Chapter 8 - The Weight of the Ledger
Jason looked smaller out here in the vast, snow-choked wilderness of the Colorado foothills than he did across our family’s dining room table in Long Island. The tailored confidence of the corporate vice president had completely evaporated, leaving behind a cornered man realizing that his carefully constructed world had finally collided with reality.
"You left your car running, Jason," I said, stopping ten feet away. I kept my posture relaxed but completely unyielding, the disciplined stillness of an officer who had spent years learning how to control a chaotic room. "And you're twenty miles past the interstate exit for the airport. Were you looking for the charter bus?"
Jason swallowed hard, his eyes darting past me toward Alvarez standing by the vehicle. "I was... I slid off the road. The weather report said the pass was open. I was trying to get back to New York."
"In a snowstorm? Without your luggage?" I took another step forward. "You weren't heading to the airport, Jason. You were tracking the inventory manifest from that bus. You knew Arthur Vance was carrying the physical wire transfer receipts in his briefcase."
A dark, bitter laugh escaped Jason’s lips. He wiped a gloved hand across his face, shaking his head. "You have no idea what you're interfering with, Erica. You think this is just some little accounting error you can hand over to a county sheriff and feel good about your military integrity?"
"It’s not an accounting error," I replied steadily. "It’s grand larceny, falsification of federal defense contracts, and deliberate obstruction of an internal audit. And your signature is on every single transfer slip from here to Norfolk."
"Dad protected this family for thirty years!" Jason snapped, his voice rising, breaking the silent stillness of the snow-covered woods. "He built a life so we wouldn't have to live on base housing, so we wouldn't have to scrape by on a sergeant's pension! Vanguard gave us security. And you—just because you couldn't stand being told not to come home for Christmas—you had to turn on a national news broadcast and blow the whole thing wide open!"
"I didn't blow anything open, Jason," I said quietly. "A blizzard did. A blizzard and a bus full of auditors that your firm tried to quietly relocate before the fiscal year closed."
Jason stared at me, his chest rising and falling rapidly. The anger suddenly drained out of him, replaced by a hollow, desperate pleading. He took a half-step forward, his voice dropping into a frantic whisper.
"Listen to me, Erica. We can fix this. Dad is already on the phone with senior command at the Pentagon. If we hand over those digital drives right now—before they log into the federal database—we can classify the whole thing as a routine clerical error. They'll let me resign quietly. Nobody has to go to trial."
"And the men whose careers were destroyed when they asked questions a decade ago?" I asked, my voice chilling the air between us. "What about the cover-up surrounding my father's old unit in Norfolk?"
Jason froze. His eyes widened, the color draining completely from his face. "What... what do you know about Norfolk?"
May you like
Before I could answer, the sharp crunch of gravel announced the arrival of a second vehicle pulling up behind ours. The door swung open, and Commander Marcus Miller from NCIS stepped out into the snow, holding a federal warrant signed by a federal magistrate less than an hour ago.
---
