Chapter 6 - Specter-07
I went without the team.
That did not mean they stayed behind.
Kane shadowed me from three blocks out.
Chen controlled traffic cameras.
Brooks monitored every police frequency in the city.
Reyes complained continuously in my earpiece.
Some habits survive retirement.
The parking structure was empty.
Tyler sat on the fourth level, wrists taped to a chair.
Alive.
Alone.
I approached carefully.
“Tyler.”
His eyes opened.
“They left.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know.”
“Specter-07?”
He shook his head desperately.
“I never saw their face.”
I cut him loose.
Tyler began talking before I asked.
The night Lily was attacked, Ethan and Brandon confronted her about the flash drive.
Their fathers had ordered them to retrieve it.
“Ordered?”
“Ethan thought it was funny. Brandon wanted to scare her.”
“And you?”
“I didn’t know until I saw them follow her.”
He ran inside after hearing screaming.
By then, Lily was bleeding.
Ethan had hit her first.
Brandon kept going.
Six fractures.
That part was real.
Tyler tried to stop them.
Someone else appeared.
A woman in a hood.
She attacked Ethan and Brandon with terrifying precision.
Then looked at Tyler and said:
“Tell Charles the Ghost Colonel still has a daughter.”
My blood chilled.
“She said that?”
“Yes.”
“Where’s the video?”
Tyler reached inside his jacket.
A memory card.
“My father’s security people found the backup before campus police erased it. I stole this copy.”
“Why help Lily?”
His face collapsed.
“Because I should’ve stopped them sooner.”
Not innocence.
Guilt.
There is a difference.
He had followed his friends into the building and watched too long before courage arrived.
Then Tyler looked behind me.
“Oh God.”
Gunshots struck the concrete.
I dragged him behind a pillar.
A black SUV tore up the ramp.
Professional shooters.
Not college kids.
Kane’s voice came through my earpiece.
“Three hostiles. No police markings.”
I fired nothing.
Lily’s words were still inside my head.
Please don’t kill them.
Kane disabled the vehicle with two precision shots.
The shooters fled on foot.
We captured one.
He carried no identification.
But inside his jacket was a Meridian Strategic Systems access badge.
Reyes arrived furious.
“You call that going alone?”
“I didn’t ask you to come.”
“You also didn’t ask gravity to work.”
Tyler gave a nervous laugh.
Then the captured gunman saw Reyes.
His expression changed.
“Major?”
Reyes froze.
The gunman smiled through blood.
“You really don’t recognize me?”
Reyes stepped closer.
The man whispered:
“Kandahar. 2004.”
Reyes went white.
That mission happened after I left Specter.
May you like
The mission where Mara supposedly died.
And according to the official report, there had been no survivors.
