Chapter 7 - WHAT HAPPENED TO MY FATHERMarcus Holloway did not deny it.
That frightened me more than any lie could have.
I closed the secure conference-room door behind us and placed my phone on the table.
Cross remained outside.
No analysts.
No aides.
Just Holloway and me.
“What happened to my father?”
Marcus looked at me for a long time.
Then removed his glasses.
“Who told you to ask?”
“Thomas Mercer.”
His face became still.
So Mercer was alive.
Holloway knew.
“You knew.”
“I suspected.”
“How long?”
“Seven years.”
Rage surged through me.
“You let me attend his funeral.”
“We had no proof he survived.”
“You suspected.”
“Yes.”
“And my father?”
Holloway exhaled.
“Sit down.”
“No.”
“Grace.”
“Tell me.”
He looked older than he had twelve hours earlier.
“Your father did not die from a heart attack.”
I felt nothing at first.
My brain rejected the sentence.
“What?”
“He was poisoned.”
The room blurred.
I put one hand against the table.
“When?”
“You know when.”
Of course.
I had been twenty-two.
Home between assignments.
My father, Samuel Bennett, collapsed while washing his truck.
The doctors said cardiac arrest.
No autopsy.
He had a known arrhythmia.
We buried him three days later.
“Who killed him?”
“We don’t know.”
“You’ve had sixteen years.”
“We didn’t know immediately.”
“When did you know?”
“Eight years ago.”
Nightglass.
My mind connected it.
“You discovered it during Nightglass.”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“Archived medical records. Your father had been part of an unauthorized intelligence review.”
I stared at him.
“My father was a communications specialist.”
“That was his official career.”
My stomach turned.
“You lied to me too.”
“I protected classified information.”
“Don’t use that phrase with me.”
He flinched.
Good.
“He was intelligence?”
“Signals analysis. Later counter-proliferation.”
I laughed once, bitterly.
“My entire childhood was a cover story.”
“Not entirely.”
“How comforting.”
Holloway placed both hands on the table.
“Samuel wanted you kept out.”
“Out of what?”
“The network that became Nightglass.”
I froze.
“My father knew about Nightglass before it existed?”
“He knew about the people who made it necessary.”
He pulled a secure tablet from the drawer.
A file appeared.
PROJECT ORPHEUS.
I had never seen it.
“Orpheus began in the late nineties,” Holloway said. “A small number of officers discovered foreign procurement agents building long-term relationships around defense families.”
My mind flashed to Vanessa.
Patricia.
Ethan.
“The same method.”
“Yes.”
“They didn’t steal files first.”
“No. They built human access.”
“Spouses. Friends. Career mentors.”
“Exactly.”
My chest tightened.
“Mercer was involved.”
“Yes.”
“On which side?”
Holloway hesitated.
“That became unclear.”
I stared at him.
“Thomas Mercer and my father worked together.”
“For years.”
“Then my father died.”
“Yes.”
“And Mercer disappeared nine years later.”
“Correct.”
“What happened between them?”
Holloway opened another file.
A scanned letter.
My father’s handwriting.
I recognized it instantly.
Marcus,
Tom has gone too far. He believes the only way to defeat Orpheus is to control it. He is recruiting assets without authorization and manipulating promotions to put people where he needs them.
If he refuses to stop, I will take this outside the program.
Samuel
I felt sick.
“When was this written?”
“Three weeks before your father died.”
My hands trembled.
Only slightly.
“Did Mercer kill him?”
“We never proved it.”
“But you think he did.”
“I think Mercer became convinced the system was corrupted beyond repair. He began creating his own network.”
“Shepherd.”
Holloway nodded.
“Possibly.”
I closed my eyes.
The man I called Uncle Tom.
Birthday cards.
Christmas gifts.
The man who taught me to fish after my father died.
He may have killed my father.
“Why recruit me into military intelligence?”
“I didn’t.”
I opened my eyes.
“What?”
“Your career path began before I knew who you were.”
“That’s impossible.”
“You were good, Grace.”
Despite everything, that hurt.
Because I had spent years wondering whether hidden hands shaped my career too.
“Mercer noticed you before I did,” Holloway continued. “I later learned he quietly recommended your name for several assignments.”
My blood went cold.
“So he shaped my career.”
“Some of it.”
“Just like Ethan.”
“Yes.”
I walked to the wall.
Everything felt contaminated.
My marriage.
My career.
My father’s death.
“How much of my life is actually mine?”
Holloway answered immediately.
“More than you think.”
I turned.
“You don’t get to say that.”
“No. But I will.”
His voice hardened.
“Mercer could open doors. He could not make you walk through them. He could recommend you for selection. He could not pass your evaluations. He could not lead soldiers for you. He could not survive Kandahar for you. He did not earn your rank.”
My throat tightened.
I hated that I needed to hear it.
“What happened in Kandahar?”
Holloway looked confused.
“You know.”
“Vanessa knew the location.”
His face changed.
“The mission was compartmented.”
“How did she know?”
“Mercer.”
“Maybe.”
I touched the scar.
Seven years earlier, our convoy had been hit outside Kandahar while transporting a captured financial courier linked to an arms-smuggling network.
The courier escaped during the attack.
