Hunted
The travel from office desk to motel hideout consumed the next hour. Headlights cut cold through the gathering dusk.
The door burst open. Beckett stood there, smirking. “Did you think I wouldn’t find you, old friend?”
Killian’s hand was already inside his jacket, fingers brushing the grip of the SIG Sauer. The motel room felt smaller now—cinder block walls painted a jaundice yellow, a single lamp casting long shadows across the stained carpet. Evangeline had Max pressed against her side on the bed, her body curved around him like a shield.
Three seconds. That’s how long Killian calculated he had before Beckett’s men filled the doorway behind him. The window behind the curtains faced the parking lot. A fire escape rusted to the building’s side. Fatal ground if they jumped with a seven-year-old.
“Impressive tracking,” Killian said. His voice came out flat, conversational. “Though I expected more from a Blackthorn. Took you three weeks.”
Beckett’s smirk faltered. The corner of his mouth twitched, and Killian filed that away—pride was the fracture point. Always had been with the heir.
“You’re not walking out of this one,” Beckett said. He stepped into the room, and Killian saw the bulge beneath his cashmere coat. Shoulder rig, standard carry. The Blackthorn security detail would be spread across the motel grounds by now, cutting off routes. “My father wants you alive. He didn’t specify *intact*.”
Evangeline shifted on the bed. Killian caught her movement in his periphery—she was looking at the ceiling. Following his training from three nights ago when they’d rehearsed escape routes in a dozen different bolt holes.
The ventilation grille above the bathroom door.
“You always were predictable, Beckett,” Killian said. He took a half-step left, drawing Beckett’s focus away from the bed. “Still using the same security contractor. Still wearing cologne that announces your position three rooms away. Still desperate for your father’s approval.”
Beckett’s eyes hardened. The fingers of his right hand curled into a fist. “You talk like you have leverage.”
“I have information.” Killian let the words hang. “About the Rotterdam accounts. About what your father did to the board member who voted against him in ’09. About where the bodies are buried.”
A beat of silence. The motel’s ancient heater rattled against the wall.
Beckett’s gaze flickered—just for an instant—toward the door. Toward the hallway where his security team waited. Weighing the risk of letting Killian speak versus the risk of his father learning he’d let the target buy time.
That instant was all Killian needed.
He moved in a single fluid sequence: hand coming out of the jacket, the SIG Sauer rising, a double tap into the light fixture above Beckett’s head. Glass exploded. The room plunged into darkness.
Evangeline was already moving. The mattress springs squealed as she grabbed Max and rolled off the far side of the bed. Killian heard her hit the floor, heard Max let out a sharp gasp that she stifled with her hand.
“Go,” Killian said. Not loud. A command that cut through the dark.
He fired two more rounds toward the doorway—controlled, aimed at chest height where a body would be. Return fire answered him. Wood splintered from the doorframe. A round punched through the drywall inches from his shoulder.
Killian dropped to a crouch, moving sideways toward the bathroom as he fired another suppression round. His eyes adjusted to the dark. He saw Evangeline lifting Max toward the ventilation grille, her arms trembling with the strain.
“Mommy I can’t—”
“Yes you can.” Evangeline’s voice was steel wrapped in silk. She guided Max’s feet onto the toilet tank, then the sink counter. “Pull yourself up. Like we practiced.”
Killian emptied the magazine toward the hallway. The slide locked back on an empty chamber. He dropped the mag, slapped a fresh one home, and racked the slide in one motion. Three seconds of silence bought him.
The grille screeched as Max wrenched it free. Evangeline boosted him into the shaft, then shoved the duffel bag up after him.
“Killian.”
Her voice brought him to the bathroom doorway. She was already climbing, one foot on the toilet tank, the other braced against the wall. In the dark, he saw the pale oval of her face turned toward him. No fear. Just assessment.
“They’ll have the east stairwell blocked,” she said. “Jasper’s backup plan was the maintenance hatch on the north side.”
“You memorized the schematics.”
“You gave me the schematics.” She hauled herself into the vent. The metal groaned under her weight. “I pay attention.”
Gunfire chewed through the motel room door. Splinters sprayed across the carpet. Killian fired twice through the bathroom wall—judging trajectory from where the shots came—and heard a choked curse on the other side. Then he was up, grabbing the vent edge, pulling himself into darkness that smelled of dust and rust and decades of disuse.
The shaft was narrow. No wider than his shoulders. He crawled behind Evangeline, feeling the vibrations of her movements through the metal panels. Max was ahead of her, his small form silhouetted against the dim light filtering through a bent grille thirty feet ahead.
“They’ll have the north exit covered in ninety seconds,” Evangeline said. She didn’t look back. Her words came between controlled breaths. “Jasper said he’d have the car at the maintenance hatch. Not the parking lot.”
“He better be on time.”
The shaft branched left toward the motel’s utility core. Killian had memorized the schematics during the drive from Chicago—every bolt hole, every crawl space, every possible egress route. The maintenance hatch opened into the mechanical room on the ground floor, which had a door to the alley behind the motel.
They reached the grille. Evangeline pushed it open, lowered herself down, and caught Max as he dropped into her arms. Killian followed, landing silent on the concrete floor.
The mechanical room hummed with the drone of furnaces and water heaters. A single bulb flickered overhead, casting stuttering shadows across the machinery. Through the door, Killian heard voices—not shouting, but coordinated radio chatter. Beckett’s men sweeping the building.
