Chapter 7 - The Security Footage
Special Agent Miller stepped forward, tapping his tablet once before turning the high-resolution screen toward the head table.
“At fifteen-twenty-eight this afternoon,” Miller announced, his voice clinical and detached, “a black BMW sedan registered to Brooke Elizabeth Reed entered Gate Three at Fort Halstead. The vehicle did not stop at the visitor center. It utilized an authorized contractor lane, scanning the Level-Three access badge issued to Ms. Reed.”
Brooke’s breath came in ragged, wheezing gasps. “No... no, I lent my car... I let an associate borrow it...”
“The gate camera captured a clear, high-definition image of the driver,” Miller continued mercilessly.
He zoomed in on the tablet screen.
There was no ambiguity. There was no shadow.
It was Brooke.
She was wearing the exact same cream-colored designer blazer she had worn to her afternoon corporate meeting before changing into her evening gown for this dinner. The camera clearly showed her holding the blue-striped Level-Three Department of Defense contractor badge up to the RFID scanner at the guard shack.
“The driver proceeded directly to Building 402—the secure logistics staging office,” Miller stated. “She utilized her biometric thumbprint and her issued badge to enter the secondary server room. Forty gigabytes of proprietary scheduling data—specifically detailing the deployment timetables for the 82nd Airborne’s upcoming readiness exercises—were downloaded to an external drive. At sixteen-ten, the vehicle departed through Gate One.”
The dining room felt as though all the air had been sucked out of it through a vacuum tube.
Marcus Vance looked like he was about to vomit. “Deployment schedules? You downloaded active troop movement data?”
In the defense contracting world, padding hours or overcharging for parts was fraud. Downloading active troop deployment timetables without operational clearance was treason.
“Brooke...” Arthur Reed stammered, his voice cracking as he looked at his younger daughter. “Brooke, tell them... tell them it wasn't you.”
Brooke didn't speak. She couldn't. Tears of sheer terror were cutting black tracks through her mascara.
“Why did you do it, Ms. Reed?” Colonel Shaw demanded, stepping directly into her personal space. “Atlas Meridian was already in the lead for the Iron Gate contract. Why risk an unauthorized download of tactical deployment manifests?”
I looked at my sister. And in that moment, the entire puzzle clicked into place.
“She didn't do it for Atlas Meridian,” I said quietly.
Shaw turned toward me. “General?”
“Look at the end of the table, Colonel,” I instructed.
Shaw’s eyes followed my gesture, landing on a nervous, balding man in an expensive grey suit who had been trying desperately to slide toward the kitchen exit.
“Mr. Donald Henderson,” I said, recognizing him immediately from a joint intelligence briefing two weeks ago. “Managing Director of Apex Global Systems. The primary competitor bidding against Atlas Meridian for Project Iron Gate.”
Henderson stopped dead in his tracks. Two CID agents instantly shifted their positions, blocking the kitchen doors.
“Brooke didn't steal the data to help her company,” I explained, my voice cutting through the heavy room. “She stole it to sell it. Atlas Meridian was paying her a regional director’s salary of two hundred thousand. But Apex Global was desperate. If Apex couldn't win the contract legitimately, they needed the proprietary logistical models to reverse-engineer their own bid—or to blackmail Atlas Meridian with an operational leak.”
I walked slowly toward Brooke.
“You’ve been living beyond your means for years, haven't you, Brooke? The two-million-dollar condo in Arlington. The leased sports cars. The gold watches for Mom and Dad tonight. Your corporate credit card didn't bounce yesterday because of an administrative error. It bounced because your company’s internal accounting team flagged thirty-five thousand dollars in unauthorized personal expenses.”
Brooke began to shake violently.
“You were drowning,” I continued, stopping three feet from her. “And Henderson offered you a lifeline. Half a million dollars in an offshore account in exchange for Fort Halstead’s staging manifests. All you had to do was use your badge one last time, pull the files, hand over the drive, and then report your badge as ‘lost’ over the weekend.”
“Caroline... please...” Brooke sobbed, falling to her knees on the marble floor, her manicured hands clutching the hem of my damp dress. “Please... we’re sisters... you’re the General! You can stop this! You can tell them it was an internal drill! Please don't let them arrest me!”
I looked down at her.
May you like
The same woman who, forty-five minutes ago, had kicked my chair across the floor and pressed a blank piece of paper into my chest to remind me that I was nothing.
***
