Chapter 3: The One Phone Call
Colonel Diane Marsh picked up on the second ring.
"Vance.
I heard you landed.
How's Jessi?"
"Both legs.
External frames.
Head trauma.
She's stable."
A pause.
"Who did it?"
"Flynn Sterling.
Son of Sheriff Arthur Sterling, Harrington County."
Another pause — longer this time.
I could hear her breathing slow down the way it did when she was thinking fast.
"Flynn Sterling," she repeated.
"Sterling Development.
The land acquisition firm."
"You know it?"
"I know the name came up in a DOJ preliminary inquiry eight months ago.
Nothing formal.
It went quiet." Her voice dropped half a register.
"Luca, what exactly was Jessi working on?"
"She was documenting unauthorized transfers of federal conservation land.
Parcels being quietly reclassified and sold to private developers.
She has a drive.
Evidence.
She hid it before they found her."
The line was silent for four full seconds.
"Where's the drive?"
"I don't know yet.
She was about to tell me when Sterling's lawyer walked into her hospital room with a settlement offer."
"They sent a lawyer to the hospital room." It wasn't a question.
Diane said it the way you say something out loud to make sure you heard it correctly.
"Tonight."
"Forty minutes ago."
"Luca." Her voice was careful now, each word placed deliberately.
"I need you to understand something.
If Jessi's evidence connects Sterling Development to federal land fraud, this is not a county matter.
This is not a sheriff matter.
This is a case that touches people with significant reach.
The reason that DOJ inquiry went quiet eight months ago — that did not happen by accident."
I looked through the small square window in Jessi's hospital room door.
She had her eyes closed.
A nurse was adjusting the drip line on her left arm.
"What are you telling me, Colonel?"
"I'm telling you that Arthur Sterling having the local police is the least of your problems.
I'm telling you to get that drive before anyone else does.
And I'm telling you—" she stopped.
"What unit does Sterling think you served with?"
"He doesn't know anything about me.
He thinks I'm a soldier who married above his station."
Diane made a sound that wasn't quite a laugh.
"All right.
Keep it that way for now.
I'm making two calls tonight.
You won't know who I'm calling and I won't tell you.
But by morning, you'll have resources."
"I need more than resources.
I need cover while I move."
"You'll have it.
But Luca — get the drive first.
Everything else is secondary until that drive is in your hands."
She ended the call.
I stood in the hallway for a moment.
The settlement envelope was still sitting on Jessi's bedside table where the lawyer had left it.
I went back into the room, picked it up without opening it, and slid it into my jacket pocket.
Jessi's eyes opened.
"Was that Marsh?" she asked.
"Yes."
"Good." She shifted slightly against the pillow and winced.
"Luca, the drive is in our house.
Hall closet.
Behind the water heater access panel.
I taped it to the back of the panel cover."
"Has anyone been to the house?"
Her jaw tightened.
"Flynn's people were there the night before they found me at the site.
I came home and the back door lock had been scratched.
They didn't find it.
But they know it exists — one of his site managers heard me tell a colleague I had documentation."
I was already moving toward the door.
"Luca."
I stopped.
"The drive has more than land records," Jessi said.
"There's a folder labeled WITNESS.
Three people.
Flynn had them pressured into recanting testimony in a zoning dispute two years ago.
One of them — a man named Gerald Pruitt — he recorded the conversation when Flynn's associate threatened him."
I turned back to look at her.
"Gerald Pruitt is still alive?"
"He was, as of four months ago.
He reached out to me.
He's been waiting for someone to come back for his recording." She held my eyes.
"Flynn doesn't know Gerald gave me a copy."
The door to the hallway opened.
A different nurse stepped in, checked the monitor, and left without a word.
I leaned down close to Jessi's face.
"I'll be back before morning."
"Don't let them follow you to the house."
"They won't."
She looked at me for a long moment.
"Luca.
Whatever Marsh told you about how big this is — she's right.
Maybe bigger."
I kissed her forehead and walked out.
The settlement envelope crinkled once in my jacket pocket as I pushed through the hospital's front doors into the cold Virginia night.
May you like
Flynn Sterling had sent a lawyer to my wife's hospital room to buy my silence.
He had no idea he had just told me exactly how frightened he was.
