Chapter 10 - The Underground Room
I wanted to board a vehicle to the training facility immediately.
Marlowe refused to let my anger become an operational plan.
The building might contain hazards, and Patrick's message might be bait.
Specialists obtained access and assessed the site before investigators entered.
I stayed in Colorado Springs and reviewed the evidence that my own agency was authorized to share.
The facility had closed years earlier, but foundation grants had continued paying for its supposed rehabilitation programs.
Those payments were the largest unexplained expenses in the ledger.
Investigators found no patients, no equipment, and no evidence that the reported services had ever existed.
What they did find was a functioning server cabinet powered by a concealed supply.
The data were preserved for forensic examination.
The first accessible index contained records named after my children.
NOAH.
ETHAN.
SOPHIA.
OLIVIA.
Each folder held a separate bank beneficiary designation.
None proved that the children had received money.
Instead the names had been used as labels for accounts managed by offshore entities.
The signatures on the designations appeared to be mine.
They were not.
The use of my children's identities transformed the case into something much more intimate.
Someone had been preparing these accounts since before their birth.
A lawyer specializing in identity theft helped me initiate protective steps for them.
I told the children only that we were locking down paperwork to keep strangers from misusing their names.
They did not need to carry the ugliness of the details.
Daniel asked to join the meeting with the lawyer.
I agreed only to a separate conversation, with every request documented.
He brought baby pictures Margaret had hidden in a locked drawer.
He said he had never seen them.
I believed him.
That made his years of incuriosity more appalling, not less.
“I don't expect forgiveness,” he said.
“Good.”
“But I want to help.”
“Then tell the truth when it makes you look bad.”
He hesitated.
Finally he admitted that eight years earlier Patrick had warned him a pregnancy scandal could jeopardize a promotion board.
Daniel had signed divorce papers within forty-eight hours.
He had not requested medical confirmation.
He had not asked for a second opinion.
He had chosen his uniform over four unborn children.
I held his gaze while he admitted it.
Then I asked one last question.
“Did Patrick promise you money?”
Daniel went pale.
“He promised to erase a debt.”
“What debt?”
Daniel whispered, “The debt my father left in my name.”
An investigator opened the next recovered file.
It contained a handwritten confession signed by General Arthur Reynolds.
At the bottom was a line that neither of us expected.
May you like
WITNESSED BY MARCUS ELLIS.
