Chapter 4 - The Letter Hidden in My Father's Desk
Rebecca read the message twice.
Then she handed the phone to Natalie.
“Trace it.”
“We are.”
William came outside.
“Where's Margaret?”
“Gone.”
His face changed.
“Taken?”
“We don't know yet.”
Rebecca looked at the footprints.
“One set looks like Mom's shoes.”
“So she walked voluntarily.”
“Possibly.”
Michael emerged from the side yard.
Rebecca turned sharply.
“Where were you?”
“Looking for Mom.”
“You disappeared at the same time.”
“I heard the door.”
Natalie stepped toward him.
“Your phone received another message.”
Michael looked at the screen.
Fear replaced irritation.
“I didn't know.”
“Did Cole mention Voss?”
“No.”
“Think.”
Michael shook his head.
Then stopped.
“He mentioned an old general.”
“Name?”
“No. Just said somebody who served with Granddad could prove Rebecca's career was built on a lie.”
Rebecca stared at him.
“What lie?”
“He didn't explain.”
William looked toward the house.
“I know what property the message means.”
Rebecca turned.
“What property?”
“My father's old cabin.”
“Granddad had a cabin?”
“Not exactly. Hunting property west of Leesburg. About forty acres.”
“I've never heard of it.”
“He sold it before you went to West Point.”
William's expression tightened.
“At least I thought he did.”
Natalie raised a hand.
“Nobody goes anywhere until backup arrives.”
Rebecca nodded.
She wasn't reckless.
Whatever waited at the Hayes property had been prepared.
Going alone would hand control to whoever wanted her there.
They returned to the study.
William opened another drawer.
Empty.
Then he removed the drawer entirely.
Behind it sat a thin envelope.
Rebecca frowned.
“You hide correspondence behind furniture?”
“My father did.”
William opened it.
Inside was a handwritten letter.
Yellowed.
Dated December 22, 1994.
William read the first lines silently.
His face changed.
“What?”
He handed it to Rebecca.
Will,
If anything happens to me, do not believe the first story you are told. Lantern was never about money. The fund was bait. Voss knows this. Mercer knows this. Only one of them knows where the real ledger is.
Rebecca looked up.
“Who wrote it?”
“Dad.”
She continued.
The remaining lines were stranger.
The person who finds the ledger will understand why we did what we did. Do not trust anyone who asks for the brown case. It contains nothing valuable except the clue they need.
Rebecca's heart accelerated.
“The brown case.”
William nodded.
“What clue?”
“I don't know.”
Natalie leaned closer.
“Anything else?”
William turned the letter over.
One sentence appeared on the back.
Christmas remembers what soldiers forget.
Rebecca stared at it.
Michael scoffed nervously.
“That sounds like a riddle.”
William didn't answer.
Rebecca looked around the study.
Christmas.
Her eyes moved toward the framed photograph lying on the desk.
Her father's final command ceremony.
Then toward another photograph on the bookcase.
Samuel Hayes holding Rebecca at age nine beside a Christmas tree.
She picked it up.
“Christmas remembers.”
William frowned.
“What?”
“Granddad loved puzzles.”
“Yes.”
“What did he give us every Christmas?”
William thought.
“Books.”
Michael said, “Coins.”
Rebecca looked at him.
“Exactly.”
Their grandfather had given each grandchild an old coin every Christmas.
A silver dollar.
Foreign currency.
Military challenge coins.
Michael had hated them.
Rebecca kept hers.
“Where are Granddad's coins?”
William looked toward a cabinet.
“Somewhere upstairs.”
“No. The ones he kept.”
William stared at her.
Then his eyes widened.
“The Christmas box.”
They went upstairs.
In the attic, behind artificial wreaths and old ornaments, William found a green metal ammunition case.
CHRISTMAS was painted on the top in Samuel's handwriting.
Michael laughed in disbelief.
“You knew this was here?”
“No,” William said. “I forgot.”
Inside were photographs.
Old holiday cards.
Challenge coins.
Letters from deployments.
Rebecca sifted carefully.
At the bottom sat a wooden box.
Locked.
William tried several keys.
None worked.
Michael turned it over.
“There.”
A number had been scratched beneath it.
Christmas Day.
Rebecca entered the numbers into the small combination lock.
Click.
Inside was a single brass key.
Attached to it was a faded luggage tag.
HAYES PROPERTY — NORTH WELL.
Natalie exhaled.
“The cabin.”
William nodded.
Rebecca looked at the key.
The message wanted her there.
Granddad had wanted someone there too.
“Maybe the ledger is on the property.”
Natalie's phone rang.
She answered.
Listened.
Her expression sharpened.
“What?”
Rebecca waited.
Natalie ended the call.
“The message came through a burner. But a traffic camera captured a vehicle leaving this neighborhood eight minutes ago.”
“Mom?”
“Passenger matches Margaret.”
“Driver?”
“Male. Older.”
“Voss?”
“Could be.”
William grabbed his coat.
Natalie blocked him.
“Sir.”
“That's my wife.”
