Chapter 11 - NATHAN CROSS'S SON
Aaron Pike refused to go to a hospital.
The irony was not lost on Abigail.
He sat wrapped in a gray blanket in the back of an ambulance while she examined the bruising around his ribs.
"You need imaging."
Pike shook his head.
"No hospitals."
"You may have a fracture."
"I've had worse."
"That's not a medical argument."
He almost smiled.
"You really are the nurse Lucas described."
Abigail paused.
"What did he say?"
Pike looked down at his hands.
"That you listened."
That hurt more than she expected.
"When did you last see him?"
"Yesterday."
"Was he hurt?"
"Yes."
"How badly?"
"Bruised, dehydrated, exhausted."
"Conscious?"
"Yes."
"Walking?"
"Barely."
Caleb stood at the ambulance doors.
"Why were you with him?"
Pike studied him.
"Because I was looking for the same thing he was."
"Anchor?"
Pike nodded.
Ruiz climbed into the ambulance and shut the doors.
"Start at the beginning."
Pike looked from Ruiz to Caleb.
"My legal name is Aaron Pike because my mother changed it after my father died."
"Nathan Cross was your father?"
"Yes."
"How old were you?"
"Eleven."
Caleb lowered his eyes.
Pike noticed.
"You called us."
Caleb looked up.
"What?"
"After he died."
Pike's voice softened.
"You called my mother."
Caleb said nothing.
"You told her he wasn't alone."
The ambulance seemed suddenly smaller.
"I remembered your voice for years."
Caleb swallowed.
"I'm sorry."
Pike shook his head.
"Don't be sorry for calling."
"I'm sorry he died."
Pike's expression hardened.
"Then help me prove why."
He reached beneath the blanket and pulled out the brass key again.
"My father mailed this to my mother two days before Redwater."
Ruiz examined it without touching.
"No markings."
"There was a letter too."
"Do you have it?"
"Not anymore."
"What happened?"
"Our house was burglarized when I was sixteen."
"Only the letter disappeared?"
"The letter and every military paper my mother had saved."
Caleb frowned.
"But they missed the key."
"My mother had sewn it inside one of my father's old stuffed animals."
Ruiz asked, "Why didn't she go to investigators?"
Pike laughed bitterly.
"She did."
"And?"
"They told her grief makes people suspicious."
Abigail felt a familiar anger.
Institutions loved calm language when they wanted frightened people to disappear.
Pike continued.
"When my mother died last year, I found the key and one photocopy she had hidden inside a cookbook."
"Photocopy of what?"
"Part of my father's letter."
"What did it say?"
Pike looked at Caleb.
"If they ever come for the Anchor archive, find Preston."
Caleb stared at him.
"It said my last name?"
"It said Caleb Preston."
"Why me?"
"Because you were Zero."
"That means nothing to me."
"It meant something to him."
Pike reached into a plastic evidence bag Ruiz had allowed him to keep and removed a folded photocopy.
Ruiz put on gloves.
The page contained only half a paragraph.
Most of the original letter had been lost.
But the last lines were clear.
C.P. doesn't know what they made him carry.
Zero is the only clean link.
If I fail, the vault survives.
Abigail looked at Caleb.
"Made you carry what?"
He shook his head.
"I don't know."
Ruiz pulled out the steel key recovered from Warren's boat.
He placed it beside Pike's brass key.
Different sizes.
Different shapes.
"Two keys," Abigail said.
Caleb stared at them.
"Maybe both open the same system."
Pike nodded.
"That's what Lucas thought."
"How did Lucas find you?"
"He didn't."
Pike looked toward the ambulance wall.
"I found him."
"At Redwater?"
"Yes."
Ruiz's eyes narrowed.
"How did you get inside a supposedly abandoned training compound?"
"I have been watching it for six months."
"Why?"
"Because men connected to my father's death started meeting there again."
"Which men?"
"Warren, Dane, Hale."
Pike hesitated.
"And Keene."
Caleb's jaw tightened.
"Rear Admiral Keene was there?"
"Three times."
Ruiz took out a notebook.
"Dates?"
Pike listed them from memory.
Ruiz wrote each one down.
"What happened when you found Lucas?"
"I broke into Redwater looking for files."
"And found him instead?"
"He was locked in a utility room."
"Why didn't you take him out?"
Pain crossed Pike's face.
"I tried."
He lifted his shirt.
A long bruise crossed his side.
"Dane caught us."
"How did you escape?"
"Lucas pulled a fire alarm."
"There wasn't an alarm when we searched."
"Because they ripped it out afterward."
"And Lucas?"
Pike closed his eyes.
"He stayed behind to give me time."
Abigail clenched her hands.
"A nineteen-year-old stayed behind so you could escape?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
Pike looked at her.
"Because he had already hidden the flash drive."
Ruiz nodded slowly.
"The locker."
"He told me where it was."
"Why didn't you retrieve it?"
"I was captured before I could."
"At the warehouse?"
"Two men grabbed me outside Redwater."
"Warren?"
"No."
"Dane?"
"One of them."
"The other?"
Pike looked at Caleb.
"Commander Hale."
Ruiz stopped writing.
"You're certain?"
"I know his face."
"Hale claims he was at Norfolk until three-thirty this morning."
Pike laughed.
"Then ask him where he was yesterday afternoon."
Ruiz's phone rang.
He stepped out of the ambulance to answer.
Abigail continued checking Pike's injuries.
"You need fluids."
"Fine."
"That sounded suspiciously easy."
"Lucas said arguing with you was pointless."
Caleb actually smiled.
"Smart kid."
Abigail inserted an IV.
Pike barely flinched.
"Tell me about the dry dock."
Pike looked toward Caleb.
"Iron Harbor has an old flood-control tunnel beneath Dock Three."
"I know the dock."
"Not the tunnel."
"Apparently not."
"It leads to a sealed records chamber built during the Cold War."
Caleb frowned.
"How do you know?"
"My father drew it."
"Where's the drawing?"
"Dane took it."
"Of course he did."
Pike continued.
"Lucas heard Warren say they were moving him there because Redwater was compromised."
"Then he's under Dock Three."
"Maybe."
Abigail hated that word again.
Pike looked at the two keys.
"The vault is there too."
Caleb's attention sharpened.
"Anchor archive?"
"That's what my father believed."
Ruiz opened the ambulance door.
His face was grim.
"We have a bigger problem."
"What now?" Abigail asked.
"The joint review team just issued a classified-site protection order over Iron Harbor."
Caleb stared at him.
"They know we're going there."
"Yes."
"Who signed it?"
Ruiz held up his phone.
"Rear Admiral Keene."
Pike laughed softly.
"There you go."
Abigail stood.
"Can he stop you?"
Ruiz looked frustrated.
"He can stop me from entering for classified-material purposes."
"Lucas isn't classified material."
"Exactly."
Caleb looked at him.
"Kidnapping warrant."
"I'm trying."
"Try faster."
Ruiz gave him a hard look.
"You think I don't know the clock?"
Abigail checked the time.
10:58 a.m.
Just over an hour until the deadline.
Her phone buzzed again.
Another message.
This one contained no photograph.
Only a video.
Lucas appeared sitting in a steel chair.
Warren stood behind him.
A digital clock on the wall read 11:00.
Warren looked into the camera.
"Mrs. Preston."
He smiled.
"One hour."
May you like
Then he placed a pistol against Lucas Bell's head.
