Chapter 5 - The Man My Sister Planned to MarryTiffany did not believe us.
The instant the lights died, I dropped behind the wall separating the entry from the living room.
“Down!”
General Hale pulled my mother behind the sofa.
Price and the second investigator moved toward opposite windows.
Dad stood frozen.
I grabbed his sweater and yanked him to the floor.
A second shot struck the front window.
Glass exploded across the hardwood.
Tiffany screamed.
“Stay down!”
“I am down!”
Another round hit the wall.
Not random.
Controlled.
Measured.
The shooter was not trying to spray the house.
He was shaping our movement.
“Rear exit,” Price said.
“No,” I replied.
He looked at me.
“They broke glass in back first.”
A diversion.
Someone wanted us moving toward a predictable escape route.
General Hale understood immediately.
“Basement.”
Dad stared at him.
“There’s no exit from the basement.”
“Exactly.”
We moved.
The investigators covered the windows while I got my family down the narrow staircase.
Mom kept whispering, “Oh my God, oh my God.”
Tiffany was shaking.
Dad looked ten years older.
The basement still smelled the way it had when I was a child—laundry detergent, old carpet, dust, and cedar from the storage closet.
Price barricaded the stairwell.
Hale got on a secure radio.
“Falcon Actual, shots fired. Residential structure compromised. Request immediate tactical response.”
My father looked at me.
“This happens to you?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
It was almost absurd enough to make me laugh.
Instead, I checked Tiffany.
“You hit?”
“No.”
“Mom?”
“I’m fine.”
“Dad?”
He nodded.
Upstairs, something crashed.
Someone had entered the house.
Price raised his weapon.
Tiffany covered her mouth.
For years she had mocked what she imagined my job to be.
Tonight, she was seeing the part nobody put into recruitment brochures.
The waiting.
The uncertainty.
The terrible knowledge that somebody dangerous might be only twenty feet away.
Footsteps moved overhead.
One person.
Then another.
A voice.
“Police!”
Price looked at Hale.
The general shook his head.
Real police were already outside.
Nobody legitimate would enter without coordination.
The footsteps reached the basement door.
The knob moved.
Once.
Twice.
Then stopped.
Silence.
The worst sound in the world.
A vibration buzzed near my leg.
My phone.
I pulled it out.
Unknown number.
I showed Hale.
He nodded.
I answered.
No greeting.
A man spoke.
“You ruined everything.”
The voice was electronically altered.
“Who is this?”
“You should have accepted the detention.”
“Why?”
“Because that was the easy version.”
Tiffany stared at me.
I switched to speaker.
Hale listened.
“What do you want?” I asked.
“You know.”
“I don’t.”
“You found a door that was never meant to be opened, Captain.”
Nightglass.
“I found somebody selling American lives.”
A pause.
Then a soft laugh.
“You still think this is about money.”
The basement door slammed inward.
Price fired once.
A man fell backward into the hall.
His weapon clattered down the stairs.
The phone call disconnected.
Tiffany screamed again.
Price moved upward.
The second investigator followed.
Hale ordered us to remain.
For ninety seconds, we heard movement.
Commands.
Boots.
Another gunshot.
Then, from outside, sirens.
Real ones this time.
Price reappeared.
“Clear.”
The attacker at the stairs was alive.
The second fled through the backyard and was captured by responding officers three blocks away.
Both carried false federal identification.
Neither carried personal phones.
Professionals.
Or close enough.
By midnight, my childhood home had become a crime scene.
Mom sat beneath a blanket in an emergency vehicle.
Dad gave statements to investigators.
Tiffany stood alone beside the curb, barefoot because she had lost one shoe in the basement.
I walked over.
She did not look at me.
“I really hated you,” she said.
It was not an apology.
Not yet.
“I know.”
“Do you?”
“Yes.”
She finally looked at me.
“I thought you thought you were better than us.”
“I didn’t.”
“You never told us anything.”
“I couldn’t.”
“You always say that.”
“Because it’s true.”
She wrapped her arms around herself.
“I thought you stayed away because you didn’t care.”
That hurt more than I expected.
“I stayed away because sometimes staying away was the safest thing I could do.”
Her eyes filled.
“And look how well that worked.”
I had no answer.
A black government SUV pulled beside us.
General Hale stepped out.
“We need to leave.”
Tiffany looked toward Mom and Dad.
“Where?”
“A secure facility.”
Then Hale looked at me.
“Captain, walk with me.”
We moved several yards away.
His face was grim.
“We identified the men.”
“Who?”
“Former private security contractors.”
“For Northland?”
“One of them.”
“And the other?”
“Former Army intelligence.”
That surprised me.
“Name?”
“Major Eric Sloan.”
I knew it.
Everybody in our field did.
Sloan had been forced into retirement after an unauthorized surveillance scandal four years earlier.
He had blamed civilian oversight.
Blamed command.
Blamed everyone except himself.
“What’s the connection to Voss?”
“We’re working on it.”
I studied Hale.
He was holding something back.
“What else?”
He exhaled.
“Voss’s crash wasn’t an accident.”
I had expected that.
Still, hearing it landed hard.
“Cause?”
“Vehicle control system compromised remotely.”
Nightglass again.
“How deep is this?”
“That’s what I came to tell you before the arrest attempt.”
He looked toward my family.
“Voss left something behind.”
“For me?”
“Yes.”
“What?”
“A sealed briefing packet.”
My pulse quickened.
“What’s in it?”
“We don’t know. Biometric lock.”
“Mine?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“Peterson.”
I nodded.
Then General Hale said the sentence that changed the entire investigation.
“Evelyn, before he died, Voss recorded a message.”
I waited.
Hale’s voice became quieter.
“He said the person running Nightglass wasn’t inside the military.”
“Then where?”
“He said the architect was someone who had been watching you since before you joined.”
My stomach tightened.
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“There was one more thing.”
“What?”
“He gave us a name.”
May you like
Hale looked toward the ambulance where my sister sat.
“Gregory Palmer.”
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