Chapter 6 - THE MAN ABOVE JULIANWilliam Cross had shaken my hand after Darun.
He was four years younger than I was, impossibly stubborn, mechanically gifted, and incapable of entering a room quietly.
He died at twenty-three.
At least that was what I had believed for nineteen years.
Nathan served as a civilian systems engineer on government aviation projects.
His small aircraft went down during a storm over western Virginia.
The wreckage burned.
Identification came through dental records.
I buried him beside my father.
I stood at his grave every Memorial Day I could.
So when Julian texted ASK YOUR BROTHER, my first assumption was cruelty.
Then Ruiz called.
“We found an account connected to Nathan Vance.”
I stopped breathing for a moment.
“Say that again.”
“A numbered account opened sixteen years ago.”
“That’s impossible.”
“I know.”
Nathan had supposedly been dead for three years when the account was created.
Ruiz continued.
“The account received recurring transfers from one of Julian’s companies.”
“How much?”
“Altogether? About nine hundred thousand.”
“Who withdrew it?”
“We’re working on that.”
“Where was the account opened?”
“Switzerland originally. Later moved through Luxembourg.”
My mind rejected every possibility.
Nathan alive.
Nathan involved.
Nathan’s identity stolen.
None made sense.
Marcus suggested the most obvious explanation.
“Julian used your brother’s identity.”
But Ruiz was less certain.
“The opening documentation included biometric verification.”
“That can be forged.”
“Yes.”
“Then it was forged.”
“Maybe.”
I hated that word.
Maybe.
Wars were full of maybe.
Maybe the road was safe.
Maybe the informant was telling the truth.
Maybe the building was empty.
People died inside maybe.
By noon, investigators found Julian.
Not physically.
Digitally.
A private aircraft registered to one of his shell companies had left New Hampshire before dawn.
Flight plan: Montreal.
But it diverted over northern Maine.
Then the transponder disappeared.
Federal authorities issued warrants.
His face appeared on every major network.
Nora turned over his second phone.
Keller surrendered two laptops.
The divorce case temporarily stalled as the criminal investigation exploded.
For the first time in seventeen years, I returned to the house Julian and I had shared without him.
Federal investigators had already searched it.
Still, standing in our bedroom felt stranger than any battlefield.
His suits were gone.
His watches.
Two suitcases.
He had planned the escape.
I opened the drawer beside his bed.
Empty.
The closet safe was empty too.
But the house held memories he could not pack.
Our wedding photograph.
A Christmas ornament Nathan made for me when he was sixteen.
The leather chair Julian slept in after my fourth surgery because he said he wanted to be near me if I woke frightened.
I stood staring at that chair for a long time.
It would have been easier if every memory had been false.
They were not.
That was the cruelest part.
There had been good days.
Laughter.
Love, or something that felt like love.
Betrayal does not erase the past.
It poisons your understanding of it.
Marcus called from downstairs.
“Iris.”
Something in his voice made me move quickly.
He stood in Julian’s study beside an open floor panel.
An investigator held a small metal case.
“Where was that?”
“Under the safe.”
Inside were photographs.
Not military photographs.
Family photographs.
Nathan.
Alive.
Older.
The first image showed him outside a café.
According to the timestamp, it was taken fourteen years after his death.
My knees nearly gave out.
Marcus caught my arm.
“That’s him?”
I could not speak.
Nathan’s hair was grayer at the temples.
His face thinner.
But the crooked smile was unmistakable.
Another image showed him getting into a car in Prague.
Another walking beside a river in Budapest.
The most recent had been taken eleven months earlier.
Nathan was standing outside a bookstore.
Alive.
My dead brother was alive.
I pressed one hand against my mouth.
Ruiz arrived thirty minutes later.
He studied the photographs.
“We need to verify them.”
“It’s him.”
“I believe you.”
“Where is he?”
“We don’t know.”
“Did Julian know?”
Ruiz looked at the hidden case.
“Yes.”
Rage came quickly this time.
All those years.
Every anniversary.
Every grave visit.
Julian had watched me mourn someone he knew was alive.
Why?
The answer began appearing that night.
Nathan had not died in the plane crash.
