At the bottom of the screen was a timestamp.
Profile last updated:
Today.
17:51.
Elena looked at the technician.
“Can you trace where the update came from?”
“Internal command network.”
“Specific terminal?”
The technician typed.
Then stopped.
“Ma’am.”
“What?”
“Captain Hammer’s office.”
Grace frowned.
“Hammer was detained by then.”
“Yes.”
Elena thought.
Who had access after his detention?
Military police.
Administrative staff.
Sergeant Major.
Colonel Voss.
And one other person.
The young corporal whose collar Hammer had yanked during formation.
The one who flinched when he humiliated Elena.
“Corporal Cooper.”
Grace looked at her.
“What about her?”
“Hammer named her as another target.”
They found Jenna Cooper in the barracks.
Except she wasn’t there.
Her roommate said she had been summoned to headquarters at 1800.
By Sergeant Major Rodriguez.
Security video showed her entering.
No video showed her leaving.
Elena’s blood chilled.
They searched.
At 12:31 a.m., an investigator found Cooper locked inside a records room.
Alive.
Conscious.
Terrified.
Her wrists had been secured with plastic restraints.
Elena crouched beside her after medics cleared the room.
“Who did this?”
Cooper shook.
“I don’t know.”
“You saw them?”
“Sergeant Major Rodriguez told me someone wanted to interview me.”
“Then?”
“He left.”
“Who came in?”
Cooper looked confused.
“A woman.”
Grace stiffened.
“What woman?”
“Civilian clothes. Maybe fifty.”
“Name?”
“She said her name was Dr. Evelyn Shaw.”
Elena froze.
Grace looked at her.
“You know her?”
Yes.
Elena knew the name.
Dr. Evelyn Shaw had been the behavioral scientist who signed several early Nightglass research papers.
She had officially died nine years ago.
Cancer.
Elena stood slowly.
“Describe her.”
Cooper did.
Gray-streaked dark hair.
Thin face.
Green eyes.
Scar beside the left eyebrow.
Grace sat down hard.
“That’s my mother.”
Nobody spoke.
Cooper looked between them.
Grace’s face had become bloodless.
“My mother died when I was nineteen.”
Elena turned.
“How?”
“Car accident.”
“When?”
“Twenty-seven years ago.”
The room became silent.
The date mattered.
Twenty-seven years ago was when Nightglass had entered its first classified expansion.
Grace whispered, “No.”
Elena understood before Grace did.
Andrew Mercer had not merely worked on Nightglass.
His wife had.
Dr. Evelyn Shaw.
The supposedly deceased mother of Lieutenant Colonel Grace Mercer.
A behavioral scientist with access to her own daughter.
Grace stood abruptly.
“No.”
Elena caught her arm.
“Grace.”
“No.”
“Listen to me.”
“My mother is dead.”
“Maybe.”
“I buried her.”
“Did you see her body?”
Grace stared.
The answer was obvious.
Closed casket.
Severe accident.
Nightglass had been manufacturing identities for decades.
Why not deaths?
Cooper began crying quietly.
“She asked me questions.”
Elena turned back.
“What questions?”
“About you.”
“What about me?”
“How you reacted to Hammer. Whether you seemed angry. Whether you talked about your husband.”
Elena felt the final structure emerging.
Rodriguez was not the architect.
Not alone.
He was a handler.
A courier.
A living identity.
The real architect had been hiding before most of them knew Nightglass existed.
Grace’s mother.
But something still didn’t fit.
Why reveal herself to Cooper?
Why leave Cooper alive?
Again, David’s warning.
Don’t chase the story they leave you.
Elena closed her eyes.
Evelyn Shaw wanted them to find Grace’s connection.
Which meant Grace was another breadcrumb.
Elena looked at her.
“Where does your father’s safe deposit box exist?”
Grace stared.
“Virginia.”
“Bank?”
“Yes.”
“Who can access it?”
“Me.”
“Anyone else?”
Grace hesitated.
“My father created a secondary authorization.”
“For whom?”
“I never knew.”
Elena’s phone rang.
Virginia State Police.
The safe deposit box had been opened forty-three minutes ago.
The person who accessed it had valid identification.
The name on the authorization?
Commander David Vance.
Grace whispered, “Your husband.”
Elena stared at the screen.
Then she laughed.
Quietly.
Everyone looked at her.
“What?” Grace asked.
Elena’s eyes filled with tears.
But she was smiling.
“They finally made a mistake.”
“What mistake?”
“David hated banks.”
Grace stared.
Elena wiped her eyes.
“He would rather bury money in the yard than maintain a safe deposit box.”
“That doesn’t prove—”
“No.”
Elena looked at the authorization record.
“But this does.”
She pointed to the signature.
“David never signed his middle initial like that.”
Grace looked closer.
“How can you be sure?”
“Because I signed our mortgage beside him. Tax returns. Insurance. Deployment papers. Twenty years of birthday cards.”
Elena straightened.
“Someone built their David profile from military records.”
“They didn’t know the private details.”
“Exactly.”
Her phone rang again.
Cyber command.
They had recovered a hidden communication packet sent from the Nightglass program three minutes before isolation.
Destination: a private satellite terminal.
Location triangulation was still processing.
Then coordinates appeared.
Grace read them.
Her eyes widened.
“That’s inside Camp Ironwood.”
Elena looked.
Not Room 17.
Not headquarters.
A building at the eastern edge of the installation.
The old behavioral-health clinic.
Closed two years ago.
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