The Night Her Dead Call Sign Answered From Her Father’s House

His left hand trembled.

He looked embarrassed by it.

“Don’t,” Harper said.

“Don’t what?”

“Pretend your body didn’t notice.”

He swallowed. “Dad used to say that.”

“I know.”

“Did he say it to you?”

“After I broke my wrist jumping from the garage roof.”

Mason almost smiled. “He told me you fell.”

“I did. After jumping.”

Maddox stared at the tree line. “Family stories later.”

Deputies arrived from both directions. The two gunmen in the warehouse were taken into custody. A search team entered the woods. Emergency medical personnel treated Mason and Nora while a bomb technician traveled from Wilmington.

Mercer remained seated at the table, talking his pulse down as though it were a disobedient employee.

Harper stayed close enough for him to see her.

“You left me,” he said.

The words came without accusation. That made them worse.

“I searched the west corridor.”

“For four minutes.”

“The ceiling was failing.”

“You had eight.”

“Who told you?”

“Sloane’s after-action clock.”

“The clock was altered.”

Mercer looked at her.

“I had four minutes,” Harper said. “Maybe less.”

He stared at the floor.

For nine years he had measured her abandonment with stolen time.

Harper said, “I heard you on the radio after the first collapse. You said you were moving east.”

“I was.”

“I went east.”

“Then the stairwell came down.”

“I didn’t know.”

“I know that now.”

She waited.

Mercer breathed slowly to keep the monitor from punishing everyone.

“I hated you because it was easier than hating a dead system,” he said. “Systems don’t care.”

“No.”

“You did.”

“Yes.”

He looked up. “That isn’t forgiveness.”

“I didn’t ask.”

A paramedic approached Mason with a stretcher. He refused it until he tried to stand and nearly folded. Maddox caught him under the good arm.

“Fine,” Mason muttered. “Stretcher.”

The paramedic looked unimpressed. “A mature choice.”

“Don’t make it weird.”

Harper went to him.

Mason watched the warehouse. “We’re not done.”

“You are.”

“Dad’s still out there.”

“You were shot.”

“In the arm.”

“People bleed from arms.”

“Thank you, doctor.”

“You’re going to the hospital.”

He looked at her, breathing through the pain.

“You’re leaving again.”

“This is not that.”

“It always has another name.”

Harper glanced at the paramedic, who pretended to adjust equipment.

“I’m going to bring Dad back.”

“You don’t know that.”

“No.”

The answer frightened him more than a promise would have.

He reached with his uninjured hand and caught the front of her jacket.

“Page two-twelve,” he said.

“What about it?”

“The sentence. The locked room.”

Harper waited.

“Dad says that whenever I lose something. He says I keep looking where things are supposed to be instead of where I was when I had them.”

“What did he lose?”

“Mom’s insurance papers. He made me help search the workshop last month.”

“Did you find them?”

“In the boat.”

Thomas owned no boat.

Harper stared at him.

Mason nodded toward the receiver card. “The key from the coffee cup had twelve stamped on it. Dad has a storage unit at New River Marina. Number twelve. He calls it the boat because Mom wanted one and they never bought it.”

“Why didn’t you say that before?”

“Because you kept telling me to stay quiet.”

Despite the blood loss, he managed to look pleased with himself.

Harper touched his shoulder carefully.

“That was useful.”

“High praise.”

The paramedics loaded him into the ambulance.

Hollis came over, rain dripping from his hair.

“My daughters are secure. Hospital security moved the younger one inside. Campus police contacted the older.”

Harper nodded.

“You were right,” he said. “They had eyes on both.”

“I’m sorry.”

He looked toward the warehouse. “You going to the marina?”

“Yes.”

“No.”

She studied him.

“I have two injured civilians, a bomb, armed suspects, and a kidnapping tied to something every person here is going to claim is classified. You’re not vanishing.”

“My father is at the river compound.”

“According to a voice on a speaker.”

“Sloane had no reason to give the location unless he believed we could bring something he needed.”

“Or he wants the rest of you in one place.”

“He does.”

“And you plan to accommodate him?”

“I plan to arrive with the wrong thing.”

Hollis shook his head slowly.

Maddox joined them. “She needs the storage unit first.”

“You’re active-duty military,” Hollis said. “Your command is about to become very interested in where you spent tonight.”

“Yes.”

“You willing to risk your career?”

Maddox glanced toward the ambulance carrying Mason.

“No,” he said. “I’m willing to decide what risk I can live with.”

Hollis looked at Harper. “And you?”

She looked at the transparent key.

“I’ve spent nine years living with a decision someone else made in my name.”

That was all she gave him.

The bomb technician arrived and began assessing Mercer’s monitor. The device was more sophisticated than the rural warehouse suggested but less advanced than Sloane wanted them to believe. The pulse trigger was real. The explosive was real. The wireless relay, however, depended on a short-range transmitter.

The technician found it beneath the table.

Once shielded inside a containment case, the device lost its command link. Mercer’s pulse could rise or fall without triggering detonation.

He removed the band.

For several seconds, Mercer stared at his bare wrist.

Then he stood too quickly and had to grip the table.

“Easy,” Harper said.

“I’ve been sitting for six hours.”

“You’ve been dead for nine years. Take a minute.”

He looked at her.

A rough laugh escaped him. It sounded unused.

Nora refused transport until Hollis promised that a deputy would remain with her and that she would not be identified under her real name over routine radio traffic. She had a fractured forearm, two cracked ribs, and a wound along her scalp that required stitches.

Harper crouched beside her before the ambulance doors closed.

“Where did they take you?”

“Hotel outside Jacksonville. Two days. Then the cold-storage site.”