Blake ditched the rental car at a rest stop seventy miles east of Provo.
He'd driven through the afternoon with one eye on the mirror, waiting for the moment when police would figure out which car was his. The rest stop was a nondescript place—a bathroom, a vending machine, a parking lot with a dozen other vehicles. Blake parked in the middle of the lot, took his bag from the trunk, and walked into the men's room.
He'd learned this technique from Frank: always move during transitions. Always change vehicles in public spaces where surveillance cameras captured too many arrivals and departures simultaneously. Always assume you'd been identified but act as if you hadn't been.
Blake changed into different clothes—a blue polo shirt instead of the jacket he'd been wearing, khaki pants instead of jeans. He stuffed the old clothes into a gas station garbage can in the bathroom. He discarded the car keys in a different trash bin at a different rest stop five miles down the highway.
Then he hitchhiked.
A trucker named Dale picked him up after twenty minutes. Dale was heading to Nebraska and didn't ask questions. Blake sat in the cab and watched the landscape flatten as they drove east, listening to Dale talk about his ex-wife and his daughter and the general failure of his life to meet expectations.
"Sometimes I think about just disappearing," Dale was saying. "Just driving off into nowhere and becoming someone else."
Blake didn't respond. He was already someone else. The question was whether that someone else could survive long enough to finish what he'd started.By evening, Martinez's team had identified the abandoned rental car.
Inside, they found Blake's surveillance photos of James Patterson. They found maps with notations. They found a gun cleaning kit and ammunition boxes. They found nothing that explained where Blake was going.
"He's heading east," one of Martinez's agents suggested. "Back to his support network in Philadelphia."
"Or he's heading anywhere," Martinez replied. "The rental car could be a misdirection. He could be heading west, south, anywhere."
Martinez pulled up Blake's known contacts. His ex-wife—remarried, living in Maine, had a restraining order against him. His sister—living in Connecticut, hadn't spoken to him in fifteen years. His former colleagues at the university—scattered across the country, most of them dead to him professionally.
There was Vincent's operation in Philadelphia, but Vincent's people wouldn't harbor a federal fugitive. Too risky. Too visible.
"Run his finances," Martinez ordered. "Credit cards, bank accounts, anything. If he needs to survive, he needs money. Money leaves traces."
James sat in a hotel room that the FBI had arranged, in a building that had been swept for security.
Sarah was in the room across the hall. They'd been given federal protection—two agents stationed outside James's door, two more outside Sarah's. They were witnesses, they were told. They were also, implicitly, bait.
James understood what Martinez hadn't said directly: Blake might try again. Blake might know where the FBI would protect James. Blake might come for him anyway.
James had tried to call Emily in Idaho but the FBI had advised against it. "If Blake knows about Emily," Martinez had said, "we don't want to provide him with a roadmap to another target."
James had accepted this, but it meant Emily didn't know what had happened. It meant she didn't know that the man she'd once loved and been harmed by had tried to kill the man who'd destroyed him. It meant she was still in Idaho, innocent of the chaos that Blake's obsession had created.
Detective Jacy Perkins stood in the FBI command center looking at photographs of Officer Smith White.
White had been a friend. Not a close friend, but the kind of friend you made in law enforcement—someone you understood because you'd shared the same world. White had been a good cop. The kind who showed up and did the work and didn't expect recognition for it.
Now he was dead because Blake had decided that James Patterson deserved to die more than White deserved to live.
"We'll find him," Martinez said, perhaps noticing Perkins' expression. "It's just a matter of time."
"Is it?" Perkins asked. "He's had a head start. He has resources we don't understand. He has a support network we haven't identified. He also has nothing to lose anymore. He killed a federal officer. He's looking at life in prison or death by cop. That makes him extremely dangerous."
Martinez didn't dispute this. She already knew it was true.
On the second day after the shooting, Blake reached Philadelphia.
He didn't go to Vincent. Instead, he went to a motel in a part of the city where people didn't ask questions and cash was currency. He paid for a week in advance and locked himself in room 14, watching the news on a small television.
His face was on the screen. A federal warrant. A description. A plea for information. The news anchors discussed Officer White's family—his wife, his children, his colleagues. They discussed the "shocking act of violence" and the "ongoing manhunt."
Blake listened to it all without emotion. He'd already accepted that Officer White was dead because of him. He'd already accepted that he was now a fugitive. He'd already accepted that the next steps would be harder, more violent, more desperate.
But he'd also accepted something else: he could still reach James. James wasn't safe in FBI protection because FBI protection assumed a rational threat. Blake wasn't rational anymore. Blake had transcended rationality into something purer—obsession converted to action, hate converted to purpose.
Blake pulled out a burner phone—something Frank had taught him how to use—and made a call to a number he'd memorized.
Vincent answered on the second ring.
"I need to disappear," Blake said.
"You're too hot," Vincent replied. "Federal heat. I can't help you."
"I don't need help disappearing," Blake said. "I need help with something else."
"What?"
"I need to know where James Patterson is being held. And I need to know how to get to him."
There was a long silence on the other end of the line. Then Vincent said: "You're making a mistake."
"I know," Blake said. "But I'm making it anyway."
Vincent hung up.
Blake set the phone down and understood that he was truly alone now. Vincent had cut him off. The operation had abandoned him. He had no network, no support, no safety net.
He had only his obsession.
Blake sat in the dark motel room and thought about the next steps. He thought about James Patterson protected by federal agents. He thought about how to penetrate that protection. He thought about the cost of continuing versus the cost of stopping.
There was no stopping. Blake had already accepted that when he'd pulled the trigger in the breakfast room. He'd accepted it the moment he'd decided to pursue James across the country. He'd accepted it the moment he'd walked out of prison with nothing but hate and time.
Outside, Philadelphia moved through the night. Somewhere to the west, in a FBI-protected hotel room, James Patterson was probably awake, probably terrified, probably wondering if Blake was coming for him.
Blake smiled. Let him be terrified. Terror was a form of attention. Terror meant James was thinking about Blake. Terror meant Blake had won something fundamental—the ability to shape James's reality through fear.
The hunt wasn't over. It was just entering a new phase.
And Blake was patient. Blake had time. Blake had nothing left but this.