We crouched behind a cubicle, hidden from view. My mind raced, and I calmed it by tracing the vacuum lines in the carpet. We sat and drew breath. Just resting felt like winning the lottery. There was a sense of fate twisting to make all of it possible, and when I thought about it, the split vision had done precisely that. In any other world, I would be dead, in jail, or worse. Not that we were out of the woods, but the woods had thinned a lot.

  A few seconds after we sat down and relaxed, Luanda looked at me, her face contorting in controlled anger, balled up both fists, then closed her eyes, her hands shaking and mouthed “FUCK” like she was shouting it wordlessly into the void. She breathed in deeply for several seconds, let it out slowly, then looked me in the eye and said. “Ok. Let’s figure out what’s next.”

  I put the voice call with BlueWhisper on speaker phone and asked for an update.

  “It’s pretty brutal right now. They have an investigator on scene. He’s calling for helicopters, drones, and k9 units, basically anything short of bringing in a psychic.”

  “Nick is on his way to Harborview Medical with two cops in the ambulance and another car behind. They're giving him the royal treatment. I’d say if they decide he’s the shooter, his wounds may prove fatal, but otherwise, he’ll survive.”

  The clatter of Whisper’s mechanical keyboard echoed through the office for a few minutes, with sirens still audible in the distance. Eventually, Whisper spoke again. “Overall, the tactical situation is pretty fubar. The main good news is you are outside the hard perimeter. The bad is that every city, county, and state police officer in the region seems to think Queen Anne is the place to be. Definitely giving you the thick blue line. I would stay hunkered.”

  Luanda broke the silence. “Hey, I wanted to thank you. There is no way we get through that gauntlet without your overwatch. I don’t know how you did it.”

  Whisper’s voice pitched a bit more a hint of pride. “No worries, Luanda. Sabot is a good bloke, and his money spends, so happy to help.”

  She mouthed the word “Sabot” at me, her eyes questioning.

  She continued, “Your intel is insane. It was like you knew where every cop was minute to minute. I almost lost it when the sheriff’s cruiser nearly spotted us.”

  Silence followed her praise before he answered, sounding confused: “Can’t say I remember that, but it’s pretty hard for me to know everything. I get the locations from the AVL system right off the cops, but I don't have them on a map. The best I can do is scroll through text updates for all the ones in a marked region. Honestly, I figured you were screwed the whole time. Just blind luck.”

  Luanda raised an eyebrow in my direction, then closed her eyes, and her hand went to her temples. Finally, she shook her head. “Well, I’m glad I didn’t know that ten minutes ago when I was walking down the street pretending to be confident.”

  We sat in relative silence for the next few minutes. My eyes drifted over the barren walls, the new paint smell making them feel more abandoned than inviting. Difficult questions hung in the air, and both of us anticipated them. The clicking of Whisper’s keyboard and the occasional detail about the ongoing search for us blanketed those questions for a time, but Luanda broke the hypnotic fog by reaching down and pressing the mute button gently.

  Five seconds passed wordlessly.

  Luanda opened up, her tone calm and even, but her eyes focused on me, making me feel like a rabbit caught in a hawk’s gaze. “I’m grateful for you getting me out of that insanity, but there are a few things I need to know. Who are these people? Why did you walk into Stillpoint, and why did they kidnap me? I need some answers because I’m just swimming for my life right now with no sense of where the shore is.”

  I spent the next fifteen minutes recounting hacking Bertrand, Levin, and Hoyle and how I came to be sitting in front of Stillpoint. The only thing I didn’t share was seeing the future. Luanda let the words flow, not interrupting until I said, “So when I heard the alarm, I knew that Nick was on his way, and even though I wanted to stay and warn you, there was no time.

  When she heard that, I noticed her calloused hands tighten. “Wait, how did you know it was Nick? You had only seen the Nike guy.”

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  Buying time to think, I corrected her, “Yes, we found out later the Nike guy was named David Vance. He was a former marine working for a company called Meridian Risk Mitigation. He and Nick Renner work for the same outfit. We think they were friends in the Military.”

  The mention of marines caught her eye briefly, but Luanda didn’t bite on the change of topics. “Right, but you didn’t know that then. How did you know Nick would be coming in the back?”

  “Well, obviously, I didn’t know it was Nick at the time, but someone had tripped that alarm, and regardless of who it was, it was bad news for me.”

