it, in red pen:

*ELIMINATION ORDER PROCEEDS.*

I looked at Mercer.

“Someone has been planning to kill us since Nightglass ended.”

His voice was barely a whisper.

“This is bigger than Voss.”

Then Noah made a noise.

He was pointing toward the tree line.

Three figures stood in the dark.

One of them raised a rifle.

I dove, dragging Noah behind the footlocker.

A shot cracked through the rain.

Dirt exploded where we had stood a second before.

I grabbed the canvas bag and ran.

Mercer returned fire with his sidearm.

We scrambled through the wet grass, making for the truck.

I looked back.

The figures were closing.

The last thing I saw, before we lost them in the trees, was a face under a baseball cap.

I recognized him.

It was the man from the black SUV.

The same face from the photograph in the footlocker.

My stomach dropped.

He was supposed to be dead.

I threw the bag into the truck and slammed the door.

Mercer hit the ignition.

The engine roared.

Noah’s eyes were wide in the mirror.

“Who are they?” he whispered.

I looked at the bag in my lap.

“People who thought I would never find this.”

Mercer drove.

The cemetery disappeared behind us.

We didn’t stop until we hit the highway.

Then I opened the bag.

Inside were three items:

A USB drive.

A folded American flag.

And a dog tag engraved: CAPTAIN ADRIAN VOSS.

I stared at the metal.

And realized the body in the footlocker was Voss.

He had been dead all along.

The man on the phone tonight was a lie.

I looked at Mercer.

He understood.

“Then who called you?”

I shook my head.

The rain kept falling.

And somewhere behind us, headlights appeared, steady and relentless.

I checked the side mirror again.

The headlights hadn’t fallen back.

“They found us faster than they should have,” Mercer said.

His voice was flat, professional.

I pulled the canvas bag onto my lap and unzipped it.

The USB drive was small, black, unmarked.

“There’s a tracker in the truck.”

Mercer’s hands tightened on the wheel.

I ran my fingers along the frame under the driver’s seat.

Nothing.

Then I felt it, magnetically attached to the underside of the center console.

A small disc, smaller than a thumbnail.

I yanked it free and rolled down the window.

I threw it out into the rain.

The headlights behind us didn’t falter.

“They were already close enough to know where we were going,” I said.

Mercer glanced in the mirror.

The SUV was gaining.

I turned to Noah.

“Buckle your belt tightly.”

He was already buckled.

But he gripped the handle above the door.

Mercer took the next exit without slowing.

The pickup swung hard onto a county road.

No streetlights.

Only rain and the high beams of our pursuer.

“Hold on,” Mercer said.

He cut the lights.

Darkness swallowed us.

The engine dropped to a low hum.