Chapter 5 - The Unknown Package
Tuesday morning arrived with a thick blanket of grey mist rolling off Lake Tahoe, swallowing the pine trees and turning the shoreline into a ghostly silhouette.
On the security feed, I watched the front door finally swing open.
David dragged two heavy suitcases down the steps, his face dark with fury, followed by Susan and Olivia carrying a crying toddler. My father brought up the rear, his head bowed, looking every bit of his seventy-two years as he loaded the last of their belongings into the trunk of the white SUV.
They had lost. The house was mine again.
I closed the laptop, letting out a long, exhausted breath. For a moment, I allowed myself to believe it was over—that the boundary had been drawn, the lesson taught, and the sanctuary reclaimed.
Then my doorbell rang.
Not the digital sensor at the Tahoe villa.
The physical wooden door of my apartment in San Diego.
I frowned, standing up from my desk and walking quietly down the narrow hallway. In my line of work, unannounced visitors at my apartment door were rarely delivery drivers with groceries.
I checked the peephole.
There was no uniform. No courier service.
Standing in the dim, empty corridor of the apartment building was a young woman I had never seen before in my life, wearing a plain black hoodie and clutching a manila envelope against her chest. She looked terrified, her eyes darting nervously down the hallway as if someone was watching her from the stairwell.
I unlocked the deadbolt, pulled the door open six inches, and rested my hand firmly on the frame.
“Can I help you?” I asked.
The girl looked up, her lower lip trembling as she thrust the manila envelope toward me.
“Are you Commander Elena Bennett?” she whispered.
May you like
“Yes.”
“My name is Chloe,” she said, her voice shaking so badly I could barely catch the words over the hum of the hallway fluorescent lights. “My uncle... my uncle was Marcus Vance. Before he went missing at the blacksite in Colorado... he told me that if anything ever happened to him, I had to give this directly to you. Because your family didn't just steal a house in Tahoe, Commander... they were working with the people who sold out the blacksite.”