  Luanda didn’t look entirely convinced. “Ok, that’s all fine, but why did they come after me, and how and why did you find out and come after them?”

  She glared at me for a long time as I worked out how to answer. It’s not like I could have just said, “Well, I had this dream, so, as one does, I decided to break you out of police custody single-handedly.” So I just kept lying.

  “Once I found out about Dave, I checked into Meridian and found a whole file on the two of them. One of the other guys they worked with was this cop, Jacob Wellington. When Whisper identified Wellington as the officer requesting your transfer, I went in hot.”

  “It was dumb as hell, but I’d do it again. I know what kind of guys these assholes are and there was no way I could let them just do whatever they wanted to you.”

  I let the complete fabrication sit in the room like two-week-old road kill. It wouldn’t even hold up to fifteen minutes of scrutiny if she talked to Whisper, and I was mentally yanking out my hair for the weak-sauce lie.

  Her weary expression told me her bullshit detector was redlining. She nodded and let the lie fester. She could tell I was full of shit, but she let it slide giving me a pass. Her smile didn’t reach her eyes as she finished the story for me. “Well, I can see why they came after me. I did shoot their partner; for all they knew, I was in on the whole thing with you. Besides, I think Nick would have done it just to get back at me for sending him running.”

  Then, she pivoted to the only problem that mattered. “So what do we do next? I don’t think we can wait a few hours and call an Uber. How long do these searches take anyway?” I didn’t know either, so we unmuted the phone and asked Whisper.

  Whisper gave us a detailed rundown, and it wasn’t great. From what he said, there would be half a day or more of hard lockdowns, every person in the vicinity would be canvassed, and even after the hard lockdown, there would be massively increased police presence for a day. He didn’t have any easy answers.

  After interrogating him for 10 minutes about options, Luanda decided to phone a friend. “Let me call my uncle Griss. He’s former MARSOC and has escaped from some pretty wild places.”

  I was reluctant to bring someone new in, but her life was in as much jeopardy as mine. “Ok, but not a regular call. Let me bounce it through a PBX.”

  I ended the call with Whisper and used the SIP phone I had installed. I connected it to a PBX I had hijacked from a real-estate firm in Vermont. When the setup was ready, I asked her for the phone number. She declared, “I’ll need to talk to him directly; don’t put it on speakerphone.”

  I was annoyed. I didn’t like the idea of a private or even half-private conversation. I acceded. “Sure, give me the number so I can set up the call, then you can talk to him.” I set up the call, but as I did, on impulse, I decided to initiate call recording on the PBX. It started to ring, and I handed her the phone. She motioned with her head as she listened to the ringing, indicating that I needed to clear out. I navigated the repetitive gray cubicles to an empty conference room, the indentation from the missing table its only feature.

  The only words I heard as I walked away sounded small and a little scared—so different from her tone with me. Her voice cracked slightly as she implored, “Uncle Griss, I really need your help.”

  Her whispered tones didn’t reach me, so I had no idea what was said, but they talked for several minutes before she stood and gestured me over. Luanda held out the phone. “He wants to talk to you.”

  As soon as I said hello, Griss’s voice thundered with barely contained venom. “For some damn reason, my niece doesn’t want me marching over there to put a bullet in you and dump you at the precinct. So I won’t. But you started this clusterfuck, and you’re gonna unfuck it. Turn yourself in—step up like a man for once. Tell the cops the truth—”

  “No fucking way,” I spat back.

  “Yes fucking way—”

  “Fuck you if you think I’m doing that. It’s a crap idea—it just boils us slowly instead of all at once. Will the cops believe me? Will the killers believe I shot a cop to rescue a girl I don’t even know? If they grab me, I’ll tell them everything, but don’t think for a second they won’t try to pin Luanda with murder one for shooting Dave and accessory after the fact for Jacob, no matter what I say now.”

  At that moment, the phone started blaring an alert. I could hear other phones also blaring from distantly down the hallway. I looked at it, and my heart sank.

  PUBLIC SAFETY ALERT - QUEEN ANNE SEATTLE: Active search for 2 suspects considered Armed & Dangerous following Officer Homicide. Female Black approx 20s (Escaped Custody) wearing blue jail uniform/scrubs accompanied by Male White approx 20s. Fled area on foot. Call 911 if seen - Use Caution DO NOT APPROACH. SPD/WSP.

  Sometimes, life just doesn’t play fair.