Chapter 11 - Twenty Thousand Dollars
Daniel did not touch the money.
He photographed the envelope where he found it and called Detective Reed.
The bills were later logged as evidence.
The envelope had no note, but one partial fingerprint belonged to a man named Victor Sloane.
Daniel knew the name.
Everyone in the regional defense-contracting community did.
Sloane owned Meridian Maritime Systems, a company that had recently lost a major Navy logistics bid.
Daniel had served on a technical review panel months earlier.
He had not selected the winner. The panel was only one part of the process.
But he had flagged weaknesses in Meridian's proposal.
"Why would a defense contractor give my wife cash?" Daniel asked.
Reed answered, "That's the question."
Federal investigators joined the case quietly.
Daniel was interviewed twice.
He turned over his devices, calendars, travel records, and work communications voluntarily.
Then they showed him a photograph from Evan's phone.
Claire and Victor Sloane were sitting across from each other in a hotel restaurant.
The date was four days before Daniel left for Virginia.
Another photo showed a folder between them.
Daniel recognized the cover sheet.
It looked like an internal briefing format.
"She couldn't have access to that."
The investigator, Special Agent Laura Kim, watched him carefully.
"Could she access your home office?"
"Yes, physically. But classified work never comes home."
"What about unclassified procurement material?"
Daniel thought of the basement room.
The copied texts.
The surveillance.
"Maybe."
That night, Daniel barely slept.
He kept thinking the child-abuse case had been the whole nightmare.
Now it looked like Claire had been using his home, his job, and perhaps his children as pieces in a much larger plan.
At 6:30 the next morning, Agent Kim called.
"Commander Mercer, we found something on Mr. Sloane's phone."
Daniel stepped into the garage so the children would not hear.
"What?"
"A message from Claire."
"What did it say?"
May you like
Kim read it.
"Once Daniel loses the kids, he'll be too busy fighting to notice anything else."
