Page 38 of Hunted in the Silence

She thought about the car on her street, which she’d already told him about. She thought about the hang-up call to the center three days ago. She thought about the tingle of awareness she’d been noticing for over a week, a kind of frequency she’d been tuned to since she was fourteen.

“There’s been a feeling,” she said carefully. “I know how that sounds.”

“It sounds like you,” he said, and something in his tone was affirming rather than making her feel embarrassed. “Tell me.”

She told him everything. The unease, the small things that had grown into a pattern she’d been reluctant to name until they had something concrete to attach it to. She said it straight, without apology, and he listened without the impatience she’d learned to expect from people who needed evidence to take things seriously.

He wrote it all down. Every detail. His expression set in grim determination.

“This changes the overview for Thursday,” he said when she finished. “If Devlin is actively moving pieces around you before the operation, he’s either about to run or about to move against you. The profile—” He stopped himself. “Silas Kane is coming in tomorrow. I’ll have him look at this.”

“I’ll be there,” she said.

“I know.” He looked at her across the desk, and the light was fading outside, the afternoon gray deepening toward early dark. “I need you somewhere safe tonight. Not your colleague’s place. Somewhere with active security.”

She was already shaking her head. “Cole, I’m not going to—”

“There’s a Bureau safe house on the east side that’s been used for witness situations. Nothing dramatic, like the cabin in the woods deal a couple of local detectives have leaned on recently, but practical, given the situation.” He held her gaze, and something told her he wasn’t going to take no for an answer. “Two days, Brynn. That’s all I’m asking. Two days until Thursday, and then this is over.”

She looked at him. At his quiet steadiness. The way he could stand unmovable on the things that mattered yet never make her feel pressured by it. She’d dealt with plenty of men whose “protectiveness” was really about their own ego or control. This wasn’t. His concern felt steady and uncomplicated—directed at her, not himself.

“All right,” she said.

Something minute in his expression relaxed. “I’ll call it in.”

While he was on the phone, she looked at the corkboard. At what they’d built over two weeks, the threads and photographs and cards in her handwriting and his. Devlin at the center of it, still without a confirmed location, the fixed point the whole web radiated from but that they hadn’t been able to pin down.

Her eyes went to the blank space on the board where his location should be.

“Cole,” she said.

He looked up from the phone, holding it slightly away from his ear.

“The ledger.” She thought of Devlin’s habits, the slow, deliberate way he assembled every step, every choice, like nothing he did was ever accidental. “He’ll have it with him when he comes for me. Because when he comes for me, he’ll be wrapping things up in Blackridge and moving on, and he won’t leave the ledger behind. He doesn’t go anywhere without it.”

Cole was very still. “You’re saying when he makes his move against you, the ledger is in play.”

“I’m saying it’s possible.” She held his gaze. “I’m not suggesting we use that. I’m saying it’s something we should consider.”

He looked at her for a long moment, the phone still held at his side, the call waiting. “I hear you,” he said. “We’ll talk to Kane tomorrow.”

He went back to the call. She turned back to the board, to the empty space where Devlin’s location should be, and let herself think through everything she knew about him—and the few things she still didn’t. And the simple, startling truth that for the first time in eleven years, she wasn’t facing this alone.

She thought of the almost-kiss two nights ago and of the step back she’d taken and the way she’d been taking that step back in one form or another for a very long time.

She thought of the worn paperback on her desk, the two Post-its marking Olivia’s favorite lines, her voice saying she nails it every time—and that subtle shift in her chest she’d been protecting, now slipping past her defenses in increments she hadn’t chosen.

She continued focusing on the board.

Two days.

They’d go in, bring Caitlin home, and end Devlin’s rein of terror, and then she could finally put the past to rest.

And after that…

She wouldn’t think about what came after. She’d built her life very deliberately around not thinking about that, around making her work the answer to everything.

But she couldn’t entirely avoid it. An involuntary flicker of awareness, sparked by a glimpse of something she’d stopped letting herself believe in.