Chapter 14
I left the camera active, the lens capturing the entire length of my hallway and the heavy steel door at the end of it.
A low, deep vibration in the floor joists woke me at a quarter past four in the morning.
It was not the sound of traffic or the wind off the Potomac. It was the rhythmic, motorized thrum of an unmarked elevator rising directly to the penthouse floor.
I slipped out of bed, keeping the lights off as I walked into the hallway.
The security monitors on my wall showed three men in black tactical gear stepping out of the elevator vestibule, their faces obscured by dark visors.
One of them carried a heavy hydraulic breach tool, while another began setting a yellow charge frame against the deadbolt casing of my steel door.
I stood in the center of the dark hallway, my glasses catching the blue reflection of the active Senate video stream on my desk monitor behind me. The camera was recording every second.
I pressed the intercom button on the wall, my voice cutting through the small speaker outside the steel entrance.
“You have precisely ten seconds to explain this breach, Commander,” I said.
Through the camera feed, I saw Harrison step into the frame behind the three men, his signet ring catching the hallway light as he raised a hand to signal the lead technician.
He did not look at the intercom camera. He simply nodded.
The technician pulled the pin on the hydraulic frame.
The steel door falling inward with a heavy, metallic crash.
Harrison took two steps over the threshold, his boots crunching on the drywall dust. He held a tri-fold paper in his left hand and tapped his gold signet ring against the heavy flashlight in his right. Behind him, three men in black tactical gear stood in the wreckage of my foyer, their weapons lowered but ready.
I did not get up from my desk. I adjusted my glasses and looked past his shoulder to the main terminal screen where the live video feed was still running.
“You are trespassing, Harrison,” I said.
He did not look at the monitors. He dropped the paper onto my keyboard, his eyes fixed on my face with the same cold authority he used when we shared this address.
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“It is a federal search warrant, Claire. National security override, signed by a magistrate at three forty-five this morning.”
“The magistrate did not have the full context,” a voice said from the desk speakers.
