So close. So fucking close!

Yael Brooks was one lucky bitch. He sloshed through the stream, biting back a curse as the frigid water flooded his shoes. Then he sprinted across a field on the other side, crunching through grass stiff with frost. He placed the rifle in the footwell of the passenger side of the vehicle and covered it with a blanket. He slipped the handgun onto the seat, out of sight but within easy reach.

Adrenaline had his heart hammering and he started the engine of the secondhand Subaru he’d bought in a private sale off some unsuspecting yahoo yesterday.

He drove for a while and pulled over when he was positive he hadn’t been followed.

He unzipped his jacket and pulled out the framed photograph of Yael Brooks and her family from when she was a kid. He captured the image with a cell and did a quick reverse image search.

After nothing but frustration when trying to track down this woman’s real identity over the last two weeks he was suddenly overwhelmed by the plethora of hits. Not on Yael, who looked a lot younger in the photo, but on her parents, the brother.

His hands shook.

Her brother Richie had killed twelve people in cold blood. He laughed, incredulous. Hell, she’d been tried as an accessory but managed to get off.

Anger burned through him. Why did some people sail through life without any consequences sticking to them while others—including himself—never caught a break?

As a teen he’d hacked into the Defense Intelligence Agency and posted about the vulnerability online trying to earn a little money while giving the feds a heads up that they needed to fix a potential problem. He’d ended up in prison being beaten and abused, disowned by his own parents. Didn’t matter he’d screamed for help so much he’d lost his voice. Didn’t matter how many times he appealed to his lawyer or the warden for help.

No one had heard his screams. No one had paid attention.

He’d been ignored. Hell, his parents had immigrated to the Caribbean but he was hoping for a reunion in the not-too-distant future.

The assaults had only stopped when one of the boys had died, but he hadn’t forgotten and he hadn’t forgiven.

Should he drive to his house and pick up his hardware wallets? But the FBI still didn’t know who he was, let alone where he lived. The information was buried so deep it would take a front loader to uncover. Even if cops did figure out his identity and searched the house, they wouldn’t find his secret room. He had at least a million on him and another million tied up and unconscious in the trunk.