Chapter 6
We reached Sarah’s townhouse in Baltimore at three in the afternoon.
She lived in a quiet neighbourhood of brick row houses.
Safe.
Ordinary.
The last place anyone would look for an Army colonel on the run.
She helped me inside.
Sat me down at her kitchen table.
Pulled out her medical bag.
“Clothes off,” she said. “Everything. I need to see what’s broken.”
I stripped off the torn uniform.
She winced.
Bruises covered my ribs from the jump.
My left ankle was swollen to twice its size, purple and black.
My back was crisscrossed with deep scratches from the thorns.
The cut on my forehead needed three stitches.
“Sprained ankle, not fractured,” she said after prodding it gently. “Three cracked ribs at least. Concussion, I’d bet. You’re lucky you didn’t break your neck jumping off that roof.”
“Lucky isn’t the word I’d use,” I said.
She cleaned the cuts.
Stitched my forehead.
Wrapped the ankle.
Taped my ribs.
Then she made coffee.
Strong.
Black.
The way I liked it.
“Okay,” she said, sitting across from me. “Talk.”
I told her everything.
The funeral.
Reed’s salute.
The letter.
The safe.
The files.
The men who’d come to kill me.
When I finished, she was pale.
Her hands were trembling around her mug.
“Your own father,” she whispered. “He sent men to kill you?”
“Not directly,” I said. “But whoever called them said Arthur wants no loose ends. Which means Arthur knows I have the files. Which means someone told him.”
“Reed?”
“Maybe. Or someone working for him. Or maybe my grandfather wasn’t as careful as he thought he was.”
I pulled the USB drive from the bag.
Set it on the table between us.
“This has everything,” I said. “Emails. Bank records. Names of everyone involved. From my father and Julian all the way up to whoever in the Pentagon was helping them cover it up.”
Sarah looked at the drive like it was a bomb.
“Have you looked at it?”
“Not yet. I didn’t have time. And I didn’t want to open it on an unsecured computer.”
She stood.
“Come with me.”
She led me to a small room at the back of the house.
A closet, really.
Filled with computer equipment.
“I do volunteer work for a human rights organisation,” she said. “We investigate war crimes. This machine is air-gapped. No Wi-Fi. No Bluetooth. Nothing. If we open the files here, nobody can trace it. Nobody can hack it.”
She booted the computer.
Inserted the drive.
Folders popped onto the screen.
Hundreds of them.
Organised by date.
By name.
By location.
“Start at the beginning,” I said.
She opened the earliest folder.
2019.
The year I was deployed to Kandahar for the first time.
The first email made my blood run cold.
FROM: ARTHUR VANCE <[email protected]>
TO: JULIAN VANCE <[email protected]>
DATE: MARCH 14, 2019
SUBJECT: KANDAHAR SHIPMENT
The inspection report came back. Plates failed three of five tests. We ship anyway. The contact at the Pentagon has already been paid. He’ll swap the real report for the forged one before anyone sees it. If anyone asks, the plates passed with flying colours. And Julian—if Clarissa finds out about any of this, we are finished. She’s still in contact with some of her medical school friends who work in the theatre. Make sure she never sees a single manifest. Not one.
I stared at the screen.
My father hadn’t just cut me off to keep me in the dark.
He’d cut me off because I was already in a position to discover what he was doing.
Because I was in Kandahar.
Treating the soldiers his equipment was getting killed.
“He knew,” I whispered. “He knew I was there. He knew what would happen. And he shipped it anyway.”
Sarah put her hand on my shoulder.
“Keep going,” she said softly.
We read for hours.
Email after email.
Meeting after meeting.
Transfer after transfer of millions of dollars into offshore accounts.
My father and Julian weren’t just running a scam.
They were running an empire of death.
And they weren’t alone.
A name kept appearing in the emails.
A codename at first.
Then a real name.
Senator Richard Hale.
Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
The man who authorised the defence budgets.
The man who’d spoken at my grandfather’s funeral.
The man my father had laughed with only days earlier.
Hale was getting ten percent of every contract.
Ten percent of every defective helmet.
Ten percent of every useless plate.
Ten percent of every dead soldier.
And then we found it.
The email that changed everything.
