CHAPTER 12: NATHAN'S LAST FILE
Marcus was sitting exactly as shown in the photograph, tied to a metal chair beneath the light. His face was swollen, and dried blood covered his collar. For once, there was no arrogance in him. "Zariah." He sounded relieved. I checked the room before approaching. "Who did this?" He shook his head. "I don't know." I cut one restraint but left the others. "Wrong answer." His eyes widened. "I'm telling you the truth." I placed Nathan's photograph in front of him. Marcus stared at his father. His breathing changed. "Where did you get that?" "You have five seconds." Marcus closed his eyes. "My father kept files. After he died, I found them in a private storage unit. Nathan's name was everywhere."
According to Marcus, Richard Sterling had participated in a procurement scheme involving military communications hardware. Equipment listed as destroyed or obsolete was secretly rerouted overseas through civilian contractors. Nathan discovered serial numbers that didn't match official manifests and copied the records. Richard panicked, but Marcus insisted his father hadn't ordered Nathan's death. "He wanted to buy him off." I leaned closer. "Nathan couldn't be bought." Marcus nodded bitterly. "That's what Dad said." The night before Nathan died, Richard met with Detective Mercer and another man Marcus knew only as "Director." That man apparently had government connections powerful enough to erase reports and redirect investigations. Richard later became terrified of him. Before dying, he left Marcus one warning: never open a specific encrypted drive.
"Where is it?" I asked. Marcus laughed weakly. "That's why I'm here. Somebody thinks I have it." A sound came from the darkness above us. I moved instantly, dragging Marcus and the chair sideways as a suppressed round struck the concrete where my head had been. The lights went out. Another shot hit the wall. I fired toward the muzzle flash, heard movement, then silence. By the time I reached the upper walkway, the shooter had escaped through a rear window. He left one thing behind: a military-grade encrypted radio identical to equipment I had seen during my Belgrade extraction.
That meant the conspiracy wasn't ancient history. It was active.
General Sterling's team arrived twelve minutes later, furious that I had disappeared but far more disturbed by the radio. The serial number traced to a batch supposedly destroyed six years earlier—the same procurement network Nathan had uncovered. Marcus was taken into protective custody. During questioning, he finally revealed where Richard's encrypted drive was hidden: inside the engagement ring he'd given Chloe. The oversized diamond setting contained a tiny sealed storage chip. Richard had designed it that way before his death, believing nobody would search something so visible.
Chloe handed it over without argument. Military cyber specialists broke the first encryption layer before dawn. Hundreds of shipping manifests appeared, along with bank transfers, contractor names, and photographs. Then we found a folder labeled N.M. Inside was a video recorded by Nathan two days before his death. My brother appeared on-screen, younger than I remembered him, nervous but determined. "Zariah, if you're watching this, I'm probably in trouble. Don't trust the police report if something happens to me. This isn't just contractors stealing equipment. Someone inside Defense is protecting them." He looked away from the camera, then back. "I know you'll want to come after them. Don't. You're my little sister. You're supposed to have a life."
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I hadn't cried when I received my Silver Star. I cried then.
The video continued. Nathan lifted a document containing several names, but the image blurred before we could read them. "The man running this uses the code name Shepherd." General Sterling froze beside me. I noticed immediately. "You know that name." He didn't answer. "General." His jaw tightened. "Shepherd was the code name of an intelligence officer presumed dead nine years ago." I waited. Sterling finally looked at me. "His real name was Colonel Andrew Hayes." My heart stopped. Hayes was the surname I had used throughout my military career, inherited from the man my mother once told me was my biological father. According to my family, Andrew Hayes had abandoned us before I could remember him. General Sterling's next sentence shattered that story too. "Zariah, Colonel Hayes wasn't just an intelligence officer." He paused. "He was your father—and I don't think he's dead."
