Chapter 10
Nobody in Charles’s office moved.
The message glowed on my phone, its demand plain enough to make the room feel smaller. Beyond the glass wall, the two Meridian guards stood near the conference room, watching us as if we were the ones who’d locked someone up.
Nora took one step toward me. “You can’t give him the audit.”
“We don’t have the original,” Charles said. He held the gray evidence pouch in one hand, its broken seal dangling from the flap. “We have a mirror.”
“He knows what we have,” Jake said. “That’s why he’s asking for what we don’t.”
I looked at the ledger on the isolated laptop. Names, dates, payments. A trail, not proof enough to stop a man who had already put my name on a forged order and sent strangers to threaten us.
My leg throbbed beneath the bandage. I shifted my weight and felt the fresh pull of it.
“We don’t trade the evidence,” I said. “Not until we know where Gabriel is.”
Nora’s mouth tightened. “And if Cross won’t tell us?”
“Then we find him without Cross’s help.”
Charles looked toward the guards. “That’s a confident plan for a room with two men outside.”
“It’s not a plan yet,” Jake said. “It’s a refusal.”
My phone rang.
The unknown number appeared again. I let it ring once, then answered and put it on speaker.
“Mercer,” Miles Cross said.
“Where is Gabriel?”
“I asked for the original audit.”
“You asked for a blind exchange. I’m not bringing you anything until I know he’s alive and where you’re holding him.”
A pause. Then Cross gave a short, humorless laugh.
“You still think this is a negotiation.”
“I think you’re the one who called.”
“You have something that belongs to Meridian. Give it back, and your friend goes home.”
“Your records say a lot of things belong to Meridian.”
The guards beyond the glass shifted. Charles’s face went rigid.
Cross lowered his voice. “You should worry less about what my records say and more about what everyone else will believe.”
The call ended.
Charles’s laptop chimed. An alert had appeared across the screen, above a headline from a national news outlet. The article showed a cropped image of the route approval: my name, my authorization, the operation date.
The headline accused a wounded Navy veteran of approving a route change that had exposed his own team.
For a moment, the room gave me no sound at all. Then the office ventilation came on with a low, steady hiss.
Nora read the headline over my shoulder. “He’s making it look like you did it.”
“He doesn’t need to make it look like anything,” Charles said, face pale. “People see that name and a classified operation. They’ll fill in the rest.”
A message appeared beneath the article, asking Charles’s company to comment on the document. His gaze fixed on the screen as if the words had been addressed to him personally.
“Your acquisition,” I said.
“Was already a bad idea.” He swallowed. “This makes it a public one.”
“Are you going to answer them?”
He looked up at me. The fear in his face was real. So was the shame beneath it.
“I’m going to tell the truth about what my company has and what it doesn’t,” he said. “I don’t know if anyone will believe me.”
“Then make sure they can’t say you helped Cross hide it.”
Charles’s fingers curled around the edge of the desk. He didn’t promise. He didn’t look away, either.
Jake moved closer to the glass. “We need to get out of this office.”
“Not through those two,” Nora said.
“Not yet,” I replied.
Her eyes found mine. She had the brass key in her pocket, the recorder in her bag, and the weight of her father’s silence behind every question she hadn’t asked. I wanted to tell her we would find him. I’d learned what promises were worth when you couldn’t control the next five minutes.
So I said, “We’ll look for a way.”
Elise’s call came in a breath later. I answered.
“I’ve got a preservation request going through an independent channel,” she said. Her voice was tight, but controlled. “If we can secure the original audit, we can keep it from disappearing into the acquisition portal.”
“Can you get it?”
“I’m trying.”
A few seconds passed. We heard keys tapping at her end, then a sharp exhale.
“What happened?” I asked.
“My access just froze.”
“Why?”
“Compromise alert. It says the request came from a compromised channel.”
“Did it?”
“No.” Her answer was immediate. A beat later, quieter: “Not from the channel I used.”
On the screen, the article kept gaining shares. A red banner appeared at the top of the portal window, and the folders beneath it vanished behind an access restriction. No new files. No preservation confirmation. Nothing Charles could open without going back through the same system.
“Can you appeal it?” Jake asked.
“I can try. But they’ve frozen the request, not just the folder.”
“Who froze it?” I said.
“I don’t know yet.”
That was the worst answer. Someone had just cut the official route while Cross made sure the public saw my name. The freeze might have been a simple security measure. It might have come from someone who wanted the audit untouched. Either way, the result was the same.
Elise dropped her voice. “Don’t send anything through the portal. I’ll call you when I know more.”
The line went quiet.
Nora had stopped looking at the screen. She was staring at her phone, where an incoming call showed no name.
“Don’t answer it,” Jake said.
She lifted her gaze. “It’s my father.”
“You can’t know that,” I said.
“I know his number.”
That stopped me. She answered and switched on the speaker.
At first there was only static, then a scrape and a soft, uneven breath.
“Nora?” Gabriel’s voice was thin but unmistakable.
Her hand clamped around the phone. The anger went out of her face, leaving something younger and more frightened in its place.
“Dad, where are you?”
“Don’t—” A rough cough. “Don’t come looking for me.”
A man’s voice, farther from the phone: “Keep moving.”
The call bumped and rattled. Beneath the noise, a bell rang—two clear notes, a pause, then one lower note that seemed to hang in the room.
Nora shut her eyes.
“What is it?” I asked.
“That bell.” She opened her eyes again, and now there was no hesitation in them. “The old Navy Yard gate clock. Dad used to bring me to the Meridian office across the street when I was a kid. I waited in the lobby while he finished work.”
Another scrape came through the speaker. Gabriel made a small sound, cut short.
Nora leaned toward the phone. “The abandoned office?”
The call ended.
May you like
She stood very still. Then she looked at me, her fear still there but no longer in charge.
“He’s taking Gabriel to the old Meridian office.”
