Chapter 22 - The Holloway Protocol
Brian swallowed hard, his throat clicking in the silence of the downstairs living room. He looked smaller than he had six months ago, stripped of the swagger he’d carried when he first introduced Marcus Vance to my wife as a financial savior.
"I didn't know what was in it, David. I swear to God," Brian whispered, his voice cracking. "Marcus told me it was just personal collateral. Corporate stock certificates. He said if anything happened to his offshore accounts while he was traveling in Europe, he needed someone local who could retrieve his grandfather’s war medals and family trust documents."
"War medals," I repeated, stepping around the table until I was standing directly over him. "You signed a federal bank registry under the name Holloway because of sentimental family heirlooms?"
"He paid my mortgage for four months!" Brian cried out, instantly clamping a hand over his mouth and darting his eyes toward the ceiling, terrified of waking Sarah. He dropped his voice to a desperate hiss. "You don't know what it was like while you were deployed. The market crashed, my firm went under, and Sarah was drowning trying to keep this place running on military allotment pay. Marcus showed up with cash, with contracts, with promises. He said his old man ran half the logistics contracts on the East Coast and could get me a VP spot at Aegis if I handled his local paperwork."
"His old man is Thomas Vance," I said.
Brian froze. The color drained from his lips until they were nearly gray. "General Vance? The one on the news tonight?"
"The one who just got tapped for the Pentagon," I said. "Which means the clock on your neck just ran out, Brian. Aegis isn't a civilian firm looking out for you. It's a multibillion-dollar defense apparatus with a retired three-star at the wheel who is currently burning every bridge between himself and his son. The text on your phone didn't come from a friendly lawyer. It came from Vance’s cleanup crew."
Brian grabbed his hair with both hands, trembling violently. "They're going to kill me. They’re going to pin Marcus’s whole operation on me."
"They won't have to kill you if the U.S. Attorney gets the paper trail first," I said, pulling a slip of paper from my pocket and setting it beside his phone. "You're going to drive to the Annapolis First National branch at seven-thirty. You're going to use the Holloway signature to access box four-one-two. And you're going to hand whatever is inside directly to me."
"The message said a courier is coming at six!" Brian pleaded. "If I go in there, what if someone is waiting?"
"I will be waiting," I said. "And so will a tactical team from the Army Criminal Investigation Division."
I didn't tell him that CID didn't have jurisdiction over the bank yet. General Sterling was moving assets off the books, utilizing counterintelligence personnel who reported directly to him, operating in the razor-thin grey zone between military security and domestic law enforcement. If Thomas Vance took office on Monday, every official investigation into Aegis would be buried under executive privilege.
At 0515, I went upstairs, dressed in civilian clothes—dark jeans, a charcoal windbreaker, and my service sidearm concealed at the small of my back. Sarah was sitting on the edge of the bed when I walked into the master bedroom.
She had her hands folded in her lap, her eyes shadowed with exhaustion. "David."
"Go back to sleep, Sarah," I said gently. "I have to handle a detail in Maryland before the sun comes up."
"It's not over, is it?" she asked, her voice tight with unshed tears. "Marcus being in jail... that was just the front door."
I knelt in front of her, taking her hands in mine. Her skin was cold. "The front door is locked. Now I'm clearing the basement."
"Brian is involved, isn't he? I heard the floorboards downstairs. I heard him crying."
"He made bad choices because he thought he was protecting you," I told her, refusing to let her carry the weight of her brother's weakness. "I'm going to make sure he doesn't pay for Marcus's crimes. But you need to keep the kids inside today. Don't answer the door for anyone except General Sterling's security detail. Understand me?"
She nodded slowly, squeezing my fingers with surprising strength. "Don't let them take what we just got back, David."
"No one takes this house again," I said. "Ever."
Forty minutes later, I was parked two blocks from the Annapolis First National Bank, watching the morning mist roll off the Chesapeake Bay through the rain-streaked windshield of an unmarked government sedan. Brian was sitting in his Honda Civic in the bank’s visitor lot, his knuckles white on the steering wheel.
At 0558, a black Lincoln Navigator with tinted windows and government contractor plates pulled slowly down the street, gliding past Brian’s car before coming to a stop directly across from the bank's side entrance.
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Two men in dark suits stepped out into the fog. Neither of them looked like bankers.
One of them adjusted his earpiece, turned his head toward Brian’s vehicle, and reached inside his trench coat.