Evangeline pulled Max behind a water heater. She pressed a finger to her lips. The boy nodded, his eyes wide but dry. No tears. Killian felt something twist in his chest—pride, maybe, mixed with a cold fury that his son had learned to be silent during a shootout before he’d learned multiplication tables.
A shadow passed beneath the door. Then another.
Killian counted to thirty. The shadows didn’t return.
He crossed to the door in three strides, pressed his ear to the metal. Nothing. He cracked it open—a sliver of yellow light from the hallway, empty.
“Now.”
They moved through the corridor in a tight formation: Killian leading, Evangeline with Max’s hand in hers, staying low. The motel’s utility hallways were unfinished—exposed pipes overhead, unpainted drywall, bare concrete floors. Employee access only.
The maintenance hatch was exactly where the schematics promised. A steel door marked with faded warning stickers, bolted shut from the inside. Killian threw the latch. The door swung open onto an alley slick with rain.
A black sedan sat idling twenty feet away. The headlights cut through the downpour. Jasper leaned against the driver’s door, saw them emerge, and didn’t waste time on greetings. He slid behind the wheel.
They reached the car as the first shouts rose from the motel’s main building. Killian shoved Max into the back seat. Evangeline slid in after him. He was still closing his door as Jasper hit the accelerator, the sedan fishtailing on wet asphalt before gripping and launching them into the night.
The motel lights shrank in the side mirror. Killian watched them until they were swallowed by the darkness.
“Safehouse is eighty miles northeast,” Jasper said. His eyes stayed on the road. “Mountain cabin. No electricity grid—generator. Blackthorn’s satellite tracking would need a thermal signature to find it.”
“They’ll check known properties,” Killian said.
“It’s not known.” Jasper glanced at him in the rearview. “Bought under a shell company that traces back to a dead man. Cash purchase. No digital footprint.”
Evangeline was checking Max for injuries, her hands moving with practiced efficiency across his arms, his ribs, his head. The boy sat rigid, his jaw clenched in a way that reminded Killian too much of his own reflection.
“I’m okay, Mom.” Max’s voice came out steady. “I’m okay.”
“I know you are.” Evangeline pressed a kiss to his forehead. “You did exactly right.”
The sedan ate miles of dark highway. Rain hammered the windshield. Jasper drove with the lights off for the first twenty minutes, relying on the peripheral glow of oncoming traffic, before switching them back on. Killian checked the rear window every ninety seconds. No headlights followed.
They turned off the main road onto a gravel track that wound through dense forest. Pine branches scraped the car’s roof. The road narrowed until it was barely a path, then ended at a cabin built from logs and fieldstone, nestled against a cliff face.
Inside, it was sparse but functional. A wood stove. Bunk beds in the single room. A propane camp stove for cooking. Water from a hand pump in the corner. Evangeline settled Max into the bottom bunk, pulling a wool blanket over him. The boy was asleep before she finished tucking the edges.
She straightened, met Killian’s eyes across the room. Neither of them spoke. There was nothing to say that Max couldn’t overhear.
Jasper had stayed outside, running diagnostics on the sedan. Killian joined him. The rain had softened to a drizzle, the forest dripping around them.
“Margot’s creating false trails,” Jasper said. “She booked a room at the Ritz-Carlton under your alias. Had a meal delivered. Used the credit card you left her.” He paused. “Took a bus to Seattle, checked into a hostel under Evangeline’s maiden name. Paid cash.”
“She shouldn’t be involved.”
“She insisted.” Jasper met his gaze. “Said you’d have done the same for her.”
Killian said nothing. Margot had been she college roommate’s sister, had become family through years of shared holidays and late-night calls. She worked at a bookstore. She baked bread on Sundays. She had never fired a weapon in her life.
And now she was bait.
Something cold settled in Killian’s chest. He pushed it down. There was no room for sentiment. Not with Beckett’s men still hunting.
“The jacket,” Killian said suddenly. “The one I was wearing at the motel. Where is it?”
Jasper frowned. “In the trunk. Why?”
“Get it.”
Jasper popped the trunk and retrieved the worn leather jacket. Killian took it, turned it over in his hands. He’d worn it when he left Chicago. Had worn it through every safehouse, every motel, every stolen hour of sleep.
He ran his fingers along the collar. The stitching was clean, factory-grade. He felt along the seams, the lining, the pockets.
His fingers stopped at the left shoulder pad.
A small lump. No bigger than a button.
He worked it free with his knife—a tiny disk, matte black, adhesive-backed. The tracking chip glinted in the dim light.
“How long?” Jasper’s voice had gone flat.
“Since Chicago.” Killian crushed the chip under his boot. The plastic cracked. The circuit board splintered. “He didn’t find me at the motel. He *followed* me. Had this on me the whole time.”
He looked at the cabin. At the single window where a dim lamp glowed. At his son sleeping inside.
“They know where we are.”
Jasper was already moving, reaching for the radio in the sedan. “I’ll scramble countermeasures—“
The cabin’s generator hummed. The forest breathed. Somewhere, miles above the treeline, a new sound began to pulse. Distant. Growing.
The beat of rotor blades.
Evangeline appeared in the cabin doorway, Max cradled against her chest, still asleep. She didn’t ask. She saw Killian’s face, saw the crushed chip at his feet, and her expression went cold and sharp.
“How long?”
“Less than five minutes.”
She turned back inside. When she emerged, she had the duffel bag over one shoulder and Max’s shoes in her hand. The boy stirred, blinked, saw his mother’s face, and didn’t cry. He just reached for Killian.
Jasper’s voice crackled over the radio: “They’re on you. I see a helicopter inbound. ETA five minutes.”