Chapter 23 #2
Ian nodded once. “Three operators. One for distance. One for insertion. One for chaos. Maybe more. But this was timed, measured, and coordinated.” He leaned forward.
“We were lucky. But if I can’t control my house…
” He looked at Killian. “Call Martin. I want security upgraded at all Chase facilities and for my family and Kieran’s. ”
The door opened behind them. Fuse and Relay entered without ceremony, both carrying tension in their spines.
“We’ve confirmed,” Fuse dropped a drive on the table, “the man Tuck shot entered through the tunnel dressed as a trauma orderly. Badge was cloned off a janitor who hadn’t been in the building since Tuesday.
Facial match came up blank. A level-three team was sent to the janitor’s home.
They found him dead.” She looked up. “Whoever he is, he’s not in our system. ”
Relay stepped beside her. “He didn’t do it alone. Someone inside rerouted the badge verification at 0512 hours. Bounced the signal through a shell server in MedOps.”
“Show me,” Reid said.
Relay spun the screen. A flow map of Chase’s internal security protocols bloomed in pulsing blue. A red pulse blinked at the point of reroute. “That’s the hook,” Relay said. “Executive stack access. That’s not maintenance level. That’s clearance tier two or above.”
Killian frowned, asking Martin to hold. “Which means?”
Fuse looked him in the eye. “Someone high up gave this guy access to the patient roster, the hallway shifts, and Claire’s room code.” Her tone sharpened. “No way in hell he makes it past Sublevel 3 without a handoff.”
The thought that someone within Chase had sold Claire out again churned hot and poisonous in Reid’s chest.
Ian finally turned from the screen. “Start pulling keycards. Every access log from the past seventy-two hours. Double-check anyone who’s already been cleared.
If you find overlap with Claire’s route from OR to recovery, you flag it.
” He stood. His expression held no softness.
“Whoever helped put a man with a gun at her bedside didn’t make a mistake. They made a choice.”
Reid didn’t speak. He just reached for his comm and keyed into Tuck’s private line.
Because if someone tried again, he wasn’t going to let her face it from a hospital bed. He’d face it for her.
SURVEILLANCE DEEP TAP ROOM – 1346 HOURS
The surveillance room was colder than the rest of Command. It was sterile, humming, and quiet in a way that made your skin itch. The blue light from the monitors gave everything a haunted edge, flickering across faces like ghosts.
Relay sat forward, scanning data across multiple screens. Fuse was hunched over three of them, eyes darting, jaw tight like she was chewing each second for answers.
Reid stood against the wall, arms crossed. He hadn’t blinked in what felt like minutes. “Talk to me.”
Fuse didn’t look up. “We found the gap. Eight minutes of missing footage outside Claire’s room.” Her voice was clipped, focused. “It looked clean and real, but it wasn’t. Someone took one of our old training videos and spliced it into the feed. Masked it like it was live.”
Reid’s fingers flexed. “That takes skill.”
“That takes knowledge,” she corrected. “This wasn’t a hacker guessing. They knew our system. They used our own tools against us.”
Relay spoke next, scanning a log on another screen. “The signal didn’t come from where it should have. It wasn’t from Tuck’s wing. It came from the auxiliary med ward, logged just after eleven this morning and covered by a fake maintenance alert, something about insulin supply.”
The cold settled deeper in Reid’s chest. “So they used a medical delivery as cover.”
“Exactly.” Relay nodded. “They walked the bomb in then slipped the shooter past the cameras. If Tuck hadn’t been in that room…” He didn’t finish.
Reid cut in, “I need a list of every person who came near ICU Room 2 between ten and noon. Every staff badge. Every hallway cam. Scrub them.”
Fuse finally looked over her shoulder. “You think it’s someone inside?”
“I don’t think,” Reid said. “I know.” He pushed off the wall, eyes sharp. “Lock everything down. No uploads. No transfers. No audio feeds.”
Fuse hesitated. “Not even Ian?”
Reid didn’t blink. “I’ll notify him in person. We need to know how far it goes. If someone inside this place is feeding information to a kill team, we keep it quiet. No panic. No noise.”
The silence in the room shifted. Not fear, but focus. They weren’t just tracking an enemy now. They were hunting a traitor.
EXECUTIVE RECOVERY SUITE 4B – 1534 HOURS
Claire sat propped up in bed, her side still sore, the bandages beneath her gown tight and unfamiliar. Each breath was measured. She'd barely had the strength to eat that morning. The door opened, and she looked up.
Ian didn’t take the usual posture. He didn’t stand tall or speak from above. He looked almost… unsure. “Claire, there’s something I need to show you. Something I hope you might help me understand.”
Tuck moved to the monitor beside her bed, checking her vitals. She caught the faint tension in his shoulders.
Ian stepped forward and handed her a small, slightly faded photograph. Three figures stood in it: her mother, Heather Bowman, smiling in a white gown; her father, Joseph, unmistakable in a tuxedo and relaxed posture. And then the third man—tall, elegant, eyes like cold steel.
The moment she saw him, her breath vanished.
Her throat closed, and her hands trembled.
She dropped the photo, unable to look at it a second longer.
Her heart began to pound in her chest. “No,” she whispered.
“No, I’ve seen him. He… he came to the house.
He called me…” her voice caught. “He called me Firefly.”
Tuck was already beside her. The monitor was alarming.
Her chest started to heave. Claire blinked, her eyes glazing over. Her voice became childlike as she began to remember. “That’s what my daddy calls me,” she said, half whisper, half defiance.
Her mother had turned so fast. The slap burned across her cheek before she finished the sentence. “You don’t talk back to Mr. Vos,” her mother snapped. “Be polite.”
Claire’s hand flew to her cheek as if she still felt it. Her breath caught. “She hit me. Because I told him not to call me that. Because I said it was Daddy’s name for me.” Her voice broke. “She defended him over me.”
Her eyes filled, but she wasn’t crying. Not in the usual sense. This was something deeper, something her body didn’t want her to remember until she was forced to.
Tuck inserted a mild sedative into her IV. “Don’t fight it, honey; you’re alright. You’re safe. Just breathe for me now. Deep, in through your nose.”
As the edges of the panic softened, another memory surged. Not a face. Not a sound.
But a screen. Her screen at the NSA. Code—dense, looping, buried deep where no one would casually look. And in the middle of it was three letters. V. O. S.
She hadn’t thought much of it back then. It didn’t trigger any flags. It wasn’t protocol. It didn’t connect to any official designation. It just sat there, hidden like a shadow in the pattern.
But now… Her eyes widened. “I saw his name in the code.”
Ian leaned in. “What?”
Claire looked at him, dizzy but clear. “At the NSA. When I found the buried pattern. It wasn’t just code. Someone signed it. Three letters. V-O-S.”
Ian’s jaw tightened. “What kind of code?”
Tuck leaned in, still watching her vitals.
She swallowed. “Data pathways. Manipulated time logs. Misdirection triggers. I flagged it quietly. But it was already there.”
Ian’s voice was low. “That’s the same kind of technology he used in Afghanistan.”
Claire stared down at the edge of her blanket. “It wasn’t random. It was his fingerprint. And I missed it.”
Ian rested a hand on her shoulder. “You didn’t miss it. You saw it. Long before anyone else did.”
Claire sank back against the pillows. Her pulse finally settled, but her voice stayed haunted. “He’s been in the background this whole time.”
Ian met her eyes. “He’s not in the background anymore.”