Chapter 42
FORTY-TWO
Her office had floor-to-ceiling windows and a mountain view Kieran had personally called “non-negotiable.” It had sleek, intelligent lighting, soft paneling, and a long glass conference table she’d only used once.
Claire reached the double doors and stopped cold. They were open.
Inside, Kieran Chase stood at the far window, hands in his pockets, spine tight.
And next to him was a man she didn’t know as well, but knew by name and reputation.
Lincoln Collier, CEO of Chase Security’s Denver division.
Both men turned as she entered, and she knew immediately something was wrong.
Kieran wasn’t a pacer. He only paced when something big was happening and he didn’t like the way it felt. “Claire,” he said carefully. “Close the door.”
Her stomach dropped. She shut the door without a word, walking to the edge of the table. “Tell me.”
Kieran looked at Lincoln. He didn’t sugarcoat it. “Overnight, we got a ping. Tiki in DC Tech confirmed the encryption chain. Tessa Wu from Tree Town One picked up the trailing IP. It’s credible.”
Claire's throat went dry. “Vos?”
Kieran hesitated.
Lincoln answered, “Vos and… your mother.”
Claire’s heart stopped. Everything in the room seemed to tip sideways. “No.”
Kieran’s voice softened. “It was from Prague. A quiet camera feed outside a private medical clinic. They were walking together. Not by accident.”
She swayed and caught the edge of the table.
Lincoln moved forward a step but didn’t touch her. “I’m sorry,” he said. “We know this is more than tactical to you.”
Claire’s breath came in sharp puffs. “How long have you known?”
“Tiki waited to confirm it wasn’t a deepfake. Vos’s face has changed. But all his metrics are the same. Tessa pinged Chase Net at 4:13 a.m.,” Kieran said. “We didn’t sit on it.”
She nodded slowly, barely hearing herself speak. “She broke her agreement with Ian. Didn’t take her long.”
Lincoln’s voice was low. “And she’s with the man who tried to destroy everything you love.”
The room fell silent except for the hum of the lights. Claire stared past them both, into the cold shine of the glass. “I want every file on Prague in the last six months. Every Chase shadow contact. Every drone path we scrubbed.”
Kieran stepped forward. “Claire…”
She turned, sharp and clear. “You brought me here because you trusted me. Now let me do what I was built to do.”
Lincoln nodded once. “We’re already clearing the lanes.”
Claire didn’t move. She had blood in her mouth and fire in her spine. “If she’s with him willingly… then I will end them both.”
She stood at the window, arms folded tight against her chest, gaze locked on the mountains that no longer gave her calm. The silence only amplified the noise inside her.
Behind her, Lincoln Collier waited with his usual quiet patience. Kieran left, heading straight to analytics to run the Prague feed himself. She hadn’t asked twice. Ian was next. The minute he was available, he needed to see this, no matter how much it broke inside him.
Her mother had not been declared dead. She was exiled from Claire’s life, from the Chase ecosystem, and from any future that resembled legitimacy.
And now, she was sighted walking beside Vos. That truth hit harder than the footage itself.
Claire’s tablet was still in her hands. She scrolled, numb, through the blur of headlines and talking heads.
Her mother’s resignation statement was composed, pristine, every syllable hers and yet not hers, and it had detonated across the networks.
National anchors dissected it, Ann Arbor papers speculated, Sunday news shows looped it endlessly, each one trying to frame her disappearance as scandal or tragedy.
Her staff claimed ignorance. That was likely the truth. No one knew where she’d gone. The speculation churned louder. Was she gravely ill? Was she compromised? Did she resign under investigation? They dissected her face, her tone, and her silence.
And then there was the political fallout. The Governor of Michigan’s choice for her replacement, the scramble over who would chair the Armed Services Committee, and the op-eds mourning the loss of her hawkish steadiness on defense. Every angle was covered, and none of it reached the truth.
Claire’s thumb hesitated on a headline that cut sharper than the rest: Where is Claire Bowman?
The articles speculated on her emergency leave filing.
Reporters were hunting her, pundits spinning her absence into another question mark in the narrative of her mother’s collapse.
Or they speculated that the shooting on campus sent her psychologically reeling.
Was she more seriously hurt when she was shot than reported, or was it a hit that placed her in the witness protection program, and her mother’s resignation was related to that?
She chuckled. Ian would appreciate the crazier rumors. The one involving aliens made her laugh.
She closed her eyes for a beat, the glow of the tablet still burning her lids. Her mother’s actions had forced her to choose exile. Claire hadn’t chosen any of this. And yet, all of it was hurting her now.
