JAKE

Rodriguez cracked first.

They brought him and Harlan in officially in Connecticut. I was told he didn't last thirty minutes in the interrogation room before the façade slipped. The man couldn't stomach what he had helped set in motion. He cried through half his statement, swearing he didn't know it would end that way.

Harlan, on the other hand, tried to play tough, pretending he was just doing his job and Emma was the Wicked Witch of the West. He held out for an hour before the mask slipped. The moment they brought up Carter's testimony, the tremors gave him away.

In the end, they both told the same story.

Adam Blake had done his homework. He had learned who in Danbury's system was dirty; who smuggled contraband; who owed favors; who liked the easy money. He had approached them weeks ago, dangling money and silence so he wouldn't ruin them with what he knew. They believed they had no choice. But greed and corruption were choices. They just didn't want to call it that.

The plan was simple—sedate a certain inmate, falsify a transfer order, and deliver her to an arranged location. Easy. It was supposed to be clean, with no spilled blood involved.

Except Collins.

Officer Ted Collins wasn't supposed to be there. He had volunteered at the last minute to cover another CO's shift and refused to let them leave without him as per protocol. He started getting suspicious when they insisted he divert from the usual route. Then the van was intercepted, and when he tried to stand up to Adam Blake and his men, Blake fired. One shot to the head and he dropped dead.

The rest was chaos; Rodriguez screaming, Harlan freezing, and Emma unconscious through it all.

Their confessions backed up everything Nurse Carter had said. Emma was never an accomplice. On paper, she was still listed as an escapee because procedure demanded it, but now we knew she was also a hostage, a victim caught in someone else's plan.

Which left one question burning a hole through my skull. Where the hell had he taken her?

That was when my phone vibrated on the table in the conference room, where we had assembled a task force.

It was an unknown number. I didn't think; I just answered. "Parker," I said.

For a second, there was only static. Then came a voice I would recognize anywhere, even if that voice sounded panicked and breathless, tinged with raw fear that scraped at my heart.

"Jake—"

I pushed from my chair, drawing every eye in the room. "Emma? Emma, where are you?"

I waved to the tech team, signaling them to trace the call, while I pressed the phone harder to my ear, hoping to get anything.

Emma didn't answer. My chest tightened. All I caught was shuffling, and a distant male voice I couldn't quite make out.

Then suddenly, a single deafening crack tore through the speaker. A gunshot. And she screamed.

My heart slammed against my ribs. "Emma!"

Nothing.

"See what you do to people," someone said in a voice heavy with a British accent. "His blood's on your hands now."

Blake.

My hand tightened on the phone so hard I thought it might crack.

There was gasping in the background and the sound of someone struggling for air. Then I heard footsteps, and that same voice again.

"Emma!" I shouted again, desperate for anything, but the only reply was a grunt, the rustle of movement, and then the line cut abruptly, like the phone had been crushed under a boot.

For a moment, I didn't move, didn't even lower the phone. I closed my eyes, reminding myself I couldn't freeze. She was still out there, and she had called me for help.

When I opened my eyes again, Luke was watching me from across the room. His brow creased almost imperceptibly, just enough to tell me he could see the cracks already spreading through my armor.

I couldn't keep eye contact. I glanced at the team working on their computers instead. "Tell me we've got a location."

One of them spun in her chair. "I've got something. Not exact coordinates, but we hit a tower. The call routed through a Red Hook cell site with a coverage sector of about three blocks."

Red Hook. She was in New York.

Luke was already pulling out his phone. "I'll check with NYPD, see if any calls came in from that area."

I nodded, forcing a slow breath through clenched teeth as relief and dread twisted hard in my chest.

Blake had dragged her back to the city, within reach, when he could've hidden her anywhere. Somewhere more secure, somewhere far from us.

So why here? What was he playing at? Was this all part of something bigger... or just another way to torment her?

Luke rushed in again. "NYPD just got a 911 report of shots fired, male victim at the corner of Ferris and Pioneer. Units are already en route."

I was moving before he finished the sentence.

