As Rink drives south from Panama City with Sue in the back seat, Hunter presses Sue to identify the gunman who attacked her house. Sue insists she has never seen him before, but Hunter and Rink do not believe her, especially after finding her armed with a silenced pistol and living under an alias. Hunter suggests her real-estate job was cover and asks if the house was a safe house, while Sue bitterly argues that she only became a target because Hunter and Rink delayed her escape.

Under pressure, Sue admits that she now works for a private protective service rather than Arrowsake, and says Jason Mercer is in the same line of work. She argues that she had chances to kill Hunter and Rink but chose not to because she now prefers protecting life to taking it. Sue then makes the chapter's most important revelation: Mercer was never the rogue agent Hunter and Rink were told he was. She says she faked her own death to escape Arrowsake after learning a secret the organization would have killed to hide, strengthening Hunter's suspicion that Arrowsake manipulated them.

With no better immediate option, Rink heads into hurricane-ravaged Mexico Beach toward Hunter's hotel instead of Hunter's destroyed home. The devastated town and damaged buildings underline how unstable everything around them has become. At the hotel, Rink hides the Ford in the garage, and the three avoid the front desk by taking an elevator straight to Hunter's floor. Once inside the cramped room, they settle uneasily, with Rink and Sue facing each other across the bed and Hunter retrieving his emergency bag containing cash, fake identification, and his SIG Sauer.

While Rink checks and reloads the weapons, Sue finally offers an explanation for why someone might have followed her. She says she and Mercer had accompanied an important client to meetings in Mexico Beach about hurricane recovery, and that tempers flared when angry residents confronted the man. According to Sue, one of those men might have arranged the attack in retaliation after she and Mercer threw him out. Hunter and Rink reject the explanation as implausible, especially given Sue's disguise and suppressed weapon, and Hunter privately suspects the client and meeting were tied to something corrupt.

Recognizing that they still need supplies and a plan, Hunter tucks his pistol into his belt and decides to go retrieve his car and look for food. Before leaving, Hunter tells Rink and Sue that if they are going to survive together, they need to talk honestly and settle the hostility between them. Hunter departs hoping the two will use his absence to clear the air, leaving the chapter with the trio hidden but still divided and uncertain whom they can trust.