Someone else had.
The dental identification file had been altered.
Nathan had entered a highly classified protective program after uncovering an illegal technology-smuggling network connected to defense contractors.
One of those companies eventually did business with Julian.
Nathan had disappeared because people wanted him dead.
Only a handful of officials knew.
Aaron Weller was one.
And somehow, years later, Julian learned the truth.
Ruiz explained what investigators believed.
“Julian may have been paying Nathan.”
“Why?”
“Or blackmailing him.”
“With what?”
“We’re trying to determine that.”
Then Ruiz showed me an email recovered from a server in Germany.
Sender: NVANCE17.
Recipient: a coded address linked to Julian.
I told you I’m finished. You promised Iris would never be involved.
Julian’s reply:
You don’t get to decide when you’re finished.
A second message came weeks later.
Nathan wrote:
If anything happens to my sister, I will expose everything.
Julian replied:
Then pray nothing happens.
I read it twice.
“You said these messages are from when?”
Ruiz answered quietly.
“Five days before Darun.”
My brother had known something was happening.
Perhaps not enough.
Perhaps too late.
But he tried to protect me.
And Julian had known he was alive.
The next morning, an international alert went out for Nathan.
Not as a suspect.
As a protected witness potentially in danger.
Hours passed.
Then a day.
Then two.
Nothing.
Meanwhile, Julian remained missing.
Marcus warned me the divorce case might take months.
I no longer cared about the divorce.
Not really.
The company mattered because people depended on it.
The stolen money mattered because theft required consequence.
But I wanted one answer above everything.
Where was Nathan?
On the third night, I received a call from an unknown number.
No caller ID.
No location.
I answered.
“Hello?”
Silence.
Then breathing.
My entire body went still.
A man spoke.
“Iris?”
I gripped the phone.
I had not heard his voice in nineteen years.
But I knew it.
“Nathan?”
He broke.
Not loudly.
Just one breath becoming a sob.
“Oh God, Iris.”
I sat on the edge of the bed.
“You’re alive.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Nineteen years.”
“I know.”
“I buried you.”
“I know.”
“I stood beside your grave.”
His voice cracked.
“I know.”
Anger and relief collided so hard inside me that I could not separate them.
“Where are you?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“You can trust Ruiz.”
“No.”
“Nathan—”
“Listen to me.”
His voice changed.
Urgent.
“Julian didn’t run because of the divorce.”
“I know.”
“He ran because the people behind Weller know you found the drives.”
“Who are they?”
“I can’t explain on the phone.”
“Then come home.”
A long silence.
“I’m trying.”
“What does that mean?”
Another voice sounded faintly behind him.
Nathan whispered.
“They found me.”
The line crackled.
“Nathan?”
“If I don’t make it—”
“Do not finish that sentence.”
“Iris, listen.”
I stood.
“Where are you?”
“Remember Dad’s watch.”
“What?”
“Dad’s watch. The one you gave me before my last flight.”
The line cut.
I immediately called Ruiz.
Within an hour, investigators were working the call.
I went upstairs and opened the box containing my father’s belongings.
His second watch was there.
Not the one Nathan had taken.
An old Hamilton.
I turned it over.
My father had engraved the back himself.
TO NATHAN — TRUE NORTH IS HOME.
Below it were coordinates.
I had seen them hundreds of times but assumed they marked our childhood home.
They did not.
Marcus entered as I typed them into a map.
The coordinates pointed to an abandoned hunting cabin in the Blue Ridge Mountains.
My father’s cabin.
A place our family had stopped using after his death.
Ruiz ordered agents there immediately.
They arrived before sunrise.
The cabin was empty.
But someone had been there recently.
Food.
Medical supplies.
A satellite phone.
And blood.
On the wooden table, Nathan had carved a message.
Not for investigators.
For me.
IRIS — JULIAN KNOWS WHO ORDERED DARUN.
Underneath it:
HE WASN’T THE ONE WHO WANTED YOU DEAD.
And below that was a name I had seen during my military career.
A man I once trusted with lives.
May you like
Senator William Cross.
The chairman of the congressional committee overseeing half the military technology contracts in the country.
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