Walls of various sized post office boxes lined the halls, the sun shining through the windows and gleaming off of the boxes in a blinding glare. I followed Dallas down one of the three hallways in search of P.O. box 6319. We finally spotted it at the end of the corridor.

"What are we going to do if there's nothing inside it?" I cocked a brow to Dallas as he slipped the key in the hole.

"Let's find out first."

He turned the key and pulled the tiny locker-style door open to reveal only a small notecard.

"What does it say?" Dallas asked when I retrieved it from the back of the box.

Úselos para ingresar a la prisión.

-M.S.

"It's in Spanish." I squinted at the scribbled handwriting. "It says 'use these to enter the prison.'"

Dallas looked back inside the box to make sure we weren't missing anything, but there was nothing else to discover.

"What do you think it was?" he asked.

I tapped my fingers against the notecard, but it didn't take me long to draw up a conclusion.

"Her fake federal I.D.'s."

Dallas took the note from my hand and studied it, flipping it over a couple times, frowning at the hard-to-read handwriting. He lifted the piece of paper to his face and smelled it, his brows drawing further inward.

"There's a hint of cigarette smoke on this," he noted. "It's very faint with the card having been in here for months, but it's noticeable. Do you know if Lindsey's a smoker?"

I shook my head. "I don't think so, but I've got a pretty good idea of who is."

I pulled out my phone and found the notes I'd been making to myself since beginning my investigation. I scrolled to the bullet points I'd typed up about my night at the London Marriott and the threatening call I'd received in the hotel room.

His voice sounded very rough. He had likely been smoking for many years. He had a thick Spanish accent. He was probably in his forties or fifties.

I held out my phone where Dallas could see my notes and pointed to the part about the man calling me.

"I think this son of a bitch who called me in London is Miguel Santiago."

He looked at me with a hint of concern brimming in his eyes, glancing back and forth between my phone screen and my face. It took a lot to worry Dallas. I knew that hadn't changed in four years. But what was so concerning to him about Santiago harassing me? I'd received plenty of threatening calls like that in the past. It was just another pain in the ass side effect of the career I'd chosen. I didn't fret over shit like that.

"What are you thinking?" I studied his expression, trying to read his mind.

Dallas pulled his lower lip into his mouth and chewed at it for a few seconds – another one of his pondering quirks.

"Tali, how did Miguel Santiago know when you'd arrived in London?" He gestured to the notes on my phone. "Obviously, he's working with Lindsey, but you'd barely begun your investigation. It was still day one. How could he have known that fast about your investigation?"

I shrugged. "I suppose it's possible that he found out when I called around to various intelligence entities, hospitals, jails, etcetera, to see if they'd seen Lindsey or knew where she might be. It was after I'd done that that he called me. Or maybe he has somebody keeping an eye on A.R.T.'s office who got wind of me coming in."

Dallas shook his head, still frowning. "I don't think that's it, though. I think there's someone on the inside."

A feeling of disgust came to my stomach at the thought of an Alpha Recon agent turning on their fellow agents and working with an enemy. Of course, if that was the case, it wouldn't be the first time that that had happened, but it was so extremely rare that anyone within our organization would be so wicked as to turn on their brothers and sisters.

A.R.T. was, in its own way, a unique family. We fought side by side. We protected one another. We supported each other, regardless of differing opinions or anything else. We always had each other's backs. I hated to think that a fellow agent would sell me out to Santiago. It was hard for me to fathom.

As I racked my brain for possible traitors, only one name came to mind.

"Lancaster?"

The name tasted bad on my tongue, and I mentally glared at the memory of his face in my mind. I knew there was something off about that guy the moment I walked into his office. Was an involvement with Santiago what he was hiding? Or was there more to it than that?

Dallas pursed his lips in uncertainty. "I don't know. Could be Lancaster. Could be someone else. But I'd bet money on it that it was someone from A.R.T. that gave Santiago a heads up about you. There's no way he could've known that the Taskforce was going to choose you for the case, or when you'd arrive in London, unless someone told him."

I couldn't think of anyone else at A.R.T. that would've ratted me out besides Lancaster. I barely knew anyone at the London office. Why would any of the agents there have a beef with me?

Dallas shut the P.O. box, slipping the notecard in his back pocket. We walked back down the hall of mailboxes to give the key back to the woman at the counter. She asked if we found what we were looking for. Dallas, being expertly vague, simply smiled, thanked her for her cooperation, and we headed back to the parking lot.

