The Senator’s Funeral
The travel from Underground bunker in the Redwood National Forest to St. Augustine’s Cathedral & surrounding funeral grounds consumed the next hour. Headlights cut cold through the gathering dusk.
The cathedral smelled of lilies and old stone, a combination Caden had learned to associate with death long before today. He stood in the third pew from the back, dressed in a charcoal suit that cost more than his first car, blending into the sea of black-clad mourners who had come to pay respects to Senator Margaret Holloway.
The irony was almost too sharp to stomach. The woman Blackthorn Industries had murdered was now the stage upon which he would attempt to bury them.
Dorian had secured their credentials through a shell company that existed only on paper—a boutique security firm contracted by the senator’s estate. The patches on their shoulders were convincing enough at a distance, and no one looked closely at the help during a funeral. Helena had positioned herself near the widow’s row, her face buried in a handkerchief, her posture that of a grieving cousin from out of state. She was the only one among them who could play that role without raising suspicion.
Caden kept his hands still on his knees, his eyes tracking the exits. Four main doors, two side chapels, a sacristy entrance behind the altar. A full house meant three hundred potential witnesses. It also meant three hundred potential shields if things went wrong.
The archbishop droned through the homily, but Caden had stopped listening. He was counting seconds, measuring the distance between himself and Helena, calculating the exact moment when the encrypted drive in she jacket pocket would need to transition into the widow’s handbag.
Beside him, Dorian sat with his back straight, his face a mask of practiced solemnity. His right hand rested on his thigh, inches from where a compact taser was clipped inside his jacket. Standard tactical protocol. Non-lethal, untraceable, effective.
“Ten minutes until the receiving line,” Dorian murmured, his lips barely moving.
Caden gave no acknowledgment. The priest at the Blackthorn estate had taught him that stillness was its own kind of camouflage. The less you moved, the less people saw you. The less they remembered.
He thought of Milo. Eight years old. Small hands. A laugh that still caught Caden off guard every time he heard it. Freya had him in the decoy vehicle a mile away, a nondescript sedan parked in a hospital garage two blocks from the cathedral. The plan was simple: if Caden’s play failed, they would extract, regroup, and vanish. If it succeeded, the FBI would take the Blackthorns into custody, and Milo would never have to look over his shoulder again.
Simple. Clean. Impossible.
The final hymn began. Caden rose with the congregation, his voice adding nothing to the sound around him. He watched Helena move toward the widow’s row, her steps timed to the music, her handkerchief now clutched in her left hand. In her right palm, she carried the drive.
Five years of evidence. Wire transfers. Encrypted communications. The names of five hit men who had worked directly for Owen Blackthorn. Senator Holloway’s autopsy report—showing the drug that had stopped her heart, manufactured by a subsidiary of Blackthorn Industries. Everything the FBI would need to dismantle the family’s empire.
The hymn ended. The archbishop stepped back. The receiving line began to form.
Caden waited until the widow was at the midpoint of the line, distracted by the stream of condolences, her handbag hanging open on her arm. Helena drifted forward, her body angled to block the view of the nearest security guard. She brushed against the widow with practiced gentility, her handkerchief dropping, her hand sweeping past the bag.
The drive disappeared inside.
Caden’s chest loosened a fraction of an inch.
Now the timer began.
He had thirty minutes until the silent alarm he had triggered on the drive activated, alerting the FBI field office three blocks away. Thirty minutes to get Dorian and Helena out of the cathedral before the agents arrived to arrest the two most powerful men in the room.
He began to edge toward the side aisle, Dorian moving in parallel, their trajectories set for the north exit. Helena was already halfway there, her handkerchief returned to her face, her shoulders shaking with perfect grief.
They were ten feet from the door when the entire plan collapsed.
Flynn Blackthorn stepped into their path, one hand in his pocket, a smile that did not reach his eyes. He was younger than Caden by five years, but something behind those eyes was ancient in its cruelty. The kind of cruelty that had learned to dress itself in expensive suits and charitable donations.
“Caden Voss,” Flynn said, his voice carrying just enough for the nearby mourners to hear. “I thought I recognized you. How bold of you to attend my father’s funeral.”
The words landed like a punch. *My father’s funeral.* The Blackthorns were here to mourn the woman they had killed, using her own death as a stage for their public appearances.
Caden said nothing. His heart rate did not change. He had been trained for this, by the same priests who had taught him stillness.
Flynn stepped closer, his hand emerging from his pocket. In it, a drive. The same model as the one Helena had planted. “Looking for this?”
Behind Caden, he heard his ex’s breath catch. Small steps, exactly where he would have expected her audible gasp.
Flynn’s smile widened. “Your friend is very precise. But precision means nothing when you’re predictable. Did you think we wouldn’t know the senator’s estate had hired a security firm that didn’t exist? Did you think we wouldn’t watch the one woman who claimed to be a cousin from Kentucky when we know the family tree doesn’t have a single branch in the Bluegrass State?”
The silence in the cathedral had become a physical thing. Mourners were turning, sensing the tension, the drama unfolding in their midst.
Caden made a choice.
He reached into his pocket and pressed the silent alarm himself. Thirty minutes became zero. The FBI would arrive in ninety seconds.
