Page 49 of Travis
I’d known the question was coming.
“About a year after Naomi died, I was monitoring old feeds I shouldn’t have still had access to. Kindt’s pipeline. The same corridor you and I have been working on together.” I grimaced while she placed the fourth stitch. “Maude flagged movement on a route I recognized. A van heading to a holding location, and the thermal imaging showed heat signatures inside. Three of them were too small to be adults.”
Her hand stopped. Then she placed the next stitch.
“I threw up in my driveway before I left the house. My body rejected the idea of leaving so hard that I almost went back inside.” I stared at the far wall. “I didn’t go back inside.”
“You went alone.”
“There was no one else and no time. If I’d waited for the proper channels, those kids would have disappeared.”
“So you just went.”
“I just went.”
She tied off the last stitch. Set the needle down. Her hands were down at her sides, and she was looking at the closed wound on my shoulder, but her focus was somewhere else.
“How many times have you done this, Travis?”
“I don’t keep exact track.”
“Ballpark.”
“Does it matter?”
She looked at me for a long moment. Then she turned to the ceiling.
“Maude. How often does he do this?”
Silence. Maude was electronically gagged. Sera raised an eyebrow at me.
I let out a tired sigh. “Go ahead, Maude.”
“He’s averaged one operation every eight to twelve days since starting eighteen months ago, with the longest gap being twenty-three days following a mission in April that resulted in a dislocated shoulder and two fractured ribs. This week he’s gone on three missions, but honestly, I think that has to do with you.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Tell me the rest.”
“He has self-administered sutures on fourteen occasions,” Maude continued, probably thrilled to be able to finally gab. “He has treated his own fractures three times, two of which should have received professional medical attention. His pre-mission stress response has worsened progressively. Average pre-departure heart rate six months ago was ninety-eight. Current average is one-twelve.”
Shit. She was making me sound like I was on death’s door. “Maude…”
“His weight has decreased by eleven pounds since the missions began. His sleep patterns have deteriorated. He has not once, in eighteen months, allowed me to contact anyone for assistance, medical or otherwise.”
“Enough, Maude.”
“It is nowhere near enough,” Maude said. “But it’s a start.”
The control room was quiet. The servers hummed. The screens cycled. I sat, stripped to the waist, under the lights with fresh sutures in my shoulder and eighteen months of damage visible on my body.
“So what happens now?” Sera asked. Her voice was calm. Too calm. It was the voice of a woman who’d already decided something and was waiting for me to catch up.
“Nothing changes for you. You’re here because Kindt wants you dead. Because your apartment is burned and you need a safe place to build your case. That’s what this is. I’m not dragging you into the rest of it.”
“You didn’t drag me anywhere. I found it myself. I’m in this whether you like it or not.”
“Sera. You work for the FBI.”
“The FBI doesn’t know the Ghost exists. They are trying to come at Kindt from traditional means and are too stupid to see that isn’t working. The only place you exist is in Kindt’s internal communications, and the FBI doesn’t have access to those.” She leaned forward.
