Chapter 10 - TWENTY-SEVEN SECONDS OF DARKNESS
The blackout lasted twenty-seven seconds.
I know because I counted.
Old habits did not care whether I was in a combat zone or a school building.
One second to orient.
Two seconds to locate voices.
Three seconds to identify the nearest exit.
By the fourth second, I had one hand on Mason's shoulder and the other extended toward the space where Detective Moreno had been standing.
“Everyone stay where you are.”
Moreno's voice came from my left.
“Sheriff's office, nobody move.”
Mason was shaking beneath my hand.
“It’s him.”
“Who?”
“He’s here.”
“Who is here?”
Mason did not answer.
A red emergency light flickered once and died.
Someone moved near the equipment cage.
I heard a shoe scrape against concrete.
Moreno heard it too.
“Stop moving.”
The scrape stopped.
Then a side door slammed.
Moreno swore and moved toward it.
I stayed with Mason.
The lights came back at second twenty-seven.
The room reappeared in harsh white fluorescent strips.
Mason sat exactly where he had been.
Major Ross stood near the wall.
Hale was beside the medic.
The security officer at the door looked confused.
Detective Moreno was already pushing through the side exit.
The equipment cage door stood open.
It had been closed before the blackout.
A small black object lay on the floor inside.
Mason stared at it.
“That’s mine.”
I did not touch it.
It was a microSD card.
Drew's missing memory card had just appeared in a locked cage during a blackout.
Hale looked at Major Ross.
“Who has access to building power controls?”
Ross stared at the card.
“Facilities and security.”
“Remote access?”
“Yes.”
“Board credentials?”
Her face tightened.
“For emergencies.”
I almost laughed.
Everything at West March seemed to become an emergency when the Cole family needed a door opened or a camera turned off.
Moreno returned through the side door.
“No visual.”
He looked at the security officer.
“Was that door alarmed?”
“Yes.”
“Did it alarm?”
The officer checked the panel.
“No.”
“Then someone disabled it.”
Mason pulled his knees toward his chest.
“I told you.”
Moreno crouched.
“Told us what?”
“That he’s here.”
“Who?”
Mason squeezed his eyes shut.
“Mr. Voss.”
The name landed hard.
Eric Voss.
The Cole Strategic Systems security employee who had come to the diner for Tyler.
“What did Voss do to you?” Moreno asked.
Mason opened his eyes.
“He put me in the cage.”
“Why?”
“Because I messed up.”
“What did you mess up?”
Mason looked toward Major Ross.
This time, Ross did not look away.
She looked frightened too.
Moreno noticed.
“Mason, answer me.”
Mason swallowed.
“I was supposed to get Drew's phone.”
Hale's face hardened.
“Who told you to?”
“Ryan.”
“Ryan told you to attack Drew?”
“No.”
“Then what did he tell you?”
“To get the phone and make him delete the video.”
“Did he tell you to hit him?”
Mason looked down.
“No.”
“You decided that yourself.”
Mason nodded once.
It was not remorse.
Not yet.
But it was the first honest thing he had admitted.
“What happened after you took the phone?” Moreno asked.
“Voss met me.”
“What did he give you?”
Mason looked confused.
“What?”
“The security footage shows him handing you something.”
Mason's eyes widened.
“You have that?”
“Yes.”
He rubbed his swollen jaw.
“It was a note.”
“What did it say?”
“Bring the card to Sim Building B.”
“Who wrote it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Was it typed?”
“Yes.”
“What happened when you came here?”
Mason's breathing changed.
“Voss was waiting.”
“Then?”
“He asked if I copied the card.”
“Did you?”
“No.”
“He believed you?”
“At first.”
“What changed?”
Mason stared at the floor.
“My phone buzzed.”
“Who texted?”
“Ryan.”
“What did he say?”
Mason hesitated.
Moreno's patience thinned.
“Mason.”
“He said Tyler had copies too.”
“So?”
“Voss got mad.”
“What did he do?”
“He hit me.”
The medic looked at the swelling around Mason's eye.
“That fits.”
Mason nodded.
“He said I was useless.”
“Then he locked you inside?”
“Yes.”
“And threatened you?”
Mason's mouth trembled.
“He said if I talked, I would be next.”
“Next after whom?”
“I don’t know.”
“You said that before the lights went out.”
Mason nodded.
“Then the lights died, the cage opened, and the card appeared.”
Mason stared at the black square on the floor.
“He came back.”
Moreno stood.
“Seal the building.”
Hale ordered security to close the external doors and check every room.
