Chapter 7 - The Man Who Wasn't Dead
Leah locked the compromised account and copied the activity logs. She refused to call it proof Owen was alive.
“Credentials can be stolen,” she said. “Especially ones nobody thought needed disabling.”
I knew that. Hope still rushed through me so hard I had to sit.
The login had used a hardware token issued at a veterans rehabilitation center outside Norfolk. Calder called its director. The response came in a careful voice: the facility had treated a patient with scars matching Owen's military medical profile, but the patient had checked out under another name.
“Why wasn't anyone told?” I demanded.
Calder put the call on speaker.
“Because he asked not to be identified,” the director answered. “He said the last man who found him tried to kill him.”
The room went silent.
“Did he leave an address?” Leah asked.
“No. He left a drawing for a woman named Sarah.”
The director sent a photograph. It showed three crude mountain peaks and a circle around the middle one. Beneath them, in Owen's narrow block letters, was a single word: HOME.
I knew what he meant. During training, my team had called an abandoned fire lookout in the Virginia hills “home” because we went there when we needed to disappear for a weekend. Owen had repaired its leaking roof with Mateo. Luke had carved June's name into the porch rail.
Calder wanted to send a protection team. I refused to give her the location until we verified no one on the compromised network could intercept it.
“You don't get to order me to trust another uniform,” I said.
“I'm not ordering you,” she answered. “I'm asking for the chance to do better.”
We agreed on a small team: Leah, a civilian investigator named Tess Morgan, and me. We would alert local law enforcement and approach in daylight. Calder stayed behind to secure the hearing records.
As we prepared to leave, my phone lit up with a number I didn't recognize.
A man's voice whispered, “Sarah, if this is you, don't bring the admiral.”
May you like
Then came a sound I knew as well as my own heartbeat.
Owen's cough.
