Behind us, Voss was already barking orders into a handheld radio.

“Are you hurt?” Mara asked, checking her rearview mirror as we hit the highway.

“No,” I breathed, my hands shaking.

I looked down at the portable monitor in my lap.

A small red power light on the side of the casing began to blink.

The screen flickered to life.

My father’s face appeared in a grainy, low-resolution recording, his eyes staring directly into the lens.

The rain lashed against the windshield as Mara pushed the sedan down a narrow, unlit county road.

Beside me, the portable monitor screen hummed with low static.

My father’s face remained frozen in the grainy frame, his jaw tight and his eyes fixed on the camera.

“Where are we going?” I asked, gripping the edges of the plastic casing.

“An old safehouse,” Mara said, her eyes scanning the dark tree line in the rearview mirror. “We’ll be off the grid in five minutes.”

She turned the car down a gravel driveway overgrown with weeds and low-hanging branches.

A small, gray-shingled cabin emerged from the wet gloom.