Chapter 8
“You’ll wear a wire,” she said finally. “And you’ll do exactly what I tell you.”
Hollister agreed to meet me at a steakhouse in Fayetteville. He was already seated when I arrived, a silver-haired man with a politician’s smile, and he stood to embrace me like a father.
“Grant. God. I heard about Evelyn. I’m so sorry, son.”
“Thank you for coming, sir.”
We talked for twenty minutes about nothing. The deployment. Old friends. Then he leaned in and lowered his voice, his face arranged in deep sympathy.
“Listen. I know this family is difficult. Margaret Shaw is a hard woman. But you need to let the professionals handle this. You’ve got a promising career. A lieutenant colonel’s leaf in your future. Don’t burn that down chasing ghosts.”
“Ghosts, sir?”
“These conspiracy ideas. Defective parts, test data. I’ve heard the rumors.” He shook his head. “Evelyn was under a lot of stress. That folder of hers with the test logs, it’s a misunderstanding. Old drafts. Nothing more.”
I set down my fork.
I had never told Wade Hollister anything about a folder. Or test logs. Or what Evelyn had found.
“Sir,” I said quietly, “how do you know about the test logs?”
He froze. Only for half a second. But I’d watched men freeze before.
“You must have mentioned it,” he said.
“I didn’t.”
His smile stayed in place. His eyes didn’t.
“Grant,” he said, very softly, “think hard about what you do next. You have no idea how big this is.”
“I know exactly how big it is, sir. Staff Sergeant Danny Okafor was six-foot-two.”
I left forty dollars on the table and walked out.
In the van in the parking lot, Reyes pulled off her headphones and looked at me with something like respect.
“That,” she said, “is going to look very good in front of a grand jury.”
But we still needed the originals. The raw test data that proved the SA-7 records had been altered. Without them, Hollister and the Shaws would claim the waiver was legitimate and the logs were simply “drafts.”
Faith gave us the answer without knowing it.
“Evelyn kept everything important at First Carolina Savings in Raleigh,” she said over the phone. “Daddy’s old bank. She said it was the only place in the state Mother didn’t have an account.”
The safe deposit box held a thick binder. Original fatigue test sheets, printed directly from the testing rig, with time stamps and machine signatures. Every one of them showed the SA-7 hubs failing. Beside them were the “certified” versions, with numbers neatly changed.
There was also a letter, signed by a former Shaw test engineer named Martin Greer.
I was ordered to change these results. I refused. I was fired. I kept copies. I’m willing to testify.
And beneath it, a sticky note in Evelyn’s handwriting.
Martin is in Knoxville. He’s terrified. Be gentle with him.
Reyes held the binder like it was made of glass.
“This is it,” she said. “This is the whole case.”
My phone rang as we walked out of the bank into the bright Raleigh afternoon.
It was Dr. Keene, and for the first time since I’d come home, there was something warm in his voice.
“Major Rowan,” he said. “She’s awake. We took her off the ventilator an hour ago. She’s asking for you.”
I had to sit down on the curb.
“She said something else,” Keene added, and his tone shifted. “She’s still very groggy. But she said one name, over and over, and she seemed frightened.”
“What name?”
“Laurel.”
Evelyn’s eyes were open when I walked in.
They were swollen, bloodshot, ringed with bruises fading from purple to yellow-green. But they were hers. Gray-green, like the ocean in winter. And when they found me, they filled with tears.
“Hey,” I said, and that was all I could manage.
Her voice was a dry, broken whisper, ruined by the breathing tube. “You... came home.”
“I told you I would.”
“I’m sorry,” she breathed. “I should have... told you.”
“Shh. You don’t owe me a single apology. Not one. Not ever.”
I sat with her for an hour. Sometimes she slept. Sometimes she squeezed two of my fingers with the hand that wasn’t fully splinted. Deputy Bray stood outside the door like a mountain that had decided to guard something.
When she was strong enough, Reyes came in, and Evelyn gave a statement in fragments of whispered words.
It was Cole Brandt who swung the poker.
It was Meredith who pinned her arms.
May you like
And it was Margaret, standing in the living room doorway in her charcoal coat, who said, “Her hands, Cole. Remember what I told you.”
Evelyn didn’t cry when she said it. She’d done her crying long before. She just said it, and then she turned her face toward the window.
