Chapter 2
Jake’s hand clamped around my jacket and dragged me through the dark.
My bad leg hit the pavement hard enough to send pain up to my hip. I swallowed the sound before it could become a shout. Above us, engines roared; somewhere behind, a door slammed, followed by a voice barking an order.
“Keep moving,” Jake said.
“I’m trying.”
We ducked beneath a service stairway and pushed through a narrow metal door. It opened onto a maintenance corridor that smelled of hot dust, jet fuel, and the sour mop water trapped in a floor drain. Fluorescent lights flickered overhead. Jake eased the door shut, then held still, listening.
I listened too. The noises outside blurred into the airport’s steady mechanical thunder. My pulse stayed loud.
“Any idea who those people were?” I asked.
“No.”
“Good. I was worried you’d started keeping secrets from me.”
His mouth twitched, but the joke didn’t make it to his eyes. He glanced down at my leg. “Can you walk?”
“I can complain while walking.”
“That’s practically a yes.”
We moved deeper into the corridor, past a row of utility cabinets and a rolling cart stacked with coiled hoses. My boot left a damp smear on the concrete. I couldn’t tell if it came from the wing or my leg. I kept my attention on the next door.
A heavy latch clanged behind us.
Jake turned, one hand lifting. The door opened, and a man in a flight suit stepped through with his helmet tucked under his arm. I recognized Commander Ryan Hayes before he spoke. Three years hadn’t changed the set of his shoulders or the way he checked a room before entering it.
“Mercer,” he said.
“Hayes.”
He looked at my leg, then at Jake. “You look worse than the last time I saw you.”
“People keep saying that like it’s useful.”
Ryan’s gaze dropped to the blood darkening my jeans. “I saw the exit open. I didn’t know if you made it off the wing.”
“Eventually.”
His face tightened. He had the expression of a man carrying news he couldn’t yet put into a clean sentence.
“What happened up there?” I asked.
“We got two sets of instructions.” He glanced at Jake, then back at me. “One said hold the aircraft. Another said clear you from it. Neither came through a channel I could verify.”
“Who sent them?”
“I don’t know.”
“You were flying next to us.”
“I know what I was flying next to.” His voice sharpened. “I’m telling you I don’t know who was giving the orders.”
Before I could press him, a woman stepped from a side passage. She wore a dark uniform beneath an unzipped jacket, and a badge clipped at her waist. Her hair was pulled tight enough to look uncomfortable.
“Commander Mercer,” she said. “Major Elise Park. I arranged the hold.”
Jake shifted between us by half a step. “You arranged it?”
“I requested that he remain aboard until I could move him into protected custody.”
“Those men on the bridge didn’t look like custody,” I said.
“They weren’t mine.”
“You’re sure?”
“I was sure of my detail an hour ago.”
The way she said it left a chill in the corridor.
Elise looked past me toward the door. “Two of my people missed a check-in. A third reported to a location I never assigned. Then someone used my authorization to alter the movement order.”
Jake’s expression went flat. “You’re telling us your detail is penetrated.”
“I’m telling you I can’t trust everyone wearing my patch.”
“Can you trust yourself?” I asked.
Her eyes held mine. “I’m the one standing here instead of sending someone else to say this.”
That wasn’t an answer. It was enough to keep me listening.
“Who was the civilian?” I said.
Elise’s face changed, only slightly. “Which one?”
“The man we pulled out on the last mission.”
For a moment, the corridor seemed to narrow around us. Ryan went still. Jake’s gaze moved to Elise, warning her not to smooth the truth into something convenient.
She drew a folded sheet from an inside pocket. “The mission manifest listed him as Elias Venn.”
“Listed him?” I asked.
“We’ve been unable to verify the identity.”
“After all this time?”
“His documents didn’t match the records we could access. The name didn’t return a reliable history. I don’t know whether Elias Venn was a real person, an alias, or a name somebody borrowed.”
I heard the old night in my head: shouted instructions, grit in my teeth, the shock of shrapnel and the weight of a man we were trying to get out alive. Two of my men hadn’t come home. The civilian had. I’d thought that was the part I understood.
“Why tell me now?”
“Because the ceremony tomorrow is connected to the operation, and someone wants you away from it.”
I looked at her. “You invited me to a ceremony?”
“I didn’t.”
“Then who did?”
“The order came from higher up.”
“An order you can verify?”
Elise didn’t answer.
Jake let out a breath through his nose. “That’s not reassuring.”
“No,” she said. “It isn’t.”
Ryan put his helmet down on the cart. “I can get them to a vehicle, but I can’t promise the route is clean.”
“Then we don’t use the route,” I said.
“You have a better one?”
“No. I have a bad leg and a growing list of people I don’t trust.”
“Good start,” Jake said. “We’ll build from there.”
Elise opened one of the utility cabinets. Inside sat a small black phone, its screen dark, its case worn at the corners. She handed it to me.
“Disposable,” she said. “No personal accounts attached. If we get separated, use this.”
I turned it over in my palm. “You carry these around?”
“I started after somebody used my credentials without my knowledge.”
“Before or after your detail stopped checking in?”
“Before.”
The phone rang.
All four of us froze.
It made a thin, ordinary sound—almost absurd in the humming corridor. Elise reached for it. I moved it out of reach.
“Don’t,” she said.
“Why?”
“Because nobody should know we have it yet.”
The phone rang again. I answered and put it on speaker.
A man’s voice came through, distorted by static. “Mercer.”
“Who is this?”
“Don’t attend the ceremony.”
Elise stared at the phone.
The voice continued. “And don’t trust any official file they put in front of you.”
“Who are you?”
A click. Silence.
Jake leaned closer. “Did you recognize the voice?”
“No.”
Elise took the phone from my hand and checked the screen. No caller ID. She looked angrier than frightened, which I suspected meant she was frightened.
“Do you see why I don’t want you anywhere near the ceremony?” she asked.
“I see why someone doesn’t want me there.”
“You can’t know that.”
“No. Neither can you.”
Her jaw tightened. “If you go, you may be walking into a controlled room with a false story already written.”
“Then I’ll read it.”
“Your men are dead, Daniel. Don’t turn their deaths into a reason to get yourself killed.”
The words landed cleanly. Too cleanly. For one breath, I was back among people in uniform telling me what the loss ought to mean.
I looked down at my left leg, at the blood creeping through the seam of my jeans. “They don’t need me to turn their deaths into anything. They’re already dead.”
Nobody spoke.
I thought of the two men who hadn’t made it home. Of the medal waiting under bright lights, polished enough to hide the hands that would pin it on me. Then I thought of a stranger with a borrowed name, and of how easy it would be to let the people who knew more than I did decide what happened next.
“I’m not walking away because somebody tells me the file is dangerous,” I said. “Not while someone else may be paying for it.”
Elise lowered her eyes to the phone.
It buzzed in her hand.
A new message filled the screen. No number. No words at first—just a photograph. A young woman with dark hair, seen from across a Washington street as she stepped out of an apartment building. One hand held a canvas bag against her side. The other was reaching for the collar of her coat.
Beneath the image were two words:
NORA VALE.
I had never seen her before.
The phone buzzed again.
Forget the ceremony. Stay away from Nora Vale.
My leg throbbed. The corridor’s fluorescent lights hummed overhead, steady and indifferent. I looked from the photograph to the face of Major Elise Park.
“Who is she?”
May you like
Elise stared at the name. For the first time since she’d introduced herself, she looked like she had no answer ready.
“That,” she said, “is what we need to find out.”