I looked at the ceiling cameras.
“Do not rely on those.”
Hale gave me a humorless smile.
“I have learned that lesson.”
Moreno called for additional deputies.
The crime-scene technician packaged the memory card.
Mason watched her.
“What happens to me?”
Moreno looked at him.
“That depends on what you did, what you tell the truth about, and what a prosecutor decides.”
Mason's face tightened.
“My dad is going to kill me.”
“Your father is not my concern right now.”
Mason looked at me.
“Ryan said you deserved it.”
I did not answer.
“He said women like you need to be reminded they are not in charge.”
Major Ross closed her eyes.
Mason continued because the first confession had cracked something open.
“He told us your military stuff was fake.”
“What military stuff?”
“That you were a SEAL.”
I stared at him.
“How did he know that before the news reported it?”
Mason looked at Ross.
She shook her head.
“Do not look at me.”
Mason's voice became quieter.
“Ryan knew before this morning.”
The room went still.
Hale stepped closer.
“What do you mean?”
“He told us yesterday.”
I felt something cold settle in my stomach.
Yesterday.
Before I had ever sat on the courtyard bench.
Before Ryan had supposedly noticed an annoying nurse and decided to harass her on impulse.
“What exactly did he say?” I asked.
Mason frowned as he tried to remember.
“He said some washed-up Navy woman was teaching medics and his dad thought it was a joke.”
“Anything else?”
“He said his dad knew who you were.”
Hale looked at me.
I already understood the implication.
My presence at West March had not been a surprise to the Cole family.
Ryan had known my background before he walked into the courtyard.
The encounter might not have been random at all.
Moreno heard it too.
“Did Ryan say why his father cared about Ms. Carter?”
Mason shook his head.
“No.”
“Did he say anything about provoking her?”
Mason hesitated.
“Yes.”
The room seemed to tilt.
“What?”
“He said his dad wanted to see if you still had a temper.”
I stared at him.
Hale whispered.
“Jesus Christ.”
Moreno's expression sharpened.
“Exact words, Mason.”
Mason swallowed.
“Ryan said, ‘Dad says she’ll snap if I push hard enough.’”
No one spoke.
The courtyard confrontation had not been an arrogant boy improvising for an audience.
At least not entirely.
Someone had expected me to react.
Someone had wanted a reaction on camera.
Then the camera footage had disappeared when the reaction did not look the way they needed.
I thought about Harrison's immediate reference to my service history.
I thought about the fake story of excessive force.
I thought about the gun planted in my classroom.
This was no longer only about protecting Ryan.
I had been a target before Ryan ever drew the training pistol.
Moreno looked at me.
“Is there any reason Harrison Cole would have a personal interest in your Navy service?”
I started to say no.
Then a memory surfaced.
A defense contractor logo on a field communications case twelve years earlier.
A procurement investigation.
A deployment accident that had never made the news.
Cole Strategic Systems.
My face must have changed.
Moreno noticed.
“You remembered something.”
I looked at the silver letters above the building entrance.
HARRISON COLE TACTICAL SIMULATION CENTER.
“Yes.”
Hale stepped closer.
“What?”
The name brought back details I had not invited into my memory.
Rain striking the roof of a temporary operations hut.
A radio displaying a full battery while transmitting nothing.
A wounded teammate squeezing my sleeve because he could not speak around an airway tube.
A procurement officer telling us later that the equipment had passed every required test.
Then the inspection sheet with a serial number that did not belong to the unit in my hands.
I remembered the anger more clearly than the fear.
Not dramatic anger.
The cold kind.
The kind that appears when paperwork says something worked and a bleeding person proves it did not.
After the deployment, investigators asked me the same question in six different forms.
Was I certain the equipment failed?
Was I certain it was configured correctly?
Was I certain weather had not caused the problem?
Was I certain another operator had not damaged it?
I answered every question.
Then one investigator asked whether I understood the economic consequences of accusing a major contractor of falsifying tests.
That was when I understood the investigation had two patients.
The people who had nearly died.
And the contract everyone wanted to keep alive.
I chose the first.
Apparently Harrison Cole had remembered that choice longer than I had remembered him.
I had not spoken the name in more than a decade.
“Operation Glass Harbor.”
Mason stared at me.
Hale frowned.
“What is that?”
“A Navy investigation.”
“Into what?”
I looked at the sealed pistol evidence bag in the technician's case.
“Equipment failures that almost got people killed.”
Moreno's eyes narrowed.
“Whose equipment?”
I already knew the answer.
May you like
“Cole Strategic Systems.”
