Stay between me and Dex. And you're not going to look at anyone or anything except where you're putting your feet. We get in the truck. Reyes has a truck. It's got nothing on it that identifies us.
And we drive out the other direction. Evelyn nodded. If those men outside are legitimate Cole said and they're actually trying to help you, they can find us through proper channels once you've had a chance to contact Dolan and verify. He held her gaze. If they're not legitimate, if they're the other kind, then we don't give them the chance, Evelyn said.
Exactly. Cole said. She looked at him for one brief moment. This man she had known for less than an hour, who had stepped in front of strangers for her without hesitating, who had listened to her talk about Nathan, with the quality of attention that cost something to give, who had worked the problem with her instead of around her. She said, and then quiet.
Thank you. Cole shook his head. Thank me yet, he said. We're still in the middle of it. Through the diner, past the counter, past the cook's window, past the waitress, who glanced up, and then went back to her order pad, and through the back door into the alley.
It was still raining. Reyes had the truck idling 8 ft from the door, the side closest to them, already open, and Evelyn was in the back seat with Cole beside her, and Dex pulling the door shut before she'd fully registered that they were moving. No headlights until they reached the far end of the alley. Sound of pursuit. She sat back in the seat and let herself breathe.
Han found the drive inside her coat, still there, still sealed in its plastic bag with its three rubber bands. The number in your head, Cole said beside her. Dolan's number. You're certain of it. I said it to myself every morning when I woke up, Evelyn said.
Every single morning for 6 days, she paused. The way I used to say my prayers, I stopped believing in those sometime in my 50s. I said Nathan's number every morning like a prayer. Anyway, Cole was quiet for a moment. We'll find you a phone, he said.
They drove for 11 minutes through the dark, the rain still working at the windows, the truck warm and quiet inside. Evelyn watched the dark go by and thought about Nathan saying, "I love you at the end of that phone call and the way he never said it casually. " And she thought about the yellow post-it in the mug cabinet and the five words he'd written and the two smaller words beneath them. And she thought about the fact that somewhere in the dark outside this truck, there were people, multiple groups of people with different plates and different suits and the same dangerous interest in what she was carrying. And she thought about Cole sitting beside her, not saying anything, not needing to say anything, just presents just there and just solid as the ground. She had spent her whole life believing certain things about certain kinds of people.
She was beginning to understand that she had been wrong about one category in particular. But she didn't have the space to think about that yet. Too much still in front of them. The phone, the call, the number she'd said every morning like a prayer. Patricia Dolaners wherever she was, who may or may not have already been compromised, who Nathan had trusted with everything, and who Evelyn was about to have to decide to trust with everything, too.
Slowed. We're at Reyes's place, Cole said. He's got a landline and a clean prepaid we can use. His daughter's house. They won't think to look here.
Evelyn nodded. She started to get out of the truck. And then she stopped. Cole, she said. He looked at her.
The men with the government plates, she said. Even if they're legitimate, even if they're genuinely federal agents trying to help. She paused. Nathan said to verify before we trusted anyone with a badge specific. He said, "Make sure Dolan knows first. " She hesitated.
He said there was someone inside inside the investigation. Someone passing information back to Meridian. He said he had a suspicion, but he couldn't prove it. Cole went very still. He said, "If the wrong person found out that Dolan had the evidence before she was ready to move, Evelyn said quietly.
They wouldn't get a second chance to use it. " Pain fell. Somewhere a few streets over, a dog barked twice and stopped. Cole looked at Evelyn in the dark of the truck cab. This 72-year-old woman with the drive in her coat and the number in her head and six days of running behind her and more running probably still ahead. And he understood completely and with absolute clarity that the thing Nathan Carter had put in motion when he drove to his grandmother's house in the middle of the night and handed her the most dangerous object in the state was not over.
They were not in the middle of the problem. They were in the middle of the real problem, the one nobody had named yet. Someone inside, Cole said slowly. He didn't know who, Evelyn said, but he was sure. Cole sat with that for exactly 3 seconds.
Then he opened the truck door. Then we're careful about what we say on that call, he said. And we're very careful about what we do. After he got out of the truck, Evelyn got out of the truck. The rain came down around them.
And somewhere behind them, in a diner parking lot in a quiet Montana town, two men with government plates sat in a clean car and watched a back door that had already let something important slip through it. And neither of them picked up a phone, which was, if you knew what to look for, its own kind of answer. The rest happened fast. That was the thing nobody told you about moments like that. He spent days, weeks, sometimes years building toward them.
And then when they finally came, they took about 4 minutes. Sheriff Briggs had three deputies with him and two genuine federal agents that Dolan had coordinated separately, people she trusted personally, people whose names were not in any file that Meridian Group had ever touched. They came in two vehicles. They did not announce themselves until they were already in position. And the men who had spent the better part of a week hunting a 72-year-old woman across the state of Montana were in handcuffs before they fully understood what had shifted.
Evelyn watched it from inside Reyes's kitchen through the window with a cup of tea she'd made herself because her hands needed something to do. Cole stood beside her. He didn't say anything. He didn't need to. When the last door of the last vehicle closed and the red and blue lights began moving away down the road, Evelyn let out a breath that felt like it had been stored in her chest for 6 days.
She'd been holding it since the moment she heard Nathan's car pull away from her house in the dark, she asked. Cole was quiet for a moment of it, he said. She understood what he meant. The arrests were the visible part, the part underneath the investigation, the evidence, the full weight of what Nathan had built and what Dolan would now build on top of it. That part was just beginning.
It would take months, possibly longer. There would be lawyers and delays and people trying to dismantle what she'd carried across the state in a plastic bag with three rubber bands. That was the nature of things this size. They didn't end clean, but the men who had followed her were in custody. The drive was in Dolan's hands, and Evelyn Carter was standing in a warm kitchen with a cup of tea, which was compared to where she'd been 24 hours ago.
AU was something close to miraculous. "I need to find Nathan," she said. Cole nodded. "We're working on it. " that we surprised her even then, even after everything that had happened in the past, hours after the truck and the call and the careful coded conversation with Dolan after Cole had stood in a doorway while Dex ran interference and Reyes kept watch the particular controlled chaos of getting the right information to the right people through channels that the wrong people couldn't see. Even after all of that, the Wii still caught her off guard.
The ease of it, the naturalenness, as if he'd been thinking of them as a unit for longer than she had. She didn't say anything about it, but she noticed it, and she held it carefully, like something that could break if handled without care. Dolan came inside about 20 minutes later, the compact woman in her for dark hair pulled back. The kind of face that told you nothing she didn't want it to tell you. She had the quality of someone who had spent a long time in rooms where showing too much cost you something and who had learned to keep the important things internal where they were safe.
She sat across from Evelyn at the kitchen table and she put her hands flat on the surface. She looked at Evelyn with something in her face that was not quite gratitude and not quite relief, but was something that sat directly between them and was bigger than either. Nathan told me about you. Dolan said. Evelyn looked at her.
What did he say? He said you were the only person he trusted completely. Dolan paused. He said if he ever had to give the drive to anyone, he would give it to you because you were the kind of person who didn't stop when things got hard. He said you were stubborn in the best possible way.
Evelyn was quiet for a moment. Where is he? She asked. Her voice was level, but just barely. I need you to tell me where he is.
Ellen held her gaze. Nathan is alive, she said. The words landed in the kitchen like something physical. Evelyn put one hand flat on the table, went to her chest briefly, automatically as if checking to make sure her heart was still doing what hearts were supposed to do. He's alive, Dolan said again.