The hospital called and said a little boy had listed me as his emergency contact. I laughed nervously and said, “That’s impossible

At 5:00 a.m., the secure landline in the cabin rang with a sharp, piercing jolt that echoed through the quiet rooms.

I bolted upright from the sofa where I’d been dozing, snatched the receiver, and pressed it to my ear.

"Hayes," the agent’s voice crackled through the static-filled line. His tone was laced with urgent panic. "Nora, listen to me very carefully. Our cyber-unit just intercepted a communication ping from a burner cell tower near Hood River. They’ve located the cabin."

My blood ran cold. "How? We were completely off the grid!"

"One of Arthur’s associates turned informant late last night," Hayes said rapidly. "They didn't track your phone; they tracked the rental vehicle registration used by the safehouse detail. You have less than twenty minutes before extraction teams arrive. Pack your bags—"

"Agent Hayes," I interrupted, my voice dropping into a calm, resolute register that surprised even myself. "I know where she is."

There was a dead silence on the other end of the line. "What did you say?"

"The micro-SD card," I said quickly. "The transaction codes aren't just shell company accounts. They're coordinates. Cape Horn Historical Reserve. The old lighthouse on the cliff."

"Nora, that’s an active federal investigation zone," Hayes warned. "If Arthur’s men are hunting her, that’s where they’ll go. It's too dangerous—"

"It's where she went to hide the physical hard drives," I countered fiercely. "If we wait for extraction, we might be too late. Send your tactical backup to Cape Horn right now. We're heading there."

Before Hayes could argue further, I slammed the receiver down onto the cradle.

I rushed into the bedroom, shaking Oliver gently awake. "Get up, buddy. We're going on a road trip."

Ten minutes later, we loaded into Agent Hayes’s federal SUV parked outside the cabin—which had thankfully been left with its keys in the ignition for emergency transport. I jammed the gear shift into drive, tires kicking up gravel as we tore down the winding logging road just as the first faint rumblings of approaching vehicles echoed from the valley below.

The drive down Highway 14 through the Columbia River Gorge was a breathtaking, terrifying blur of sheer cliff faces on one side and the churning gray waters of the river on the other.

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