Chapter 4 - Evelyn’s Birthday Gift
While Claire was in labor, Evelyn’s birthday celebration continued beneath crystal chandeliers at a private country club.
More than eighty guests filled the ballroom. A jazz quartet played near the windows, and servers carried champagne between tables decorated with pale-pink roses.
Evelyn stood at the center of it all.
She wore a fitted pink dress and the diamond necklace Ryan had bought with money his company could not afford to spend.
When Ryan arrived from the hospital, she kissed his cheek.
“I knew you would make the right choice.”
“Claire’s actually in labor.”
Evelyn’s smile tightened.
“And she has an entire hospital caring for her. I have one son.”
Ryan looked toward the entrance.
“Is Victor here?”
“In the library.”
Victor Voss sat alone with a glass of whiskey when Ryan entered.
He was in his late fifties, silver-haired and calm, with the polished confidence of a man who expected other people to take risks for him.
“You’re late,” Victor said.
“My wife went into labor.”
“And yet you’re here.”
Ryan sat across from him.
“I told you I could get useful information.”
Victor placed a small black data drive on the table.
“Useful is not the same as valuable.”
Ryan stared at it.
“What exactly do you want?”
“Procurement timelines. Companies under consideration. Security concerns that could remove our competitors.”
“My wife doesn’t tell me those things.”
Victor smiled.
“She does not need to tell you.”
Evelyn entered and closed the library door.
“Claire keeps a work computer at home,” she said. “Ryan has access to the house.”
Ryan looked at his mother.
“You said this was just background information.”
“And it is,” Evelyn replied. “Information that belongs to your wife. A wife is supposed to support her husband.”
“It might be protected.”
Victor pushed the drive across the table.
“The software handles the difficult part. You connect it to a computer on the same home network. It searches for accessible directories and copies what it finds.”
Ryan did not touch it.
“What if it’s traced?”
“It won’t be.”
“Then why don’t you do it?”
“Because I do not live in Colonel Bennett’s house.”
Ryan froze.
Evelyn looked at Victor.
“Colonel?”
Victor raised an eyebrow.
“You didn’t know your daughter-in-law’s rank?”
Evelyn’s face hardened.
“She told us she managed an office.”
“Colonels manage more than offices.”
Ryan thought about Claire’s medals locked inside the upstairs closet. He remembered the officers who called her at all hours and the way senior officials became unusually respectful when she entered a room.
He had spent years reducing her career into something small enough not to threaten him.
Now Victor was offering him a way to use what he had refused to understand.
Ryan picked up the drive.
At 7:20, his phone began ringing.
Claire.
He looked at the screen.
Evelyn saw the name.
“Do not answer during my toast.”
“She might have had the baby.”
“Then someone will send a photograph.”
Ryan silenced the call.
At 9:30, Victor left the country club.
Before leaving, he whispered, “Tonight. The offer disappears in the morning.”
Ryan drank two glasses of whiskey.
At 10:45, he drove home alone.
The nursery light was still on. A half-folded baby blanket rested on the rocking chair. Claire’s hospital checklist lay on the kitchen counter.
For the first time, guilt entered his chest.
He opened his phone.
Nineteen missed calls.
One voicemail.
Ryan listened to Claire say she was frightened.
He almost called the hospital.
Then Victor sent a message.
Do you want your company to survive?
Ryan walked into the home office.
He connected the black drive to his computer.
The software searched the network.
At 11:47, a folder appeared.
NATIONAL EMERGENCY COMMUNICATIONS MODERNIZATION - PROPOSED SCHEDULE.
Ryan copied it.
He told himself it was only a schedule.
He told himself Claire would never know.
He told himself he had done it for their future.
Then he sent the archive to Victor.
Thirty seconds later, inside a military operations center, an alert turned red.
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TARGET HAS ACCEPTED DECOY MATERIAL.
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