Chapter 10 - NEVER TRUST MERCER
The recording ended with my father's voice hanging in the refrigerated air.
Never trust Nathaniel Mercer.
Mercer did not reach for his weapon.
That was the smartest thing he could have done.
Reed and Sullivan both had guns trained on him before the silence fully settled.
Voss looked like he had been hit.
"Where did Cole get that?"
Mercer asked the question quietly.
I stepped between him and the truck.
"You tell me."
"I have never heard that recording."
"My father knew your name."
"Yes."
"You knew him."
"Yes."
"And somehow that never came up."
Mercer took a slow breath.
"Because I was ordered never to tell you."
I laughed once.
"Everyone in my life has an order explaining their lies."
"Avery—"
"Don't."
I held up the recorder.
"Why did my father warn Voss about you?"
Mercer looked at Voss.
"Because Daniel thought I betrayed him."
"Did you?"
"No."
"What did you do?"
His eyes dropped.
"I gave him the flight route."
My chest tightened.
"The route he died on?"
"Yes."
Reed swore softly.
Mercer kept talking before I could move.
"Daniel asked me to create a false training corridor so he could move evidence to an inspector outside Meridian's reach."
"Who knew?"
"Daniel. Me. Voss."
Voss shook his head.
"I didn't know the route."
Mercer turned on him.
"You knew enough."
"Not the coordinates."
"Someone did."
I stepped closer.
"Who else had access?"
Mercer closed his eyes.
"My operations clerk."
"Name."
"Leonard Vale."
Pike looked sharply at me.
I felt the connection at the same time.
NCIS Director Marcus Vale.
"Related?"
Mercer nodded.
"Marcus's father."
The warehouse seemed to tilt.
One of the five people with full access to my current cover package was Marcus Vale.
His father had access to my father's fatal flight route.
Two generations.
Same system.
Same surname.
Sullivan lowered his weapon a fraction.
"That doesn't make Marcus guilty."
"No."
I looked at Mercer.
"But it puts him at the center of the map."
Pike's receiver beeped.
The locator had moved.
We all looked toward the truck.
The waterproof drive was not there.
"Signal is twenty meters north."
We spread out.
Behind a wall of empty pallets was a narrow office.
The door stood ajar.
Inside, a laptop rested on a desk.
The drive was plugged into it.
No one was present.
On screen, a progress bar showed 93 percent.
COPYING.
I rushed forward and yanked the drive free.
The laptop immediately began deleting itself.
Pike pulled the power cable.
"Battery."
Sullivan ripped the battery panel open and disconnected it.
The screen died.
Reed searched the room.
"Exit door."
A rear door opened into an alley.
Fresh tire marks led away.
Whoever copied the drive had left seconds before we arrived.
Pike inspected the device.
"Still intact."
"Can you play it?"
"Not on anything connected to a network."
Voss pointed toward a secure equipment case in the truck.
"There should be an isolated field reader."
Sullivan looked at him.
"Why would there be?"
Voss did not answer.
That answer was enough.
The truck had been prepared for this exact moment.
We found the reader.
Pike connected the drive.
An encrypted file appeared.
HARKER_SEGMENT_7.
He entered a key from memory.
The screen filled with grainy courtyard footage.
Daniel Harker sat tied to the chair.
His face was bruised.
An unseen interrogator asked a question.
"Who authorized the buyer list?"
Harker laughed weakly.
"You already know."
"Say the name."
He looked directly toward the camera.
"Vale."
My pulse jumped.
"Marcus?"
The recording continued.
"Which Vale?"
Harker smiled.
"Both."
The image froze.
Then the video skipped forward.
A younger man stepped into frame.
Not Marcus Vale.
His father, Leonard.
Older than he had been when my father died, but unmistakable.
Harker spoke to him.
"Your son knows what you built?"
Leonard Vale answered.
"My son will inherit it."
Pike stopped the video.
Nobody spoke.
There it was.
A line connecting my father's death, Somalia, and my compromised cover.
Marcus Vale had not accidentally inherited proximity to Meridian.
He had inherited Meridian itself.
Mercer took out his secure phone.
"I'm calling Washington."
Voss grabbed his wrist.
"No."
"We have evidence."
"We have evidence that someone copied less than a minute ago."
Mercer stared at him.
Voss continued.
"If Marcus already has the segment, he'll move before your call reaches anyone who can stop him."
I looked at the frozen image of Leonard Vale.
"Where is Marcus tonight?"
Mercer checked the command roster.
His expression changed.
"Coronado."
"What?"
"He arrived forty minutes ago under emergency NCIS authority."
Reed's eyes narrowed.
"Who invited him?"
Mercer looked sick.
"I did."
My phone vibrated.
A text from an unknown number.
CAPTAIN HAYES, YOUR INVESTIGATION IS OVER.
Another message appeared.
TURN YOURSELF IN AT THE NORTH GATE.
Then a photograph loaded.
Admiral Mercer standing beside the burning headquarters building.
A red targeting box surrounded his face.
The final message arrived.
