Chapter 4: Behind the Panel
Our house was dark when I pulled up.
I sat in the car for three minutes and watched the street.
A neighbor's porch light.
A dog barking two houses down.
Nothing moved near our front door or the side gate.
I went in through the back.
The scratch marks on the lock were still there — shallow, impatient, the work of someone in a hurry.
They had gotten in.
They had searched.
And they had missed it.
I moved through the dark kitchen without turning on a light, down the hall, and opened the closet door.
The water heater hummed in the back corner.
I crouched, found the access panel by touch, and ran my fingers around the edge of the cover until I felt the ridge of tape.
The drive was there.
A small black USB drive, wrapped in a strip of electrical tape, pressed flat against the back of the panel cover.
I held it in my palm for a moment.
Then my phone buzzed.
Unknown number.
I answered.
"Mr.
Vance." A man's voice.
Unhurried.
"I think you have something that belongs to my client."
"Your client should be more careful with his property."
"That's a reasonable point," the man said.
"I'd like to offer you a different number than what was in that envelope.
Considerably different."
"Who am I speaking with?"
"Someone who can make the next several years of your life very smooth.
Or very difficult.
The choice is genuinely yours — I want to be clear about that.
We're not unreasonable people."
I walked back through the dark hallway toward the kitchen.
"How did you get this number?"
"Mr.
Vance.
You flew commercial from a military transit point on emergency leave.
Your number is in the hospital intake form your wife filled out.
These things aren't difficult."
"What's the new number?"
A pause — satisfied, like he'd expected resistance and was pleased it had dissolved.
"Four hundred thousand.
Wired within twenty-four hours.
You take your wife somewhere warm to recover.
You never speak about Harrington County again.
The drive disappears.
Everyone moves forward."
I opened the kitchen drawer and found a pen.
"You said there was a folder on that drive," I said.
"How do you know what's on it if you haven't seen it?"
The line went quiet for exactly two seconds.
"I didn't say that," the man said carefully.
"You said the drive.
Not a drive.
The drive.
Which means you know what Jessi had and you know what's on it." I clicked the pen once.
"Who are you working for?
Sterling Development, or the people above Sterling Development?"
He didn't answer immediately.
When he spoke again, the unhurried quality was gone.
"Mr.
Vance, I strongly encourage you to consider what you're doing.
You have a wife in a hospital bed.
You have a career.
You have a life that is currently intact.
I am offering you a clean exit."
"I appreciate the offer."
"But?"
"But I've already made my call tonight.
And the person I called is considerably less reasonable than you are."
I ended the call, removed the battery from my personal phone, and switched to the secure handset Diane had couriered to the hospital — it had been waiting at the nurses' station in a padded envelope with my name on it when I came back through the lobby.
I hadn't mentioned that to the man on the phone.
I stood in my dark kitchen, drive in one hand, secure phone in the other.
Someone above Flynn Sterling had been listening for the drive to surface.
They had moved within an hour of me landing.
That meant they had a contact inside the hospital, or inside the county system, or both.
Arthur Sterling thought he ran Harrington County.
He didn't know someone was running him.
I sent Diane a single text on the secure line: *Drive recovered.
Second contact made.
Not local.*
Her reply came in under a minute: *Expected.
Asset en route to your location.
Do not move until contact.*
May you like
I sat down at the kitchen table in the dark and waited.
Twenty minutes later, someone knocked on the back door — three short, one long.
