The pieces clicked together in my mind with a horrifying finality, creating the ultimate reversal of everything I had assumed.
Vance didn't send his son to bully Leo. The entire roof incident wasn't about Rick dropping a phone by coincidence.
"I was scheduled to inspect the athletic center basement on Monday," I realized, saying the words aloud.
The mercenary nodded painfully. "Vance knew you would see the concrete stress fractures. He knew a guy with your structural demolition background wouldn't miss it. He told his son to bully your kid today. To push you. Vance wanted you to react. He wanted you to assault a student so he could have you arrested and fired before Monday. The phone... the phone getting dropped and picked up by your kid was an accident. It just forced Vance to escalate early."
The trap had been set for me. Leo was just the bait. I had played exactly into Vance’s hands by attacking Rick on the roof, but the burner phone had accidentally derailed his neat little framing job.
In the distance, the wailing sound of police sirens began to cut through the night air. The neighbors must have heard the broken glass and the commotion.
I couldn't stay here. If the police found three broken mercenaries in my house, my real identity would come out. The state would investigate my past, they would see the violence, and CPS would take Leo away in a heartbeat. I couldn't explain this legally without losing my son.
I secured the leader to a heavy iron radiator with my zip-ties, leaving him groaning on the floor.
I ran to the bedroom, pulled back the carpet, and opened the floorboard. Leo was curled in a tight ball, shaking. I reached down, grabbed his small hand, and hoisted him out.
"You did great, buddy. We have to go right now," I said.
I grabbed his red Captain Comet backpack, grabbed my truck keys, and carried him out the back door into the thick woods behind our property. We moved quickly through the dark, avoiding the driveway as the blue and red flashing lights of police cruisers began illuminating the trees near the main road.
I navigated the woods blindly, letting muscle memory guide me until we reached the secondary gravel road two miles away.
I pulled out my personal phone and called Sarah, an old friend from my contracting days who now ran a quiet, secure bakery in the next town over. She owed me her life from an extraction in Kabul, and I trusted her with mine. She picked us up ten minutes later in her nondescript sedan.
I buckled Leo into her backseat. "Take him to your safehouse," I told Sarah through the window. "Do not let anyone inside. I'll come for him when it's over."
"Be careful, Elias," Sarah said grimly, looking at the bruised knuckles and dirt covering my clothes.
I watched her drive away, feeling a crushing weight lift off my chest. Leo was safe.
My personal phone vibrated in my pocket.
It was an unknown number. I answered it, putting it to my ear.
"I have to admit, Elias," Marcus Vance's smooth, arrogant voice echoed through the speaker. "I didn't expect you to walk away from a three-man tactical hit squad. You really are the Ghost."
"You made a mistake bringing my son into this, Marcus," I said, my voice cold as the grave.
Vance laughed lightly. "No, Elias, you made a mistake. I own the local police. I own the mayor. And while my men were stalling you, I officially filed a kidnapping charge against you regarding your own son, using your unsealed psychological military records as probable cause. You are a wanted fugitive."
"Leo is gone," I said. "You'll never find him."
"Won't I?" Vance replied, a cruel smile evident in his tone. "Did you really think Rick dangled that bag off the roof just to scare the kid? We needed to make sure we could track you if things went wrong. Check the bag, Elias."
My heart stopped.
The faint electronic chirp I had heard in the boiler room before Leo even went missing. Clue one.
Rick hadn't been holding the bag to torture Leo. Rick had snatched the bag specifically to drop a GPS tracker into the lining, following his father's orders to ensure I could be located when I inevitably fled town after the setup.
Vance knew exactly where Leo was going.
CHAPTER 4
The night air suddenly felt thick and suffocating. The revelation hit me like a physical blow, locking the final piece of the puzzle into place.
The faint chirp in the boiler room. The heavy weight in the bag on the roof. I had assumed the extra weight was just the burner phone Rick had dropped in a panic. But the chirp had happened before Leo found the phone in the hallway. Rick hadn’t dropped the phone in the bag—Rick had planted a GPS tag in the bag on the roof, but Leo had coincidentally found the burner phone earlier, confusing the two objects in my mind.
I didn't hesitate. I pulled the phone away from my ear and immediately dialed Sarah.