Chapter 3
The rain was streaking the floor-to-ceiling glass of my living room, turning the lights of the Potomac into long, smeared lines of yellow and red. The apartment was too quiet, the empty spaces on the bookshelves showing where Harrison’s historical biographies used to sit.
My work phone vibrated on the stone kitchen counter, the screen displaying a private military exchange number.
I answered on the third ring, putting the device on speaker as I stood by the window.
“Claire,” Patricia’s voice said, the tone dry and perfectly spaced, like a lecture at a charity gala.
“Hello, Patricia,” I said.
On the screen of my tablet, her face appeared in the frame of a video call. She was sitting in her study in Georgetown, her fingers slowly smoothing the edge of a green silk scarf.
“The gateway in Berlin is rejecting my digital signature,” Patricia said. “I assume this is a technical error on your end.”
“Your credential was revoked at eleven-thirty this morning,” I said, watching a drop of rain slide down the glass.
“My husband built that defense system, Claire,” she said, her voice dropping into a register that had intimidated three generations of Senate staffers. “The Vance legacy is not subject to your administrative spite.”
“The network belongs to the federal government, not the family,” I said.
“Reintegrate the access key immediately,” Patricia said. “We have deliveries in progress that cannot afford a delay.”
“The decision is final,” I said.
I tapped the red icon on the screen, cutting her off mid-sentence.
The room went silent again, save for the wind pushing against the glass.
The basement server room of the agency was fifty-four degrees, a cold that settled deep into my joints after ten minutes. The only sound was the high, thin hum of the cooling fans and the occasional click of a hard drive head shifting.
I sat in the blue light of the terminal, my fingers cold against the keys.
A yellow warning block began to blink in the upper right corner of the primary monitor.
An unknown system query was knocking on the gateway I had just closed.
I tapped the console to trace the source, my fingers moving quickly across the diagnostic command lines.
The signal was not coming from Georgetown or the Vance offices in Virginia.
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The diagnostic tool showed the ping was originating from an internal military node, deep within our own secure architecture.
It was an untraceable routing, using a command structure that had not been active in our inventory for over a decade.
