CHAPTER SIX
The glass of bourbon in Doug Marwood’s hand caught the last streaks of dying sunlight as it filtered through the wall of windows across the room.
His penthouse office sat high above the San Francisco skyline.
It was sleek, sterile, and curated down to the last detail.
Modern artwork and framed awards lining his office walls—distinguished research plaques, pharmaceutical innovation medals, magazine covers calling him brilliant, a visionary, a pioneer of neurological intervention.
He was a man who thrived on control. It was his greatest weapon. But the paper in his hand made his knuckles tighten, a rare fracture in the calm he’d built his life around.
It was nothing more than a single white sheet of paper, delivered inside a blank envelope that had appeared in his mailbox earlier that day mixed with the rest of his mail.
The message staring back at him on the paper had caused a bit of unease.
But it was the San Diego postmark that made his blood run cold.
He leaned back in the high-backed leather chair, swirling the bourbon slowly as he stared at the message for the hundredth time. I remember more than I’m supposed to. Whoever sent it wanted to make a point, and it worked.
Doug’s jaw ticked as his thoughts drifted, his mind slipping back to six years ago when he still lived and worked in San Diego. Those were the glory days. He had been at the helm of a program that could’ve revolutionized trauma therapy for returning soldiers with post-traumatic stress syndrome.
Project EchoFall.
It had been conducted with government authorization, quietly overseen by a small division within the Department of Defense.
Officially, it didn’t exist. Funding was routed through layered grants and shell research partnerships.
Non-disclosure agreements were airtight.
Only a handful of government and military officials even knew the full scope of what he was attempting.
And what he was attempting had been extraordinary.
Project EchoFall was designed to disrupt memory reconsolidation in combat veterans suffering from severe, treatment-resistant PTSD.
Using a calculated combination of neuro-blocking pharmaceuticals, targeted electrical stimulation, and controlled re-exposure therapy, the goal had been to interrupt the emotional charge of traumatic memory at the neurological level.
Three volunteers had stepped forward. All decorated soldiers who had come back from a mission were shattered in ways no one had been able to reach, each one drowning in the aftermath of trauma and severe PTSD.
They had signed consent forms thicker than textbooks. They had undergone baseline scans, psychological profiling, and weeks of preparation. Every step had been monitored—brain mapping, hormone panels, and neurological imaging.
At first, it had worked. One had reported sleeping through the night for the first time since returning home from that mission. The other two, who were experiencing violent flashbacks, had diminished drastically.
But those positive results began to unravel at a terrifying speed.
All three men began deteriorating neurologically. Severe headaches. Erratic behavior. Sudden rage. Brain bleeds that no one had predicted. Imaging lit up with anomalies Doug had never seen in pre-trial simulations.
It took several days, but Dr. Marwood had stabilized all three men, though most of the time they were sedated.
Then, about two weeks later, one night, all three men mysteriously disappeared from the facility. The two guards inside the facility saw nothing, and security footage provided no leads. It was like they had just vanished into thin air.
After an extensive, but under-the-radar, months-long search to find them, the team finally gave up. It was apparent that the trio didn’t want to be found. And knowing their background in Special Forces, they had the resources to stay hidden. Doug’s only hope was that they were still alive.
After that, the project was shut down immediately. Non-disclosure agreements were reinforced with threats of prosecution. In other words, EchoFall ceased to exist, and nobody dared to speak about it.
The failed trials had been enough to gut him, but his downfall hadn’t stopped there.
Just one week after the project was shut down, his wife had been killed in a car accident on a rain-slick stretch of highway outside the city, leaving Doug to drown in the wreckage of both his professional life and everything he’d thought was still holding his personal one together.
In the span of days, his life had collapsed in on itself so completely he’d barely been able to catch his breath.
He’d been so devastated by both that he resigned from his position at the hospital and moved to San Francisco.
Doug’s gaze dropped to the paper again.
It had to be one of the three. But what exactly did the message mean?
He took a slow sip of bourbon, the burn doing nothing to ease the chill creeping up his spine.
If one of them had resurfaced, EchoFall could be exposed. Doug wanted to help however he could, but first, he needed to alert the man who had led the project.
◆◆◆
Colonel Neal Reed sat at the head of the secured conference table with a closed folder in front of him.
The room itself was one of the smaller briefing spaces tucked inside an administrative wing at Camp Pendleton.
It was windowless and sealed tight, with soundproofed walls, a humming vent overhead, and a keypad entry.
His assistant, a civil employee with top clearance, sat to his right.
Across from them sat the three others who had been summoned with almost no explanation—Major Scott Vance, Captain William Kester, and Sergeant Major Owen Rickard.
All three were physicians who had been assisting Dr. Marwood during the EchoFall trial phase.
The tension in the room was thick. Everyone present, except the Colonel, wore a mask of curiosity about why this specific group had been summoned.
Colonel Reed finally broke the silence as he placed his elbows on the table and clasped his hands together.
“Thank you all for coming on short notice. Earlier today, I was made aware that we could have a situation concerning Project EchoFall.”
