Chapter 4 - The Man I Buried Seventeen Years Ago
I couldn't speak.
The voice came again.
“Nattie, don't hang up.”
Daniel saw my face.
“Who is it?”
My throat closed.
Nobody had called me Nattie since I was sixteen.
Nobody alive.
“Dad?”
The room froze.
A breath came through the phone.
Then the line disconnected.
I stood there staring at the screen.
Grandpa looked devastated.
That told me he knew more.
I crossed the room.
“Is my father alive?”
William didn't answer fast enough.
I shoved the blue folder toward him.
“Is my father alive?”
“I don't know.”
“Wrong answer.”
“It is the truth.”
“You just told me he didn't die the way I was told.”
“Yes.”
“That voice was his.”
Harper leaned forward.
“Are you certain?”
I turned on him.
“I know my father's voice.”
Seventeen years had passed.
But some sounds don't age in memory.
The low rasp.
The slight pause after my nickname.
The way he placed emphasis on the first syllable.
It was him.
Or somebody who had studied him very carefully.
I opened the folder.
Hospital records.
Photographs.
A naval intelligence memorandum.
Half the pages were heavily redacted.
One line remained visible.
CDR JAMES REED — COMPROMISE SUSPECTED.
My stomach dropped.
“My father was under investigation?”
Grandpa nodded.
“For espionage.”
Daniel whispered, “Jesus.”
I kept reading.
“He was cleared.”
“Eventually.”
“After he died?”
Grandpa stared at me.
“After he disappeared.”
I sank into the chair.
“What happened?”
William sat opposite me.
“When you were fifteen, your father discovered unusual transfers of classified technical material.”
“Northstar?”
“The earliest version of what became Northstar.”
“So this began seventeen years ago.”
“Yes.”
“He reported it?”
“To Rourke.”
I understood before William continued.
“And that was a mistake.”
“We believe so.”
“He disappeared when I was sixteen.”
“Yes.”
“My mother told me his car went off a bridge during a storm.”
“There was a vehicle.”
“No body.”
“No.”
I laughed bitterly.
“Of course there wasn't.”
My mother had died six years later.
She had taken the truth with her.
Or maybe she had been protecting me.
“Did she know?”
“Yes.”
That hurt too.
Everyone had known.
Everyone except me.
“My father abandoned us.”
“We don't know that.”
“He disappeared.”
“To protect you.”
The voice came from Harper.
I looked at him.
He continued.
“James believed whoever was stealing the material had identified you and your mother.”
“How do you know?”
“He called me the night he vanished.”
“Why you?”
“We served together.”
“What did he say?”
Harper swallowed.
“He said, ‘If they think I'm dead, they may leave my family alone.’”
I closed my eyes.
Daniel reached for my hand.
This time I let him.
Everything I remembered about my father rearranged itself.
The last breakfast.
The way he hugged me before school.
The extra second he held on.
I had thought about that hug thousands of times.
I always remembered myself pulling away because I was fifteen and embarrassed.
I had hated myself for it after his supposed death.
Now another possibility existed.
He had known.
He had known it might be goodbye.
“Why bring me into Northstar?”
I asked William.
“Because your father contacted me two months before the mission.”
The room went silent again.
“You said you didn't know if he was alive.”
“I knew he was alive four years ago.”
My anger returned instantly.
“You lied.”
“I said I don't know if he's alive now.”
“That's word games.”
“Yes.”
At least he admitted it.
“What did he tell you?”
“That the leak had resurfaced.”
“And you put me on the operation?”
“He asked me to.”
I stood so quickly my chair struck the wall.
“My father asked you to put me on a sabotaged vessel?”
“He did not know it would be sabotaged.”
“He put me in danger.”
“He believed you were the only officer he could trust.”
“He didn't know me anymore!”
“He watched your career.”
I stopped.
“What?”
William looked ashamed.
“From a distance.”
My eyes burned.
Birthdays.
Graduation.
My commissioning.
Promotions.
My wedding?
“Did he watch me get married?”
Grandpa didn't answer.
That was answer enough.
