Their shack on Gatun Lake was little more than four walls and a tin roof, but for the first time they felt they were truly off the grid.

  On that first night after raiding the GCP combat outpost, Sawyer sat and listened to the water lap against the stilts while Cormac stripped and cleaned his rifle on the kitchen counter. They’d asked Bradford to keep an eye on the skies. He also made it known that while Project Black Ledger was important, he reminded them that the Panama territory fell under the U.S. Southern Command and all aerial assets were being used by the special operations unit in the region, SOCSOUTH, who focused their efforts on counter insurgency. Needless to say, it was likely they wouldn’t be lending their assets to Project Black Ledger anytime soon and so their safety fell on their shoulders.

  As they cleaned their gear and loaded their guns, a few police cruisers had passed by their shack but they never stopped. They weren’t sure if that was good or bad.

  By the third evening after sundown, they were fairly certain the GCP hadn’t tagged their location and so they decided to move on to the next phase of their operation.

  They hit the market in the next town over. They bought civilian clothes: cheap polos, faded jeans, ballcaps, and knockoff Ray-Bans. Cormac moved like a tourist and Sawyer kept his head low with his hat brim pulled down.

  On that dark night lit by the town lights, they split the city into quadrants and tagged ideal locations to acquire informants. They visited downtown, warehouse sectors, underpasses, alleyways, the red light district, and any other place they could think of to interview and acquire assets who would act as their eyes and ears. They gave each of their assets a burner phone with two numbers: one linking to a cellphone that Sawyer and Cormac kept and one linking to one of Braford’s burner phones. Sawyer told the informants that if they ever received a call they better answer or the cash would stop flowing. Each informant’s task was simple: find Ashley and tell them her whereabouts the moment they knew.

  They never revealed that Ashley was CIA, only a lost friend. They hoped their plan would work because they had to find her to retrieve the Black Ledger and continue their father’s mission, but they weren’t stupid enough to break her cover and put her life at risk. Deep down, Sawyer believed that if she really was trying to find a way to reverse her vampirism like she claimed then he could use that information.

  Over the next week, they didn’t have much luck. They received several tips, but after following each of their informant’s leads they realized that all of the girls who were tagged merely looked like Ashley but were not her.

  From then on, Sawyer and Cormac spent most of their time trowling the city themselves. Cormac searched during the day shift, cruising around in a battered cab mostly through the industrial arteries of Colón and Panama City. Sawyer owned the night. He fleeted from spot to spot, a blur to the public. He avoided cameras and moved from shadow to shadow.

  When the hunger gnawed at him, he slipped into the mercado and bought blood bags from the lady in the tent. When his cash ran low he scouted ATMs on the corner for GCP or rich tourists seeking an hour at the brothel. They were easy targets. He caught them in alleys and wore a ski mask as he robbed them, taking their wallets and phones. He always tied their hands behind their back and gagged their mouths, then fleeted away. The process took only minutes. If they could shout, what would they even say?

  After every night of searching for Ashley, they compared notes back inside the shack on Gatun Lake. The ritual was the same. They placed maps on the table and sipped on beer. They spoke with Bradford only when there was intelligence worth sharing, which involved following leads on girls who ultimately were not Ashley.

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  One night, they checked the Puerto de Cruceros Abandonado as midnight approached. It was the next creepy place among many on their growing list of places Ashley might have visited. Puerto de Cruceros was an old cruise terminal hunched over the water. Half of its windows were shattered. Midnight hustlers hung out and snorted cocaine, rolled dice, played cards, and planned kidnappings with the cartels.

  After sneaking inside the facility, dressed in dark clothing, they passed by street girls who watched the dark crashing tide alongside their man of the night. Black market vendors whispered about special cargo and incoming shipments without revealing specifics, never revealing for whom the packages were for. As they stalked the grounds, they never heard the name BlackDiamond, let alone Ashley Cross, but they both believed the people there were more entwined in Harland’s operations than they could prove. While Sawyer and Cormac fished for answers, they were surprised to find that nobody there accepted their cash and one guy even spat in Sawyer’s face. It took everything inside of him not to rip him off the ground and bleed him out in front of everyone. It was clear they weren’t going to get any solid information there at Puerto de Cruceros Abandonado.

  The night after, they visited a docked freighter turned brothel. The whole ship smelled like diesel and sweat. The girls were from half a dozen different countries, many from Russia. In the narrow halls, they heard the creaking bedframes and muffled arguments in languages neither of them spoke. A few of the dockworkers took their money and promised they would ‘keep their ears open’ for Ashley, but their eyes were filled with deception and they ultimately couldn’t be trusted.

  According to one informant, Casco Viejo was supposed to be a safer bet. The rooftop bars were clean, loud, and filled with the kind of trash who extorted local businesses and ‘made them pay’ if they didn’t offer protection money. The individuals there were wealthy, hidden amongst the surrounding dredges. There, they spoke with a couple of offshore bankers and lawyers whose smiles died the moment they brought up the name Harland Morrow. After that, they didn’t talk much. And they definitely never saw Ashley.

  Fear hung in the air and clung to the words of their conversations with the Panamanian locals.

  Everyone made it clear they wanted nothing to do with Harland Morrow and nothing to do with BlackDiamond. The streets were poisoned by the deep fear that BlackDiamond encapsulated the country with. Many believed that if they spoke ill of Harland that he would curse them and their family to die.

  By the end of the week, one thing was obvious. Harland Morrow knew more people than they initially realized. They feared him and most of them worked for him in some way. Nobody breathed a word about the Reaper tech either and looked puzzled when they tried vaguely describing it, never letting the word Reaper be said aloud. Either nobody knew a thing about it or nobody took the bait.

  The stories they heard were bad, stories about water poisonings that BlackDiamond used to wipe out entire neighborhoods for unknown reasons. Some believed it involved betrayal. They also heard stories about disappearances near the ports, mostly women and kids gone without a trace. They heard about murders disguised as accidents to clear the way for business deals. None of it was proven or even investigated by the local police; but it was all spoken about in the same low and reluctant tone that said proof didn’t matter because everyone in Panama knew the deep truth of their situation and saw the evil results and the resulting decay on their society.

  Cormac leaned back one night with a beer in his hand and stared at Gatun Lake through the open doorway. “Thing is,” he said. “Everybody’s got a Harland story. It’s like too many people know him. And I don’t know what that means.”

  Sawyer looked down at the map where he’d circled and crossed out dozens of bars, docks, and alleys. “Yeah,” he said quietly. “If they really wanted us to know something, they would have told us. Maybe they believe nothing can be done.”

  “Maybe nothing can be done. Maybe we’ll never find Ashley.”

  Outside, the water of Gatun Lake lapped against the stilts and somewhere far off a police siren wailed and died just like all of their leads on Ashley.