Chapter 7 - MARCUS’S CONFESSION
Before the headlights surrounded the church, Marcus admitted that Arthur had visited him the night before the staged death. Arthur carried no luggage and wore the cracked watch.
“He told me I would have to become the villain at the funeral,” Marcus said. “He said you would survive hatred more easily than grief.”
Claire’s jaw tightened. “He was wrong.”
“I told him that.”
“What did he say?”
“That being wrong about you was the one habit he never managed to break.”
The church windows brightened as vehicles moved into position outside.
Marcus handed Claire the better rifle.
It was a small gesture, but it reversed a lifetime in which Arthur had always given Marcus the safer position and Claire the harder task.
The blood on Marcus’s bed belonged to a hospital orderly found unconscious in a stairwell.
Security footage showed Marcus leaving in a wheelchair pushed by a woman wearing a surgical mask. At the loading dock, the woman removed the mask for less than a second.
Facial recognition identified Mara Vance.
Claire wanted to believe Marcus had been abducted.
Then agents found a handwritten note inside his pillow.
Claire,
I knew part of it. Not all.
Dad made me work with Northstar Meridian after you left. He said I could protect you from inside. I believed him until I saw the transfer files.
Do not trust Hale.
The first Claire is connected to Site Thirteen.
M.
Claire read it twice before giving it to Hale.
The agent’s expression did not change.
“You think he wrote this willingly?” Hale asked.
“I recognize his handwriting.”
“That was not my question.”
“Neither was yours.”
Hale placed the note in an evidence sleeve.
“You have trusted me for less than twenty-four hours.”
“I do not trust anyone for twenty-four hours.”
“That is probably why you are alive.”
Site Thirteen appeared nowhere in the ledger copies. The original ledger remained missing, but Hale’s team had photographed sixty-three pages before the airfield operation. One page contained a series of coordinates disguised as account totals.
They led to a decommissioned radar station in the Appalachian Mountains.
Samuel uncovered another clue in Arthur’s estate records. For eighteen years, a Bennett trust had paid maintenance fees for a weather research facility at those coordinates. The trust beneficiary was listed only as C.E.B.
Claire Elizabeth Bennett.
Hale ordered a tactical operation.
Claire was excluded.
“You are emotionally compromised,” Hale said.
“My brother may be there.”
“Your brother told you not to trust me.”
“Which makes me useful. If this is a trap, they expect me.”
“Exactly.”
Claire did not argue further. She waited until Hale’s convoy departed, then used Arthur’s satellite phone to access a hidden menu. The cracked watch provided the password: 0217.
A map appeared.
The same coordinates flashed beside a live signal moving east of the radar station.
Claire took Samuel’s car and followed.
The signal led not to the main facility but to a forest service road ending at an abandoned church. Inside, Marcus sat alone on the altar steps with his wrists bound loosely in front of him.
Claire kept her pistol raised.
“Where is Vance?”
“Gone.”
“You escaped?”
“She let me go.”
“Why?”
“To bring you here.”
Claire did not lower the weapon.
Marcus looked exhausted. “I deserved what you thought of me at the funeral.”
“You carried an erasure transmitter.”
“Dad gave it to me.”
That answer made her pause.
“He said someone would activate a destructive signal when the casket opened. The transmitter was supposed to block it.”
“It was broadcasting on the same frequency as the case.”
“I did not know that.”
“Convenient.”
Marcus laughed without humor. “You think I enjoyed taking your place? Every dinner, every photograph, every speech where he called me his son while warning me never to become too comfortable?”
Claire saw the boy he had been beneath the bruises.
“What did he tell you?”
“That Northstar selected you for an operation because of your identity. When you discovered the casualty reports, you were close to finding Hearth. Dad publicly rejected you so they would believe you had lost access to him.”
“He could have told me.”
“He said you would refuse protection.”
“He was right.”
“He also said I had to stay close to Vivian because she knew where the first Claire was.”
Claire lowered the pistol slightly.
“Does she?”
“I think she is the first Claire.”
“No. The records show she gave birth to me.”
“Records can be manufactured.”
Marcus stood slowly.
“Site Thirteen stores original identity files. Dad went there three weeks ago. He found something that terrified him.”
“What?”
“A video of Rebecca Bennett recorded last month.”
Claire’s throat tightened.
“My mother would be in her sixties.”
“She is.”
Marcus took a phone from beneath the altar cloth and played a short clip.
A gray-haired woman sat before a concrete wall.
Her eyes were Claire’s eyes.
“Arthur,” the woman said into the camera, “if you are seeing this, Voss has begun the final transfer. Do not let them bring Claire home.”
The recording ended.
Claire stared at the black screen.
“Which Claire?”
Marcus looked toward the church doors.
“That is what Dad went to find out.”
Headlights appeared through the stained glass.
Hale’s convoy had not followed Claire.
Black Northstar vehicles surrounded the church.
May you like
Marcus reached beneath the altar and pulled out two rifles.
“Now,” he said, “you can decide whether I am real family.”
