The word left my lips as a dry rasp, but its weight shattered the suffocating silence hanging over the intake bay.

Before Eleanor could react, the radio on her dashboard burst into loud, garbled static.

"Unit 4, we have a breach. Signal pinged at the safe location. Harrison’s team intercepted the vehicle tracker—"

The line went dead.

"Out! Now!" Eleanor yelled, pulling a heavy black sidearm from her holster.

Tires squealed on the gravel outside. High-beam headlights cut through the pitch-black darkness of the pine forest, illuminating the windows of the safe house.

I grabbed Maya’s car seat, ignores the searing pain in my abdomen, and scrambled out of the SUV behind Sarah.

A megaphone boomed from the driveway. It wasn't the police. It was David’s voice, raspy, cruel, and completely unhinged.

"Emily! Hand over the child and the drive, and we let your sister walk! You think state agents can protect you? I own the judges in this county! I own the streets!"

"He’s desperate," Eleanor whispered, taking cover behind the reinforced front door of the safe house. "He knows if the sun comes up, he’s going to federal prison for the rest of his life. He has nothing left to lose."

"Where is Michael?" I shouted from the hallway, shielding my baby with my own body.

A shadow moved across the side window. Glass shattered.

"I'm right here, Emily!" Michael’s voice called out from the darkness inside the house. He had slipped in through the back patio.

He stepped into the hallway light. His shirt was stained with rain and mud, his hair disheveled, his eyes wild and bloodshot. In his right hand, he held a chrome handgun. In his left, he held my mother’s thumb drive.

"You ruined everything," Michael hissed, stepping closer, his gun trained directly on my chest. "All you had to do was sign the papers. All you had to do was be a quiet, obedient wife. We could have lived comfortably! Now look at what you’ve forced me to do!"