Chapter 14 The Truth #2
Ghost goes quiet for a moment. I hear the click of keys—he’s running the address through our database.
“How solid is your intel?”
“Couldn’t be more solid.”
“Your lawyer drew a direct line to Stratton. CEO signature on biological storage?”
“Straight as an arrow.”
“That’s not a coincidence. That’s a smoking gun.”
“I know—and I know what we need to do.”
“I know what you’re going to say, and you already know I don’t like it, but we need to see what’s there before they scrub it clean.”
“Agreed.”
“What’s your status?” Ghost’s voice remains calm, measured, the voice that pulled me out of Colombia when I was bleeding out on a warehouse floor with a cartel hit squad closing in.
“Mobile. We’re about six hours out.”
“Recon only.” His tone sharpens, steel under the calm. “You confirm the location, document what you find, and get out. No engagement. No breach. No heroics.”
“Copy that.”
“Diego.” He uses my real name. That’s never good. “Don’t be a hero. Heroes die. Operators complete missions.”
“Understood.”
“I mean it. You’ve got a high-value civilian with you who represents our best chance of taking down Nexus legally. Do not risk her life. You get eyes on that site, and you wait.”
“Copy that, but …”
“But, what?”
“She’s not good at listening. Cassie wants to check it out.”
“Of course she does. They all want to help, even when it’s likely to get them killed. Listen, check in when you have eyes on the target. Do not engage. I’m lean on support. Fuse is in the Cascades, recovering. Brass is still officially dead. Can’t risk him in the field. I’m stuck in DC.”
“What about Whisper or Torque?”
“They’re supporting Guardian HRS on an op in Europe. They’re headed back, but not for eighteen hours.”
“That’s too long. What Cassie found indicates they’re moving the ML-273. Whatever it is, it’s important, and we need more intel.”
“Not arguing that.” Ghost pauses. “Look, I may have a solution. Thorne.”
“Thorne?”
“He works solo and is near you. I’m sending him your coordinates. Don’t let him spook you; he’s quieter than you are.”
“Some random guy? I don’t know about that.”
“Cool your jets. He was going to sign on with Guardian HRS, but has family in Seattle. Wasn’t going to activate him until I ran it by the team, but he’s close.”
“Thought you said he was in Seattle?”
“His parents live there. He has a little girl. Cancer. She’s finishing treatment at CHOP, so he’s close.”
“No way am I taking a man away from his sick kid for an op.”
“It’s either that, or send you in alone, and I’m not doing that. Don’t worry about Thorne; his girl is ringing the bell today. His parents are with him. I’ll talk it through with him, but that’s all I’ve got.”
“We’re a good six hours or so out.”
“Call when you get there. Keep me up to speed. No heroics. Your primary mission remains. Keep Cassie Brennan breathing.”
“Will do.”
“Ghost out.”
The line goes dead.
I stand there for a moment, holding the receiver. The plastic is warm from my grip, slick with the sweat of my bandaged palm.
Recon only.
I think I can do that, but something tells me whatever’s in that facility, Phoenix will protect it at any cost.
I hang up the phone. Walk back to the van.
“What did they say?” Cassie’s already half-turned in the passenger seat, watching me approach. Her lawyer instincts are in overdrive, reading my body language, cataloging the tension in my shoulders.
I slide behind the wheel. Close the door.
“Phoenix coordinated multiple strikes after your position was flagged.” The words taste like ash. “Three assets in DC. All dead.”
Her face goes pale. “Because of me.”
“Because of Phoenix. Because they’re scared of what you found.” I start the engine. “That’s not on you.”
“But if I hadn’t logged in—”
“Then we wouldn’t have the Terra Alta address. We wouldn’t know about the biological assets being moved. We’d be hiding in a hotel room waiting for them to find us.” I pull out of the gas station lot, checking the mirrors.
She’s quiet for a moment. Processing.
“What about your team? Can they join us?”
“Stretched thin. Ghost is going to send someone, or try to. Name’s Thorne. He’s new to us, but …”
“So we’re on our own?”
“For now.” I merge onto the highway, heading south toward the West Virginia border. “Ghost authorized reconnaissance. We look, we document, we leave. No engagement. No breach.”
“And if something goes wrong?”
“We handle it.”
She nods. Her jaw is set, her eyes fixed on the road ahead. Not the frightened attorney from five days ago. Something harder. Forged in fire.
“From this point forward, we’re completely dark,” I say. “No phones. No digital footprint. Phoenix can’t track what doesn’t ping.”
“Analog ghosts.”
“Exactly.”
