Chapter 5 - The Woman Who Was Dead
My aunt Emily had been alive for twenty-one years.
My father had known for twenty.
The lie had consumed half my life.
Emily refused to give her location over the phone.
Instead, she gave me an address in Virginia and told me to come the following afternoon.
Only me.
I stopped trusting requests to come alone.
Cole arranged surveillance.
At 2:00 p.m., I knocked on the door of a modest farmhouse surrounded by oak trees.
A woman opened it.
She was sixty-two.
Her hair was silver-blonde.
A scar ran from her temple to her jaw.
But I recognized her eyes.
"Hi, Lyss."
Nobody had called me that since childhood.
I couldn't speak.
She reached for me.
I let her.
For several seconds, I was fourteen again, standing at a funeral with an empty coffin while my father told me Aunt Emily had died instantly.
"You were alive."
"I was."
"He buried an empty coffin."
"Yes."
"Why?"
"Because Everett said I was safer dead."
I stepped inside.
Emily had been an engineer on Lantern.
Not officially.
Dawson Strategic had employed her through a subsidiary.
She discovered a flaw in the prototype two weeks before the fatal test.
She recommended cancellation.
Everett overruled her.
During the test, the system overheated.
Three soldiers died.
Emily survived with severe burns.
While she recovered, Everett's people told Harrison that hostile foreign intelligence had learned she possessed technical data.
Her death was staged.
At first, Harrison believed he was saving her.
Then the lie became useful.
Everett buried Lantern.
Harrison kept his contracts.
Emily disappeared.
"And the money?" I asked.
"Everett paid Harrison to support me."
"Fourteen million dollars?"
"Medical care. Security. Relocations."
"Did you receive fourteen million?"
She looked away.
"No."
There it was.
My father's crime.
He had started as a frightened brother.
Then greed had done the rest.
"How much?"
"I don't know."
"Emily."
"Maybe two million over twenty years."
Twelve million dollars remained unexplained.
"Ryan discovered that."
"Yes."
"Why didn't you contact me?"
"I tried."
"When?"
"Eleven years ago."
The year my family erased me.
My throat tightened.
"What happened?"
"Everett intercepted it."
"How do you know?"
"He visited me afterward."
"What did he say?"
"That if I contacted you again, he'd make sure your next deployment became your last."
I sat very still.
Emily touched my hand.
"I believed him."
"So did Dad."
"Your father believed whatever made his life easier."
That sounded like the Harrison I knew.
"Why now?"
"Ryan found me."
Of course he had.
"He came here six months ago."
"The warehouse photograph."
"Yes."
"What did he want?"
"The truth."
"Did you give it to him?"
"Most of it."
"Most?"
Emily stood.
She walked to a cabinet and removed a metal case.
Inside was a damaged communications component.
Lantern.
Original prototype.
"This survived the fire."
I examined it.
"Why keep it?"
"Because the official explanation was wrong."
"What do you mean?"
"The system didn't fail."
I looked at her.
"Three people died."
"Yes."
"But not because of a design flaw."
She opened the casing.
A small component had been cut.
Deliberately.
"Sabotage?"
Emily nodded.
"Someone wanted Lantern to fail."
"Who?"
"I never knew."
"Everett?"
"No."
That surprised me.
"You're defending him?"
"I'm telling you the truth. Everett covered up the disaster, but I don't believe he caused it."
"Then who did?"
"Someone inside Dawson Strategic."
My father.
Ryan.
My mother.
Or someone I hadn't considered.
Emily handed me a photograph.
Four engineers stood beside the Lantern prototype.
Emily.
Two men I didn't recognize.
And my father.
"Why was Dad there?"
"He wasn't just an executive."
She pointed at the prototype.
"He helped design it."
I stared at the photograph.
Harrison had always described himself as a businessman.
He had an engineering degree, but I had never seen him touch anything more complicated than a wine opener.
"He knew the system."
"Better than anyone."
"Are you saying he sabotaged it?"
"No."
"Then what are you saying?"
"That he could have."
I drove back to my parents' house that evening.
My father was waiting in his study.
I placed the photograph on his desk.
He stared at it.
"Where did you get this?"
"Emily."
His eyes closed.
"You saw her."
"She told me about Lantern."
"Then you know."
"I know you lied."
"I was protecting her."
"For twenty years?"
"At first."
"And later?"
He couldn't answer.
"Did you sabotage Lantern?"
His head snapped up.
"No."
"Could you have?"
"Yes."
"Who else?"
"Emily. Everett. Two engineers."
"Names."
"Charles Vance and Peter Caldwell."
"Where are they?"
"Vance died fifteen years ago."
"And Caldwell?"
"I don't know."
That answer had become a family tradition.
"Emily says the system was sabotaged."
My father stared at the photograph.
"I know."
"You knew?"
"I found the cut component after the accident."
"And you still let the government call it an electrical fire?"
"Everett convinced me there was a national-security threat."
"You keep blaming Everett."
"Because he was there."
"So were you."
His face tightened.
I leaned across the desk.
"Why did you really laugh at me?"
He looked confused.
"At Hawthorne."
"Alyssa—"
"No. I want the truth."
He looked away.
"I was afraid."
"Of my rank?"
"Of what came with it."
"Access."
"Yes."
"So every time you called my career ridiculous—"
"I was trying to make you leave it."
"By making me hate you?"
"I thought eventually you'd quit."
I almost laughed.
"You never knew me at all."
"I know that now."
I turned toward the door.
"Alyssa."
I stopped.
"I am sorry."
I didn't forgive him.
Not then.
Maybe not ever.
But for the first time, I believed the apology hurt him.
My phone rang.
Ryan.
"I found Caldwell."
I straightened.
"Where?"
"Not where. Who."
"What does that mean?"
"He changed his name."
"To what?"
Ryan sent me a photograph.
I opened it.
The man was older now.
But I recognized him.
He had been standing in the ballroom.
Near my mother.
He had attended Christmas dinners.
Birthdays.
My academy graduation.
My promotion ceremony to colonel.
Family friend.
Attorney.
My father's closest adviser.
Martin Shaw.
I stared at the screen.
Ryan whispered:
"He's been inside our family for thirty years."
Then I heard my mother scream downstairs.
I ran.
The front door stood open.
Her emerald scarf lay on the floor.
May you like
Martin Shaw's car was disappearing through the gate.
And my mother was inside it.
