I reached around Matthew and opened another folder. Soldiers, interpreters, aid workers—officially dead, but still breathing in Hoyle's system. Extracted, renamed, and repurposed as assets.
Matthew stared at Hoyle's photo on the laptop screen—silver-haired, expensively dressed, the kind of man who appeared on financial news programs to discuss global markets. Nothing in his face suggested the monster he'd become.
"What drives him?" Matthew asked. "Beyond profit."
"Control," I said immediately. "He told me once that chaos was just unorganized information. His network doesn't create instability—it monetizes the existing instability. He thinks he's providing clarity."
I took a step back, leaving control of the laptop to Matthew. "Farid wasn't the only one extracted. It's been happening for years. Stage a death, steal a life, and sell the rest. Who goes looking for someone they already buried?"
Matthew's hands trembled as he scrolled through the files. "The blood. I held pressure on wounds that wouldn't stop bleeding."
"Pig blood mixed with coagulants. Creates a realistic trauma response without actual life-threatening injury. The extraction team was probably within fifty meters of the blast site."
"I grieved for him." His voice broke on the last word. "I carried his death with me for years. Thought I'd failed him."
"You were supposed to. That's how the operation works. Real emotional trauma creates authentic behavioral patterns. Anyone investigating would see exactly what they expected—a medic devastated by losing someone he couldn't save."
"Do you know what I told his mother?"
Matthew didn't wait for an answer.
"That he didn't suffer. That it was fast. That he knew he was loved."
He stood abruptly, the chair rolling backward across the room. He paced to the window, pressing his palms against the glass like he needed something solid to push against.
"Where is he now?"
"I don't know."
Matthew pressed his forehead against the glass. "Is he safe?"
"Define safe. One step out of line, and they'll activate another asset to eliminate him. That's how Hoyle maintains loyalty—golden cage or shallow grave, your choice."
He had stepped out of line, and Farid might already be dead.
Matthew turned back to face me. "How do you know all this?"
"Because I was inside the network for over five years. Courier, intelligence liaison, whatever they needed. I thought I was working for legitimate humanitarian operations until I started seeing the patterns." I gestured at the laptop screen. "Hoyle doesn't only collect information. He collects people. Rebuilds them. Uses them until they're no longer useful."
"And then?"
"Then they have accidents. Disappear. Get transferred to operations that don't exist." I stared into his eyes. "There was a boy in Istanbul, Ercan. Nineteen. He thought I was saving him. I handed him off to what I thought was a refugee liaison. He hasn't been seen since."
Matthew absorbed the information the same way he probably processed medical trauma—collecting facts, assessing damage, and calculating what he could save. His face gave nothing away, but I watched his hands open and close at his sides.
"And a Hoyle asset put that bullet in you on the freeway?"
I nodded. "That's a solid conclusion."
"Why come here?"
The question cut deeper than I'd expected. I could have tried to run anywhere—Portland, Vancouver, or disappeared into the Pacific Northwest's endless forests. I could have contacted other assets, activated emergency protocols, and followed contingency plans designed for this situation.
But Farid helped bring me to Matthew. He had his reasons, and I had mine.
"Because you looked at me like I was still a person, even when I wasn't sure I was."
I didn't mean to let my voice catch. But it did, just once. That single breath of hesitation was louder to me than the gunshot that started this all.