Daniel looked shaken.
“He was there?”
“No,” William said. “Not physically.”
“But he knew.”
“Yes.”
I wanted to scream.
Instead I laughed.
Quietly.
That frightened Daniel more.
“So my dead father followed my life, secretly influenced my assignment, and helped put me on Northstar because he trusted me to expose the same leak he'd been chasing.”
“Yes.”
“And when I nearly died, he still didn't come back.”
William's eyes softened.
“No.”
I looked away.
That answer hurt worst.
Carter finally spoke from the corner.
“Natalie.”
I ignored him.
“Natalie, I think you need to see this.”
I turned.
He was holding his laptop.
“What?”
“The email that started this.”
“I thought it disappeared.”
“It did. But the attachment cached locally.”
Harper stood.
Carter rotated the screen.
The citation appeared.
He scrolled to the file properties.
Created seventeen days ago.
Modified fourteen days ago.
Then a hidden metadata field.
Author.
JREED.
My heart stopped.
Daniel whispered, “James Reed?”
“No,” I said automatically.
But I didn't believe myself.
Carter clicked another tab.
“There was something embedded in the document.”
A string of numbers.
Coordinates.
Harper recognized them.
“That's Chesapeake.”
Carter entered them into a map.
A location appeared.
An abandoned marina approximately ninety minutes away.
Grandpa stared at it.
“I know that place.”
“How?”
“James used it once.”
I grabbed my jacket.
Daniel stood.
“I'm coming.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“Natalie, I'm not letting you walk into—”
“This is not a marriage argument.”
“It is when my wife is walking into a trap built by her supposedly dead father.”
He had a point.
I hated that.
Harper called security.
Grandpa insisted on coming.
Carter did too.
I refused Carter immediately.
“You've done enough.”
His face fell.
“I can help.”
“You can help by staying here.”
For once, he didn't argue.
An hour and twenty minutes later, Daniel and I sat in the back of Harper's SUV while Grandpa rode up front.
Two security vehicles followed.
The marina was almost completely dark.
We approached on foot.
Pier Seven.
Slip Fourteen.
Numbers I would never forget.
A small storage building stood at the end.
Padlock hanging open.
Grandpa whispered, “He used to leave signals.”
“What kind?”
“Light in the east window.”
There was no light.
We entered.
Empty.
Dust.
Old ropes.
A metal desk.
On the desk sat a tape recorder.
Not digital.
Cassette.
Beside it was a Polaroid photograph.
Me.
Taken at my commissioning ceremony.
On the back:
I'M SORRY I MISSED EVERYTHING.
My hands started shaking.
Daniel touched my shoulder.
I pressed PLAY.
Static crackled.
Then my father's voice.
“Nattie. If you're hearing this, they found the trail again.”
I stopped breathing.
“I need you to understand something. Northstar wasn't about the encryption package.”
Harper moved closer.
My father continued.
“It was about identifying who would risk destroying it.”
A pause.
“And you were never supposed to be aboard when they did.”
Grandpa whispered, “James.”
The recording continued.
“I tried to stop the mission. Rourke refused. After the sabotage, I knew the leak was someone neither of us had considered.”
Static.
Then:
“The person who ordered the bulkhead sealed was not Vale.”
I looked at Harper.
His face had gone white.
My father's voice became softer.
“It was someone operating from shore.”
Another pause.
“And Natalie already knows him.”
The tape clicked.
Stopped.
Daniel looked around.
“That's it?”
I opened the recorder.
There was no more tape.
Grandpa examined the desk.
Harper went toward a side door.
Then we heard movement outside.
Footsteps.
One person.
Slow.
Approaching the building.
Daniel whispered, “Security?”
Harper checked his phone.
“No.”
The footsteps stopped outside.
Three knocks.
I raised my voice.
“Who is it?”
Silence.
Then the voice I had spent seventeen years believing I would never hear again answered through the door.
“Nattie.”
My hand moved toward the knob.
Before I could touch it, Grandpa grabbed my wrist.
May you like
Because another voice had just whispered from behind us.
“Don't open that door.”
