Chapter 17 - Shadows in the Capital
Three hundred miles to the north, inside a sterile, windowless SCIF room tucked deep beneath the Department of Justice headquarters in Washington, D.C., Assistant Attorney General Marcus Vance stared at the flashing red monitor with mounting panic.
He wasn't related to Julian or Evelyn by blood—not officially, anyway—but he owed his entire career, his federal appointment, and his multi-million-dollar offshore portfolio to the judicial pipeline that Gregory White had spent thirty years lubricating.
"Sir, we're losing the North Carolina node," a frantic cyber-security analyst whispered, his fingers blurring across his console. "The local cache at the Blue Ridge bunker was partially destroyed, but a secondary burst transmission was intercepted by an encrypted relay in Zurich."
Marcus slammed his hand down on the polished mahogany desk, the sharp crack echoing off the soundproofed walls. "I don't care about the relay! Can you pull the decryption keys or not?"
"Negative, sir. The firewall has been refactored. Whoever is on the other end isn't just defending—they’re running an active trace back through our own subnets." The analyst swallowed hard, his face pale under the fluorescent glare. "Sir... the trace is originating from a secure terminal in Raleigh. Wait, no—it’s pinging a residential sector in the Blue Ridge foothills. Winston-Salem outskirts."
Marcus felt a cold knot twist in his stomach. Captain Jacqueline White.
He had read her military dossier twice. A relentless, unyielding military intelligence officer who refused to play by club rules, backed by a rogue tech specialist who could hack a satellite uplink blindfolded. If Jacqueline managed to extract those Zurich keys before morning, every federal appointment, every appellate confirmation, and every hidden slush fund in the executive branch would be laid bare across the front page of every newspaper from New York to London.
"Get me Director Vance on the secure line," Marcus ordered, his voice tight with desperation.
"Sir, Judge Vance is already in federal custody in Petersburg."
"Then get me the private security contractor we used for the transition logistics," Marcus snapped, pacing across the room. "Tell them the clean-up crew in North Carolina failed. Tell them to dispatch a specialized tactical recovery team to the old White estate outside Winston-Salem immediately. I want the hard drives, the physical ledgers, and anyone breathing inside that house neutralized before dawn."
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The analyst hesitated for a fraction of a second, his fingers freezing over the keyboard. "Sir... that’s an active federal officer’s residence. If we get caught running an off-the-books wet-work op on domestic soil—"
"If Captain White publishes those files," Marcus interrupted, leaning over the console until his face was inches from the analyst's, "none of us will have a career left to save. Move. Now."
