Chapter 6 - Blood Money
By noon the following day, the story had swallowed the national news cycle whole.
CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC had abandoned their scheduled programming, running split-screen broadcasts. On the left side of the screen was the viral clip of Margaret Wilson holding the gold lighter, sneering: *It’s just a piece of metal, you little country girl.* On the right side were live aerial shots of federal agents in blue windbreakers carrying dozens of cardboard evidence boxes out of the glass-and-steel monolith of Wilson Capital on Wall Street.
The internet had dubbed Margaret "The Couture Arsonist."
Memes of her face, frozen in horror as she realized she was being broadcast to the world, had already been viewed over a hundred million times. Veterans' organizations across the country were holding rallies outside Wilson Defense Logistics manufacturing plants.
I was sitting in a small, quiet diner in Queens, wearing civilian clothes—a simple gray hoodie and jeans—with a ballcap pulled low over my eyes. Jessica sat opposite me, scrolling through her phone, taking bites of a stack of blueberry pancakes.
"The Wilson Capital stock lost four point two billion dollars in market cap during the morning pre-market," Jess said, turning the phone to show me the plummeting red chart. "Their board of directors just called an emergency meeting. Word on Twitter is they’re voting on whether to forcibly strip Richard of the CEO position."
Before I could answer, my phone buzzed on the formica tabletop.
The number was blocked, but the area code was 202—Washington, D.C.
I answered, placing it on speaker between us. "Captain Harvey."
"Katie."
The voice was hollow, cracked, stripped of all the smooth arrogance that had defined Jason Wilson for the two years I’d known him. He sounded like a man speaking from the bottom of an abandoned well.
"Jason," I said evenly. "You shouldn't be calling this number. You have an active federal subpoena, and my attorneys have already filed for a permanent protective order."
"Katie, listen to me, please," he pleaded, his breathing shallow and rapid. "I’m in a hotel near Newark. My father’s lawyers won't even take my calls anymore. They told me Dad’s defense strategy is to claim that I acted alone—that I was a rogue executive who forged his signatures on the Stryker contracts! Dad is going to throw me to the wolves, Katie! He’s going to let me do twenty years in federal prison to save himself and the board!"
I felt no satisfaction, only a cold, heavy sadness for the weak, spineless boy who had chosen money over honor his entire life.
"You signed the documents, Jason," I reminded him. "You took the three-hundred-thousand-dollar bonus. You bought that Porsche sitting in your garage with money stolen from the safety of soldiers."
"I did it because Dad told me to!" he yelled, his voice cracking into a desperate sob. "He told me that’s how the game is played! He said if I wanted a seat on the board, I had to get my hands dirty! Katie, look, I have money. In Switzerland. In an account Dad doesn't know about. Five million dollars. I can wire it to you right now. Anywhere in the world. You can withdraw your statement. You can tell CID that you misunderstood the data files—that you were retaliating because Mom burned the dress! If you do that, the fraud case collapses! Please, Katie, I’m begging you!"
Jessica looked at me, her eyes flashing with pure disgust. She reached over, tapped the record icon on her own phone, and angled the microphone closer.
"Jason," I said, keeping my voice perfectly calm, perfectly steady. "Are you attempting to bribe an active-duty Army officer and federal witness to commit perjury?"
There was a dead, agonizing pause on the other end of the line.
You could hear the realization dawn on him, the sudden, paralyzing terror that he had just committed another federal felony on a recorded line.
"Katie..." he whimpered. "No... no, I didn't mean it like that..."
"Goodbye, Jason," I said. "Next time you want to talk to me, do it through the United States Marshals."
I ended the call and looked at Jessica.
"Send that recording straight to Miller," I said.
"Done," Jess replied, her thumb tapping the screen. "That’s another ten years added to his sentence. Bribery of a witness."
Just then, the bell above the diner door jingled.
A man in an immaculate dark blue Brioni suit stepped inside. He had silver temples, cold hazel eyes, and carried a slim leather briefcase with the initials *J.V.* stamped in gold near the latch. He looked around the grease-stained diner with open disdain before his gaze locked onto me.
Julian Vance.
Not related to my Colonel, but far more dangerous: the most ruthless, highly-paid crisis PR fixer in Manhattan, known in political circles as "The Eraser."
He walked over to our booth, not waiting for an invitation, and pulled out a chair from the adjacent table, sitting down with smooth, unhurried grace.
"Captain Harvey," Vance said, his voice like silk sliding over gravel. "We finally meet in person."
"You have five seconds to stand up and walk out that door, Mr. Vance," Jessica said, her hand dropping instinctively toward the waistband of her jacket where her service weapon was concealed.
Vance didn't even look at her. His eyes stayed locked on mine.
"You're a very smart woman, Captain," Vance said, opening the latch of his briefcase with a soft click. "You played the livestream brilliantly. You caught Margaret in an indefensible moment of private arrogance, and you used the Stryker procurement leak to break Wilson Capital’s defensive perimeter. It was a masterclass in asymmetric warfare."
He pulled out a single sheet of paper and placed it on the formica table between my coffee cup and Jessica’s plate.
"What is that?" I asked without looking down.
"That," Vance said, leaning forward, "is an official personnel discharge order from the Department of the Army, dated eight years ago. Pertaining to your late father, Master Sergeant Thomas Harvey."
My heart gave a single, violent jolt, but I kept my face entirely expressionless.
"My father died in combat in Fallujah," I said, my voice dropping to a dangerous whisper. "He was awarded the Silver Star."
"He was," Vance murmured, his smile cold and venomous. "Until now. Because inside this briefcase, Captain, are twenty-four sworn affidavits from his former unit members alleging that your father wasn't killed by an enemy ambush. He was killed while running an illegal black-market firearms ring out of the motor pool, and the ambush was an inside job to cover up his theft of six hundred thousand dollars in government weapons."
The diner seemed to disappear around me. The smell of coffee turned to ash.
"You're lying," I said, every muscle in my body coiling like a steel spring.
"Perhaps I am," Vance purred, his fingers tapping the paper. "Perhaps I’m not. But if these documents are delivered to the Washington Post and the Army Review Board tomorrow morning, your father’s Silver Star will be revoked posthumously. His body will be exhumed from Arlington National Cemetery and removed from sacred ground. And your precious Bronze Star? It will be tainted forever as the legacy of a traitor’s daughter."
He leaned in closer, his breath smelling of expensive mints and rot.
May you like
"You drop the charges against Jason and Richard by five o'clock today, Captain," Vance whispered. "Or I will dig your father out of his grave and drag his bones through the mud."
***