She turned back toward Lincoln. “I want Tuck, Patrick, and Seth here now.”
“And the rest of the team?” Lincoln said.
“I don’t want the full team,” she clarified. “Not yet, just them.”
Lincoln paused. “You’re building a response?”
“No,” she said. “I’m figuring out how to tell Reid.”
He blinked. “You don’t think he’s ready.”
Claire walked to the edge of the long table and pressed her palms against the glass.
“He doesn’t know what my mother did, and that she’s not my mother.
I don’t even know if he remembers what Vos did to him.
His memory's still fractured. He just got back pieces of our beginning. If I drop this on him now, if I say Vos and my mother are together in Prague…” She broke off.
Lincoln let the silence hold.
Claire inhaled through her nose. “I need Patrick’s instinct. Seth’s caution. Tuck’s gut. We don’t do this blind.”
Lincoln nodded. “Understood.”
She stood there, frozen for another moment. “Also,” she added without turning around, “as soon as Ian's free, I need to speak with him. No gatekeeping.”
“Sure.”
Claire barely heard him leave. She stared at the mountains a moment longer, willing her heart to stay inside her chest. And waited for the only men who might understand how to carry the truth before it shattered the man they all loved.
STRATEGY brIEFING ROOM – 1543 HOURS
A single monitor on the wall played the Prague feed on loop, muted, slowed, and timestamped.
Heather Bowman and Vos, side by side, walking calmly beneath the overhang of a private hospital entrance, like ghosts who never knew they were meant to stay dead.
She kept staring at Vos—the height, the stride, his hand on Heather’s arm was all his, but his face was altered.
Is that why you are you going to a private hospital? Plastic surgery?
Claire stood near the long table, arms crossed. The door opened softly. Tuck came in first, in a suit, back to his day job. His expression was unreadable, but his eyes immediately found hers.
Seth Brady followed in black Chase scrubs, clean-cut, steady-eyed, his ID badge hanging from a lanyard. He was always clinical and composed.
Patrick Hedges brought up the rear in blue surgical scrubs covered by a long lab coat, jaw clenched like he’d already heard something he didn’t want confirmed.
Claire wasted no time. “That was recorded in Prague, twelve hours ago. Confirmed ID by two in tech. The man is Vos, albeit with a new face.”
They all stared. Patrick leaned forward, elbows on the table. “Who’s the woman?”
Claire’s throat tightened. “Heather Bowman.” She’d stopped using the word “mother.”
Tuck turned slowly. “I’m sorry, honey.”
Claire shook her head once. “She was exiled. Ian removed her from Chase affairs. She was to have no contact. She disappeared off-grid after leaving Ann Arbor. We assumed she’d remain buried somewhere in failure or shame. We were wrong. I was wrong.”
Seth’s voice was level. “Do we have any understanding that Reid remembers what Vos did?”
Claire exhaled. “No. He hasn’t mentioned it. But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t remember.”
Tuck lowered himself into the nearest chair. “That’s a problem.”
Patrick stayed standing. “What do you want us to do?”
“I want your read,” Claire said. “Reid has to be told. We can’t let him overhear something or feel it in a briefing. He needs to hear it directly from someone he trusts.”
Tuck rubbed his jaw. “If you’re asking me whether he can take it? Maybe. But you don’t hit a healing brain with two traumas back-to-back without a plan. We need to give him ground to stand on first.”
Patrick nodded. “Agreed. Anchor him before you detonate the truth.”
Seth looked thoughtful. “Does he know your mother’s situation?”
Claire shook her head. “I never told him. He has no idea what she did.”
Seth leaned forward. “You’re telling him she was horribly cruel and removed for all her actions. He’s going to see that as a second betrayal if you don’t handle it exactly right.”
Claire’s jaw tightened. “I know.”
Tuck looked at her gently. “We’ll help you figure out how to say it.”
Patrick crossed his arms. “But do it fast. Because once this goes operational, it’s going wide. And he can’t hear it from someone else.”
Claire nodded once. “Then we tell him tonight.”
REHAB ROOM 10 – 1714 HOURS
Reid looked up immediately. He was seated, cooling off from his most recent PT session, holding his water bottle. Sweat dampened the edge of his T-shirt. He looked more alert than she’d seen him in days.
“You’re back early,” he said.
Claire forced a smile, crossed the room, and sat on the bed beside him. “Yeah,” she smoothed a hand over his thigh, “I needed to be here.”
He faced her. “What happened?”
She hesitated.
“Claire.”
Her voice was soft. “There was a sighting.”
His body tensed. “Who?”