Chapter 3 - The Empty Locker
The MPs reached Staff Sergeant Colter’s barracks office seven minutes too late.
His desk drawers were open.
His laptop was gone.
So was the government-issued phone assigned to his position.
Colonel Hale arrived just as an investigator photographed an empty filing cabinet.
“Tell me he didn’t sign out,” Hale said.
“He didn’t,” Sergeant Molina replied. “Gate camera shows his truck leaving through East Gate. No leave packet. No pass.”
Lena stood outside the office with Captain Reed. She had not been ordered there, but Reed had asked her to identify a folder she remembered seeing after her first complaint.
Reed lowered her voice. “Do you know Colter well?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Does he have family nearby?”
“I don’t know.”
“Friends?”
Lena looked through the doorway at Derek’s squad photos pinned to the wall.
“Vaughn.”
That answer did not help anyone relax.
“Vehicle located.”
Every head turned.
Colter’s truck had been found behind a closed gas station twelve miles from Fort Halbrook.
Keys inside.
No Colter.
Hale ordered a perimeter and told Reed to return Lena to her barracks.
“Sir, with respect,” Lena said, “I don’t think I should be alone.”
Hale studied her.
It was calculation.
“You have reason to think you’re in danger?”
“I have reason to think someone already destroyed official records to protect him.”
She nodded toward the empty office.
“People don’t usually run because they lost paperwork.”
That evening, Lena sat on the edge of her bunk while her roommate, Private First Class Tessa Brooks, paced near the window.
“You never told me it was this bad,” Tessa said.
“I didn’t know who to trust.”
Tessa stopped.
“That includes me?”
Lena’s eyes softened. “It included everyone.”
At 2214, someone knocked on the barracks door.
Three slow knocks.
The MPs in the hallway called out, “Identify yourself.”
No answer.
Empty.
But something lay on the floor.
Inside was a photograph of Lena entering the Inspector General office two months earlier.
Across the front, written in black marker, were four words.
YOU SHOULD HAVE STOPPED.
Tessa stared at it.
Lena did not.
She turned the photo over.
May you like
On the back was a second message.
NEXT TIME, NO WITNESSES.