OR THE ADMIRAL DIES NEXT.
We did not rush back to Coronado after Harker named both Vales.
That would have been predictable.
Instead, Holloway's name became our next problem.
Her federal detention order against me had not appeared yet, but Mercer found a legal hold placed on several evidence channels under her authority.
"Why would counsel freeze evidence?"
Reed asked.
Mercer read the notice.
"National security contamination."
Sullivan snorted.
"That's what lawyers call panic."
I looked at Voss.
"Do you trust Holloway?"
"I trust that Dana Holloway trusts the law."
"That's not the same answer."
"No."
He thought for a moment.
"Her mother worked with your father."
I stared at him.
"Another fact everyone forgot to mention."
"We didn't forget."
"That makes it worse."
Mercer looked up from the tablet.
"Holloway's mother was federal counsel assigned to the early logistics cell."
"Meridian."
"Yes."
"So every person with access to my cover package has family or operational ties to the original network."
Nobody answered.
Because yes.
That was the truth.
My assignment had not been random.
I had been selected by people whose history intersected with my father's history.
Whether they intended to use me or protect me remained unclear.
Maybe both.
That possibility bothered me most.
Reed leaned toward me.
"Avery, what if this investigation was never about Sullivan?"
"It started with Pike's report."
"Which Sullivan says Pike never made."
"Then what was it about?"
He looked at the Harker video.
"Opening the Ledger."
I had not heard that word yet.
But the logic was already there.
If Meridian kept records, someone needed a reason to pull old files from sealed storage.
A reopened Somalia inquiry would do exactly that.
"You're saying someone created the investigation to force hidden evidence back into circulation."
"Yes."
"Why?"
"To steal it. Destroy it. Or use us to find something they couldn't find themselves."
That last possibility stayed with me.
My cover package.
Sullivan's provocation.
Pike's reappearance.
The memory card.
The vault.
Everything kept pushing us toward older and older layers of Meridian history.
Like someone knew the doors existed but needed us to supply the keys.
My phone vibrated with the message threatening Mercer.
He read it and immediately started issuing security orders for himself.
I stopped him.
"No extra detail."
"Why?"
"Because if they know where you are now, they'll know where you move."
"You want me exposed?"
"I want you unpredictable."
He almost smiled.
"Daniel used to say that."
The comparison hit me strangely.
"Don't make me like you."
"Wouldn't dream of it."
We planned my arrival at North Gate as a controlled surrender.
Reed built redundant audio transmission.
Pike placed a secondary recorder in my collar.
Sullivan positioned himself where he could see Vale's agents without being seen.
Mercer stayed away.
Voss monitored federal traffic.
For the first time, we operated as something close to a team.
That should have reassured me.
It did the opposite.
Teams were easier to betray once everyone knew where to stand.
When I walked toward Marcus Vale under the gate lights, I carried no visible weapon.
But I carried every question his father had left behind.
And I knew one of us was about to learn that the official story was no longer strong enough to protect him.
Before walking toward North Gate, I listened to Harker's final segment one more time.
There was more after Leonard Vale said his son would inherit the network.
A second voice entered the courtyard recording.
Distorted by distance.
Older.
Commanding.
"Enough. End the interview."
Harker turned toward the unseen speaker.
"You afraid I'll say your name too?"
The recording ended there.
Pike had never recovered the next segment.
"Recognize the voice?"
I asked Sullivan.
He shook his head.
"Could be anyone through that room echo."
Voss listened twice.
"Not anyone."
"Who?"
"Someone accustomed to command."
Reed rolled his eyes.
"That's half this base."
Still, the unknown speaker mattered.
Leonard Vale had been in Somalia.
But he had not necessarily been the highest authority present.
That kept Mercer, Voss, and others inside the circle.
The segment did not solve the case.
It made the hierarchy larger.
I copied the audio onto an isolated recorder and gave one duplicate to Reed.
"If I'm taken, this goes to Holloway."
"You trust her now?"
"No."
"Good."
"You enjoy that word too much."
"Tonight has been validating."
He checked my collar transmitter.
"Signal is clean."
"Until someone shuts it off."
"Then I'll know they shut it off."
That was the best we could do.
Control was mostly an illusion by then.
What we still had was redundancy.
One person could be framed.
One recording could be altered.
One authority could be compromised.
So we made copies, witnesses, alternate channels, and human checks.
It was the opposite of how Meridian worked.
Maybe that was why it felt right.
As I walked toward Marcus Vale, the North Gate floodlights flattened every shadow.
He looked composed.
Six agents behind him looked disciplined.
The scene had all the visual grammar of lawful arrest.
That was what made it dangerous.
If anyone photographed us, history would later show a rogue captain surrendering to federal authority.
No image would capture the forged timeline, the dead men with active credentials, or the fathers who had built a hidden network beneath our institutions.
I stopped ten feet from Vale.
He ordered me to place my weapon down.
I did.
Not because I trusted him.
Because I trusted Reed to hear what happened next.
May you like
At least, I hoped I did.
