DAX POV
The drive back to Lexington had felt like a slow, grinding inevitability, even though the GPS had promised it was the fastest route. The air in the car was thick with tension, the kind you couldn’t ignore no matter how many times Henry cracked a joke or Maria softly hummed along to the music.
We had agreed unanimously to leave the motel behind. Staying meant giving Steve the chance to come to us, and I wasn’t about to risk Maria’s safety just to feel like we had some semblance of control. If Steve wanted her, he’d have to go through me, through us, on our turf, where we could predict his moves and prepare.
But that was the problem. Predicting him wasn’t easy, and it gnawed at me like an unsolvable equation. I’d been replaying every interaction, every piece of intel, every sl
