Chapter 7 - The Empty Room
The digital clock on the dashboard read 2:14 AM as I killed the headlights a block away from my house, coasting into the driveway with the engine humming quietly. The neighborhood was dead asleep, porch lights casting long amber shadows over manicured lawns and quiet suburban driveways.
Everything looked entirely normal. And that was what made my skin crawl.
"Stay here," I whispered to David and Marcus in the back seat, unholstering my sidearm and checking the chamber.
I slipped out of the vehicle, moving with the silent, deliberate cadence of an EOD sweep through hostile territory. The front door was unlocked—not forced, not kicked in, but clicked shut with the precision of someone who knew the exact rattle of the latch.
I pushed the door open, the floorboards groaning softly beneath my boots.
"Matty?" I called out, my voice barely above a whisper, tight with a terror that no bomb disposal field had ever managed to evoke.
No answer.
I cleared the downstairs in seconds—living room, kitchen, hallway. Everything was in its place. Matty's backpack was slung over the kitchen stool, his science fair project sitting half-assembled on the kitchen table. But the house was freezing, the back sliding glass door standing open an inch to let in the damp night air.
I sprinted up the stairs, throwing open the door to Matty's bedroom.
The bed was empty. The blankets were thrown back, still warm, as if he had just crawled out of them minutes ago. Sitting squarely in the center of his pillow was a single, laminated index card—the exact twin of the one wrapped around the dummy mine at Sandbridge.
Marcus and David appeared behind me in the doorway, their expressions darkening as they took in the empty room.
"They didn't wait for us to come to them," Marcus said grimly, stepping into the room and picking up the index card with a gloved hand. He flipped it over. Written on the back in neat, block handwriting was a single line:
Commander Merrick. Bring the original Vanguard hardware to the naval yard dry docks by sunrise, or your son gets to learn what really happened in the Gulf.
I stared at the card, the raw, suffocating panic threatening to drown my thoughts. But beneath the fear, something else took over—a cold, sharp clarity born of pure maternal fury. They thought they could use Matty to break me. They didn't realize that threatening my son was the one surefire way to turn a cornered soldier into a walking catastrophe.
"They don't want the digital files anymore," I said, my voice dropping into a register that made even Marcus step back. "The hardware. The physical prototype decoder from the original Vanguard deployment. It's locked in my secure locker at the base armory."
"Sarah, you can't walk into the base armory right now," David protested, stepping forward. "Your name is flagged across every security terminal in the district. Entering the perimeter is suicide."
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"Then I won't go in through the gate," I said, turning to face them with absolute resolve. "And I'm not going alone."
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