Chapter 4 - The Man in the Gray Coat
Elise and Daniel left through a maintenance tunnel built into the station’s western wall.
They reached the cliffside seconds before the steel door opened behind them.
Wind tore across the rocks as they climbed toward an old access road. Daniel moved first, checking the path while Elise protected the recorder inside her coat.
Neither spoke until they reached the tree line.
“My car is north,” Daniel said.
“Mine is south.”
“They will be watching both.”
Elise looked back at the station.
Three figures emerged from the main entrance. Two wore dark clothing. The third wore a long gray coat.
Even at a distance, Elise recognized the way he stood.
His hands were folded behind his back.
His chin was slightly raised.
He did not search the area like someone who feared losing them. He simply watched the cliffs as though he already knew where they would go.
“Do you know him?” Daniel asked.
“No.”
But Elise had seen that posture before.
In classified briefing rooms.
In photographs with the faces blurred.
In surveillance footage recorded during the final weeks of Operation Lantern.
The man in the gray coat lifted a phone to his ear.
Elise’s secure device vibrated.
She answered.
“You should not have opened the room,” the man said.
“Then you should have used a better lock.”
“You always believed skill could protect everyone around you.”
“And you always believed fear could replace loyalty.”
The man went silent.
Daniel watched Elise closely.
She continued.
“You knew Thomas.”
“I knew what Thomas discovered.”
“Where is the ledger?”
“Closer to the wedding than you think.”
The call ended.
A vehicle engine started near the station.
Elise and Daniel moved deeper into the trees.
They spent the next hour following a drainage route toward the highway. Daniel had arranged a secondary vehicle at an old service road, but when they reached it, the driver’s door was open.
A white envelope rested on the seat.
Daniel checked beneath the car and inside the engine compartment before touching it.
The envelope contained a photograph of Olivia leaving a bridal fitting.
A date and time were written across the bottom.
Tomorrow, 4:30 p.m.
Behind the photograph was a single sentence.
CONRAD WILL OFFER HER A CHOICE.
Elise called Olivia immediately.
No answer.
She tried again.
The phone went directly to voicemail.
“Elise,” Daniel said, “we need to consider the possibility that Olivia is already involved.”
“She would have told me.”
“Unless she does not know whom to trust.”
Elise studied the photograph.
Olivia was smiling beside her wedding planner, but her eyes were turned toward someone outside the frame.
Someone she recognized.
Someone she feared.
Daniel started the car.
“Where does Conrad meet her tomorrow?”
“The Vale Foundation building.”
“Private security?”
“More than he needs.”
Daniel glanced at the recorder inside Elise’s coat.
“If Thomas’s first ledger section is hidden somewhere Olivia remembers as home, where would that be?”
Elise knew the answer.
After Thomas disappeared, Olivia had lived for almost two years in a small apartment near the Norfolk naval base.
The apartment had belonged to Thomas.
Elise had kept it.
No one had entered in more than a decade.
They drove there before contacting anyone else.
The building had been renovated, but the apartment remained unchanged. Thomas’s books still stood on the shelves. Olivia’s childhood drawings were stored in a desk drawer. A faded growth chart marked the kitchen wall.
Elise began searching.
Daniel inspected the floorboards and electrical outlets.
An hour passed.
Then Elise noticed a drawing framed above Olivia’s old bed.
It showed a ship, a lighthouse, and three stick figures holding hands.
The frame was heavier than it should have been.
Behind the drawing was a narrow metal box.
Elise opened it with the brass key.
Inside was a small drive labeled SECTION ONE.
There was also a letter addressed to Olivia.
Elise did not open it.
Daniel connected the drive to an isolated computer.
A ledger appeared.
Hundreds of payments.
Inspection numbers.
Component codes.
Names.
One name appeared more often than the others.
Conrad Vale.
But the final page contained something far more dangerous.
A transfer of twelve million dollars authorized by a company called North Meridian Holdings.
The approving signature belonged to Vice Admiral Samuel Wren.
Elise stared at the screen.
Samuel Wren had been her closest friend during Operation Lantern.
He was also the man who had officially confirmed Thomas Mercer’s death.
Daniel leaned toward the computer.
“I thought Wren died six years ago.”
“So did I.”
The apartment door opened behind them.
Olivia stood in the hallway wearing her bridal fitting dress beneath a long coat.
Her eyes moved from Elise to the ledger.
Then to the unopened letter.
“You found it,” she whispered.
Elise rose slowly.
“You knew it was here?”
May you like
Olivia closed the door.
“Not until Conrad told me yesterday.”