FROM: RICHARD HALE <[email protected]>
TO: ARTHUR VANCE <[email protected]>
DATE: OCTOBER 3, 2025
SUBJECT: YOUR FATHER
Marcus is getting too close. He’s been asking questions. He’s been going through old files. If he finds anything, he’ll go to the press. He’s too much like his granddaughter that way—stupidly loyal to the wrong ideals. I don’t care that he’s family. I don’t care that he’s a war hero. He is a liability. Handle it. And make it look like his heart.
The room went quiet.
So quiet I could hear the hum of the computer.
So quiet I could hear my own heartbeat.
My grandfather hadn’t died of natural causes.
He’d been murdered.
By my father.
On the orders of a United States senator.
“Oh my God,” Sarah breathed.
I stood up.
Walked to the window.
The world outside was normal.
People walking their dogs.
Kids riding bikes.
A woman carrying groceries.
And in here, on this screen, was proof that two of the most powerful men in America had ordered the death of a decorated four-star general.
My grandfather.
I thought about the funeral.
About my father’s fake tears.
About Julian’s solemn face.
About Senator Hale’s eulogy, calling my grandfather “the greatest man of his generation.”
They’d killed him.
And then they’d stood over his casket and lied.
And they would have gotten away with it too.
If my grandfather hadn’t been smarter than all of them.
If he hadn’t hidden the files.
If he hadn’t sent for me.
“We have to go to the press,” Sarah said. “Now. Before they find us. Before they kill anyone else.”
I shook my head.
“No. If we go to the press now, Hale will call it a fabrication. He’ll say I’m a disgruntled daughter with a grudge. He’ll destroy my career. He’ll destroy yours. And then he’ll burn every copy of these files and keep right on killing.”
“Then what do we do?”
I turned away from the window.
“We need someone on the inside,” I said. “Someone who can verify these files. Someone who can’t be bought. Someone with enough power that Hale can’t just make them disappear.”
“Who?”
I thought about Reed.
About the salute.
About the lighter.
About the code word Kandahar.
If he’d betrayed me, he would have been at the house with those men. He wouldn’t have sent me alone. He would have wanted to make sure I was dead.
Unless he was being watched.
Unless his office was bugged.
Unless someone had followed me from the country club.
“I need to talk to Reed,” I said.
“Are you insane? He might be the one who sent those men!”
“Maybe,” I said. “But if he is, I’m already dead anyway. And if he isn’t—he’s the only chance we have.”
I picked up my phone.
A burner Sarah had given me.
I dialled the number Reed had given me.
It rang once.
Twice.
Three times.
“Colonel Vance,” Reed said. He didn’t sound surprised. “I was wondering when you’d call. The safe house was compromised. Torres is in the hospital. Shot twice. He’ll live, but barely. They followed you from the country club. Someone put a tracker on your uniform during the funeral.”
I froze.
A tracker.
Not a betrayal.
Something worse.
They’d been watching me before I even knew I was in the game.
“I have the files,” I said.
“Good,” Reed said. “I need you to bring them to me. But not at the Pentagon. Too many eyes. There’s a warehouse at the old Baltimore shipyards. Pier 17. Midnight tonight. Come alone. And Clarissa—if Hale knows you have those files, he’ll send every killer he owns. Don’t trust anyone. Not even me. If I’m not alone when you get there, shoot first and ask questions later.”
He hung up.
I looked at Sarah.
“Midnight,” I said. “Pier 17. Baltimore shipyards.”
She didn’t hesitate.
“I’m going with you.”
“No. It’s too dangerous.”
“Too dangerous for you too,” she said. “And you’re the one with the cracked ribs and the sprained ankle. Face it, Clarissa—you need backup. And I’m the only backup you’ve got.”
She was right.
I could barely walk.
And I was about to walk into a meeting that could be a trap.
“Okay,” I said. “But you stay in the car. If I’m not out in twenty minutes, you call every news outlet in the country. You send them everything. You don’t worry about me. You just make sure the truth gets out.”
She nodded.
“Deal.”
I looked at the clock.
Six hours until midnight.
Six hours until I found out if Reed was friend or foe.
Six hours until I came face to face with the men who’d killed my grandfather.
I loaded the nine millimetre.
Checked the .38.
Sharpened the old man’s hunting knife.
And waited.
Somewhere in Washington, my father was having dinner.
Somewhere, Senator Hale was making plans.
And somewhere, four men with guns were still looking for me.
May you like
But this time, I wasn’t running.
This time, I was waiting.
