Page 47 of Rogue Hope
Thin wires, copper, encased in clear plastic or silicone stretching across the path they’d been about to take. The copper blended into the earth-toned concrete floor. With the dust and debris, he almost hadn’t noticed.
He crouched down, signaling Zara to remain still. The wire bisected the room, disappearing behind a sagging particleboard bookcase.
“We need a drone in here ASAP,” Zara ordered over comms. “Suspicious wire. Might be energized.”
“Drone in flight,” Deke responded instantly. “ETA thirty seconds.”
“Good idea,” Finn acknowledged. He was too used to winging things. Running on adrenaline and brainpower and little else.
While they waited for the tiny electronic scout, he tiptoed along the line, following it to its source at the base of the far wall. Frayed ends curled skyward.
He exhaled slowly. “False alarm. Old speaker wire.”
The tiny drone zipped silently overhead, dipping close and hovering before flying back out the window.
“We concur,” Ronan announced in Finn’s ear. “Old-school speaker wire. You’re good to continue.”
Finn straightened, meeting Zara’s irritated gaze. He shrugged. “I haven’t seen tech that old in years. It’s from the eighties. Maybe older. Better safe than sorry.”
She didn’t respond verbally, but her expression spoke volumes—part annoyance, part grudging acknowledgment of his caution. They resumed their search, moving in tandem across the dining area, checking under tables and behind the bar.
“Perimeter remains secure,” Griffin updated through their earbuds. “No movement in the vicinity.”
“Vehicle standing by,” Axel confirmed again. “All quiet on the eastern approach.”
“Thermal scans still negative,” Deke added. “No heat signatures detected inside or within thirty meters of your position.”
Each reassurance from the team should have eased Finn’s tension, but instead, it heightened it. Years of fieldwork had taught him that when things appeared this clean, they rarely were.
They moved toward the narrow hallway at the back of the space. A small office sat at the end of the corridor, its door ajar. Inside, a dust-covered desk held nothing but scattered papers. A filing cabinet stood with drawers partially opened, apparently emptied in haste.
The entry to the safehouse would be there somewhere.
Finn moved back into the hallway, something about the office’s condition triggering his suspicion. If this truly had been an active safehouse, even a rarely used one, basic maintenance protocols would ensure it didn’t look this abandoned. The dust layer was too thick, the neglect too thorough, even for CIA spooks.
“Hang tight,” he ordered Zara.
Her mouth opened, but whatever protest she planned to make, she kept to herself.
He made his way back toward the kitchen, scanning more carefully now, looking for anything that didn’t match the overall pattern of abandonment. As he pushed through the swinging doors again, something caught his eye—a slight irregularity in the dust pattern near the industrial shelving unit against the far wall.
Moving closer, he noticed what had triggered his attention: a relatively clean rectangular outline on the floor, as if something had been placed there recently. Most people wouldn’t have noticed. Neither Zara nor her team noted it.
If his brain weren’t so finely-tuned to patterns of every kind, he wouldn’t have either. He craned his neck, leaning his cheek against the wall to see the back of the shelving unit.
And there it was, a cardboard box tucked behind rusting metal containers. Unlike everything else in the room, the box was new.
The incongruity set off immediate alarm bells. He rose up on his tiptoes and edged closer. Through a gap in the box’s lid, he caught the distinct rhythmic blinking of tiny LED lights.
Recognition hit him like a physical blow. “IED!” he shouted into his comm, already turning to race back through the swinging doors. “Clear the area! Zara, get down!”
He burst into the dining area, eyes locking on Zara’s position across the room. She had turned at his shout, expression shifting from confusion to alarm in an instant.
The distance between them felt impossible to cross in time.
Three strides. Two. One.
Please, Lord, keep her safe.
