Chapter 6 - The Watcher in the Woods
The blinking red light in the dark tree line vanished the instant Sergeant Miller turned to follow my gaze.
"Colonel?" Miller frowned, squinting through the sheeting rain toward the wooded ravine. "I don't see anything. Just the wind hitting the utility lines down by the easement."
"Wind doesn't pulse in a rhythmic three-count burst, Sergeant," I said quietly, my grip tightening around the curved handle of my cane. "That was an encrypted optical telemetry ping. Someone was recording the entire perimeter takedown."
Miller's professional instincts flared instantly. He thumbed the comms unit on his shoulder. "All units, secondary sweep. Move two troopers down the ravine easement toward the railway line. We might have a spotter."
"Don't bother," I murmured, watching the empty tree line where the shadow had dissolved into the storm. "If they wanted to engage, they would have done it while your men were focused on the deck. That wasn't a spotter. That was an inspector checking to see if Daniel's team completed their assignment. When they saw the intruders cuffed, they marked this property as a compromised asset."
Miller looked down at the two bound operatives still gasping for air on the patio floor. "A compromised asset? Colonel, whose payroll are these men actually on? Because it's becoming pretty clear your son wasn't running this operation alone."
"My son is a small-time embezzler with an expensive wife and a gambling debt," I replied, my voice hard as flint. "He thought he was selling proprietary defense schematics to a private shell corporation called Apex Vanguard. What he didn't know was that Apex Vanguard was bought out five years ago by an intelligence black-site division operating out of Fort Meade—run by a man who used to report directly to me."
Before Miller could process that revelation, the front security gate at the edge of the driveway let out a sharp, metallic pop.
It wasn't a police siren. It was the distinct sound of a heavy hydraulic override engaging the property's perimeter locks.
Miller spun around, drawing his sidearm. "Hold on—who authorized another unit to breach the gate?"
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"No one," I said, my heart missing a beat as I looked toward the front of the house. "Get your troopers inside the sub-basement vault right now. The cleanup crew isn't here to observe. They're here to sanitize the entire site."
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