Chapter 6 - The Listening Device
The transmitting device was smaller than the spare button on my uniform.
A technician removed it with tweezers and showed Ortiz the adhesive strip on its back.
It wasn't designed for a battlefield.
It was designed for an office where people assumed they were alone.
The hospital director demanded an explanation.
Ortiz gave him one he did not like.
“Your security system has been compromised, and somebody with access to patient equipment helped make that happen.”
She requested rosters, badge logs, and camera recordings.
By late afternoon, three hours of footage were missing from the cameras outside Emily's room.
The missing period began thirty minutes before she arrived.
It ended just after Margaret entered.
“Somebody anticipated her admission,” I said.
Ortiz didn't argue.
She moved Emily to an isolated recovery suite and stationed vetted nurses at both entrances.
I walked beside the bed as orderlies transferred it down a restricted corridor.
Even unconscious, Emily seemed to resist the movement.
Her hand searched the sheet until I caught it.
“It's all right,” I said.
“We're going someplace safer.”
I wanted to believe the words.
After the transfer, a hospital chaplain offered to sit with me.
I told him I didn't know what to pray for.
He said a prayer didn't have to be polished to count.
I sat in silence while he held the space open.
Later, I took the elevator to an empty floor and called my commanding officer.
I had avoided the conversation because I feared what I might hear.
Major Ellis answered on the first ring.
“Nathan, how's Emily?”
“Alive.”
The one-word answer nearly broke my voice.
I told him about the forged signature and the leaked deployment data.
He didn't ask me to trust the system blindly.
He promised to request an independent review through military channels.
“Do not investigate your own personnel records,” he warned.
“Let the professionals preserve the evidence.”
“I understand.”
“Also, Sergeant, don't confuse restraint with inaction.”
The distinction mattered.
Every hour I wasn't confronting the Whitmores felt like betrayal.
But the investigators were working, and my wife needed me where I could actually help.
That night Ortiz returned with the device's registration history.
It had been purchased through a shell company called Northbridge Patient Services.
The company's registered agent was a lawyer named Samuel Keene.
I recognized the name.
Keene had officiated our wedding when the county clerk was unavailable.
Emily called him Uncle Sam, although he wasn't related to her.
He'd hugged her at the reception.
He'd given us a silver-framed photograph of our first dance.
I felt ill remembering where the frame had sat for years.
On the bookshelf in our bedroom.
Keene had visited our house dozens of times.
He knew our routine.
He knew when I deployed.
He knew which doors squeaked.
I called Ortiz back.
“Search our wedding photographs,” I said.
“Find every picture with Keene in it.”
“Why?”
“Because he gave us something I never inspected.”
An agent at our house located the frame within the hour.
Behind the photograph was a memory card taped inside the backing.
There was no label.
The data were encrypted.
And someone had written a single word on the tape in Emily's handwriting.
May you like
INSURANCE.
