Chapter 8 - The Funeral Guest Who Shouldn’t Have Been There
I was extracted to Fort Belvoir.
The real destination.
Cole came under temporary restriction while his altered route was investigated.
My family remained at the house with federal agents.
Nobody got Thanksgiving dinner.
I felt no guilt.
At Belvoir, analysts reconstructed Marcus’s weekly signals.
The first twenty-seven were authentic.
The twenty-eighth was different.
Someone copied his encryption signature almost perfectly.
Almost.
The coordinates led to an abandoned farmhouse in Virginia.
A trap?
Maybe.
A message?
Possibly.
Then an analyst showed me funeral surveillance.
Military funerals are documented more thoroughly than grieving families realize.
Hundreds of faces.
Honor guard.
Officers.
Relatives.
Guests.
One man stood behind a tree line during the burial.
Baseball cap.
Gray beard.
Watching.
Aaron?
Facial comparison said no.
Then the system generated another probability.
Marcus.
My throat closed.
“Impossible.”
The analyst enhanced posture, ear geometry and old injury patterns.
Eighty-seven percent.
My husband may have watched his own funeral.
I felt sick.
He had seen me.
Pregnant.
Crying.
Holding his folded flag.
And he stayed hidden.
Why?
Then we discovered something worse.
After the burial, the man followed my father.
Not me.
Harrison drove to a motel.
Met someone.
Raymond.
They exchanged an envelope.
Dad had claimed Raymond was merely searching our bedroom because Meridian pressured him.
But they had coordinated before my family threw me into the garage.
I called Harrison.
“What's in the envelope?”
Silence.
“What envelope?”
I sent the photograph.
His breathing changed.
“Elena—”
“Don't lie again.”
He finally confessed.
Marcus had approached him secretly three months earlier.
Alive.
My father knew.
The betrayal physically hurt.
“You watched me bury him.”
“He made me promise.”
“You watched me touch that coffin.”
“He said your life depended on believing it.”
I closed my eyes.
“What did he give you?”
“Instructions.”
“To put me in the garage?”
“No.”
That part had been Victoria and Raymond.
Marcus instructed Harrison to let anyone searching the bedroom believe the house was unprotected.
Dad played along.
Poorly.
Cruelly.
But deliberately.
“What did you give Raymond after the funeral?”
“A fake access code.”
“Why?”
“Marcus wanted Meridian to use it.”
Bait.
The entire house had become a trap.
And I had been living inside it without consent.
Then Dad said:
“Elena, there’s something else.”
“What?”
“When Marcus met me, he wasn't alone.”
“Who was with him?”
My father began crying.
“A woman.”
My mind immediately went somewhere ugly.
“Who?”
“I hadn't seen her since Aaron disappeared.”
He whispered her name.
Colonel Rebecca Shaw.
May you like
My commanding officer.
The woman who had personally approved my extraction orders.
