Chapter 3 - Someone Inside Knew My Schedule
Harbor Consulting should have disappeared after our rejection.
It hadn’t.
Ross pulled the procurement file while digital forensics worked on Jake’s storage card.
The company had been formed fourteen months earlier.
Small.
Virginia registration.
Three employees on paper.
Yet Harbor had bid on five defense-adjacent training contracts in less than a year.
My team reviewed one of them.
We found two résumés listing security credentials the applicants did not possess.
I recommended disqualification.
Procurement agreed.
End of story.
Except someone had taken it personally.
Ross pointed at Jake’s payment record.
“Harbor’s corporate account didn’t send this.”
“What did?”
“A payment processor tied to a private card.”
“Name?”
“Still tracing.”
Jake sat across the room with military counsel requested.
Ethan had stopped talking entirely.
Noah had agreed to provide a written statement.
I should have been thinking about disciplinary charges.
Instead I kept returning to the photographs on the card.
Someone knew where I would be.
Not generally.
Precisely.
Breakfast at 0640.
Exchange Tuesday at 1735.
Headquarters exit Wednesday at 1820.
Those movements weren’t public.
“You think they tracked your phone?” Ross asked.
“My secure device logs location anomalies.”
“Vehicle?”
“Possible.”
Then I saw one photograph that changed my thinking.
It showed me entering a small briefing room in Training Building Four.
Only six people knew about that meeting.
It was an unannounced integrity review.
No calendar invite.
No posted schedule.
I had notified the attendees verbally.
Ross saw my expression.
“What?”
“Whoever took this knew about Thursday’s briefing.”
“Who attended?”
I listed them.
Ross Hale.
Me.
Senior Chief Laura Benton.
Lieutenant Mark Ellis.
Civilian analyst Priya Nolan.
And Captain William Mercer.
Ross leaned back.
“That’s not a list I enjoy.”
“Neither do I.”
Captain Mercer supervised training compliance across the command.
He had personally approved my assignment.
He had also defended my team when Harbor complained about the rejected bid.
If someone inside that group was leaking my schedule, we had a bigger problem than three arrogant recruits.
The forensic technician entered.
“We cracked part of the folder.”
“How?”
“Weak encryption around the image archive. The document partition is stronger.”
He placed a tablet down.
The MITCHELL folder contained thirty-seven photographs.
Twelve were of me.
Nine were of Ross.
Six were of Senior Chief Benton.
Four showed access-controlled doors.
The remaining six were photographs of documents.
One stopped me.
A draft personnel assessment from my team.
I had written it.
It concerned weaknesses in recruit identity verification.
The draft had never been distributed.
“Where was this stored?”
“Your internal team workspace?”
“Yes.”
Ross folded his arms.
“How many people could access it?”
“Five.”
“Name them.”
Me.
Benton.
Ellis.
Nolan.
Mercer had supervisory visibility but not routine editing rights.
The technician enlarged the image.
It wasn’t a screenshot.
It was a photograph of a monitor.
A reflection appeared in the dark border.
Only part of a face.
Male.
Short hair.
Uniform.
Ross said, “Ellis?”
“Could be.”
Lieutenant Mark Ellis was thirty-one, efficient, ambitious, and irritated that I had been chosen to lead the integrity assessment instead of him.
That gave him resentment.
Not motive.
I refused to jump.
“Enhance what you can.”
The technician nodded.
“The encrypted document partition also has filenames.”
He showed us.
MESS HALL.
BARRACKS C.
PATCH.
ALARM RESPONSE.
And one that made Ross stop breathing for a moment.
FATALITY PROTOCOL.
“What the hell is that?”
“We can’t open it yet.”
I looked through the glass toward Jake.
He was rubbing his palms on his trousers.
I entered the interview room with his counsel present.
“I’m not asking about the breach.”
Jake stared at me.
“Then what?”
“Who told you about my patch?”
“No one.”
“You knew where I’d be.”
“No.”
“You walked to my table.”
“It was a joke.”
“Your payment says otherwise.”
His lawyer quietly told him not to speculate.
I waited.
Jake looked at me.
“We were only supposed to embarrass you.”
“Who is we?”
“Me and Ethan.”
“Noah?”
“He wasn’t supposed to know about the money.”
“Why slap me?”
Jake looked toward the door.
“That wasn’t the plan.”
I believed that.
“What was?”
“Take your food. Make fun of you. Get you angry enough to shove somebody.”
“Why?”
“So somebody could record it.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where was the camera?”
Jake hesitated.
Then pointed toward the mess-hall ceiling.
“Across from your table.”
Ross, listening from outside, immediately ordered the footage secured.
Ten minutes later he came back.
“The camera across from your table was disabled at 0632.”
Eight minutes before I arrived.
“By who?”
“A maintenance override.”
“Authorized?”
“Yes.”
My stomach tightened.
“Whose credentials?”
Ross turned the screen toward me.
LIEUTENANT MARK ELLIS.
Before I could respond, my secure phone rang.
Ellis.
I answered.
“Where are you?”
His breathing sounded fast.
“Sarah, listen to me.”
“Security shows your credentials disabled the mess-hall camera.”
“I know.”
“Explain.”
“I didn’t do it.”
“Then come to Command Security.”
“I can’t.”
“Why?”
A metallic crash sounded behind him.
Then Ellis lowered his voice.
“Because somebody just broke into my apartment.”
“Are you safe?”
“For the moment.”
“What are they looking for?”
He hesitated.
“The original Harbor file.”
I stared at Ross.
“What original Harbor file?”
“The one Captain Mercer told me to destroy.”
May you like
The call went dead.
📖 Find out why Captain Mercer allegedly ordered the Harbor file destroyed—and what investigators found inside Lieutenant Ellis’s apartment in CHAPTER 4. 👇
