Chapter 13 - Forty-Eight Hours
The review board gave the contractors forty-eight hours to produce records under the legal process already underway.
To Marcus, it sounded like too long.
To my father, it sounded like a countdown to ruin.
To me, it was simply a deadline by which people would reveal what they were willing to do.
Dad came back the next morning with a lawyer.
He admitted he had received payments for helping Mercer Systems secure civilian contacts, but denied knowing the connection to Daniel's mission.
His lawyer stopped him every time his explanation drifted toward speculation.
"Did you use my credentials?" I asked.
"No."
"Did you know someone was using them?"
Dad closed his eyes.
The lawyer advised him not to answer.
I had never seen silence used so differently by the two of us.
That afternoon the investigators located Lena Price.
She had gone into hiding on the advice of a friend after receiving threats and had failed to tell the authorities where she was going.
She agreed to provide a statement in a secure location.
Her first revelation was brutal.
Mercer Systems had maintained a parallel archive of messages that never appeared in the official mission log.
One message ordered the team to remain in place while a subcontractor completed an unauthorized transfer nearby.
The rerouting of communications was meant to keep the operation from being noticed, not to injure anyone.
But once the extraction window closed, the difference meant nothing to Daniel.
Lena had copies of the message headers.
"Who authorized it?" Reyes asked.
Lena looked toward me.
"Andrew Mercer approved it.
Someone inside the procurement chain helped."
"My father?"
She shook her head.
"Your father wasn't the one who made the order."
For one breath, relief nearly flattened me.
Then Lena added, "He was the one they paid to keep your grandfather quiet afterward."
I stared at her.
Granddad had died believing he had failed to save me from my own family.
May you like
Now I wondered what he'd tried to save Daniel's family from as well.
