Chapter 6 - Vale Finally Told Me Part of the Truth
We contacted Vale through Caleb’s official channel.
Not mine.
Vale answered.
His first words were:
“Is she with you?”
Caleb looked at me.
I nodded.
“Yes, sir.”
Silence.
Then Vale said:
“Evelyn.”
I hadn’t heard that name spoken directly to me in years.
“What did you do?”
“I needed to know whether your location was compromised.”
“You sent Ranger.”
“Yes.”
“Without warning me.”
“I couldn’t risk contacting you.”
“You just called my diner yesterday.”
“After Ranger confirmed it was already too late.”
That made sense.
I hated that it made sense.
Vale explained that someone had accessed archived mission records connected to my final deployment.
Not full operational files.
Fragments.
Personnel identifiers.
K9 records.
Travel manifests.
Enough to reconstruct who survived.
“Who?”
“We don’t know.”
“Mason?”
Vale went quiet.
I stood.
“Adrian.”
“We never recovered Keller’s body.”
Caleb looked at me.
I closed my eyes.
Officially, Mason died during an explosion in a vehicle staging area.
There had been remains.
Identification was considered conclusive.
Apparently not.
Vale continued.
“DNA identification relied on partial material recovered from the site and associated equipment.”
“You told me he was confirmed.”
“I told you what I believed then.”
“Do you believe he’s alive now?”
“I believe somebody wants us to consider it.”
That distinction mattered.
Then I asked about the dog tag.
Vale hadn’t known.
His voice changed.
“Leave the apartment.”
“We already did.”
“Good.”
“Where do you want us?”
“No military facility.”
Caleb frowned.
“Sir?”
“Until I know whether the breach came through military systems, nobody goes inside a predictable location.”
That was when I realized Vale’s fear was bigger than mine.
He trusted neither civilian nor military channels completely.
Then he said something that shifted the power again.
“Evelyn, there’s more.”
“What?”
“The final mission wasn’t compromised before you arrived.”
My throat tightened.
“What are you saying?”
“The team’s location was exposed afterward.”
“By whom?”
“We found a delayed transmission embedded in Keller’s equipment.”
I stopped breathing for a moment.
Mason’s equipment had broadcast our position after we were already on site.
If intentional, Mason had betrayed us.
If not, somebody used his gear.
May you like
Either way, the attack that supposedly killed him had begun with a signal linked directly to him.
And Ranger had been the first one to react before the ambush.
