Chapter 6 - The Woman Who Disappeared
Adrian Vale was taken into custody, but the Sentinel countdown continued.
Twelve hours.
Maya and the engineering team worked from the underground bunker while police searched every room.
The server Vale had used was only a relay. The true control system remained hidden elsewhere.
Daniel stood beside the central console.
“Can you stop it?”
Maya did not look away from the code.
“Not without the original architecture key.”
“Where is it?”
“Elise Parker may know.”
Detective Shaw received a call from Vermont.
The rural clinic in the photograph had closed months earlier, but a former nurse remembered Elise. She had arrived under another name with a head injury and severe anxiety.
A man claiming to be her brother had paid cash for treatment.
The nurse became suspicious and helped Elise escape.
After that, Elise vanished again.
However, she had left an envelope behind with instructions that it be opened if anyone from Marlowe Aerospace came looking.
The envelope contained a train ticket, a storage-locker number, and a handwritten message:
Find Anna Bell. She remembers the fire.
Evelyn recognized the name.
Anna Bell had worked as Samuel Marlowe’s secretary during the company’s first decade.
She was now ninety-one and lived in an assisted-living community outside Philadelphia.
Daniel called the facility.
Anna agreed to speak with Evelyn.
They had no time to travel, so the conversation took place by video.
Anna appeared on the screen wearing a blue cardigan. Her body looked fragile, but her eyes remained alert.
When she saw Evelyn, she smiled.
“I wondered when the past would finally knock.”
“What fire did Elise mean?” Evelyn asked.
Anna’s smile disappeared.
“The laboratory fire in 1989.”
Daniel knew the official history. An electrical fault had destroyed a prototype guidance system. One engineer died.
But Anna told a different story.
The engineer, Peter Vale, had been Adrian Vale’s younger brother.
Peter and Samuel were developing an early navigation system together. Peter secretly attempted to sell the design to a foreign buyer.
Samuel discovered the plan and confronted him.
During the confrontation, Peter tried to destroy evidence. The fire began accidentally.
Samuel attempted to save him but failed.
“To protect Peter’s family,” Anna said, “Samuel reported the death as an accident and buried the espionage investigation.”
Evelyn closed her eyes.
Samuel had never told her.
“Adrian believed Samuel caused Peter’s death,” Anna continued. “He spent years trying to prove it.”
“Why would Elise know this?”
“Because she found Samuel’s private archive.”
Anna explained that Samuel had preserved evidence from the fire in a storage locker under Anna’s name. The locker contained Peter’s original navigation key—the foundation upon which Sentinel’s modern code had eventually been built.
The train ticket led to Philadelphia.
The storage facility was near Anna’s former home.
Maya checked the countdown.
Nine hours remained.
Daniel arranged a company helicopter, but Maya warned that Sentinel’s corrupted navigation network might already be active.
They traveled by police convoy instead.
During the drive, Briggs’s lawyer contacted Detective Shaw.
Briggs wanted to make a deal.
He admitted threatening employees on Nathan Cole’s orders. In exchange for leniency, he offered the location where Cole had taken Elise Parker.
An abandoned rehabilitation center outside Baltimore.
Police units surrounded it.
Inside, they found medical supplies, restraints, and surveillance equipment.
They also found Elise.
She was alive.
Weak, frightened, but alive.
Cole was gone.
Elise had been held for eleven months because she refused to reveal where she had hidden the physical ledger.
When Daniel spoke to her by phone, he struggled to find words.
“I failed you,” he said.
Elise’s voice was faint.
“You didn’t know.”
“I should have.”
“Yes,” she replied. “You should have.”
The honesty hurt more than anger.
Then Elise added, “But you can still stop them.”
She explained that the ledger was not in the Founders’ Wall compartment.
She had moved it to the statue after realizing Cole was watching her.
The recorder they found was a distraction.
The real ledger was sealed inside the bronze statue’s hollow chest.
Daniel called headquarters and ordered the statue opened.
Inside, employees found the book.
It documented bribery, surveillance, false contracts, board corruption, and Project Sentinel’s hidden command structure.
One name appeared repeatedly.
Richard Harlan.
Chairman of the board’s audit committee.
The man currently directing company operations during Daniel’s absence.
Daniel called headquarters.
Harlan did not answer.
A security alert appeared on Maya’s tablet.
Someone had entered the Sentinel command center using Daniel’s executive credentials.
Maya looked at the countdown.
Four hours and twenty-six minutes remained.
May you like
Richard Harlan was not trying to escape.
He was finishing the launch.