“And if Voss wants you emotional, you're giving him exactly what he wants.”
“He has Margaret.”
“We don't know that.”
Rebecca stepped between them.
“We go together.”
Natalie shook her head.
“My team goes.”
“He asked for me.”
“Which is why you don't go.”
Rebecca looked at the brass key.
“He doesn't have this.”
Natalie stopped.
Rebecca continued.
“Whatever he wants at that property requires the brown case. But the case only contained a clue. This key is the next step.”
William nodded.
“Dad designed it that way.”
Natalie didn't like it.
Rebecca could see that.
But she also knew the calculation.
If Voss had Margaret, delaying could increase danger.
If the ledger existed, recovering it mattered.
“Armored vehicle,” Natalie said.
Rebecca nodded.
“Full team.”
“Yes.”
“No heroics.”
Rebecca almost smiled.
“You've known me twenty years.”
“That's why I said it.”
They drove forty minutes.
Snow thickened across rural Virginia.
William sat beside Rebecca.
Michael had been ordered to remain at the house with agents.
For once, he had not argued.
“I'm sorry,” William said quietly.
Rebecca looked toward him.
“For tonight?”
“For all of it.”
“Dad.”
“I saw the conflict between you and your mother. Between you and Michael. I told myself adults solve their own problems.”
Rebecca watched snow race through the headlights.
“You weren't responsible for Michael's choices.”
“No. But I was responsible for mine.”
She said nothing.
William looked at his gloved hands.
“I was proud when you chose West Point.”
“I know.”
“I was also afraid.”
That surprised her.
“Of what?”
“That you'd become me.”
Rebecca smiled faintly.
“That's not exactly reassuring.”
“I mean the parts that hurt people.”
She looked at him.
William continued.
“I missed your childhood. Then you chose the same life, and I watched Margaret become angry at you for every absence she had forgiven in me.”
Rebecca swallowed.
“Why didn't you say anything?”
“Cowardice.”
She almost laughed.
He looked at her.
“Generals can be cowards about families.”
The vehicle slowed.
Natalie's voice came through the radio.
“Two minutes.”
Rebecca checked the key.
The cabin appeared through trees.
Dark.
Abandoned.
One vehicle parked outside.
Margaret's.
Rebecca's chest tightened.
Teams moved first.
Perimeter.
Entry.
Clear.
No people.
Margaret wasn't inside.
Neither was Voss.
But on the kitchen table sat the brown leather case.
William approached it.
Rebecca stopped him.
“Wait.”
Natalie checked it.
No explosives.
No obvious device.
They opened the case.
Letters.
Old photographs.
A map.
And a cassette tape.
Michael hadn't lied.
The contents seemed harmless.
Until Rebecca found a photograph beneath them.
Samuel Hayes.
Daniel Mercer.
Charles Voss.
Three younger officers standing in front of the cabin.
On the back, Samuel had written:
THE THIRD MAN SOLD US OUT.
William stared at it.
“Voss.”
“Maybe.”
Rebecca looked at the map.
A circle marked the northern edge of the property.
North well.
They followed it.
Behind the cabin, half buried beneath snow and brush, stood an old stone well.
Rebecca inserted the brass key into a metal plate beneath the rim.
It turned.
A hidden compartment opened.
Inside sat a waterproof container.
Natalie removed it.
They carried it back to the cabin.
Inside was no ledger.
Only another letter.
Rebecca opened it.
This one was addressed to her.
COLONEL REBECCA HAYES.
Her blood went cold.
The envelope looked decades old.
“That title is impossible,” Natalie said.
Rebecca opened it.
The handwriting was Samuel's.
Rebecca,
If you're reading this, then you became what I always believed you could become. I don't know your rank as I write this, so forgive the gamble. Your father thinks I gave you those old coins because I wanted you to remember history. I wanted you to remember evidence.
Rebecca stopped.
“Evidence?”
William whispered, “The coins.”
Rebecca continued.
Every Christmas coin was selected for a reason. Dates. Countries. Operations. Put them in order.
She looked at her father.
“My collection is at my apartment.”
Natalie's phone rang again.
She answered.
Then turned toward Rebecca.
“We found Margaret.”
“Where?”
“Back at your house.”
Rebecca blinked.
“What?”
“She just walked into the driveway.”
“Voss?”
“No sign.”
“Is she okay?”
“Yes.”
“Then why did she leave?”
Natalie listened to someone through the phone.
Her expression slowly changed.
“Oh, hell.”
“What?”
“Margaret says nobody abducted her.”
William stared.
“Then where was she?”
Natalie looked at him.
“She went to meet Charles Voss voluntarily.”
Rebecca felt the betrayal before the explanation came.
“Why?”
Natalie lowered the phone.
“Because your mother has been talking to him for fifteen years.”
The cabin went silent.
Then Rebecca heard a floorboard creak upstairs.
Everyone froze.
The tactical team had already cleared the cabin.
Natalie raised her weapon.
Another creak.
Slow.
Deliberate.
May you like
Someone had been hiding above them the entire time.
And then a man's voice called Rebecca's name.
