Chapter 29 - The Midnight Summons
My breath caught in my throat. Nathan’s eyes darkened, the easy warmth in his expression vanishing in a fraction of a second, replaced by the lethal, hyper-focused gaze of an operator in an ambush.
"That's impossible," I whispered, staring at the flashing red text. "Thorne was the head of the syndicate. His private network was seized by the FBI."
"Thorne wasn't the head," Nathan said, ripping the IV from the back of his hand without wincing. He swung his legs over the edge of the bed, the hospital gown falling loose around his bandages. "He was a middleman. Just like Carson."
Before I could answer, the heavy double doors of the private suite swung open without a knock.
The two Secret Service agents didn't draw their weapons. Instead, they snapped to attention and stepped aside, their expressions rigid, blank, drained of all humanity.
Walking into the room was a woman in a dark charcoal suit. She looked to be in her late fifties, with steel-gray hair pulled back in a severe bun, carrying a slender leather dossier beneath her arm. She didn't have an escort. She didn't need one; the authority radiating from her posture was chilling, absolute.
"Major Vance," she said, her voice smooth, low, and cultured. "Ms. Stanton. Don't bother screaming for the guards. The entire floor has been cleared for the next twelve minutes."
Nathan immediately stepped between her and me, his stance low, shielding my body despite the agony every movement must have caused his healing ribs. "Who the hell are you?"
The woman offered a thin, humorless smile, laying the leather dossier down on the foot of the bed. "My name is Director Eleanor Cross. Department of Strategic Defense Initiatives. The people your father reports to when he thinks no one is watching."
"You sent the hit squad to the shaft," I said, my heart slamming against my ribs like a caged bird. "You had Thorne executed before he could testify."
"Marcus Thorne had outlived his usefulness the second you broadcast those files to the civilian networks," Cross replied without an ounce of remorse. "He was greedy, sloppy, and emotionally unstable. But you, Ms. Stanton... you have proven to be an astonishingly persistent variable."
"If you came here to finish the job," Nathan growled, his hand closing around the heavy ceramic water pitcher on the nightstand, "you're going to have to kill me first."
"Kill you?" Cross chuckled softly, tilting her head. "Good heavens, no, Major. If we wanted you dead, the oxygen line in your room would have delivered potassium cyanide forty-eight hours ago. We don't want you dead. We want you to see the real war."
She tapped the leather dossier with a manicured finger.
"Carson was an idiot who thought he was playing chess. Marcus was a thief who thought he was a king. But the Kandahar ambush wasn't about stolen arms, Major Vance. It was an extraction. And the man your unit died trying to eliminate wasn't a terrorist."
Cross took a step closer, her cold eyes locking directly onto mine, ignoring Nathan entirely.
"The target in Kandahar was Mera Stanton’s father. And according to our satellite telemetry six minutes ago... he just landed at a private airstrip twenty miles south of this hospital."
Nathan froze, his gaze whipping back toward me in absolute shock.
May you like
I stood there, the room spinning around me, the air turning to ice in my throat. My father had died ten years ago in an overseas accident. I had buried his empty coffin myself.
Director Cross smiled, checking her watch. "The midnight summons is waiting, Ms. Stanton. Either you walk out of this hospital with me right now to meet him... or the next bomb doesn't hit a server room. It hits this entire wing."
