Pierce Ridge slipped away from the circle with the controlled casualness of someone who didn't want the movement to look like retreat. He pulled his phone from his jacket and dialed Uriah Wells with his back turned to Buck Tanner, his voice dropped to the register people used when they were sharing information they didn't want overheard."Boss," Pierce said. "I'm at my father's place. There's a man here claiming to be Buck Tanner. One of Aron Jackson's five tiger generals."The silence on the other end lasted three seconds."Claiming to be Buck Tanner," Uriah Wells repeated. His voice was careful. "I saw Buck Tanner at Aron Jackson's meeting less than an hour ago. He was assigned a specific task. A task that should take him to the eastern district for the rest of the afternoon.""You're sure?" Pierce pressed."I watched Jackson give him the assignment personally," Uriah replied. "There's no way he finished it this quickly. And men of his rank don't show up on residential streets to co

Quinn noticed it first.North Lake Road at this hour should have had the ordinary resistance of a city moving through its afternoon. Other vehicles. Traffic rhythm. The small interruptions of urban movement that accumulated into background noise so consistent people stopped hearing it.The road ahead was empty. The road behind was empty."Cosmo," Quinn said. Her voice was quiet. "How long has it been since we passed another vehicle?"Cosmo's eyes moved to the rearview mirror with the sharp focus of someone recalibrating. She had been running her standard surveillance, tracking tails, suspicious vehicles, repeat faces in adjacent lanes. She had not been watching the road itself as a variable.The realization arrived like cold water finding skin."Contact the network," Cosmo said immediately. "Now."Quinn already had her phone out. The call connected in two rings and the report came back fast, faster than comfortable, which meant the information had already been assembled before they as