Chapter 4 - The Room I Never Entered
"Yesterday I was stocking shelves at a grocery store in Flagstaff," I told him. "Check the cameras."
"I believe you," Rourke said, sounding surprised by his own words.
He arranged for me to remain on base as a witness under escort, a decision Sloane protested loudly. At 7:10 that evening, Rourke brought me, Atlas, and an exhausted Sergeant Luis Ortega to the sealed explosives lab. "Somebody spilled solvent through the ventilation intake," he said. "The moment I opened the door, my eyes burned."
"Why were you there?" Rourke asked.
Ortega held up a photo on his phone: an old dog harness with orange webbing along its shoulder pad. "They were counting Kharif equipment as scrap. Then I saw the inventory form. It said one harness had been moved to B-17."
"Who signed the move?"
"Nora Hayes. Yesterday."
"Except I didn't," I said.
Rourke unlocked the outer door. Atlas slipped past him and began searching the room with quiet, methodical movements. At the back stood a dented metal cage.
B-17.
Inside was the harness.
I hadn't seen it since the evacuation helicopter. The straps still bore a pale slash where a fragment had cut through the fabric. Eli used to joke that Atlas had better body armor than either of us.
I lifted the harness carefully. Atlas pressed his muzzle into the shoulder pad and froze.
"What is it?" Ortega whispered.
I ran my finger along the orange seam. Three black stitches. A second layer of material beneath them. Eli had repaired the harness in the field, but this pad was thicker than I remembered.
"Give me a seam cutter."
"We need to preserve the evidence," Rourke said.
"Then photograph it first. Every inch. Get a witness and an evidence bag."
He did. Under the phone's bright light, I opened one stitch while Ortega recorded. Hidden inside the padding was a waterproof packet smaller than a postage stamp.
A microSD card.
Atlas lowered his head against my knee. My throat tightened. "Eli," I whispered. "What did you do?"
Rourke placed the card into a sealed evidence sleeve. Before he could write the time, all the lights went out.
A heavy lock snapped onto the outer door.
May you like
Then a man's voice came through the wall speaker.
"Leave the card on the floor, Nora. Last chance."
