And each clue pointed neatly toward a new suspect just as the previous one became inconvenient.
Hammer.
Vale.
Mercer.
A chain of breadcrumbs.
David’s warning returned to her again.
Don’t chase the story they leave you.
Elena looked at Rodriguez.
“When Holloway accessed Room 17, who discovered it?”
He thought.
“Mercer.”
Elena went still.
“And Beck?”
Rodriguez’s expression changed.
“Mercer.”
“Cho?”
“Mercer.”
Voss stared.
“Grace reported all three security violations.”
Elena looked toward the dark doorway.
“No.”
“What?”
“She didn’t report three security violations.”
Elena’s voice became almost a whisper.
“She selected three victims.”
Chapter Eight
Lieutenant Colonel Grace Mercer was arrested at 10:43 p.m. trying to enter Camp Ironwood through an unused vehicle gate.
She did not resist.
That was the first thing Elena found strange.
Mercer was forty-six, compact, composed, with dark blond hair cut at the jaw and the expression of a woman irritated by inefficiency rather than frightened by arrest.
She sat in the same interview room Hammer had occupied hours earlier.
Elena entered alone.
Mercer smiled.
“Admiral.”
“You’ve had an interesting evening.”
“So have you.”
“Where were you?”
“Off base.”
“Doing what?”
“Meeting someone.”
“Who?”
Mercer leaned back.
“Marcus Vale.”
Elena’s eyes did not change.
“Convenient.”
“I assume you found the ring.”
That surprised her.
Mercer smiled faintly.
“Your face moved.”
“Barely.”
“Enough.”
“Explain.”
“General Vale called me at sixteen hundred.”
“Why?”
“He said Nightglass was compromised.”
“What is your connection to Nightglass?”
“My father.”
Elena waited.
“Colonel Andrew Mercer.”
The name meant something.
She searched memory.
Then found it.
Andrew Mercer had chaired part of the accident review following David’s crash.
Elena felt her pulse change.
“He investigated my husband’s death.”
“No,” Grace said.
“He buried it.”
Silence.
Grace continued.
“My father spent the last five years of his life drinking himself unconscious because of what he had done.”
Elena watched her carefully.
“He left records.”
“What records?”
“Names. Payments. directives.”
“Where?”
“Safe deposit box.”
“Why didn’t you report them?”
“Because I did.”
Elena’s eyes narrowed.
“To whom?”
“General Vale.”
“And?”
“He told me my father had been unstable.”
“When?”
“Nine years ago.”
Grace laughed bitterly.
“Two days later, my promotion packet mysteriously disappeared.”
“Retaliation?”
“I thought so.”
“You stayed in.”
“I decided leaving would make their job easier.”
Elena leaned forward.
“What happened to Holloway?”
Grace’s expression softened.
“She found me.”
“That isn’t what the reports say.”
“The reports are fiction.”
“You wrote two of them.”
“I wrote drafts. They were changed.”
“By whom?”
“I don’t know.”
Elena sat back.
“That answer is getting old.”
Grace looked at the mirrored window.
“Ask Rodriguez.”
Elena didn’t react.
“Why?”
“Because all personnel reporting at Ironwood passes through the command Sergeant Major’s office before final archiving.”
“That doesn’t prove anything.”
“No.”
Grace leaned closer.
“But this might.”
She removed nothing.
Her hands were visible on the table.
“Three months ago I set a trap.”
Elena waited.
“I created a fake incident report.”
“About?”
“A nonexistent soldier.”
“What name?”
“Private Caleb Ward.”
Elena had seen that name.
Not in Ironwood files.
In Washington.
A sealed notification about a soldier transferred after a mental health crisis.
Her skin prickled.
“That file reached the Pentagon.”
Grace nodded.
“I never sent it.”
“Who had access?”
“Me, Voss, Rodriguez.”
“Anyone else?”
“No.”
Elena thought.
“Voss?”
Grace shook her head.
“He was in Germany when I created it.”
“Rodriguez.”
“I thought so.”
“Then why not confront him?”
“Because Luis Rodriguez saved my life twenty years ago.”
Elena went still.
“Where?”
Grace looked at her.
“Nightglass.”
The room seemed to shrink.
“You were part of it?”
“I was twenty-six.”
Elena stared.
“A captain.”
Grace nodded.
“They isolated me for eleven days during what I was told was a command-resilience assessment.”
Her voice remained controlled, but her fingers had tightened together.
“They told me my team blamed me for a training accident that never happened. They showed me fake messages from my husband. They altered my sleep schedule. They made me believe my career was over.”
Elena said nothing.
“Rodriguez broke protocol.”
“How?”
“He told me the messages were fake.”
“Why?”
“He said the study had gone too far.”
Grace swallowed.
“He got me out.”
Elena thought of the man who had lowered his eyes while Hammer poured soda on her.
The man who had hidden David’s truth for twelve years.
The man who claimed he had been threatened.
“Where is General Vale now?”
Grace laughed once.
“Probably at home in Virginia.”
“You said you met him.”
“I met someone claiming to represent him.”
“Who?”
“He never gave a name.”
“What did he want?”
“Room 17 destroyed.”
“Why return to the base?”
Grace stared at Elena.
“Because I told him yes.”
“You agreed?”
“I wanted him to think I had.”
“Why?”
“Because I put a tracker in the case he gave me.”
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