Page 8 of Hollow Trace

“I just did.”

Gideon snorted. “Christ, you and Neve are so much alike, it’s scary.”

Quinn coughed. “Wait, Neve’s alive, too?” He looked between them. “Which, of course, she is. I assume everyone on your team’s still breathing.”

Gideon cleared his throat. “I’m sorry, who’s talking?”

Coulter blew out a rough breath, looking as if he wanted to bang his head against the window. “Just our friendly neighborhood Mountie. You know how Scout is with strays on the side of the road.”

“Mountie?” Gideon paused for a moment. “Jesus, it’s not Taylor, is it?” He groaned at the silence that followed. “You know Gus is gonna lose his shit.”

“You let me worry about the general. I need you to tell me what you found.”

“Down to business, then. Your signal is transmitting to a covert DoD satellite conveniently orbiting right above us, then bouncing through a number of cell towers. Likely to an app on a phone. The data’s encrypted, but compared to Finch’s setup, this is much lower security. If I didn’t know better, I’d say whoever’s behind it doesn’t want Finch to know what they’re up to.”

“Great, another rogue fanatic.”

“One who’s obviously got an endgame because I picked up a dozen more signals like the one in your truck about twenty klicks southwest from your position. I’m not sure what I’m looking at. They’re currently stationary but the terrain is interfering with the connectivity, so I might only be seeing portions of the actual real-time feed.”

“Do me a favor and send me the coordinates. And keep an eye on the marks. Where’s Neve?”

“On her way to your last known location with the rest of the team. Once you radioed in, they abandoned their other recon mission. I’ll reroute them to the new coordinates, but they’re a good hour away.”

“Roger. Keep them updated. We’ll be jamming the watch signal on our end, so I’ll have to initiate contact unless this thing dies. We’ll check in once we reach the location. And Gideon…”

“Yeah?”

“Tell Neve to keep her head on a damn swivel. I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

Coulter ended the call, waited for Gideon’s text with the coordinates, then turned the jammer back on. He launched the vehicle’s nav, inputting the coordinates. “Damn. That’s remote.”

Scout shifted the map around. “But not completely inaccessible. I think there’s an old mining road up that way.”

Quinn nodded, leaned between them, his finger tracing an invisible line across the map. “If you follow this track to the main forest road, then branch off here…” he touched the console, “you’ll meet up with a decommissioned fire road. Not sure how far we can drive. There’ve been fires and mud slides up that way over the past few years. But it should get us close enough to cover the rest on foot.”

Coulter tapped his chin, obviously mulling it over. “We’ll head that way. See how far we can drive. Re-evaluate once we’ve got an idea of what we’re up against.”

Quinn grunted. “My sister might be up there.”

“And we can’t help her if we get ourselves killed.” Coulter looked Quinn in the eyes. “We aren’t going to abandon her. But charging in blind won’t save anyone. Especially when we’re up against a force that doesn’t drop unless you land a kill shot, which isn’t easy with all the body armor and faster-than-normal reflexes.” He smoothed his hand down his shirt, looking as if he wanted to tug on it. “We’ll head for the coordinates. Hopefully have three more teammates backing us up by the time we get there.”

Scout stared at Quinn, noting his tight lips and furrowed brow. He wasn’t challenging Coulter, but she knew that if at any point, they opted not to go in full throttle, Quinn would.

The thought played in the back of her mind as she drove along the desolate gravel road, following a series of questionable two tracks that wove around one side of the mountain then up and over a saddle, finally dropping them into a canyon between twin peaks.

Scout slowed, two massive spruce blocking the last section of the fire road. Mud and gravel sloughed over the track, more debris lining the edges.

She shoved it into first, yanked on the parking brake, then shut off the engine, pointing to the map where Coulter had inputted the latest coordinates from his text to Gideon. “We’re only a couple klicks from the source of one of the signals. I can get us there on foot.”

Quinn handed the watch to Coulter. “It’s not pulsing anymore, but it’s probably safer to leave it here with the jammer still activated. Unless you just want to smash it.”

Coulter accepted it. “Gideon’s going to want to give it a once over. Hard to do that if it’s in a thousand pieces.”

Quinn didn’t argue, just opened the door and stepped out. He had his pack seated over his shoulders, his rifle in his left hand by the time she jumped out and met him at the rear of the flatbed. Lowering the gate, she dragged a crate of extra gear to the edge.

Quinn whistled when she opened it, Coulter already digging through stuff, strapping frags and extra mags to his vest. “Jesus.”

Scout sighed. “I know. Illegal, but…” She handed him a vest. “It’s a spare for Coulter. He tends to draw a lot of bullets. It should fit.”