Chapter 7 - The Video That Lied
The video spread faster than any correction could. By morning, a dozen accounts had clipped the worst three seconds: me on a radio, saying, "Take the river road."
It was my voice. That was the problem.
"You said it," Dad whispered.
"I said the opposite. They cut out the word 'don't.'"
Torres replayed the audio. A tiny jump in the wave pattern marked the edit, but nobody scrolling on a phone would notice.
Chloe stared at the screen. "I shared this."
"Of course you did," I said.
"I didn't know."
"You didn't check."
That quiet sentence stung her more than yelling would have.
Torres began tracking the upload. Vale asked whether I could retrieve Ben's drive. I said yes, but the hiding place was forty miles from where I lived, in an abandoned seaside storage unit I rented under a name nobody else knew.
"Why didn't you turn it in?" Vale asked.
"I tried. Twice. The first investigator disappeared. The second told me the case had been closed and warned me not to talk again."
"Names?"
I gave them both. Torres wrote them down without blinking.
We drove north in two unmarked cars. The city was still dark, streetlights shining on wet pavement. I rode with Torres, who offered coffee without asking for my life's story. I liked her immediately.
"For what it's worth," she said, "the edit is sloppy. Someone wanted speed more than credibility."
"That means they're afraid of something."
"Yes. Probably of you."
The storage lot smelled of rust and rain. My padlock had been cut cleanly. Inside, shelves lay overturned. Someone had found the little blue box beneath the floorboards.
It was empty.
Scratched into the concrete were six fresh words:
YOU SHOULD HAVE STAYED DEAD, HARPER.
Then Torres's radio announced a second discovery. A security camera had captured the person who entered the unit at dawn.
May you like
It was my father.
THE SCARS THE ADMIRAL REMEMBERED
