Chapter 2 - The Long Drive West
The drainage tunnel smelled like rot and standing water. My dress shoes slipped on the slimy concrete as I ran, the beam of my phone’s flashlight bobbing wildly ahead of me. Behind me, I heard more gunshots — sharp, staccato bursts that echoed off the walls — followed by the sound of metal tearing as someone slammed into the storage unit’s roll-up door. I didn’t look back. I just ran, my breath coming in ragged gasps, until the tunnel sloped upward and I saw a faint glimmer of moonlight ahead.
I burst out of a culvert half a mile west, just as Voss had said, landing hard in the overgrown grass behind the boarded-up diner my father had taken me to for burgers when I was a kid. The place had been closed for a decade. Now it looked like a set from a horror movie, its windows cracked, its parking lot cracked and choked with weeds.
My car was still at the storage facility. I patted my pockets, my hands shaking. Phone. Wallet. The brass key. The laptop case was still slung over my shoulder, its hard shell digging into my back. I had enough cash in my wallet for a cab, maybe, but I didn’t dare call one. If Vandenberg’s men were watching the storage facility, they’d be watching the roads too.
I thought of Voss. Of the gunshots. I had no way of knowing if she was alive.
I pulled out my phone. Seventeen missed calls. Twelve from my mother. Three from Celeste. Two from numbers I didn’t recognize. A dozen new texts, most from my mother, all variations on the same theme: Where are you? Come home. We need to talk. Julian, answer me.
I opened the laptop case, flipped open the device, and entered the password again. The home screen loaded, and as promised, an address glowed in the center: 1429 HEMLOCK RIDGE ROAD, POCONO MANOR, PA. Below it, a note: Two hours west. Stay off interstates. Take back roads only. Car is parked at the diner. Keys under the third step by the back door.
I stared at it. My father. Even now, even when he was supposed to be dead, he was three steps ahead.
I circled the diner, staying low in the shadows, until I found the back door. Three rotting wooden steps led up to it. I knelt, felt under the third one, and my fingers closed around a set of keys on a leather fob. The fob had a tiny engraving: FOR WHEN YOU NEED TO RUN.
Parked behind a rusted dumpster, its dark paint blending into the night, was a beat-up 2018 Ford F-150. It looked like every other contractor’s truck in northern New Jersey — unremarkable, invisible. I unlocked it, slid behind the wheel, and turned the key. The engine purred to life, quiet and steady. The gas gauge read full.
I pulled out onto the side road, heading west, and didn’t turn on the headlights until I was a mile away from the diner.
The drive to Pennsylvania took longer than two hours. I stuck to two-lane state roads, winding through small towns where the only light came from all-night convenience stores and the occasional porch lamp. Every set of headlights behind me made my grip on the wheel tighten. Every time I passed a police car, my heart hammered against my ribs. I kept expecting to see those black SUVs in my rearview mirror, kept expecting to hear sirens.
But the road stayed empty.
I drove in silence for the first hour, my mind replaying everything that had happened since the gravedigger grabbed my arm. The empty coffin. The key. Voss with her badge and her gun. The laptop heavy on the passenger seat beside me, holding enough evidence to take down a crime family. My father — my quiet, cardigan-wearing, golf-watching father — as a deep-cover FBI operative who’d spent half his life lying to everyone he loved.
I thought of the day he’d taught me to ride a bike. Of the way he’d cried at my wedding. Of how he’d held my daughter when she was born, his hands so gentle you’d never know they’d held a gun. Were those moments real? Or had they just been part of the cover?
I reached for my phone, then pulled my hand back as if it had burned me. Voss had been clear: Do not call anyone. But Celeste. My kids. They were at home, probably wondering where I was, probably scared. My mother was there too. The text she’d sent at the cemetery — Come home alone — kept playing in my head. It wasn’t like her. It was cold. Demanding.
What if Vandenberg’s men were already at the house? What if they had my family?
I gripped the wheel until my knuckles turned white. I couldn’t go back. Not yet. If I did, I’d be walking into a trap, and then the laptop would fall into Vandenberg’s hands, and everything my father had risked — everything he’d faked his death for — would be for nothing. My family would be in more danger, not less.
I had to trust that Voss’s team was watching them. She’d said they had protection in place. I had to believe her.
I reached the Poconos around midnight. The roads grew narrower, winding up into the mountains, the trees closing in on either side like dark walls. Snow dusted the shoulders — it was late October, cold enough that the ground was hard beneath the grass. I followed the GPS on the laptop, which had come alive with turn-by-turn directions, until I turned onto Hemlock Ridge Road.
It was a dirt track, rutted and bumpy, leading deep into the woods. I drove slowly, the truck’s high beams cutting through the darkness, until I saw it: a small, isolated cabin, its windows dark, a single light glowing on the front porch. A stone chimney rose from the roof, thin tendrils of smoke curling into the night air.
Someone was home.
I parked the truck behind a stand of trees, grabbed the laptop case, and approached the cabin on foot, staying in the shadows. My heart was pounding. Voss had said it was a safe house, but how could I be sure? What if Vandenberg’s men had gotten here first? What if —
The front door opened.
Light spilled out onto the porch, and a man stepped into the glow. He was older than he’d been in the photos I’d grown up with, his hair grayer, his face lined with deep creases around the eyes and mouth. He wore flannel and jeans, work boots on his feet. But the way he held himself — straight, alert, his eyes scanning the treeline — was nothing like the father I’d known.
He saw me. His face broke into a smile that was equal parts relief and sorrow.
“Hey, kiddo,” Raymond Mercer said. “Took you long enough.”
I froze. The laptop case slipped in my hand. For a second, I couldn’t breathe. He was supposed to be dead. I’d watched them lower a coffin into the ground. I’d grieved him.
And here he was. Alive. Standing on the porch of a cabin in the middle of the woods, like he’d just stepped out to get the mail.
“You,” I said. My voice cracked. “You’re — you’re alive.”
“For now,” he said. He held up his hands, as if calming a spooked horse. “I know you have questions. God, do you have questions. But you need to come inside. It’s not safe out here. They’re tracking the laptop’s signal — we’ve got maybe ten minutes before they zero in on this location.”
He stepped aside, gesturing me in. “Come on, Julian. We’ve got a lot to talk about. And not much time to do it.”
May you like
I looked at him — at the man who’d been my father, at the stranger who’d just turned my entire life upside down — and then I looked back at the dark road behind me. Somewhere out there, men with guns were hunting me. Hunting us.
I stepped onto the porch and walked past him into the cabin.