By the time we reached the scene, the street was crawling with uniforms. The smell of gunpowder still hung in the air, tangled with salt and diesel from the docks.

The shot had gone off less than thirty minutes ago. The victim, a middle-aged man, homeless according to the first responders, had already been loaded into the ambulance. They said he was lucky; he had lost a lot of blood but was holding on.

Luke and I stepped under the yellow tape, flashing our badges.

A trail of blood, thin at first, then thicker, led toward a dumpster and the mouth of an alley. The forensic team was already at work, crouched over the pavement with swabs and evidence bags.

"Victim's blood type is B positive," a crime scene technician said. "But there's another sample. Preliminary tests show O negative."

My pulse jumped. "Amount?"

"Minimal," he said. "Judging by the spatter, it's not a fatal loss. Surface wound, maybe. But we have Lawrence's medical file from Danbury. It's a match. Blake's type from the file Interpol shared with us is A positive."

My heart clenched. She was hurt... but alive. I told myself that this was what mattered.

Luke joined me, gloves already on, his eyes sweeping the alley.
"We've got a team canvassing the surrounding blocks," he said. "Checking for any cameras that might've caught them leaving."

He nodded toward the nearest intersection. "NYPD's pulling CCTV from the pier gates too."

I finally looked at him. "If he's as smart as they say, he'll have used blind spots. But someone had to see something."

Luke sighed. "I'm not sure about smart. Unhinged, definitely. I mean... bringing her here? And now he shot a man in broad daylight."

A slow breath dragged out of me, trembling at the edges. I tried to steady it, but the air felt different now, thicker, heavier, like it still carried whatever that bastard did to her here.

"What is sure is he's not getting away," Luke said. "He has half of the law enforcement in North America hunting him now."

I nodded, though part of me wanted to snap at him, tell him what if that didn't matter anymore? What if we were already too late?

But I bit it back. Luke was taking this as seriously as I was. My anger had no business going anywhere near him.

And he was right. Adam Blake had killed a federal officer, kidnapped a federal inmate, and now shot another man. The manhunt was only getting bigger.

We had put out BOLOs on every bridge and tunnel, and his description had gone to every charter service and airport across the tri-state. The marshals were setting up coordinated roadblocks. Every route out of the city was tightening by the minute.

If he thought he could just vanish, he was wrong.

But my only concern was Emma...

As we moved around the area, taking in every angle and shadow, Ashford's words from earlier kept cutting through my thoughts. His voice had been calm, clinical, and infuriatingly detached.

"Even if she was taken against her will, how can we be sure she's not working with him now?"

I had wanted to punch something then. Still did. But I had kept my mouth shut, because the second I gave him an excuse to call me compromised, he would pull me off the case, and I wasn't risking that. Not when she was out here with him.

But things were crystal clear now for everyone, with her call, her scream, the panic in her voice, and the blood on the ground.

She had tried to get away from him. She had called me. She had believed I could help her. And it gutted me that I still couldn't reach her.

My lungs ached. The thought of what that bastard might do to her for calling me—what he might have already done—hit hard enough that my knees nearly buckled.

I forced the image back and anchored myself to what I could control.

A detective in plain clothes approached, notepad in hand. "Agents, we've got a witness."

He led us toward a man standing beside a cargo truck. He was in his mid-forties, still wearing a safety vest. His hands were shoved deep into his jacket pockets, and his eyes kept flicking toward the alley every few seconds. His face was tight and pale, the look of someone who had seen something he wished he hadn't.

"I was on break behind the loading dock," he said. "Heard the shot, came out to look, and saw a guy and a woman... she was limping, looked hurt. The guy had a gun. I—I ducked behind a bin. I didn't want to get shot, you know?"

"You remember what they looked like?" Luke asked.

He nodded quickly, throat bobbing. "The guy was tall, blond, wearing a black coat. The woman had brown hair, messy, like she had been running."

"When did they leave?"

"A couple of minutes after the shot. They got into a car; a black BMW sedan, older model. I couldn't get the plates from where I was hiding. They turned down Bowne Street, headed toward the main road by the docks. I waited a minute, then ran out. The man who got shot... he was still breathing. I called 911."

