Chapter 10 - The Dead UncleThomas Waverly sent me flowers.
That was the first sign the signature was real.
The second was his phone.
Turned off.
The third was a government vehicle abandoned near Dulles Airport outside Washington.
He had been preparing to run.
Agent Bell placed security around me immediately.
“I don’t need bodyguards.”
“You exposed a defense procurement conspiracy involving senior officers.”
“I’ve had worse Thursdays.”
She did not laugh.
Neither did I.
The documents from Grandpa’s storage unit showed Reed had approved emergency field deployment of the R-17 modules despite internal warnings.
But the motive was complicated.
He hadn’t received money.
He didn’t own Waverly Meridian stock.
Instead, Reed had been commanding an expanding operation overseas.
His troops urgently needed secure communications.
A six-month delay would have forced units to operate with even older equipment.
So Reed made a choice.
Ship the flawed units.
Fix them later through software updates.
Except the updates failed.
Then enemy forces began exploiting communications leaks.
Reed realized what he had done.
Instead of reporting it, he joined my father in hiding it.
Careers.
Contracts.
Reputations.
The same disease.
Everyone thought exposure would be worse than the original mistake.
So the lies multiplied until people died beneath them.
By noon, every television network was asking where General Reed had gone.
By evening, the answer arrived.
He called me.
Private number.
“Claire.”
I recognized his voice.
Agent Bell, sitting across from me, immediately activated tracing equipment.
“General.”
“I suppose you found Arthur’s archive.”
“Yes.”
He sighed.
“I wondered whether Eleanor still had the key.”
“You knew?”
“Your grandfather told me about the storage facility years ago.”
“Then why didn’t you destroy it?”
“I didn’t know which unit.”
“Lucky me.”
“Claire.”
My anger rose.
“You stood in that ballroom pretending to be shocked.”
“I was shocked.”
“You knew about the equipment.”
“Yes.”
“You knew Dad had covered it up.”
“Not everything.”
“You knew enough.”
He was silent.
I laughed without humor.
“Everyone keeps saying that.”
“I made a terrible decision.”
“No. You made hundreds.”
“That’s fair.”
“Where are you?”
“I’m not going to tell you.”
“Then why call?”
“To warn you.”
Agent Bell leaned closer.
I put the call on speaker.
“About what?”
“Peter Sloan.”
“He’s in federal custody.”
“Then you should ask why he surrendered so easily.”
Bell’s eyes narrowed.
Reed continued.
“Sloan wasn’t protecting Richard.”
“Who was he protecting?”
“The person who turned Waverly Meridian’s defective units into an opportunity.”
My pulse increased.
“What opportunity?”
“The defect became exploitable once someone understood when the encryption weakened.”
Agent Bell wrote something quickly.
“Are you saying someone intentionally gave that vulnerability to hostile forces?”
“Yes.”
My stomach dropped.
“That’s treason.”
“Yes.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know.”
“Convenient.”
“I swear to you.”
“You expect me to trust you?”
“No.”
That answer surprised me.
“I expect you to verify everything.”
Bell mouthed, Keep him talking.
I asked, “Why did you approve deployment?”
“Because we were losing people due to outdated systems.”
“And your solution killed more.”
His voice cracked.
“I know.”
For the first time, Reed sounded old.
“I thought we could patch the defect before anyone exploited it.”
“But someone did.”
“Yes.”
“When did you know?”
“Three weeks before Nightfall.”
My blood chilled.
“Why was Nightfall launched?”
“To retrieve evidence linking the breach to a source operating near Khost.”
“The data unit.”
“Yes.”
“Grandpa’s documents say the mission was officially equipment recovery.”
“Cover designation.”
“So Dad knew what we were retrieving?”
“Yes.”
“Austin?”
“I doubt it.”
“Peter Sloan?”
“Yes.”
I thought back.
Hart.
The burning building.
The memory device.
Austin handing everything over.
“Who ordered Dad to make the evidence disappear?”
Reed was silent.
“General?”
“Nobody.”
I frowned.
“Richard volunteered.”
Of course.
He was protecting Waverly Meridian.
But Reed continued.
“He told me he could contain the scandal.”
“And you let him.”
“Yes.”
My nails dug into my palm.
Then Reed said, “Claire, listen carefully. The recovered data included payment records.”
“To whom?”
“A source inside Waverly Meridian.”
“Who?”
“The identity was encrypted.”
“Then how do you know Sloan is protecting them?”
“Because Peter Sloan personally managed the internal access logs.”
Agent Bell leaned toward the phone.
“General Reed, this is Special Agent Naomi Bell.”
“I assumed you were there.”
“You need to surrender.”
“I will.”
“When?”
“When Claire is safe.”
I almost snapped.
“Do not pretend this is about protecting me.”
“It is now.”
“Where are you?”
“Find the person inside the company who accessed the R-17 vulnerability archive before the first battlefield compromise.”
Bell typed rapidly.
“We already pulled access logs.”
“The official logs were altered.”
“How do we find the originals?”
“Arthur kept analog security backups.”
I remembered the filing cabinets.
“We have them.”
“Then look for employee 0417.”
Bell wrote the number.
“Who is that?”
“I don’t know.”
The call ended.
The trace failed.
Agent Bell immediately contacted the evidence team.
Twenty-three minutes later, a technician called.
Employee 0417.
The identity appeared on a personnel card from seventeen years earlier.
I stared at the photograph.
Young.
Dark hair.
Thin face.
A man I knew.
Not Peter Sloan.
Not my father.
Not any executive currently under investigation.
My uncle.
Thomas Waverly.
Dad’s younger brother.
Except Uncle Thomas had supposedly died sixteen years ago in a boating accident.
No body had ever been recovered.
My entire childhood contained barely any mention of him.
Grandpa had removed his photographs after the accident.
Dad claimed grief made him unable to discuss it.
I suddenly remembered something.
A funeral with no coffin.
Mom crying.
Grandpa refusing to attend.
“Was Thomas declared legally dead?” I asked Rebecca.
“Yes. Seven years after disappearance.”
“What was his role at Waverly Meridian?”
She searched.
“Cybersecurity architect.”
My heart raced.
“He designed the R-17 system.”
The room went quiet.
Agent Bell looked at me.
“If Thomas Waverly survived…”
“He knew the vulnerability better than anyone.”
We searched corporate travel records.
Old expense accounts.
Contractor IDs.
Nothing.
Then Leo called.
He had been reviewing the Nightfall audio again.
“Claire.”
“What?”
“Remember the voice in the background before the second explosion?”
“I thought it was Hart.”
“It isn’t.”
He enhanced the recording.
Played it.
A faint male voice.
Foreign-accented English.
“Package confirmed.”
Then another voice answered.
American.
“Move east.”
Two words.
But I knew that voice.
I had heard it at Thanksgiving dinners when I was a child.
Thomas.
My supposedly dead uncle had been at Nightfall.
Eight years ago.
Four kilometers from where my brother stood frozen.
Close enough to watch soldiers die.
That night, Agent Bell issued an international alert.
At 2:13 the next morning, facial-recognition software found a match.
A man traveling under the name Thomas Vale had entered the United States three days before Austin’s promotion party.
His destination?
Atlanta.
And security footage from the St. James Club showed him standing in the ballroom while my father struck me.
He had watched everything.
He knew the evidence was being released before we knew he was alive.
Which meant while my family had been fighting one another, the most dangerous Waverly of all had been standing less than thirty feet away.
Watching.
May you like
Waiting.
And planning his next move.
