Chapter 21
CHAPTER
TWENTY-ONE
Natalie wiped the last of her tears away with her oversized sweatshirt sleeve and forced herself to take a steady breath.
Crying wasn’t going to help anything right now. Falling apart wouldn’t prove her father’s innocence or these people’s guilt.
She’d spent her career managing crises, controlling narratives, burying the truth in well-designed PR campaigns. She’d become an expert in uncovering what was really happening beneath the surface spin.
It was time to use those skills now.
“I want to see everything.” Her voice sounded firmer. “Not summaries. Not interpretations. I want the raw data. Financial records, travel logs, communications. All of it.”
Colton raised an eyebrow. “Ms. Ravenscroft—”
“I’m a communications director for an international corporation,” she interrupted.
“I know how to read financial documents, analyze travel patterns, and identify inconsistencies in official statements. If you want my help, then I want to actually examine the evidence myself. Maybe I’ll see something you missed.
Maybe I’ll prove you’re wrong. Either way, I need to see it. All of it.”
Ty and Colton exchanged a glance.
Then Colton nodded slowly. “Let me call Jake in here.”
A moment later, their colleague came into the room. He moved to a laptop at the end of the table and began typing. Within moments, a projector displayed a complex folder structure on the wall.
“Financial records are in the red folders, communications in blue, surveillance logs in green,” Jake explained. “What do you want to start with?”
Natalie stood and moved closer to the screen. This was familiar territory—data analysis, pattern recognition, finding the story beneath the facts. She needed to set aside her emotions right now and concentrate on the tangible.
“Travel records,” she said. “Show me everywhere my father has been in the past six months.”
Jake clicked through several folders until a spreadsheet appeared—dates, destinations, flight information, hotel bookings.
Natalie scanned the list, her eyes moving quickly down the columns.
London, Singapore, Cape Town, Istanbul.
All cities where Ravenscroft International had legitimate business operations. She’d written press releases about several of these trips.
Then something caught her eye.
“There.” She pointed at an entry. “September 15 through 18. Dubai.”
“What about it?” Colton asked.
“My father told me that was a vacation.” Natalie’s mind raced. “Said he was taking a few days off, that he’d been working too hard. But he never takes vacations. Never. The last time he took time off was—” She stopped, calculating. “Five years ago, after his knee replacement surgery.”
“Keep going,” Ty murmured.
She turned to face the room. “I actually thought he might have a girlfriend there, someone he was keeping secret. He was being so cagey and wouldn’t give me details about where he was staying or what he was doing.”
Hudson pushed off from the wall. “Ravenscroft International doesn’t have operations in Dubai?”
“No. We have a small client base in the UAE, but nothing that would require in-person meetings. Certainly nothing that would require a four-day trip.” Natalie looked back at the screen. “Can you show me his communications around those dates?”
Jake pulled up email and phone records.
Natalie leaned in, studying the data before pointing to a cluster of calls. “Look at this. Three calls to an unlisted number in Dubai the week before the trip. Then nothing during the trip itself—radio silence. Then two more calls to the same number three days after he returned.”
Ty nodded slowly. “Setting up a meeting, attending the meeting, then confirming the deal was done.”
Natalie’s stomach churned, but she forced herself to keep analyzing. “What about bank records? Did any money move around those dates?”
Colton pulled up financial data and highlighted a transaction. “There. Transfer of $2.3 million to an offshore account in the Caymans, dated September 17th.”
The middle of his “vacation.”
Natalie sank back into her chair, her professional detachment cracking. “He lied to me. When I asked him about the trip after he got back, he showed me photos of tourist sites. The Burj Khalifa, the Marina, some amazing food. Said he’d just needed to clear his head.”
“Did he seem different when he came back?” Hudson asked.
She thought about it. “He was . . . anxious. Kept checking his phone more than usual. Had more late-night calls.” She looked up at Hudson. “And that’s when he started asking more often if I was dating. Like he was suddenly worried about who I was spending time with.”
The implications settled over her like a weight.
Her father hadn’t been on vacation. He’d been in Dubai conducting business—the kind of business that required encrypted communications and offshore bank transfers.
The kind of business that terrorist organizations conducted.
Nausea churned in her gut.
“What else did he do after the Dubai trip?” she heard herself ask. “What changed?”
Colton pulled up more records, and together they began building a timeline. Her father’s behavior, his communications, his meetings—all of it viewed through this terrible new lens.
With each piece of evidence, with each pattern Natalie recognized from her professional experience, the foundation of her beliefs about her father crumbled a little more.
She’d wanted to prove Hudson and his colleagues wrong.
Instead, she was helping them build their case.
Hudson watched Natalie work through the evidence. Each discovery she made tightened the knot in his gut.
The Dubai trip. The offshore transfers. The encrypted communications.
She was good at this—too good. Her analytical mind cut through the noise and found connections his team had missed. The trip they’d dismissed as legitimate vacation travel now looked like exactly what it probably was: a weapons deal or terrorist coordination meeting.
“We need more information about Dubai.” Colton leaned back in his chair. “Specifically, what your father is planning next. If this was a preliminary meeting, there will be follow-ups.”
Natalie’s face was pale but composed. “What are you suggesting?”
“That you go back to Norfolk,” Ty said. “Resume your normal life. Go to work, see your father, act like nothing has changed. And while you’re there, gather whatever intelligence you can about his upcoming activities.”
Hudson’s jaw tightened. “That’s putting her directly in the line of fire.”
His team wanted to send her back into that world. Back to her father. Back to danger.
“It’s also our best chance of stopping whatever Sigma is planning,” Colton countered. “Natalie has access we don’t. She can ask questions that would raise red flags coming from anyone else.”
“What about the men who followed us tonight?” Natalie’s voice sounded steady, but Hudson heard the fear beneath her even tones. “The ones who shot at us. Did my father send them after me? Or after Hudson? Or were they not connected to my father at all? Maybe they were his enemies.”
The questions hung in the air.
Hudson exchanged glances with Colton and Ty.
“We don’t know for certain,” Colton admitted. “It’s possible your father was trying to kill Hudson, but his operatives got sloppy and put you in danger.”
“That doesn’t sound like something my father would authorize. Besides, if that’s true, does that mean my father knows who Hudson is?”
“We don’t believe he does,” Ty said. “But we do believe he wants to scare off anyone who gets too close to you, probably out of fear that they’ll learn too much about what’s going on at your company.”
“Either way, those men are still out there,” Ty said. “If you go back, you’ll need to be careful. Extremely careful.”
“We can provide support,” Colton said. “Hudson will maintain his Timothy Shaw cover, keep seeing you publicly. We’ll have surveillance, backup protocols. You won’t be alone.”
Natalie remained quiet, her fingers tracing the rim of her coffee mug. “And what exactly am I looking for?”
“Details about upcoming trips,” Ty said. “Conversations about Critical Mass. Any mention of timelines, locations, or personnel. Access to his calendar, his communications—anything that might tell us when and where the attack is planned.”
“You’re asking me to spy on my own father.” She sounded entirely too calm as she made that statement.
“We’re asking you to help save lives,” Colton said. “Just remember the stakes. If we’re right about him, thousands of people could die. If we’re wrong, the evidence you gather will prove it.”
Natalie closed her eyes before nodding. “Okay. I’ll do it.”
Hudson wanted to argue, to tell them this was too dangerous, that they were asking too much of a civilian who’d been terrorized and shot at just hours ago.
But Colton and Ty were right—Natalie was their best chance for finding out information on Critical Mass.
That didn’t mean he had to like it.