Ty stared at Evelyn like the man had just admitted to setting the fire and forgetting to mention it.
"What do you mean, any of us."
Evelyn didn't answer right away. He hit the back of the front seat twice with his fist.
"Take the river road. No main lights."
The driver grunted once. The SUV cut hard right. Everybody slammed sideways again.
Marlon made a low sound through his teeth.
Ty caught him before his head hit the glass. "Stay with me."
"I am," Marlon said, which would've been more convincing if his eyes weren't going soft around the edges.
Jadah had one hand braced against the door and the other crushed against her own mouth like she was holding something in by force. Her lashes were wet. She looked furious about that too.
Isaac sat forward a little, ribs screaming, shoulder throbbing hot and stupid, and kept his eyes on Evelyn.
"What do you mean."
Evelyn looked at him this time.
"Your mother kept you outside it."
"Outside what."
"This."
Isaac almost laughed.
The sound came out ugly. "You think naming it after the fact helps."
Evelyn ignored that. "She was supposed to hand me the drive before dark. She never made the meet."
The whole car went still in a new way.
Ty blinked. "Meet."
"Yes."
"That sounds criminal."
"Yes," Evelyn said again.
Ty looked personally offended by how often that kept being the answer.
Isaac's voice dropped. "You sent her there."
"No."
"Then why was she there."
Evelyn held his stare for a second too long.
"Because she knew they were on her."
That landed like a brick through glass.
Jadah turned her head slowly. "They were chasing his mother."
"They were tracking what she took."
"Took from who," Ty snapped.
Evelyn's jaw flexed once. "Men who don't call the police when something goes missing."
"That does not narrow it down at all."
"It's enough for tonight."
"No," Isaac said. "It's not."
The SUV flew through a yellow light that should've been red already. Horns barked behind them. The driver didn't care.
Evelyn leaned forward and rapped his knuckles on the seat again. "Check rear."
The man in the front passenger seat twisted, looked through the back window, then the side mirror.
"Nothing clean yet."
Yet.
Isaac heard it. So did everyone else.
Ty shook his head once. "I hate this car."
Marlon's head dipped. Ty slapped his cheek lightly, then harder when he didn't like the response.
"Hey."
"I'm awake," Marlon muttered.
"Prove it."
"Your breath smells like stress."
Ty almost cried from relief and rage at the same time. "Great. Good. Perfect. Keep being rude."
Evelyn reached across without asking and pressed two fingers to the side of Marlon's neck, checking pulse like he had the right.
Isaac wanted to hit him again.
Instead he said, "The man at my building. The one in the sedan. Who was he."
Evelyn's eyes flicked to him.
"He came himself?"
"Yes."
That bothered him. Good.
Evelyn looked away and rubbed once at the back of his neck. First uncertain thing Isaac had seen from him all night.
"That means they were still guessing."
"About what?" Jadah said.
"Whether she gave it to me," Evelyn said. "Whether she hid it in the house. Whether she'd hand it to him. Whether he'd panic and lead them to it."
Isaac went still.
"They used me."
"Yes."
The word came out flat and clean.
No sugar. No apology.
That was somehow worse than if he'd lied.
Ty stared at Isaac. "Bro."
Isaac didn't look at him.
His mother dead on the hallway floor. Her hand locked around that drive until death had to pry it loose. The note. The photo. The porch light. The bag on the old house.
They'd tugged him through the city like a hook in meat.
His voice thinned. "And you knew they'd do that."
"I knew it was possible."
"You still let her carry it."
At that, something sharp cut across Evelyn's face.
"Don't do that."
Isaac leaned forward. "Do what."
"Talk like I put it in her hand."
The car went quiet again.
Even Ty shut up.
Isaac looked at him and saw it then, under all the control and the commands and the dead-eyed competence.
Not guilt exactly.
Something worse.
History.
"She chose," Evelyn said. "Like she always did."
Jadah stared between them. "Who are you to her."
Evelyn looked at the dark window instead of her. "Wrong question."
"Then give me a right one."
The front passenger turned halfway around. "Silver sedan, two cars back. Been with us six blocks."
Everybody snapped toward the rear window.
Isaac saw headlights weaving through traffic, nothing more. Normal enough to be any stranger. Which meant nothing now.
The driver said, "I can lose them."
"You can try," Evelyn said.
Ty swore under his breath. "Cool. Love that wording."
Evelyn held out his hand. "Phones."
Nobody moved.
He looked at Jadah first. "Now."
She laughed once. Thin. Shocky. "You're out of your mind if you think I'm handing my phone to a stranger in a moving car."
Evelyn leaned in before anyone could breathe.