“I think this drive won’t matter,” Caden said, his voice calm. “Because in about a minute, the Bureau is going to walk through those doors and arrest every Blackthorn in this building.”
Flynn’s smile flickered. Not gone, but wounded. “You’re bluffing.”
“You killed a United States senator. You think I’d bluff with that on the line?”
The first sirens cut through the cathedral walls.
Something dark passed across Flynn’s face. Not fear. Anger. The pure, burning anger of a predator who had cornered prey, only to find the prey had teeth.
He stepped back, his hands rising in mock surrender. “Well played, Caden. But this isn’t over. You have a child. A lovely one, from the photos. Milo, is it? Eight years old. Attends Westbrook Elementary. Has a favorite stuffed rabbit he sleeps with.”
Caden’s blood turned to ice.
“You shouldn’t have said that,” Dorian said, stepping forward.
“I should have said it in person,” Flynn replied. “So he knows. So you know. When you look at his face tonight—if you still have the privilege—you’ll remember that I told you this wasn’t over.”
The front doors burst open. FBI agents flooded the nave, their badges out, their voices overlapping in a symphony of authority. Owen Blackthorn was still in the front pew, his face a mask of confusion as agents surrounded him.
Flynn turned to face them, his hands raised, his smile intact. “I’m Flynn Blackthorn. I’d like to call my lawyer.”
The arrest was clean. Professional. The Blackthorns were led out in less than three minutes, their cuffs glittering under the cathedral’s stained-glass light. The widow wept—whether from relief or rage, Caden couldn’t tell.
He should have felt triumphant. He should have felt the weight of five years lift from his shoulders.
Instead, he felt the weight of Flynn’s words pressing down on his chest like a stone.
*Milo. Westbrook Elementary. The stuffed rabbit.*
He pulled out his phone and called Freya.
She answered on the first ring. “Did it work?”
“He’s been arrested. Both of them.” His voice was flat. Military flat. “Flynn approached me before the FBI arrived. He knew about Milo.”
A pause. Then, her voice sharp: “Knew what about Milo?”
“Everything. The school. The rabbit.” Caden was already moving toward the exit, Dorian and Helena falling in behind her. “We need to move him. Tonight. Somewhere they won’t find him.”
“I’m already in the car. We’re heading to the secondary location now.”
“Don’t. Come to me. I want eyes on you.”
Another pause. Longer this time. “Caden… there’s a car following us.”
His stomach dropped. “What kind of car?”
“Black sedan. Blacked-out windows. They’ve been trailing us since I left the garage.”
“Lose them. Take the back roads, the ones we rehearsed. I’ll meet you at checkpoint Gamma.”
“Checkpoint Gamma is an abandoned gas station.”
“It’s also the only place they won’t expect us to go. Do it.”
The line went dead.
Dorian had already started the engine of their rental, a gray sedan that could blend into any parking lot in the city. Helena climbed into the back, her hands shaking for the first time since Caden had met her.
“They’re going to find him,” she said, her voice small. “They have lawyers. They have money. They’ll be out by morning.”
“They’ll be out in three hours,” Dorian corrected. “Owen Blackthorn has a retainer with the best criminal defense firm in the state. They’ll have bail posted before the ink on the charges dries.”
“Which means we have three hours to disappear,” Caden said. “Drive.”
The gray sedan pulled away from the curbside, weaving through the funeral traffic, heading toward the abandoned gas station on the edge of the city. The one place they had never discussed in detail, because discussing it would have made it real.
Caden watched the rearview mirror, his hand resting on the taser in his jacket. He didn’t know if Freya had lost the tail. He didn’t know if Flynn’s men had already found Milo’s school, his doctors, his friends, his routine. He didn’t know if eight years of running had finally caught up to them.
But he knew one thing with absolute certainty.
The Blackthorns had made a mistake.
They had threatened his son.
And there was nothing in this world—not the FBI, not the law, not the entire machinery of civilization—that would stop him from making them regret it.
His phone buzzed. He glanced down.
Freya’s text was short: *Lost the tail, heading to Gamma. But they know the car.*
He typed back: *Abandon it two blocks out. Walk through the field. Stay low.*
The reply came in a single word: *understood.*
Dorian took the exit ramp at speed, the sedan’s suspension groaning under the turn. Helena had her eyes closed, her lips moving silently—praying, perhaps. Or counting. Caden had never asked what she did when the fear became too much.
The sun was setting over the city, painting the sky in shades of amber and blood. Somewhere behind them, the Blackthorns were already walking out of a federal building, their lawyers smiling, their power intact. Somewhere ahead, a gas station that had been abandoned for twenty years held the only chance they had left.
The car hit a pothole, and in the ripple of impact, Caden’s phone slid across the seat.
It buzzed again.
He picked it up.
His blood stopped moving.
A photo of Milo’s school backpack—the one Milo had left in the decoy car. It was propped against a concrete wall, the familiar green canvas smudged with dirt, the zipper half-open. A child’s drawing was visible inside, the corner of a crayon sun peeking out.
Below it, three words.
**YOU CAN’T HIDE HIM.**