The highway stretches ahead. West Virginia mountains rising in the distance, their peaks shrouded in a gray haze. We have half a day of driving. Hours of empty road and silence, and the weight of everything we haven’t said.
“Diego?”
“Yeah?”
“What you said last night. About 2019. About Sofia.”
My hands tighten on the wheel.
“You’ve told me some of it. The car crash. The canyon.” She pauses. “But there’s more, isn’t there? Something you haven’t said.”
The question hangs in the air. I could deflect. Change the subject. Lock the ghost back in its box where it belongs.
I’ve done it a thousand times. With Ghost. With Brass. With the shrinks the Navy sent me to after I came back from Colombia with blood on my hands and nothing in my eyes.
But Cassie’s not the Navy. She’s not my team.
She’s—something else.
“Yeah,” I say finally. “There’s more.”
She doesn’t push. She waits.
The silence stretches between us, filled with the hum of tires on asphalt and the soft whisper of the heater. Mile markers flash past. 47. 48. 49.
The silence feels like an opening. Like she’s giving me space to step through when I’m ready.
Except she goes first.
“I won a spelling bee when I was eight.”
I glance at her. She’s looking out the window, watching the mountains slide past.
“I came home with this trophy. Gold plastic. My name engraved on the base. ‘Cassandra Brennan, First Place.’ I was so proud.”
Her voice is soft. Distant. Like she’s narrating a memory that belongs to someone else.
“The house was empty. My dad was working a double shift—he always worked doubles back then, before his promotion. My mom was at the hospital for an extra shift. My sisters were at their own activities. Megan had debate team. Riley had art class.”
“So you waited.”
“Three hours. At the kitchen table. Holding my trophy.” She laughs, but there’s no humor in it. Just the hollow echo of a wound that never quite healed. “I remember the way the plastic felt in my hands. Cheap. But important. The most important thing in my whole eight-year-old world.”
I don’t say anything. Just listen.
“When my mom finally got home, she was exhausted. I remember the way she looked—the scrubs, the bags under her eyes, the way she dropped her keys on the counter like they weighed a hundred pounds.” Cassie’s voice catches.
“She looked at the trophy and said, ‘That’s nice, honey. Did you do your homework?’”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.” She turns to look at me. “And that was the pattern. Every report card. Every award. Every accomplishment. ‘That’s nice, dear.’ ‘We’re proud.
’ But they were always distracted. Always looking past me.
Looking at Megan’s med school applications.
Looking at Riley’s latest crisis. Looking anywhere but at me. ”
“The invisible daughter.”
“I thought if I was perfect enough, they’d have to see me.
If I achieved enough, I’d finally matter.
” She shakes her head. “Valedictorian. Georgetown. Top of my class at law school. Youngest associate partner at Morrison & Vale. And still—still—when I called my dad about the Vanguard case, the biggest case of my career, he said, ‘That’s great, sweetheart. Megan just got promoted to Chief of Surgery. We’re throwing a party Friday. You’ll come, won’t you?’”
“Jesus.”
“That’s why I went to that Business Center.
” Her voice is steady now, but I hear the crack underneath.
The fault line running through everything she does.
“That’s why I couldn’t just hide in that hotel room.
Because if I disappear—if I go invisible again …
Did I ever really exist? Was any of it real, or was I just—background noise?
A supporting character in everyone else’s story? ”
The highway unreels in front of us. I grip the wheel. Process what she’s telling me.
The woman who fights like hell to be seen. Who took on a trillion-dollar corporation because disappearing into obscurity was worse than dying. Who couldn’t stay hidden in Philadelphia because invisibility feels like death.
It all makes sense now.
“Your father,” I say. “The cop.”
“Twenty-six years on the Boston PD.” Her voice softens with grief. “He died three years ago. Heart attack at a Little League game. Died doing something good.”
“I’m sorry.”
“He was a good man. Just—not good at seeing me.” She wipes her eyes with the back of her hand. “I keep thinking… If I’d been the one to get promoted. If I’d been the one who needed rescuing, like Riley. Would he have seen me then?”
“He saw you.”
“He didn’t.”
“Cassie.” I reach across the console. Take her hand. “He saw you. He just didn’t know how to show you.”
“I know.” A small smile. “I’m starting to believe it, but it doesn’t help with feeling invisible.”
She gave me something real. Now it’s my turn.
“Sofia was pregnant.”
The words come out harder than I intended. Cassie goes still beside me.
“Eight weeks. I didn’t know.” My hands are white on the wheel. The bandages pull tight across my abraded palms. “She was going to tell me when I got back from Syria. Wanted to do it in person. Wanted to see my face.”
“Diego …”