"Do you think Santiago's paying someone off at A.R.T. to give him information?" I suggested, climbing into the car.

Dallas tugged at his vest, shifting in his seat to get comfortable. I knew what he was thinking. He planned on continuing down the road, going to the next stop on our list. He was going to keep pushing himself like he always had. Back before the incident, I could recall numerous times that I'd seen him so devoted to a case that he'd literally gone three or four days without any sleep. He was probably the most dedicated agent I'd ever met. It was no wonder he'd achieved the role of team leader at I.D.A. in less than a year. At the time, he'd outdone dozens of agents who had been with I.D.A. for a decade to reach that status. It was an unprecedented accomplishment with the International Defense Alliance.

"That's likely," Dallas said as we pulled out of the parking space. "I don't think any agent would trade information for nothing. There's got to be some incentive, and it's more than likely monetary."

I was tempted to call Alana and have her look into the agents at London A.R.T. to see if any of them had recently deposited large or unusual sums of money, or made any questionable transactions, but I knew that would be a waste of her time. The Taskforce only hired expertly discrete agents. If one of them was, in fact, being paid off, they weren't going to be that obvious about it. Looking into their financial accounts would be too easy. Our agents were smarter than that.

"Where to next?" Dallas's voice broke my concentration.

I started to retrieve my phone to look at our list, but common sense and concern for Dallas's safety was telling me it would be best if we didn't push it too much.

"Dall, you're exhausted," I began, planning to give him the spiel about needing to rest before we tried to investigate anywhere else.

He groaned and tilted his head back against the headrest, closing his eyes and slowly shaking his head back and forth in disagreement. He'd always been such a stubborn man.

"I don't want you to overexert yourself and get hurt." I tried to reason with him. "I just got you back. I'm not going to let you overdo it and hinder your strength and abilities when we've got armed thugs scouring the area for us. I don't want anything to happen to you. Not again..."

He turned his head to look at me with tired eyes. He may have disagreed with me, but I could tell he understood, and he wasn't going to put me through that worry.

"Alright. I get it, Tali," he sighed, putting the car in park and unfastening his seatbelt. "Let's compromise."

I didn't like the sound of that. I knew he was too stubborn to just give in to my reasoning.

"What?"

"We'll switch places," he said. "You drive and I'll sleep. Deal?"

I rubbed a hand over my forehead in frustration. "Dallas, that's not what I meant."

"I know what you meant." He climbed out of the car and bent over to look back at me. "But A – I disagree, and B – we don't know how much time we have, so we've got to keep going."

There was no use in arguing with him. We could butt heads like rams all day and never get anywhere. I gave up and compromised, switching seats with him and demanding that he immediately take a nap.

Our next destination on the map was a bank in Leipzig, roughly an hour and a half away. Since we were taking backroads, it could take a little while longer, buying Dallas more resting time, which was my main focus at the moment.

It was later in the afternoon, and I knew that by the time we arrived, the bank would be closed anyway. I started to ponder alternate ways to make use of our time, as we wouldn't be able to speak with the bank manager until the next morning. I imagined finding a cheap motel and something simple to eat. Pizza, perhaps. My stomach rumbled at the thought. Then we could plan out the next day and go to bed. Dallas would finally get some real sleep, and I would get to enjoy lying there beside him with his arms around me.

Fifteen minutes into the drive, I glanced over at Dallas's sleeping figure. He was in an awkward position with one leg crossed over the other and his hands folded on his stomach. His short bangs swept across his forehead making him look younger and less hardened to the world. I remembered what he looked like when we used to lie beneath the aspen tree in the park and his bangs would always fall haphazardly in his face. His hair had been longer and untamed back then.

I watched him out of the corner of my eye as I drove us south down an old dirt road. He'd leaned the seat as far back as it would go and pointed the vents away from his body. He'd fallen asleep quickly and was breathing in a gentle rhythm, occasionally moving in his sleep to get more comfortable. Part of me wanted to pull over on the side of the road and just look at him, admire his sleeping face. It may sound like such an insignificant detail on our journey, but I wanted to remember that peaceful look on his face. I wanted to take a picture of it in my mind to keep forever. Dallas David looking at peace was a rarity in the truest form, and it broke my heart that that's the way it was. He deserved to relax more often. He deserved to be happy...