I have eyes on them.

Both of them, still on board.” A pause.

“Understood, Mr.

Dax.” Dax. Dax Ashgrave was Porter’s younger brother.

For one wild moment I did the math of fleeing — wake Cody, grab the bag, vanish into the anonymity of a highway plaza, be home in Baltimore by dark.

But I had a sleeping nine-year-old, a single overnight bag, and a phone I now had to assume Dax could see; I had no car and no proof of anything but a whispered warning and a torn note.

And under the practical impossibility sat a colder fact: if this was what the stranger said it was, running home only meant being found at home, where there were no witnesses and no one watching.