Chapter 5 - The Road to the Depot
Naomi drove an old maintenance truck down a gravel route behind the rifle range. The truck smelled of diesel and stale coffee. Mara wore a reflective vest and sat low in the passenger seat, studying the prepaid phone.
“Why are you doing this?” Mara asked.
“Because I was on duty when Daniel supposedly died. And because Rourke ordered me to erase the convoy's access logs.”
Mara turned. “You never told me.”
“I kept copies.” Naomi's knuckles whitened on the wheel. “I was scared. I'm still scared.”
“You should be.”
A black SUV waited outside the depot, its lights off. Through the fence, two men dragged Liang toward a loading bay. Even at a distance Mara recognized the determined way he held his head.
“There's our witness,” she said.
“There's a whole lot of trouble beside him.”
They parked among rusting storage containers. Mara approached the building from the drainage ditch while Naomi tracked the guards through a thermal camera used by engineers to check overheated wiring. Inside, Liang sat in a chair, wrists tied, a bruise spreading below his eye.
A security contractor leaned close. “Where is the drive?”
“I don't know,” Liang answered.
“Wrong answer.”
Mara struck the lights with a thrown wrench. Darkness swallowed the room. Naomi triggered the depot's warning siren. As the guards stumbled toward the sound, Mara entered through a side door and cut Liang loose.
He grabbed her sleeve. “Don't fight them here. They're expecting it.”
They ran toward a service exit. A guard blocked the corridor. Mara shoved a rolling tool cart into his legs, sending him tumbling onto the concrete. She took his radio and kept moving.
In the truck, Liang clutched his ribs. “Your brother saved my life,” he said. “They made me come here to draw you out.”
“Then why give me the key?”
“Because Daniel made me promise I would.”
Naomi accelerated toward the road. Red lights flared ahead. Two military police vehicles pulled across the only exit.
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The moment she saw the depot, another memory surfaced. Daniel had brought her here for a family day before his deployment. He had shown her how supply sheets worked, not because he expected her to care about paperwork but because he was proud of keeping people equipped. “A missing bolt can ground a helicopter,” he'd said, tapping a stack of forms. “Little lies become big problems.” At the time she'd teased him for sounding like their father. Now she wondered how many little lies he'd found before the people above him decided he was a problem. Beside her Naomi adjusted the mirror, quiet and alert. Neither woman said aloud what they both understood: if Daniel really lived, the next few hours could destroy every comfortable assumption they'd carried for nearly a year.
Liang stared at the blockade. “There's something you need to know about Daniel,” he whispered. “He isn't hiding anymore. He's a prisoner.”
