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He touched the photo again.
“Before his arrest, Vance had installed a timed transmitter. If a remote server doesn’t receive a real-time response within a specified time frame, it sends an encrypted packet elsewhere. We haven’t identified the recipient yet. We believe Locker 118 contains the local backup.”
A dead man’s safety switch.
Obviously.
Vance was the kind of man who never trusted any trail of treason unless it had built a second one behind his back.
I leaned back. The leather chair creaked. “Has my father been contacted?”
“Maybe. Maybe not. But he acts like a man who thinks he’s helping his daughter.”
My phone vibrated face down on the table.
Unknown number.
I let the phone ring once, then answered. “Bennett.”
The voice on the other end was feminine, terse, and professional. “General Bennett? This is Melissa Karr, an attorney representing Chloe Carter.”
Of course he did.
“My client requested a meeting,” the lawyer said. “She says she’ll speak only with you.”
Reed and Morales were watching me.
“What do you want?”
“You say,” Karr replied, “that you thought you had found everything, but you didn’t.”
I closed my eyes for a moment.
“Where?”
“Federal facility, Pearl Harbor annex.”
“I’ll be there in thirty minutes.”
When I ended the call, Reed held up a photo of the marina key to me.
“Do you think I’m stalling?”
“Probably.”
“Are you still going?”
“YES.”
Morales tilted his head. “Why?”
Because liars usually tell the truth when they believe it can still save them.
I stood up and picked up the folder.
As I did so, Reed added, “General?”
I looked up.
“We extracted another frame from the villa footage.”
He handed me a second image.
My father, just before dawn, slipped the marina key into his pocket with hands that showed no sign of surprise or confusion.
Chloe wasn’t the only one in my family still hiding something.
Part 7
All federal holding cells smell the same.
Stale coffee somewhere nearby. Overworked ventilation. Disinfectant that never fully masks the smell of metal and anxiety. The interview room they put me in was small, overly bright, and bare, with a steel table bolted to the floor and a dark glass pane on one wall.
Chloe was already there when they brought me in.
Without an audience, it seemed smaller.
No designer dress. No heels. No carefully arranged room to stand in the center of. Just her punishment uniform, no jewelry, and a makeshift ponytail that revealed the tension on her face. Nonetheless, the first thing she did when she saw me was straighten her shoulders, as if posture alone could restore her rank.
“Harper.”
I sat down across from her. “You asked for me.”
He laughed softly under his breath. “I’m still trying to keep calm.”
“It saves time.”
For a moment, he just looked at me. There was something almost childlike in his gaze—not innocence, but recognition. As if he were finally studying a map after years of assuming he already knew the territory.
Then the mask came back.
“I want a deal.”
“You don’t make deals with me.”
“You might be able to help.”
“NO.”
His nostrils flared. “You didn’t even hear me.”
“I heard enough on the plane, at dinner, and in the villa.”
That was a shock. A fleeting flash in her eyes. She realized then that I knew about the tablet, and fear washed over her so quickly she almost didn’t notice.
“That was Vance,” she said.
“NO.”
“Yes,” he replied dryly. “He built everything himself. He took care of the contracts. He told me where to sign.”
“And you signed.”
She opened her mouth, closed it, and changed tactics. Chloe had always done it that way. When the truth failed, she resorted to acting.
“You think I wanted that?” she asked, leaning forward. “Do you know what it’s like to grow up with someone who never wanted normal things? Dad bragged about Vance because Vance made money. Mom loved anything shiny. And you…” She laughed again, her voice rising. “You made everyone uncomfortable because you never cared about what the rest of us cared about.”
I didn’t say anything.
He hated it.
“I had to build something,” he continued. “I had to win at something. Do you understand?”
“You chose this as the goal to win.”
His jaw tensed. “You always have such a clear voice.”
“That’s because I am.”
For the first time, real anger lit up her face. “Don’t do that. Don’t sit there like you’re better than me.”
“I don’t have to.”
A deathly silence fell in the room.
Chloe looked down at her hands. When she spoke again, her voice was weaker. More dangerous.
“Vance had created a backup system,” she said. “An automatic release system in the event of his death. If he missed a check, an encrypted package would be transferred to a second delivery point.”
“Locker number 118?”
She looked up sharply. “You already know about the locker.”
“I know enough.”
He licked his lips. “There’s a hard drive in there. And a satellite phone. If the satellite phone is turned on and configured correctly by this evening, the archive will be sent to the buyer instead of being downloaded blindly.”
“Who has the key?”
Then he smiled, but it was an unpleasant smile, because there was no longer any charm in it. “Dad.”
I let the silence drag on.
She mistook it for surprise and continued, because Chloe always assumed a pause meant she was winning.
“Vance told him they were legal documents. Investment documents. Dad took the envelope this morning because he still thinks he can fix things if he gets the right documents to the right lawyer.” He leaned forward. “He’s not going to a lawyer, Harper.”
“Where is he going?”
“Marina.”
“Which?”
She shrugged. “You’re a genius. Get by.”
I got up.
This scared her more than screaming would have.
“Are you leaving?”
“YES.”
She also stood up, placing her palms on the table. “Wait.”
I turned around.
For a moment, I thought he might finally say something real. An apology. A confession. Anything that belonged to the moment and not to his ego.
Instead she whispered, “Don’t let Vance bury me with him.”
There it is.
No remorse.
Self-preservation.
I knocked once and the guard opened the door.
As soon as I stepped into the hallway, Chloe called my name again. I didn’t turn around.
Reed was there waiting. “Well?”
“He confirmed the locker and the satellite phone. Arthur has the key.”
Reed cursed under his breath, “We removed the traffic camera footage from the resort while you were inside.”
He gave me a tablet.
The image showed my father at the rental car just forty minutes earlier, his baseball cap pulled down, sunglasses on, and a bag under his arm. Recent date and time.
“Is there a GPS tracker on the vehicle?” I asked.
“Too slow to get consensus, too slow to get a mandate if it was already moving. But we stopped a traffic light at an intersection.”
He zoomed in on the next still image.
A road sign.
Ala Wai Marina for small boats.
“It’s not the most obvious choice,” I said.
“No,” Reed replied. “Which means someone told him not to take the obvious option.”
After that, we moved quickly: down the corridor, out into the humid dusk, in black SUVs that smelled of rain-soaked asphalt, vinyl, and gun oil. Honolulu traffic shimmered around us in the humid light. The radio crackled with communications.
I watched the city speed by and thought of my father clutching that envelope as if it were a solution.
He had laughed in the living room.
He had attempted to force the door to get past the armed policemen on board the plane.
He had begged me in the ballroom.
And despite everything, he continued to choose Chloe.
My phone vibrated: a message had arrived from the base.
Timed release window: 4 hours and 11 minutes.
Reed glanced at the screen and muttered, “There’s not much time.”
“NO.”