Chapter 3 - The Sister I Buried Without a Body
Mara was the only person in Task Force Specter who could tell me I was wrong and make me listen.
She was younger by four years, smarter by ten, and reckless enough to believe mortality was a suggestion.
Specter-07.
Our intelligence architect.
She died three years after I left the unit.
At least that was what the Pentagon told me.
No body.
No funeral with remains.
Just a sealed flag and an officer informing me that the circumstances were classified.
By then, Lily was three.
I did not ask enough questions.
That guilt returned nineteen years later in a hospital corridor.
“Could someone be using Mara’s old credential?” I asked.
Chen answered through Reyes’s secure line.
“Possible. But this isn’t a copied university badge. The access request used an encryption certificate derived from old Specter architecture.”
“You’re saying only we would know how.”
“I’m saying whoever did it wanted us to notice.”
That sentence sat heavily between us.
A clue.
Or bait.
Inside Lily’s room, a nurse changed her IV.
Lily woke when I entered.
I held up my phone.
“Can you type?”
She nodded.
Her fingers moved slowly.
DAD PLEASE DON’T DO ANYTHING.
I almost smiled.
She knew me better than I thought.
“I need to know what happened.”
Her eyes filled.
She typed again.
I DON’T REMEMBER ALL OF IT.
“What do you remember?”
ETHAN ASKED ME FOR SOMETHING.
“What?”
She hesitated.
Then:
A FLASH DRIVE.
My stomach tightened.
“What flash drive?”
Lily looked confused.
She typed:
THE ONE MOM LEFT ME.
For nineteen years, I believed I knew every possession my late wife, Anna, had left behind.
Her wedding ring.
Photographs.
Letters.
A blue blanket Lily still kept folded in her closet.
There had never been a flash drive.
“When did you get it?”
LAST WEEK.
“From whom?”
IT WAS IN A PACKAGE.
“Who sent it?”
NO NAME.
“What was on it?”
I DIDN’T OPEN IT.
That answer came too quickly.
I knew my daughter.
Lily had opened it.
And whatever she saw had frightened her enough to lie to me while lying broken in a hospital bed.
I took her hand.
“You don’t have to protect me.”
Her eyes widened.
Then tears spilled toward her temples.
Before she could type again, Dr. Mercer entered carrying the evidence bag from the attack.
“We found something in her sweatshirt.”
A bloodstained scrap of paper.
Three names.
Ethan Cole.
Brandon Hale.
Tyler Whitmore.
I unfolded it.
The handwriting looked like Lily’s.
Almost.
But the letter T curved the wrong way.
Someone had planted the list.
May you like
Someone wanted me focused on those boys.
And perhaps they knew exactly what kind of father I used to be.