Colonel Reed looked from face to face and saw the same surprised reaction in every one of them. He couldn’t blame them. EchoFall had never been revisited since it was shut down.
But now, with Dr. Doug Marwood’s call still echoing in the back of his head, Neal had the unwelcome feeling that the lid on a box that had been closed for years had just shifted.
He cleared his throat, hating that the sound came out rougher than he intended. “Earlier this morning,” he said, keeping his tone level, “I received a call from Dr. Marwood. He received a note in the mail.”
For a beat, no one said anything. Then Major Vance leaned forward, resting his forearms on the table. “What kind of note?”
“It was short, but enough to make him think the sender could be tied to EchoFall. There was no signature, and no return address.”
“Postmark?” Captain Kester asked.
“San Diego,” the colonel replied.
Vance’s expression hardened. “One of the three?”
Colonel Reed exhaled slowly. “I can’t say for certain.” He hated that answer. “But we have to consider it a strong possibility.”
“What did the note state?” Sergeant Major Rickard asked.
Colonel Reed flipped open the folder lying in front of him. Dr. Marwood had sent him a copy of it.
“It says, ‘I know more than I’m supposed to.’”
“Is that supposed to be a threat?” Vance asked, not looking happy.
The colonel sighed. “Again, I don’t know.”
Vance swore under his breath and dragged a hand across his mouth.
“Look, we at least know this much.” Neal started.
“Whoever sent it is in the area or was recently. That doesn’t give us enough to move on directly, and it sure as hell doesn’t give us enough to start poking at old files and drawing attention where we don’t want it.
For now, we wait and keep our eyes and ears open.
If one of them reached out to Marwood, there’s a reason.
Maybe he will contact him again. Or maybe he shows himself. Either way, this was a start.”
Vance frowned. “That’s it? We just sit on it?”
“For now. Yes,” the colonel said, looking displeased with Vance’s attitude.
Vance let out a disbelieving breath. “Sir, if one of those men is unstable and he’s resurfacing now, sitting on it feels like a hell of a gamble.”
Colonel Reed met his stare. “And going hunting without enough to go on is worse.” He let that sit for a second, then added, “We don’t even know whether the sender is trying to warn Marwood, threaten him, or drag us all back into something that should’ve stayed buried.
Until we know more, we keep this contained. ”
“If he’s local, he won’t stay invisible forever,” Rickard added.
“No, he won’t,” Colonel Reed agreed.
He pushed back from the table. “That’s all for now. Keep your ears open, keep your mouth shut, and if you hear anything, come to me first.” His gaze moved between them, making sure the point landed. “I’ll be in touch if Marwood calls again or if anything else surfaces.”
One by one, they stood. Chairs scraped softly across the floor. Then one by one, they all filed out of the conference room.
◆◆◆
As soon as the meeting was over, a call was placed. It wasn’t made from inside the building. It came a few minutes later, from inside a vehicle parked far enough from the building to avoid attention.
After three rings, a rough voice answered.
“Yeah.”
“Mortis, this is Talon,” the caller said, using code names they used when they served together early in their careers.
“Talon…it’s been a while. What can I help you with?”
“Are you still in the San Diego area?”
“Maybe.”
The caller’s lips twitched faintly. Typical answer for a hitman. The man never gave specifics. But that was why the caller had used him before. He was reliable, efficient, invisible, and most importantly, he didn’t leave any loose ends.
“I’ve got a situation that might require your services.”
“I’m listening.”
“There’s an individual who may have resurfaced. Someone who should not be drawing attention.”
“And you want him persuaded to stay quiet?” the voice asked mildly.
“I want the situation resolved.”
The man on the other end didn’t need clarification.
“What’s the timeline?”
The caller’s hand tightened around the phone.
“As soon as possible, once the target is located.”
A beat passed. Then the man said, “Send me the details.”
As soon as the line went dead, the caller placed the phone back into the glove box.
He sat there for a few minutes, his mind reeling with the name he didn’t want to say, even in the privacy of his own head.
Because if that particular ghost had found his way back to Marwood or worse, San Diego, then everything he had done to sabotage those trials years ago might have been for nothing.
He pulled out his laptop and booted it up right there in the car. The sooner he got the information to Mortis, the sooner the situation could be dealt with quietly and permanently.
He logged in to a secure site protected by layers of encryption. Once in, he located a file labeled with a code designation only a handful of people would recognize.
His fingers hovered over the keyboard for half a second. But hesitation was weakness. And weakness got exposed.
He hit a key. The encrypted file was transmitted through a secure channel.
After sending the file, he shut down the laptop and slid it back into the passenger seat before starting his car.
The low rumble filled the silence, but it did nothing to quiet the irritation gnawing at him.
He had hoped Calvin Henderson had died years ago, just as the other two involved in EchoFall had.
It would’ve made everything easier. Instead, one ghost had slipped through, and now he was back, threatening to drag the past into the light.
As he pulled out of the parking lot, another thought crossed his mind. Could Dr. Marwood be a liability as well? He needed to think on that one before he made a decision.