He hesitated, eyes dropping to the pavement. "I—I wanted to help the woman, but I've got kids. I just froze."

Luke gave him a steady, understanding nod. "You did good. You saved that man's life."

He nodded, eyes downcast, and stepped back toward the officers taking his statement. Luke and I headed for the car. The late-afternoon air felt heavier now, the hum of the city pressing against my ears. We were just reaching for the doors when an alert buzzed through our earpieces.

"We've got a possible secondary scene about three blocks from the blood trail. Abandoned brick building. Requesting units to check it out."

We were in the car a second later and reached it in under five minutes.

The building sat at the end of a narrow street, its brick façade stained by years of rain and salt. Half the windows were boarded up; the rest were clouded with grime. A faded sign on the corner still read MARINE SUPPLIES, the blue paint peeling like old scabs.

We climbed to the third floor fast. The team was already there, their cameras flashing, brushes sweeping for prints, and evidence bags filling with anything that might matter.

The room was bare and filthy. A single bed leaned against the wall, its thin mattress stripped down to the frame. A pile of clothes lay on the floor, tags still dangling like they had come straight out of a store before being tossed here.

When I reached the window, the sight nearly knocked the breath out of me.

A torn strip of white cloth hung down, tied to the bed frame, twisting in the morning wind. It fluttered gently, as if it were waving for help long after she had stopped.

The sheet was knotted in intervals. The last knot had ripped clean through halfway down. When I leaned out the window, I saw the fire escape to the side, where a few crime scene techs were already swabbing blood from the metal edge.

My fingers tightened around the windowsill as the pieces clicked into place. She had tried to escape, tied those thin sheets together as her only chance, and they had almost failed her.

Luke stepped up beside me. "They think she used this to pick the lock," he said, holding up a small evidence bag. Inside was a bent safety pin, its tip twisted into the crude shape of a pick.

God, Emma. You really did put up a fight.

I nodded stiffly, looking out the window again. "She hit the fire escape. Probably tore her leg on the metal. That's where the blood came from."

Luke exhaled. "Damn. She's tougher than she looks."

I didn't respond. I already knew that. "Did they find anything else? Anything that tells us where he took her?"

"They're still looking," Luke said. "But let's think this through. If he's trying to get out of the country, the obvious exits are suicide. JFK and LaGuardia are locked down by now."

"He'll try to leave the city first," I said, thinking aloud with him. "Red Hook's full of private docks, half of them unmanned. If he's got a boat, he could be halfway to Jersey by now."

Luke hummed, pulling up a map on his tablet. "Or Long Island. If he's planning to fly out, he'll want something smaller, industrial, quiet. Somewhere you can disappear between trucks and cargo planes. Republic Airport fits that."

"Or Linden," I said. "If I were him, that's where I'd go."

Luke nodded slowly. "Yeah. Jersey makes more sense."

"Maybe," I said. "But we still need proof."

As if on cue, one of the officers crouched near the radiator glanced up. "Got something," he said. "Looks like a receipt. Must've slipped behind this thing."

I took it from him with gloved hands. It was a list of purchases, crumpled, torn at the edges. A bottle of Jack Daniel's. A pre-packed sandwich. Black coffee.

Then my eyes caught the name at the bottom. Bayway Quick Stop.

Luke and I exchanged a look. The address hit both of us at once. That gas station sat right off the road to Linden Airport, half a mile from the private hangars.

I checked the timestamp. Yesterday, 10:43 a.m. He had probably set up the getaway, then driven to Connecticut to pull off the rest of his plan.

Luke shook his head. "He makes a whole tri-state run, and what trips him up is booze."

A humorless breath slipped out of me. "Fate's a bastard."

Sliding the paper into an evidence bag, I sealed it tight and spoke into my earpiece. "Get units moving to Linden. Every hangar, every warehouse. Quiet approach only."

Before we left, I looked back at the window. The torn sheet fluttered weakly in the wind, and the blood staining the fire escape glinted in the light.

"Hold on, Emma," I whispered. "Just hold on."