Chapter 19 - THE EMPTY COFFINThe explosion had been theater.
Mara recognized the pattern because she had seen it before.
Black Tide did not merely kill people.
It controlled what everyone believed had happened.
Thomas's death fifteen years earlier.
Eleanor's death twenty-two years earlier.
Now another false death.
But this time Eleanor had staged it herself.
A message waited inside Mara's coat pocket.
Three words.
FOLLOW THE FIRST BELL.
Nathan saw it.
“Mom?”
“Probably.”
“You believe her?”
“No.”
Mara folded the message.
“But I believe she wants me somewhere.”
The first bell was not at Meridian.
It was at the abandoned naval academy chapel where Thomas and Eleanor had married.
Inside its bell tower, Mara found an old photograph.
Seven officers.
Thomas.
Eleanor.
Rourke.
And four people Mara had never seen.
On the back:
FOUNDING COUNCIL — 1998
Three members were dead.
Rourke was imprisoned.
Thomas was in federal custody.
Eleanor was missing.
One remained active.
Admiral Jonathan Keene.
Chief of Naval Strategic Readiness.
One of the most decorated officers in the country.
The same man who had personally congratulated Mara after the Rourke conviction.
Nathan whispered:
“He shook your hand.”
Mara remembered his words.
Your father would have been proud.
At the time she had assumed it was courtesy.
Now she understood.
Keene had known Thomas.
Reyes called.
“Mara, we have a problem.”
“What?”
“Thomas never reached federal detention.”
Mara closed her eyes.
“How many vehicles?”
“Three.”
“Which one was attacked?”
“None.”
A pause.
“He disappeared from inside the convoy.”
Mara looked at Keene's face in the photograph.
May you like
Black Tide's surviving founder had just taken her father.
And this time Mara knew exactly whom she was hunting.
