Chapter 16 - The Officer Beside Us
Colonel Javier Ramirez had been at my engagement party.
He had stopped Mason from stepping in after the first slap.
He had helped clear guests.
He had been beside us for years.
He had also served under my father.
I refused to believe one dying word without evidence.
Hsu did too.
But we moved carefully.
Ramirez was not told about the locker.
We retrieved it before dawn.
Inside were three laptops, printed bank records, burner phones, and a small digital recorder.
One file was labeled J.R.
Hsu played it.
A man’s voice filled the room.
Ramirez.
“Thomas, I told you the hearing schedule. That’s all. No operational files. No names.”
Thomas answered, “And I paid you for exactly what you gave me.”
“I don’t want money.”
“Then why did you take it?”
Silence.
Thomas laughed.
“Because your son needed treatment and insurance refused the experimental program.”
My chest tightened.
I remembered Ramirez’s son Mateo. Leukemia at twelve. Experimental care in Europe. He survived.
Ramirez spoke again on the recording.
“This ends now.”
“No,” Thomas said. “It ends when I say it ends.”
The recording stopped.
Mason sat back.
“He was compromised.”
“Years ago,” I said. “That doesn’t mean he still is.”
Hsu opened another file.
Recent transfers.
Small amounts sent to a nonprofit connected to Mateo’s medical foundation.
The latest had arrived two weeks earlier.
From Northstar.
I felt sick.
“Bring him in,” Hsu said.
Ramirez arrived voluntarily.
He saw the recorder and closed his eyes.
“I wondered when that would surface.”
I stared at him.
“You knew Dad was investigating Thomas?”
“Yes.”
“You fed Thomas Dad’s schedule.”
“Yes.”
“Did you know what happened to the plane?”
“No.”
His voice cracked.
I had never heard it crack.
“My God, Olivia, no.”
“Why should I believe you?”
“You shouldn’t. Check everything.”
Hsu asked about the recent payments.
Ramirez looked confused.
“I didn’t know about them.”
“They went to your son’s foundation.”
“My son’s foundation has twelve board members.”
His face changed.
“Thomas is framing me.”
“Maybe,” Hsu said.
Ramirez looked at me.
“Your father found out about the first payment years ago. I confessed everything to him.”
“What did he do?”
“He should have destroyed me.”
“But?”
“He made me report myself through a protected channel. I cooperated for eighteen months.”
Hsu leaned forward. “With whom?”
Ramirez named a federal task force that had been dissolved after Dad’s death.
Then he added something none of us expected.
“Your father believed Thomas had a second source. Someone much closer to the aviation investigation.”
“Who?”
“He never told me.”
My phone buzzed.
A video call invitation.
Unknown sender.
We accepted.
Thomas appeared on screen.
Behind him sat my mother, alive and terrified.
Thomas smiled.
“Midnight,” he said. “Bring the drives.”
Then he turned the camera.
Behind my mother was a wall clock.
And beneath it, a framed photograph of my father.
I recognized the room immediately.
May you like
Thomas was not at the rail depot.
He was inside my childhood home.
