Chapter 2 - The Boy Who Was Supposed to Be Afraid
Tyler answered his phone and immediately walked away from the others.
I watched through the reflection in the hospital glass.
His expression was wrong.
Not confused.
Terrified.
“Who called him?” I asked Reyes.
“Not us.”
That bothered me.
Specter had been active for less than thirty seconds.
Someone else already knew.
Ethan noticed me watching and gave me a mocking salute.
Brandon Hale laughed.
Tyler did not.
He returned five minutes later with sweat on his forehead.
“We should go.”
Ethan rolled his eyes.
“Relax.”
“I said we should go.”
His voice cracked.
Interesting.
I had spent most of my adult life reading frightened men.
Tyler Whitmore was not frightened of me.
He was frightened of whoever had just called.
Dr. Mercer asked them to leave.
Ethan deliberately brushed his shoulder as he passed.
“These people work for us,” he whispered loudly enough for me to hear.
I memorized it.
Not because I intended to hurt him.
Because arrogance is often more useful than fear.
At 2:13 a.m., Reyes sent the first intelligence package.
Ethan Cole’s father, Graham Cole, held $640 million in state infrastructure contracts.
Brandon’s mother, Senator Rebecca Hale, sat on the Armed Services Committee.
Tyler’s father, Charles Whitmore, controlled the university’s largest donor foundation and owned stakes in three defense technology firms.
Individually, powerful families.
Together, something else.
All three families had financial connections to a private defense contractor called Meridian Strategic Systems.
I knew the name.
I had seen it nineteen years ago on a classified briefing.
Meridian had supplied experimental surveillance hardware to Task Force Specter.
The program was canceled after one of our missions went catastrophically wrong.
Officially, the technology was destroyed.
Unofficially?
I never believed that.
Reyes called again.
“You seeing Meridian?”
“Yes.”
“We’ve got another problem.”
“What?”
“The science building cameras didn’t malfunction.”
“They were erased.”
“By campus security?”
“No. Remote intrusion. Military-grade wipe.”
I looked toward Lily.
“Can Chen recover it?”
“She’s trying.”
“And the emergency phones?”
“Disconnected ninety seconds before the attack.”
Too precise.
This was not three drunken college boys improvising violence.
Someone had prepared the scene.
Then Reyes said, “Colonel… there’s something else.”
He sent me a campus access log.
Lily had entered the science building at 9:08 p.m.
Ethan at 9:41.
Brandon at 9:44.
Tyler at 9:47.
But another credential entered at 9:02.
Nineteen minutes before Lily.
The name had been deleted.
Only one identifier remained.
SPECTER-07.
I stared at it.
Task Force Specter had only ever assigned seven permanent operator numbers.
Specter-07 belonged to a woman who died sixteen years ago.
May you like
Captain Mara Voss.
My younger sister.
