Chapter 6 - The Shooter Who Was Already Dead
Christopher Hale arrived four minutes after Kelsey triggered the emergency beacon hidden inside her uniform bag.
By then, the shooter was gone.
Police found three suppressed rifle casings in the hedge across the street.
Professional placement.
Professional escape.
Ryan sat in the ambulance with a cut on his forehead from broken glass.
Kelsey stood beside Christopher.
“You believe him now?” Ryan shouted.
Christopher ignored him.
Kelsey did not.
“Believe what?”
“That this is bigger than your mother.”
Kelsey walked toward the ambulance.
Ryan lowered his voice.
“They don’t miss.”
“They missed tonight.”
“Because they weren’t trying to kill you.”
Kelsey stopped.
Ryan looked at the shattered dining room.
“They were warning you.”
“Why?”
“To stop looking.”
Christopher joined them.
“Who is they?”
Ryan smiled bitterly.
“You wouldn’t believe me.”
“Try me.”
Ryan looked at Kelsey.
She nodded.
“Halcyon.”
Christopher’s face did not change.
“Who specifically?”
“That’s the problem. You never know.”
A crime scene officer approached.
“Sergeant.”
Christopher followed her toward the hedge.
Kelsey stayed with Ryan.
“You said my father recruited you to watch me.”
“He did.”
“Prove it.”
Ryan looked exhausted.
“There’s a storage unit.”
“Where?”
“North Briarwood.”
“What’s inside?”
“Documents Daniel gave me.”
“Why didn’t you destroy them?”
“Insurance.”
“Against who?”
“Everyone.”
Christopher returned.
“We got a partial fingerprint on a casing.”
Ryan laughed.
“They won’t be in your database.”
Christopher looked toward the officer holding the mobile terminal.
“They are.”
Ryan stopped laughing.
“Name?”
Christopher read.
“Thomas Garrison.”
Ryan’s expression changed completely.
Kelsey saw recognition.
“You know him.”
Ryan stood.
“That’s impossible.”
“Why?”
“Thomas Garrison has been dead for eight years.”
The fingerprint identification was confirmed twice.
Former Army intelligence contractor.
Thomas Edward Garrison.
Declared dead after a boating accident in 2018.
Body never recovered.
Kelsey looked at Christopher.
“Missing body.”
“Convenient.”
Ryan whispered, “They’re activating dead assets.”
Christopher looked at him.
“What does that mean?”
“Halcyon maintained identities.”
“For covert operators?”
“For people who needed to disappear.”
Kelsey thought about Daniel.
Vehicle fire.
Dental identification.
No visual identification possible.
Her stomach turned.
“Was my father’s body recovered intact?”
Ryan stared at her.
“Kelsey.”
“Answer.”
“I don’t know.”
She saw it.
The hesitation.
“You know something.”
“I don’t.”
“You’re lying.”
Ryan looked away.
Kelsey stepped closer.
“Was Daniel Morgan actually in that car?”
Ryan would not answer.
Christopher called another unit to secure the storage facility.
They arrived shortly after sunrise.
Unit 417 was registered under a false company.
Ryan supplied the access code.
Inside were six gray archival boxes.
A locked steel case.
Two laptops.
And a blue leather ledger.
Kelsey stared at it.
Ryan looked equally shocked.
“That wasn’t here.”
Christopher turned.
“What?”
“I swear.”
“You expect us to believe that?”
“I haven’t opened this unit in four months.”
Kelsey approached the ledger carefully.
No dust on top.
Someone had placed it there recently.
Christopher photographed everything before opening it.
The first page contained handwritten names and dates.
Hundreds.
Some crossed out.
Some circled.
Others marked with a small symbol identical to the one engraved on the brass key.
Kelsey flipped slowly.
Military officers.
Politicians.
Scientists.
Judges.
Executives.
Then she found her own name.
KELSEY ANNE MORGAN
Subject 17.
Status: Continuation viable.
Continuation.
Her hands tightened.
Beneath her name was another notation.
Pairing initiated 2009.
Kelsey looked at Ryan.
They met in 2009.
“You weren’t assigned to observe me.”
Ryan closed his eyes.
“You were assigned to marry me.”
Silence.
Christopher looked from one to the other.
Ryan sat on a storage crate.
“It wasn’t supposed to happen.”
“What?”
“I wasn’t supposed to love you.”
Kelsey almost laughed.
It came out colder than anger.
“You want credit for that?”
“No.”
“Good.”
“I was supposed to stay close. Report changes. Watch for memory recovery.”
“Memory of what?”
“I don’t know.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
Ryan looked at the ledger.
“I was never high enough.”
“You beat my mother over something you didn’t understand?”
“I didn’t hit her.”
Kelsey froze.
“What?”
Ryan stood.
“I threatened her. I smashed the bat into the table. I grabbed her arm. I admit all of that.”
Nancy’s bruise.
The impact pattern.
Kelsey stared.
“You’re saying you didn’t strike her shoulder?”
“No.”
“She says you did.”
“I know.”
“Why would she lie?”
Ryan’s eyes moved toward the ledger.
“Ask her what happened after I left the kitchen.”
Kelsey’s phone rang.
Christopher answered his own simultaneously.
Both calls came from the police station.
Nancy Morgan was gone.
Not released.
Not transferred.
Gone.
The officer assigned outside her room had been found unconscious in a stairwell.
Security cameras showed Nancy leaving through the rear entrance beside a man in hospital scrubs.
The man looked directly into one camera.
Kelsey watched the footage on Christopher’s phone.
Older.
Gray hair.
Thin face.
A scar above his right eyebrow.
Nancy walked beside him willingly.
Kelsey’s knees almost weakened.
Christopher noticed.
“What?”
Kelsey enlarged the image.
She had not seen that face in eleven years.
May you like
But she knew it better than her own.
“That’s my father.”
