Chapter 11

For seventeen years, I had believed my father was dead.

In less than ten seconds, my mother destroyed that reality.

I could barely hear Vale through my earpiece.

“Captain, stay focused.”

Focused?

My dead father had apparently ordered my mother to fake his death.

I stared at her.

“You’re saying he survived?”

She began crying.

I had seen my mother cry three times in my life.

At my father’s funeral.

When my brother was injured in a car wreck.

And when I deployed the first time.

“Yes,” she said.

Hendricks looked pleased.

“Now we’re getting somewhere.”

“Where is he?”

My mother shook her head.

“I don’t know.”

“Mom.”

“I swear.”

Hendricks moved closer.

“She’s telling the truth.”

I looked at him.

“How would you know?”

“Because I’ve spent seventeen years looking for him too.”

A door slammed somewhere behind me.

Hendricks raised the pistol.

“Token.”

I tossed it across the concrete.

It slid to his feet.

He picked it up.

My pulse hammered.

The fake device was transmitting.

Hendricks inserted it into a portable terminal on a crate.

The screen illuminated.

AUTHENTICATING.

Vale whispered, “Stand by.”

Hendricks watched.

Then his face changed.

ACCESS DENIED.

He looked at me.

“What did you do?”

I shrugged.

“I got promoted yesterday. Maybe paperwork’s slow.”

His expression twisted.

“You think this is funny?”

“No.”

He grabbed my mother.

That was his mistake.

She drove her heel into his shin.

Hendricks stumbled.

I moved.

One step.

My shoulder hit his chest.

The pistol struck the floor.

My mother dropped behind the chair.

Hendricks grabbed my jacket.

We crashed against the crate.

Agents flooded the warehouse.

“FEDERAL AGENTS!”

“DON’T MOVE!”

“DOWN!”

Hendricks froze beneath me.

I could have hit him.

Every part of me wanted to.

Instead, I stepped away.

He was handcuffed on the same concrete where he had threatened my mother.

Vale approached.

“Good work.”

I looked at him.

“Where is my father?”

Vale did not answer.

That told me everything.

“You knew.”

His silence confirmed it.

“You knew he survived.”

“Not exactly.”

“You looked me in the face and let me believe he was murdered.”

“We believed he might have survived the crash.”

“Where is he?”

“We don’t know.”

I laughed.

It sounded broken.

“Apparently nobody knows anything.”

My mother stood behind me.

“Naomi.”

I turned.

She looked older than she had yesterday.

“What happened seventeen years ago?”

She took my hands.

“Your father discovered that Meridian was only one part of something much larger. He believed senior officers were selling secure military technologies to foreign intermediaries.”

“Hendricks.”

“Yes.”

“Rainer?”

“No.”

“How do you know?”

“Because Rainer helped your father disappear.”

I turned toward the warehouse entrance.

Rainer was gone.