Chapter 6 - The Price of a Mother
Olivia lunged for the receiver. “Let me speak to her.”
“Your mother is resting,” the woman replied. “For the moment.”
“Kessler, listen to me—”
“Don't use names on an unsecured line, darling. You learned that lesson the hard way.”
Hale signaled an analyst to begin a trace. Kessler laughed as if she could see the movement.
“You have one day. Bring the ledger and the girl to the old stone pumping house by the lake. Nobody armed. No uniforms.”
“Olivia isn't a bargaining chip,” Hale said.
“She has been one for nine years.” The line went dead.
Ben gripped the table. “The ledger isn't paper. It's an encrypted drive in Mara's weatherproof kit. She called it her insurance policy.”
Olivia remembered the kit: red stitching, cracked white buckle, always strapped beneath Mara's seat. She remembered Mara shoving it at her as the roof collapsed.
“I thought it burned.”
“You put it somewhere safe,” Ben said. “You told me to remind you when it mattered.”
She closed her eyes, searching through a memory full of smoke, metal, and terror. A stream under the ridge. A culvert. Three stones painted blue.
“I hid it,” she whispered. “Before they caught me.”
Hale set a map between them. “We can recover it with a secured team.”
“No,” Olivia said. “They watch every official vehicle that leaves this base.”
“I won't send you alone.”
“Then help me without trying to control me.”
Hale studied her. “Fair.”
They agreed on a small team: Olivia, Ben, and Staff Sergeant Maya Collins, a military police investigator who had never served under Voss. Maya arrived without questions or ceremony and handed Olivia a fresh uniform top.
“Your old one is evidence,” she said. “We'll preserve it properly.”
Olivia thanked her. It was the first simple kindness anyone had offered since the parade ground.
At the motor pool, Briggs waited by a service van. “I can show you how Voss moves around this place,” he said.
Olivia stared. “Why would I believe you?”
“Because he just sent me a photo of my little sister walking home from school.”
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On his phone, beneath the photograph, the message read: YOUR TURN TO PROVE YOUR LOYALTY.
THE MARK THEY TRIED TO ERASE •