"You are already in a moving car with strangers because somebody gutted a woman upstairs and sent her son the picture. Give me the phone."
That did it.
Jadah yanked it from her hoodie pocket and slapped it into his palm.
Ty followed half a second later, muttering, "This is kidnapping-adjacent."
Evelyn took Marlon's from his front pocket while Ty kept pressure on the wounds. Then he looked at Isaac.
"Yours is off."
"I know."
"Good."
He passed the phones up front. The passenger pulled a thick gray pouch from under the seat and dropped them inside one by one.
Jadah saw that and went colder. "What is that."
"Something your phone should've been in an hour ago," Evelyn said.
Ty frowned. "I'm not getting that back, am I."
"No."
"That is theft."
"No," Jadah said, eyes still on the pouch. "That's fear."
The sedan behind them sped up.
Not enough to be stupid. Enough to stop pretending.
The driver swore. "They clocked us."
Evelyn hit the seat again. "Left. Then cut under."
The SUV jerked hard down a side street lined with shuttered shops and chain-link lots. Tires squealed. Marlon's head rolled against the seat and stayed there too long.
Ty's voice cracked. "Marlon."
Isaac moved before he thought.
He slid across the seat, got one hand behind Marlon's neck, the other pressing the wrapped forearm tighter when fresh blood soaked through.
Marlon's eyes fluttered open.
"There he is," Ty said, almost savage with relief. "Don't you do that."
"Do what."
"Die to inconvenience me."
"Trying not to."
"Try harder."
Isaac kept pressure on the arm and looked up.
"Tell me what's on the drive."
Evelyn looked at the pocket in Isaac's shorts.
Then at Isaac's face.
"Enough."
"That's not an answer."
"It's the only one you need until we stop moving."
"Wrong," Isaac said. "My mother is dead. I need all of them."
For a second it looked like Evelyn might actually say it.
Then the passenger twisted in his seat.
"Second vehicle ahead."
Everybody looked front.
At the next intersection, a dark shape rolled slow across the lane and stopped just enough wrong to not be traffic.
Dark gray.
Tinted.
The sedan.
The driver cursed and yanked the wheel. The SUV hopped the curb so hard Jadah cried out and Ty slammed shoulder-first into the door. Gravel and weeds spat under the tires as they cut through the edge of an empty lot and back onto pavement.
The gray sedan turned with them.
Not fast.
Ready.
"They knew the route," the driver said.
That sentence sucked all the air out of the car.
Evelyn's face went blank in a dangerous way. He looked at the passenger. The passenger looked back once.
No words.
Enough.
Ty saw it anyway. "Why are y'all looking at each other like that."
No answer.
Jadah's voice went thin. "Did somebody sell the route?"
"Quiet," Evelyn snapped.
"No," she snapped right back. "No, you dragged us out of a dead woman's house and now another car is magically in front of us and I want an actual answer."
The passenger said, "Box in thirty seconds."
The gray sedan ahead slowed.
Another set of headlights appeared in the rear mirror.
Closing.
Ty twisted around and saw them too. "Oh, come on."
The SUV was suddenly too small for the amount of fear in it.
Marlon lifted his head a fraction. "Glove box."
The driver blinked. "What."
"Your left," Marlon said, voice barely there. "Open it."
The driver did.
Inside was a compact black pistol and a folded paper map.
Ty stared. "Everybody in this car is deeply unserious."
Marlon ignored him, eyes on the windshield now. More awake for one brutal second than he'd been since the house.
"To the right," he said. "There's an alley after the laundromat. Too narrow for both."
The driver frowned. "You know this area?"
Marlon gave the ghost of a smile. "I know bad neighborhoods with bad planning."
The gray sedan ahead started angling.
Closing the street.
The rear vehicle sped up.
Boxing them.
Evelyn looked at the driver. "Do it."
The laundromat sign flashed by in dead blue neon.
The alley came up fast and mean, barely wider than the SUV, half blocked by dumpsters and a bent delivery gate.
The driver wrenched the wheel.
Metal screamed.
Side mirror shattered off.
Everybody got thrown hard enough to bruise.
The SUV knifed into the alley anyway.
For one second it felt like they'd made it.
Then headlights flared white at the far end.
Another car.
Already waiting.
Ty made a strangled, furious sound. "Are you kidding me."
The driver hit the brakes so hard everybody pitched forward.
Not enough room to stop clean.
Not enough room to turn.
Across from Isaac, Evelyn had already gone for the door.
And in the flash of those oncoming lights, Isaac saw the one thing that made his blood go colder than his mother's empty wrist.
The man getting out of the car ahead wasn't the bearded one.
It was the driver from the sedan.
And he was smiling like he finally knew exactly which pocket to cut.