Three soldiers died.
I nearly did.
The investigation found operational compromise but never identified the leak.
Now I knew.
“Was Orpheus connected to the ambush?”
Holloway’s silence answered me.
“You knew?”
“We suspected.”
“Marcus.”
“I did not know enough to tell you.”
“You let me blame myself.”
His face broke.
“I know.”
I stared at him.
For years I had wondered whether I missed something.
Whether I made the wrong route decision.
Whether three men died because I failed them.
“You knew there might have been a leak.”
“Yes.”
“And you said nothing.”
“Because we couldn’t identify where the leak came from, and telling you would have jeopardized the investigation.”
I wanted to throw something.
Instead, I stood completely still.
That was worse.
Holloway knew it.
“I’m sorry.”
“Everyone is sorry today.”
A knock came at the door.
Cross entered.
“Colonel, we found something in the bracelet footage.”
He stopped when he saw our faces.
“Bad time?”
“No,” I said. “Show me.”
He placed a tablet on the table.
Video from three months earlier.
Patricia’s living room.
Vanessa sat across from someone just outside the bracelet camera’s direct angle.
Voice only.
Male.
“You’re taking too long.”
Vanessa replied, “Ethan is easy. Grace is not.”
The man said, “She doesn’t need to be easy. She needs to be isolated.”
“Her command trusts her.”
“Then damage the marriage.”
My stomach dropped.
Vanessa laughed softly.
“Already happening.”
The man continued.
“The husband is insecure. The mother resents her. Use that.”
Cross paused.
“Voice analysis matched archived recordings.”
“To whom?”
He looked at Holloway.
“Thomas Mercer.”
There it was.
Mercer had deliberately weaponized the weaknesses in my family.
“Keep playing.”
Vanessa said, “What if Ethan finds out?”
Mercer answered, “He’s irrelevant.”
HE WAS NEVER THE TARGET.
The photograph made sense.
Vanessa: “And Patricia?”
Mercer: “Disposable.”
I felt no pleasure knowing that.
Vanessa: “When do we take the pin?”
Mercer: “Not until Holloway activates Walker.”
Cross stopped again.
Holloway stared at the screen.
“He knew we’d reactivate you.”
“Of course he did.”
My mind raced.
Mercer needed me operational.
Visible.
Mobile.
Why?
Echo said the pin contained a shadow archive.
But Mercer didn’t need to steal it earlier.
He waited.
“Because the pin changes when activated,” I whispered.
Holloway looked at me.
“What?”
“The authentication credentials rotate when Nightglass is fully activated.”
Cross understood.
“So before tonight, stealing it would be useless.”
“Yes.”
“Now?”
“Now it can open the archive.”
Holloway swore.
My phone vibrated.
Security notification.
A message sent through the Nightglass emergency protocol.
No sender ID.
One line.
BRING THE PIN TO SAMUEL’S GRAVE. 1800. ALONE.
Everyone saw it.
Cross shook his head.
“Absolutely not.”
“It’s a trap.”
“Obviously.”
Holloway looked at me.
“He knows we’ll surveil it.”
“Which means the cemetery isn’t the real location.”
Exactly.
Mercer knew me.
Knew my father.
Knew how I thought.
He wanted me focused on the grave.
So what was nearby?
I pulled up a map.
My father was buried at a veterans cemetery outside Southern Pines.
Less than ten miles from—
I stopped.
“The old communications depot.”
Holloway leaned over.
“What?”
A decommissioned Army relay facility sat nine miles east of the cemetery.
Closed for years.
Officially empty.
My father had once taken me there as a child during a family open house.
Mercer had been with us.
“He wants the pin at the depot.”
Cross frowned.
“Then why mention the grave?”
“Because it’s personal.”
Holloway looked at me.
“Or because he wants us to discover the depot.”
That possibility was worse.
“What if Mercer isn’t our only enemy?”
Nobody spoke.
The house fire.
Mercer denied ordering it.
Could have been a lie.
But what if it wasn’t?
What if two factions wanted Nightglass?
Mercer’s rogue network.
And whoever the original Orpheus organization had become.
Suddenly Vanessa’s comment made sense.
I’m the distraction.
Maybe she wasn’t referring to herself versus Mercer.
Maybe Mercer himself was the distraction.
My phone rang.
Ethan.
I answered.
“What?”
His voice was breathless.
“Grace, my mother is gone.”
My body went cold.
“What do you mean gone?”
“She was supposed to be moved to protective holding.”
“Yes.”
“The transport never arrived.”
Holloway immediately grabbed a radio.
Ethan continued.
“Her lawyer got a text from her phone.”
“What did it say?”
Silence.
Then:
“Tell Grace to bring the silver pin.”
I closed my eyes.
Patricia had become leverage.
Cross whispered, “Mercer?”
I wasn’t sure.
Because if Mercer considered Patricia disposable, kidnapping her made little sense.
Unless someone else had her.
Two networks.
Two enemies.
One pin.
And my family trapped between them.
I looked at Holloway.
“Lock down every Nightglass node.”
He nodded.
“What are you doing?”
May you like
I picked up the tablet containing Project Orpheus.
“I’m going to find out which ghost is actually hunting us.”
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